Big Tech

Today U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in Texas' case NetChoice v. Paxton to define Big Tech platforms' role in disseminating users' speech. In his brief, Senator Hawley argues that the Supreme Court must narrow Big Tech's power by defining whether these social media companies are self-conscious editors of content or neutral platforms that simply host users’ posts. He urges the Supreme Court not to...

Today U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced the Ending DHS Funding for Liberal Propaganda Act to prevent the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from distributing grant funds to organizations that promote discrimination against conservative viewpoints. Just last week, reporting revealed that DHS paid leftist academics to create propaganda to "counter" conservatives, under the guise of "media literacy." "The Biden Administration has time and again...

Today U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) highlighted his bipartisan legislation to put power in the hands of consumers and give Americans harmed by nascent AI technology their day in court to hold Big Tech companies accountable. In a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing, Senator Hawley called out the tech industry for focusing on profits while turning a blind eye to the dangers of AI—like chatbots that have successfully taunted users into...

Today U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, co-chaired a hearing, calling on Congress to protect Americans' creative work from being harvested by powerful A.I. companies without fair pay. "What are we going to do practically to make sure that normal people—whether they are journalists, whether they're bloggers, whether it's just the working mom at home—what they can do to protect their work product,...

Today U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) delivered remarks on the Senate floor and again called for unanimous consent on his bill, the No TikTok on United States Devices Act, which would prohibit TikTok from operating in the United States and ban commercial activity with TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance. The renewed push to ban the app comes amid the increase in anti-Israel, pro-Hamas content on the platform. "TikTok has become a haven for antisemitic content, a...

Today U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) heard testimony from Meta Whistleblower Arturo Béjar, the former Director of Engineering for Protect and Care at Facebook. The hearing took place in the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, where Senator Hawley serves as Ranking Member. During his opening remarks, Senator Hawley called out Big Tech for their extensive lobbying efforts to kill any legislation attempting to regulate the industry. "Big...

Today U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) sent a letter to Secretary of the Treasury and Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) Chairwoman Janet Yellen. He urged her to conclude CFIUS’ review of TikTok and to ban all ByteDance-controlled apps currently available to U.S. users, especially given the increase in anti-Israel, pro-Hamas content on the platform. "TikTok—and its parent company ByteDance—are threats to American national security," wrote...

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) – Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law – joined Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), and Susan Collins (R-Maine) to introduce the Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act, a bipartisan bill to ban the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to generate materially deceptive content falsely depicting federal candidates in political ads to influence federal elections. “We must...

U.S. Senators Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Ranking Member and Chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, held a hearing on the guiding principles for regulating artificial intelligence (A.I.) moving forward. Senator Hawley questioned leaders in the A.I. space—including Dario Amodei, Cofounder and CEO of Anthropic, Yoshua Bengio, Professor at the Université de Montréal, and Stuart Russell, Professor of Computer Science at...

Today U.S. Senators Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) – the Ranking Member and the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, respectively – introduced the No Section 230 Immunity for AI Act. This new bipartisan legislation would clarify that Section 230 immunity will not apply to claims based on generative AI, ensuring consumers have the tools they need to protect themselves from harmful content produced by the...