As Facebook’s oversight board prepares to decide if Donald Trump can return to the social media platform, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) views the situation to be a “sad” one for free speech.
“I think that this is sad that right now in our country, that the free speech that Americans enjoy basically depends on the whims of monopoly corporations. I have no idea how this board really operates. Nobody does,” Hawley told the Washington Post in a interview Tuesday.
Hawley was asked about the Facebook board preparing to announce whether it will lift its ban on former President Trump on Wednesday.
“This is the Facebook supreme court, as Facebook has sometimes called it. I don't think any one company should have this kind of power over speech, over data, over news and information,” Hawley said.
“I have no idea, of course, what the decision of their oversight board will be. And I think what it is, is less important than the sheer amount of power that they exercise and, of course, the total lack of transparency. And this is why in my view we need to break them up, Facebook is a monopoly, Google is a monopoly - the power of these monopolies is unlike anything we've seen in this country in a century.”