Big Tech attacks become rallying cry for GOP candidates

RENO, Nev. — Shortly after launching his campaign last year for the Republican nomination in Nevada’s U.S. Senate race, Sam Brown got into a scrape with Twitter. “As a Republican, we’re very used to seeing censorship happen on the Big Tech platforms.” As the 2022 primary season moves forward next week with contests in several states including Nevada, that sense of persecution is animating the GOP effort to retake control of the Senate. Brown’s GOP opponent, former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt, frequently knocks “censorship of speech” as “one of the most onerous threats to our free democracy.” In Ohio, Senate Republican nominee JD Vance has warned that Big Tech companies are going to “destroy our nation.” And in his controversial 11-point plan to “rescue” America, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who leads the GOP effort to regain the Senate majority, threatens legal action against social media companies that “censor speech and cancel people.” The GOP offensive comes as Elon Musk has pursued a purchase of Twitter, articulating a philosophy aligned with many Republicans who argue that the social media efforts to blunt misinformation and propaganda have stifled conservatives from expressing their views. In April, he told a crowd of supporters gathered at a Las Vegas honky-tonk that Musk’s planned purchase was a “big win” over “radical Big Tech monopolies that have been stifling conservative free speech.” “To watch all these Twitter employees in their cry rooms because, ‘Oh, my God, Elon Musk has pledged to allow an open, robust debate,’ is really something to behold,” he said. In Arizona, Blake Masters, a former venture capitalist now running for the U.S. Senate with Trump’s backing, said Musk’s purchase of Twitter would be a win for both free speech and “election integrity” — a phrase Republicans have used to raise questions about the legitimacy of U.S. elections, specifically Trump’s defeat, despite a coalition of top government and industry officials declaring the 2020 election to be “the most secure in American history.” “Beyond Elon, we need a suite of new policies, from treating the major social media companies as common carriers to writing a Digital Bill of Rights to requiring transparency and oversight of Google’s search algorithm,” he said in a statement.