According to the Department of Justice, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions will meet with several state attorneys general to discuss whether social-media companies are "intentionally stifling" free speech and obstructing competition.
"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," said, Devin O’Malley, a DOJ spokesman.
The meeting - which will occur on September 25th and include a representative of the Justice Department’s antitrust division - is intended to help Sessions decide if there’s a federal case to be made against companies such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter for violating consumer-protection or antitrust laws.
This move comes after prolonged investigation into large tech companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google by the federal government. It also comes on the heels of President Trump’s accusation that Google intentionally skews their search results to display more liberal results.
Executives from Facebook and Twitter, including Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, appeared on Capitol Hill recently to testify at a Senate hearing examining how foreign powers like Russia have used social media to spread propaganda and wage behind-the-scenes social influence campaigns.
In an interview with Bloomberg recently, President Trump said that companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon could represent a “very antitrust situation.” Trump’s former White House chief strategist, Steve Bannon, also stated that he believed tech companies should be broken up.
The briefing will include the Attorney General’s from Alabama, Nebraska, Tennessee, Louisiana and Texas. One representative that is looking forward to hearing from Sessions and other Attorney General’s about next steps is Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry.
Landry states that he is “extremely concerned” about data collection by Google, Facebook and Twitter and the supposed suppression of conservative viewpoints. He added that he’s “thrilled” by the Justice Department’s interest.
“In my opinion you’re not going to fix this legislatively,” Landry said, “You’re going to have to fix this like we’ve always fixed monopolies in this country; you’re going to have to take an antitrust suit.”
Multiple tech companies have adamantly denied they have sought to suppress certain content on the internet. Some critics of these companies have even expressed concerns about these legal inquiries into said companies being weaponized for political gain.
Some experts have raised a range of doubts over whether an antitrust probe into these companies would have legal grounds. Those include the federal immunity law that has frustrated many state investigations into the internet platforms’ practices. Some believe that the allegations of free-speech suppression could help undermine the platforms’ immunity claims.