Political momentum for a crackdown on Silicon Valley’s social media giants got a boost this week when a state attorney general said he would tell U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions next week that Google, Facebook and Twitter should be broken up.
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry wants the federal government to do to the social media firms what it did to Standard Oil in 1911, according to a Louisiana newspaper report Tuesday.
The government smashed up Standard using antitrust laws, forcing it to break into 34 business pieces. Landry is accusing the tech behemoths of suppressing conservative views and stifling competition, on top of infringing on antitrust laws, The Advocate reported.
“This can’t be fixed legislatively,” Landry told the paper. “We need to go to court with an antitrust suit.”
He or another high official from his office will next week present the break-up proposal to Sessions at a meeting that California Attorney General Xavier Becerra is expected to attend.
Landry, president of the National Association of Attorneys General, had spent months with his colleagues probing what they described as anti-competitive practices by Facebook, Google and Twitter, according to the paper. The decision to push for a break-up of the social media companies came after Landry and his fellow attorneys general heard many complaints that companies routinely froze out conservative views, deliberately or accidentally, The Advocate reported.
Twitter declined to comment on Landry’s accusations and planned solution. Facebook and Google — whose subsidiary YouTube has been accused of censoring right-wing content — did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Early this month, after President Donald Trump claimed on Twitter that social media companies were “totally discriminating” against Republicans and conservatives, Sessions announced he would bring in a group of state attorneys general to examine whether firms like Google, Facebook and Twitter were “intentionally stifling the free exchange of ideas,” The Washington Post reported.
But Becerra was among Democrat state attorney generals not invited to the meeting.
However, after pushback over the restricted invitations, Sessions’ Department of Justice announced last week that the meeting would include a bipartisan group of 24 attorneys general, and take place Sept. 25. Becerra is planning to attend.
The Justice Department, Becerra said in a statement, “has responded to our request that states with interests involving the future and oversight of social media platforms be included in any discussion of this subject.
“States like California, the nation’s tech leader and home to a $385 billion tech industry, have a wealth of insight and expertise to share in any inquiry about the role of technology companies and we look forward to a thoughtful conversation in Washington, DC.”
