If Americans truly want a full accounting of what happened on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol, Big Tech platforms such as Facebook must be part of the accounting, a political commentator argues.
“Social media platforms were instrumental in communicating and organizing the so-called ‘insurrection’ to destroy our democracy, as it’s hyperbolically described by the Left and plenty of Republicans,” writes Julie Kelly at American Greatness, where she is a senior contributor.
“If random Americans can be held legally responsible for others who commit crimes, then why are Silicon Valley tycoons with immense power and loads of money not similarly liable?”
Kelly contends veterans and high schoolers “shouldn’t be the only people paying a dear price for an event some compare to the Oklahoma City bombing or 9/11; if January 6 was indeed a domestic terrorist attack, then Big Tech, not Donald Trump, acted as the rented truck or the doomed airliner.”
“They ‘aided and abetted’ more violence and destruction than a handful of Oath Keepers,” she writes.
Kelly, whose work also has been featured at The Federalist, National Review, Wall Street Journal, The Hill and more, noted that some 300 Americans already “face a slew of charges related to the melee on Capitol Hill last January.”
Charges range from assaulting an officer to destroying government property to trespassing.
“More than 70 protestors stand accused of ‘aiding and abetting’ various crimes; even people who didn’t vandalize the Capitol or even enter the building have been charged with helping others do damage and interrupt Congress’ certification of the Electoral College results,” she says.
Kelly says she’s reviewed thousands of pages of charging documents “and can confirm much of the evidence collected by investigators was found on the defendants’ own social media accounts.”
Facebook accounts posted the most incriminating content by far,” she says.
She cites the DOJ claim that Oath Keepers membes used “websites, social media, text messaging, and messaging applications to recruit other individuals to travel to Washington, D.C., to support the January 6 operation.”
But such an alleged conspiracy “very likely would not have been possible without Facebook.”
She points out an analysis by Parler, “the right-leaning social media company deplatformed after January 6,” found more than half of those arrested so far “have allegedly incriminating Facebook posts or messages.”
When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared before Congress and was questioned, he “tap-danced in his response,” Kelly writes.
She notes multiple social media platforms immediately canceled President Trump, claiming he was responsible.
However, she points out, a study showed Twitter had 14,000 posts with the tag #HangMikePence.
“So if the sitting president of the United States along with regular Americans can be punished for using these platforms to allegedly stoke violence, what is the liability of the companies themselves?” she asks. “Why should the purveyors of this contraband communication be spared?”
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