Big tech, Twitter bans and Bing: US Democrats spar over Silicon Valley on debate stage
Social media companies are under pressure to police their platforms in the run-up to the 2020 election
Senator Kamala Harris, Senator Bernie Sanders, former Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg wait onstage before the fourth Democratic US 2020 presidential election debate at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio October 15, 2019. PHOTO: REUTERS
SAN FRANSISCO:
US Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren went after big tech during the Democratic debate on Tuesday but brushed off rival Kamala Harris’s challenge to join her in calling for President Donald Trump’s suspension from Twitter.
Warren, a US senator who is in a virtual tie with former Vice President Joe Biden in many opinion polls in the Democratic race, argued for her proposal to split up major tech firms such as Facebook, Alphabet and Amazon over antitrust concerns, in what was the most wide-ranging discussion of big tech in the Democratic debates to date.
“I’m not willing to give up and let a handful of monopolists dominate our economy and our democracy. It’s time to fight back,” Warren said in the debate in Westerville, Ohio.
Facebook launches tool to let users control data flow
But she did not engage with the request by Harris, also a US senator, that she join her in calling for Twitter to suspend Trump’s account. Harris has argued that Trump uses the platform to intimidate his opponents and threaten violence.
“It is a matter of safety and corporate accountability,” Harris pushed, while Warren refused to engage, instead saying she was focused on beating Trump in the November 2020 election.
“I don’t just want to push Donald Trump off Twitter. I want to push him out of the White House. That’s our job,” Warren responded.
Warren, who said on Tuesday she would not accept campaign contributions of more than $200 from executives at large tech companies or big banks, then pivoted to focus on whether candidates were taking money from big tech.
Social media companies, which are under pressure to police their platforms in the run-up to the 2020 election, have most recently been attacked by Democratic candidates, including Warren and Biden, for allowing politicians to run ads with false or misleading claims on their platforms.
This month, leaked audio from an internal Facebook meeting in July disclosed Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg telling staff they would “go to the mat” to defeat Warren’s expected effort to break up the company if she is elected president.
The other Democrats on stage did not explicitly endorse Warren’s plan to split up the major tech firms but voiced concerns about competition.
Facebook exempts political speech from fact-checking
US Senator Bernie Sanders, another longtime critic of big tech firms and corporate influence, said the United States needed a president with “the guts to appoint an attorney general who will take on these huge monopolies.”
Former US Representative Beto O’Rourke said he would be “unafraid to break up big businesses” but that he did not think it was the president’s role to designate which companies should be broken up.
In a moment that swiftly generated memes on Twitter, entrepreneur Andrew Yang took a swing at Microsoft Corp’s search engine Bing.
US Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren went after big tech during the Democratic debate on Tuesday but brushed off rival Kamala Harris’s challenge to join her in calling for President Donald Trump’s suspension from Twitter.
Warren, a US senator who is in a virtual tie with former Vice President Joe Biden in many opinion polls in the Democratic race, argued for her proposal to split up major tech firms such as Facebook, Alphabet and Amazon over antitrust concerns, in what was the most wide-ranging discussion of big tech in the Democratic debates to date.
“I’m not willing to give up and let a handful of monopolists dominate our economy and our democracy. It’s time to fight back,” Warren said in the debate in Westerville, Ohio.
Facebook launches tool to let users control data flow
But she did not engage with the request by Harris, also a US senator, that she join her in calling for Twitter to suspend Trump’s account. Harris has argued that Trump uses the platform to intimidate his opponents and threaten violence.
“It is a matter of safety and corporate accountability,” Harris pushed, while Warren refused to engage, instead saying she was focused on beating Trump in the November 2020 election.
“I don’t just want to push Donald Trump off Twitter. I want to push him out of the White House. That’s our job,” Warren responded.
Warren, who said on Tuesday she would not accept campaign contributions of more than $200 from executives at large tech companies or big banks, then pivoted to focus on whether candidates were taking money from big tech.
Social media companies, which are under pressure to police their platforms in the run-up to the 2020 election, have most recently been attacked by Democratic candidates, including Warren and Biden, for allowing politicians to run ads with false or misleading claims on their platforms.
This month, leaked audio from an internal Facebook meeting in July disclosed Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg telling staff they would “go to the mat” to defeat Warren’s expected effort to break up the company if she is elected president.
The other Democrats on stage did not explicitly endorse Warren’s plan to split up the major tech firms but voiced concerns about competition.
Facebook exempts political speech from fact-checking
US Senator Bernie Sanders, another longtime critic of big tech firms and corporate influence, said the United States needed a president with “the guts to appoint an attorney general who will take on these huge monopolies.”
Former US Representative Beto O’Rourke said he would be “unafraid to break up big businesses” but that he did not think it was the president’s role to designate which companies should be broken up.
In a moment that swiftly generated memes on Twitter, entrepreneur Andrew Yang took a swing at Microsoft Corp’s search engine Bing.