Last Updated on February 3, 2021
Fox News host Tucker Carlson said on Tuesday night that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s Big Tech crackdown will likely set the standard for the rest of the country.
Governor DeSantis announced on Tuesday sweeping action against Big Tech companies, designed to tackle rampant censorship from them, which has mostly been targeted against conservatives and supporters of President Trump. As National File reported:
Some of the new regulations include a mandatory opt-out from content filters created by Big Tech companies, which can leave users “shadowbanned” without the need for full platform removal, a right of action for all Floridians against Big Tech companies who violated this, and a number of daily fines related to interference in elections, including a $100,000 daily fine levied for any company that suspends political candidates.
DeSantis claimed that the Big Tech companies were the number one threat to democracy and freedom of expression in America.
Speaking to Tucker Carlson on Fox News on Tuesday evening, DeSantis said that Floridians wanted protection against being censored by Big Tech, and said his action would end up “being a really good first step” in tackling the dominance and control of Big Tech companies over the lives of ordinary Americans.
“There’s always been the question, what do you do about this?” DeSantis asked. A lot of us have thought that there’s been something wrong for a long time, but to just sit back and hope it gets better, that clearly wasn’t going to work, so we’re leading, and I think it’ll be good.”
DeSantis added that there would likely be a big fight in the legislature against his plans, but that hopefully his administration would garner “a lot of support” for what they’re doing:
“I think most folks do want protections for their privacy and their data, I think most folks want protections from being deplatformed,” said DeSantis. “And it’s just not being banned from Twitter or something, as we’ve seen, these companies… can collude, they can deny you, if you’re a small business, of payment processing, of the ability to use email and text.”
DeSantis continued, “You go to a rally that they don’t like and you engage in wrong-think, and all of a sudden your flower business is decapitated for a month because they take action. So I think we’ve gone down a dangerous path on this. This provides protections for individual Floridians, and I think it’ll be very positively received, but we’re buckled up, we know that there are always fights over these things.”
Tucker remarked that DeSantis’s proposed action plan “really does set the standard for the rest of the country” when it comes to acting against Big Tech censorship, with DeSantis arguing that other legislatures will “follow suit” in enacting similar legislation. “I mean Florida laws may actually have an effect on folks who are visiting here all the time, so I think it’s going to have an effect one way or the other beyond our borders,” DeSantis said.
Tucker suggested that the steady hand of Governor DeSantis and his America First policies were one of the reasons that people are now moving to Florida. “Pretty amazing, finally someone’s doing something [about Big Tech],” he concluded.
You can watch the full interview below:
