In a fiery floor speech on Wednesday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) voiced her opposition to the House bill that seeks to compel a Chinese company to divest from TikTok or face a ban in the U.S. During her address, Greene passionately criticized Facebook, echoing the recent change of heart by former President Donald Trump regarding TikTok.
“I stand before you today as the sole member of Congress who has faced the unprecedented consequence of being banned from social media platforms,” Greene opened, acknowledging the situation.
On January 2nd of 2022, Twitter banned me. Banned my personal account on which I was campaigning for Congress, raising money and using my free speech to inform the voters in my district they can vote for me. This was not by a company owned by China.
This was by American-owned Twitter. This came on the heels of our own United States government working with Big Tech and working with social media companies to censor and ban Americans free speech. I believe that this bill can cause future problems. It’s opening Pandora’s Box and I’m opposed to this bill. Most Americans don’t trust the United States government because of our experience dealing with it. Never forget that the United States government also was the one that provided the Russia hoax to Americans. It also worked to ban Americans’ free speech. It also has worked in so many ways to illegally warrantless spy on Americans through FISA.
In addition to her strong opposition towards the United States, Greene also outlined several other measures she would take to counter Chinese influence within her own country.
If we wanted to be serious about stopping a foreign adversary, if we wanted to be serious about stopping China, we would stop China from buying our U.S. farmland. We would, we would raise up our American energy independence. We would also stop the Green New Deal and not rely on China, who owns and operates 85% of the battery market worldwide. There are dangers that lie ahead in this. This is really about controlling Americans data. And if we cared about Americans data, then we would stop the sale of Americans data universally, not just with China. There’s some further issues. This is a Pandora’s box.
“What if Congress or the United States government decides to force the sale of another social media company in the future, under the pretext of safeguarding American data from foreign threats?” she pondered.
I think we could see in the future another Russia, Russia, Russia, and possibly force the sale of X, as many members in this body claim that Elon Musk is altering the algorithms of X. By the way, it was Elon Musk purchase of X that restored my social media account on Twitter and allowed me to have my free speech back on Twitter. There’s also members of this body, the Democrats are claiming that election meddling can happen on social media. Well, we could never forget Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. We can never forget the election meddling that happened there. And by the way, American owned Facebook and Instagram is where most of the garbage, like the gender lies and the woke lies exist. Many Americans and many teenagers believe awful things, and they don’t just see them on TikTok, they see them on Facebook and Instagram too.
I don’t think this will accomplish what the goal is to accomplish. So there’s other concerns. I think here is that when the government moves into forcing the sale of of TikTok, who is going to buy it? That’s the question that we should be asking.
Who is going to buy it? Who will be the next to control the data of over 170 million Americans? Are we going to trust Mark Zuckerberg to control their data? I certainly don’t. By the way, most of the time my posts on Facebook are shadow band, and I certainly don’t have the reach on that social media account. I think that there’s many other ways to protect data, and I think this body is capable of it.
The bill received strong bipartisan support in the House, passing with a vote of 352 to 65. Notably, Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from the squad voted against the measure.
