“The book corporate monopolies don’t want you to read,” that’s how Republican Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) describes his new book, The Tyranny of Big Tech. In it, Hawley lays out frightening facts about the data Big Tech giants have amassed on users and what he thinks Washington needs to do about it.
Hawley hopes his book brings renewed attention to the negative impacts of Big Tech, from monitoring young children to influencing worldwide elections.
“For me, this really started as a parent,” Hawley told CBN News.
He says that’s when he realized Big Tech companies were tracking his kids and millions more online.
“These companies were following around the kids online and building profiles of them, so that really led to me getting interested in this,” Hawley explained.
As Missouri Attorney General at the time, Hawley led the charge by filing anti-trust investigations against both Facebook and Google, which he says has expanded to include similar suits in all 50 states.
“I think at the end of the day, monopoly power is always bad for liberty,” Hawley believes. “Monopoly power is bad for free speech, and these companies have unprecedented power over speech, over our lives, and we’ve got to reclaim that power for us as individuals and as families.”
Now a U.S. senator, Hawley is fighting Big Tech on a federal level.
“I think from a political point of view we have to break these companies up,” claims Hawley.
Laying out the case in his new book, Hawley exposes his alarming discoveries and points to why he believes Big Tech companies are influencing millions of voters worldwide.
“I think they absolutely are swaying votes,” says Hawley.
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In the book, he cites a 2019 testimony on Capitol Hill from Dr. Robert Epstein, whose research led to shocking revelations.
“In 2016, Google’s search algorithm likely impacted undecided voters in a way that shifted at least 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton, whom I supported,” Epstein testified in 2019.
Epstein also warned Congress that companies like “Google have likely been determining the outcome of 25% of national elections worldwide since at least 2015.”
“Dr. Epstein, he walked through experiments that he did, analysis that he did where he took the autocomplete suggestions on Google,” Hawley explained to CBN News. “To show that in 2016 for instance that if you typed in Hillary Clinton’s name the autocomplete suggestions were overwhelmingly positive, if you typed in Donald Trump’s name, they were overwhelmingly negative.”
Hawley also writes about a 2019 meeting with Mark Zuckerberg where the Facebook founder and CEO apologized for censoring the pro-life group, Live Action.
“Currently if that happens to you, if that happens to a Christian pro-life group, you can’t do anything about it,” says Hawley. “I mean you can ask Facebook to change their mind, you can beg them, but you don’t have any rights you can enforce against them.”
And from his standpoint, the social media giant has yet to make any significant change in providing accountability there.
“I think we ought to allow people to go to court, have their day in court,” says Hawley. “If the companies can really defend it, if there’s an explanation that they’ve followed their own procedures – then they’ll be fine. But if they really have singled out conservatives or people of faith, then there’s going to be a problem.”
Hawley believes power is in the wrong hands when companies like Facebook and Twitter police free speech in America – such as censoring people like former President Donald J. Trump.
“The only reason people care is because Facebook is so powerful,” says Hawley. “Listen, if Facebook had a lot of competitors then President Trump could just go to another platform – say alright, fine, forget you Facebook I’ll go over here to this platform. The whole point is Facebook doesn’t have any real competitors in the social media space so what they do really matters because they’re the only game in town for all intents and purposes.”
Hawley believes breaking up Big Tech should be a bipartisan issue on Capitol Hill.
“I think there could be, I think there should be, and I think that breaking them up is where we ought to come together,” claims Hawley.
Until then, he encourages individuals and families to commit to cutting back on social media while taking a closer look at protecting their privacy.
“Try to take all the steps that you can to limit the amount of information that you’re voluntarily giving over to these companies and that means spending less time online it also means using browsers for instance that will help keep your data as private as possible,” encouraged Hawley.
When it comes to action in Washington, Hawley believes real change is up to the voters and can only happen when they decide to stop allowing Big Tech to raise their kids and run their government.
The remainder of this article is available in its entirety at CBN