GOP congressman wants to take over Facebook to save far-right media

Openly racist Trump fan Rep. Steve King (R-IA) abandoned so-called small government conservatism Tuesday when he suggested the government should take over Facebook in order to help conservative media figures.

During a sham House hearing devoted to baseless claims that social media is censoring conservatives, King grilled Facebook Head of Global Policy Management Monika Bickert about the company’s algorithms.

King claims those algorithms resulted in decreased traffic for “Gateway Pundit” Jim Hoft, a right-wing blogger who traffics in smears and conspiracy theories.

King also mentioned Trump backers “Diamond and Silk,” who lied to Congress by claiming that a Facebook algorithm cut their traffic when an independent analysis showed the opposite.

After Bickert explained the principles of Facebook’s algorithm, King made a heavy-handed suggestion for an “alternative” in case the alleged content filtering “gets further out of hand.”

“It appears to me that section 230 needs to be reviewed, and one of the conversations that I’m hearing is, what about converting these large behemoth organizations that we’re talking about here into public utilities?” King asked.

That suggestion, it turns out, comes from “Gateway Pundit” Jim Hoft himself, who described Facebook as a “utility” in a statement to Congress.

But despite Republican attempts to boost arguments that social media sites discriminate against conservatives, independent analyses show that conservative media figures are thriving on Facebook.

King’s suggestion, aside from inventing a non-existent censorship problem, also endorses government taking over private businesses for the explicit purpose of controlling political speech. That’s a dangerous position for any elected official in a democracy to take.

Steve King poses himself as a champion of “limited government” — but that alleged principle goes right out the window when King is given the chance to protect vicious smear merchants and pro-Trump propagandists.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.