In an interview he gave with Fox Business Network's "Maria Bartiromo's Wall Street" this week, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.) spilled the beans about Twitter's duplicitous content standards.
Gallagher explained how Twitter ignored his repeated requests to kick Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propagandists off the platform at the very same time that conservatives left and right were being shadow-banned for trying to share the Hunter Biden laptop story.
A lot has come out ever since Elon Musk took over the Twitter platform, including the blatant double standards that saw right-wing users persecuted while left-wing users were free to say and do whatever they pleased. (Related: Prior to his purchase, Musk declared that upwards of 90 percent of Twitter's user base is actually bots.)
"It's unbelievable, and I salute Twitter's new owner for putting this out there," Gallagher stated.
"One thing that Elon Musk could do to connect it to our earlier topic, that wouldn't – that he could just do with the snap of his fingers, is he could kick all of the Chinese Communist Party so-called wolf warrior diplomats who are all over the platform attacking America, calling America an evil, systemically racist country."
Gallagher further explained that while Chinese residents are not allowed to use Twitter at all due to CCP restrictions, CCP officials have allowed themselves unlimited access with rubber-stamp approval from Twitter executives.
"And, of course, Chinese citizens aren't allowed access to this platform because the CCP prevents it – just kick them off, insist on basic reciprocity, any country that's so afraid of their own citizens that they don’t allow them to have access to Twitter, well, their diplomats shouldn’t be allowed to exploit the platform to attack America," Gallagher added.
"So, that's one thing I actually asked Jack Dorsey to do when he was the head of Twitter. He predictably ignored me on that, but Elon has an opportunity to lead on that issue."
Gallagher wants the federal government to ban TikTok
Also this week, Gallagher joined two other lawmakers in introducing legislation that would ban TikTok, a China-based social media competitor to Twitter, at the federal level.
Expressing concerns that the CCP could be using TikTok to collect data on Americans, Gallagher said in a statement accompanying the legislation that continuing to allow TikTok to operate in the United States is akin to having allowed the USSR to own The New York Times during the Cold War.
"TikTok is digital fentanyl that's addicting Americans, collecting troves of their data, and censoring their news," Gallagher said.
"No country with even a passing interest in its own security would allow this to happen, which is why it's time to ban TikTok and any other [Chinese Communist Party]-controlled app before it's too late."
TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, routinely collects data from TikTok, which Gallagher and his colleagues say can be easily intercepted and analyzed by the CCP. This is why Gallagher, at the very least, wants to see TikTok banned from all state-owned phones used by public servants in his home state.
"That TikTok, and by extension the CCP, has the ability to survey every keystroke teenagers enter on their phones is disturbing," Gallagher co-wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post along with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).
"With this app, Beijing could also collect sensitive national security information from U.S. government employees and develop profiles on millions of Americans to use for blackmail or espionage."
In response, Gov. Tony Evers issued a statement explaining that his administration continues to "take cybersecurity very seriously" and regularly consults the nation's three-letter agencies 'in making decisions about cybersecurity for state government devices."
The latest news about social media censorship can be found at Censorship.news.
Sources for this article include:
Please contact us for more information.