Cruz singled out Google and called it "the most dangerous company on the face of the planet" due to the company's size and the how it controls the vast majority of online searches. The tech company has been accused of suppressing conservative content and promoting "left-leaning" media outlets on its search engine.
Cruz also slammed Twitter and Facebook for their part in quelling conservative views and discouraging content that put Democrats in a bad light. He noted, for example, Twitter's attempts to censor content exposing Democratic Presidential hopeful Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden's links to China, Russia and Ukraine.
Cruz's comments came just as Congress voted to override President Donald Trump's veto of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 (NDAA), which the latter did over the bill's failure to repeal Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that protects social media companies from litigation.
Google influencing votes in favor of Democrats
Cruz based his comments on a 2019 hearing for the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution for which he served as chairman. One of the guest speakers for the hearing, renowned psychologist Robert Epstein, talked about big tech’s manipulation abilities. Epstein, according to Cruz, found that Google shifted more than 2.6 million votes to the Democrat Party in the 2016 election through rigged search outcomes.
"Dr. Epstein is not a Republican. He is a liberal Democrat who voted for Hillary Clinton but is outraged to see that kind of abuse of power. Google is clearly the most dangerous," said Cruz. (Related: Google caught reminding liberals, but not conservatives, to vote.)
Google, which also owns the video-sharing platform YouTube, had been repeatedly accused of anti-conservative bias. Critics pointed to its banning of YouTube content creators holding conservative views and blacklisting of websites such as NaturalNews. A 2018 report also shows that 96 percent of Google search results for Trump prioritized left-leaning and anti-Trump media outlets.
Twitter, Facebook promoting Democratic views
Cruz also condemned Twitter and Facebook for downplaying controversies on the left and suppressing conservative views. In an online hearing in November last year, members of Congress including Cruz interrogated Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about their respective companies' censorship and manipulation practices.
"We just recently had a hearing where Jack Dorsey testified with a beard that looked like he had crawled out from under a bridge," Cruz told Breitbart News. "I asked Mr. Dorsey at that hearing, ‘Who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what we’re allowed to read?’"
Cruz, in his statement, was referring to Twitter's censorship of the New York Post stories about the Bidens' business dealings with China, Ukraine and Russia in the lead-up to last year's elections. The news outlet got blocked from Twitter after running a story about it, which caused a maelstrom of criticism from politicians close to Trump, including Cruz.
Cruz expressed his concern about the censorship of such a prominent publication and said: "The New York Post is not some fly-by-night organization. It is the newspaper with the fourth-highest circulation in the country. It was founded by Alexander freakin’ Hamilton." (Related: Giuliani: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey "covering up child pornography.")
Cruz is more restrained in his criticism against Facebook, even crediting Zuckerberg for acknowledging the need to protect free speech. He noted, however, that Zuckerberg "benefited because Twitter and Google are so rotten that even though Facebook’s pretty bad, just saying free speech is important makes him appear markedly better than his rivals, but all three are very serious concerns."
Cruz’s comments came a day after the Senate voted to override Trump’s veto of the NDAA. The bill includes Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Act, which grants immunity to social media companies like Facebook and Twitter from legal liabilities for content posted by users. Trump vetoed the bill because he wanted to repeal Section 230 as it poses a serious threat to election integrity and national security.
Cruz was among the senators who voted in favor of Trump's veto.
Not long before the Senate ruling, the Republican Senate majority reported that Facebook censored one of its ad accounts. This came just as Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are vying to get re-elected in the decisive Georgia Senate runoff on Jan. 5.
Read more stories about big tech's attempts to rig the elections at TechGiants.news.
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