The Morning Briefing: Congress Needs to Slay Big-Tech's 3-Headed Monster

Enough With the Hearings, Congress. Do Something About the Big-Tech Plague

Wishing the Happiest of Hump Days to all of you, my dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. I have never lived on a boat, but am willing to try new things.

I feel like we have been here before when it comes to Big-Tech overreach.

Oh wait, that’s because we have.

Twitter CEO Jack “Great Rasputin’s Beard” Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark “Bowl Cut” Zuckerberg were back for another virtual get-together with some senators again on Tuesday, this time in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

I am beginning to lose count, but I know that this is at least the third time since the summer that members of Congress and the CEOs have staged one of these political kabuki theater performances. The pattern is familiar: Zuckerberg doesn’t remember much, Dorsey shows up stoned but with plenty of stalling, sometimes nonsensical answers. Then Ted Cruz ABSOLUTELY DESTROYS them, which makes for some good blog traffic.

After that, the Jack and Zuck show gets back to business as usual.

Tyler covered yesterday’s latest “Cruz vs Dorsey” moment:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) took Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to task over his company’s suppression of the bombshell New York Post report on Hunter Biden’s emails linking Joe Biden to his son’s notorious business deals. In a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Cruz pressed Dorsey on how Twitter could possibly claim not to be a publisher when it selectively applied its hacked materials policy against the Biden story but not against the New York Times article on Trump’s tax returns.

Cruz is also a member of the Commerce Committee, so he and Dorsey had pretty much this same conversation three weeks ago. The difference between now and then is…nothing. OK, the election happened and we got to see that Twitter and Facebook probably did help Biden a lot, but nothing has really changed for Twitter, Facebook, and Google. As I wrote at the end of last month, Dorsey and Zuckerberg (and occasionally Google’s Sundar Pichai) keep showing up for these dog-and-pony shows because they know that they’re largely untouchable.

All they have to do is show up for an hour two of tongue-lashings, then retreat to their billionaire enclaves and continue doing whatever the hell they want to do.

Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri got in on the action yesterday, saying that he had evidence that Twitter, Facebook, and Google were engaged in some censorship collusion. Hawley took to Twitter afterward to complain about Zuckerberg’s evasiveness and this reply to it was perfect:

So what are you going to do? Talk him to death?

— Little Larry Sellers (@SpawnOfDanelaw) November 17, 2020

Nothing concrete will happen unless Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is altered. As the Wall Street Journal explains, most agree that it needs to be updated, but there isn’t much agreement on what the update should involve.

Until that is figured out, the charade will continue. The Big Three will continue censoring conservative voices and — if the Republicans keep the Senate — they will occasionally be summoned for a good talking-to.

In my headline today I said that Congress needs to slay the Big Three. “Neuter” would have been a better word, perhaps.

Stop the theater though. Its ineffectiveness is becoming rather embarrassing at this point.

Bee Me

Study Finds Connection Between Believing Russia Rigged 2016 Election And Believing 2020 Election Was Foolproof https://t.co/JQCGi72UoX

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) November 18, 2020

The Kruiser Kabana

pic.twitter.com/vzSeBdnJwo

— minimalism (@youminimalism) November 16, 2020

Another great show full of content that couldn’t get made today.

My new goal is to become a beer taster with a cult following.

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PJ Media Senior Columnist and Associate Editor Stephen Kruiser is the author of “Don’t Let the Hippies Shower” and “Straight Outta Feelings: Political Zen in the Age of Outrage,” both of which address serious subjects in a humorous way. Monday through Friday he edits PJ Media’s “Morning Briefing.” His columns appear twice a week.