California Republican lawmaker warns Google, other tech giants of hearings if bias continues

In the wake of Google listing “Nazism” as an ideology of the California Republican Party just days ahead of the state’s primary elections, Rep. Devin Nunes warned that the company and other tech giants could face hearings from lawmakers.

“I would hope that they just don’t get involved in politics and don’t censor conservatives and Republicans,” Nunes, R-Calif., said during an interview on “Sunday Morning Futures.” “But if they continue to do it, then we’d have to move, obviously, to hearings on these issues.”

The search engine’s Knowledge Panel, which provides users information related to the search topic that appears on the right side of the search results and is particularly beneficial to businesses, listed Nazism along with “Conservatism,” “Market liberalism,” “Fiscal conservatism” and “Green conservatism” as ideologies of the California GOP.

Nunes criticized the bias, and said other California tech firms like Facebook and Twitter could also be subject to hearings if they censored conservatives or Republicans.

“It’s always been there with newspapers and television, but now as you see it getting into the Internet, it’s one of the challenges we have with millennials,” he explained.

A new search engine would be the best way to end social media’s censorship of conservative ideas, according to Nunes, who believes there is a “free market solution” to the problem if “someone can compete with Google.”

“If they can’t, then ultimately we’re looking at monopolies and then that brings in a whole ’nother set of circumstances – is are these companies – Facebook, Twitter, Google, Apple, etc. – are they monopolies and should they be reined in? I would hope we don’t have to go there,” he said.