Heritage Foundation Defends Facebook’s ‘Right’ to Censor, Will Oppose Regulation

The Heritage Foundation will defend Facebook’s legal right as a “private company” to censor content and will oppose attempts to regulate the tech giant, according to the think tank’s senior research fellow for technology, Klon Kitchen.

In an interview with Breitbart News, Kitchen argued that as a private company, Facebook has the right to censor content at will, although he strongly cautioned the social network against a censorious approach.

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“I{snip} But they’re a private company, and the Heritage Foundation is going to be very clear about a private company’s right to organize and conduct its business as it sees fit.”

Kitchen disagreed with the view that platforms like Facebook and Google are special cases due to their dominant position in the marketplace and their unprecedented influence over news and politics, which includes the power to sway undecided voters by up to 80 percent, and boost voter registration by significant margins among targeted users.

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“I think right now, we have free speech on these platforms,” said Kitchen. “Just about any political view that you want to have, you can get on these platforms. They certainly have community standards.”

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Today, Axios reported that The Heritage Foundation was involved with Facebook’s political bias review, conducted using employees of Eric Holder’s law firm, led by former Republican Senate Whip Jon Kyl. {snip}

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Kitchen supports the idea of social networks maintaining lists of banned posts and users to be reviewed by conservative third parties. A variant of this idea has been proposed by Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale.

“I’m very happy for that to be one of many considerations. They do need to do a better job of explaining to users why they’re making the decisions they’re making. I think they understand that; what’s left to be seen is how well they’re going to go about doing that.”

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