The former chief security officer of Facebook suggested conservative news outlets One America News and Newsmax be deplatformed following the siege of the Capitol and the proliferation of “radical views” online.
“We have to turn down the capability of these conservative influencers to reach these huge audiences. There are people on YouTube, for example, that have a larger audience than daytime CNN, and they are extremely radical and pushing extremely radical views,” Alex Stamos said Sunday on CNN’s Reliable Sources.
“And, so, it is up to the Facebooks and YouTubes, in particular, to think about whether or not they want to be effectively cable networks for disinformation. And then we’re gonna have to figure out the OANN and Newsmax problem that these companies have freedom of speech, but I’m not sure we need Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, and such to be bringing them into tens of millions of homes,” he continued.
“This is allowing people to seek out information if they really want to but not pushing it into their faces, I think, is where we’re going to have to go here,” he said.
The comments were hit with condemnation on Twitter, with some expressing outrage, saying it’s another example of suppressing conservatives.
Control, suppress, censor conservatives. What’s next re-education camps? https://t.co/FQ8LjlMhTr
— Mercedes Schlapp (@mercedesschlapp) January 17, 2021
The left’s pivot from blaming Republicans for “othering” minorities to publicly calling for the “othering” of anyone who doesn’t toe the groupthink line — well, it’s stunning. https://t.co/F4i0gzrqTd
— Virginia Kruta (@VAKruta) January 17, 2021
Without pushback of any kind. https://t.co/wRAKXpC7CD
— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) January 17, 2021
Banning speech is never the best answer. https://t.co/k5wEhkzcrr
— Mike Glenn (@mrglenn) January 17, 2021
“Newsmax never denied the election results. We called all contested states for Biden as they were certified and accepted him as President-elect on December 14. We note that our coverage of Pres. Trump’s electoral challenge was less significant than Fox News and Fox Business but they are not included in this blacklist,” Newsmax said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
The statement added that Newsmax was “disappointed” in both Stamos, as well as CNN’s Oliver Darcy who tweeted about the matter, for wanting to “engage in overt censorship at the same time they are limiting competition.”
Stamos served as Facebook’s CSO from 2015 to 2018, when he stepped down to take a position at Stanford University. In 2019, he called on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to step down from his role, citing that he needs to give up “some of that power” instead of breaking up the Big Tech behemoth.
