The Department of Justice announced on Wednesday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions would meet with state attorneys to discuss potential antitrust and censorship issues with major tech companies.
Devin O’Malley, a Department of Justice spokesman, released a statement earlier announcing that “the Attorney General has convened a meeting with a number of state attorneys general this month to discuss a growing concern that these companies may be hurting competition and intentionally stifling the free exchange of ideas on their platforms.”
This is just the most recent action taken against large tech companies by the administration, which has become increasingly hostile to tech and social media companies.
US President Donald Trump has frequently attacked large tech companies for perceived grievances. He has gone after Amazon for a slew of issues, ranging from internet sales taxes, their usage of the US Postal Service, negative press coverage in the Amazon-owned Washington Post, and monopolistic behavior. More recently, he went after Google for allegedly suppressing conservative voices in Google searches.
Just last Wednesday, President Trump tweeted out a video allegedly showing Google promoting former President Obama’s State of the Union addresses while neglecting to promote his. The caption was a single hashtag – “#StopTheBias”.
Earlier on Wednesday, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg testified in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee regarding foreign election interference through social media. Notably, Alex Jones, whose conspiracy-peddling organization InfoWars was recently banned from Facebook and YouTube, sat right behind them, in an attempt to draw attention to his treatment by social media companies.
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