Kenneth Robert Buck is an American politician who represents Colorado's fourth congressional district in the United States House of Representatives, strongly criticized Google for its connections to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) during a House subcommittee hearing on antitrust with the chief executive officers of the country's tech giants. He claims the big techs are involved with the CCP.
If Google wants to be friends with Communist China, Buck told Fox News that the company's CEO Sundar Pichai must answer for the Chinese Communist Party's outrageous behavior. This statement comes after Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Apple's Tim Cook, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, and Pichai testified before Congress.
Buck, who has openly criticized the tactics adopted by the Congress, came up with legislation in the House earlier this week on the United States Senator Josh Hawley's "Slave-Free Business Certification Act," which suggests holding American companies accountable for any use of forced labor in the supply chain. Aside from discovering the troubling connection between tech firms and the CCP, Buck said, there was general agreement between both parties that the hearing revealed vicious attempts to suppress competition within the free market.
He went on to say that both sides of the aisle agree that these platforms take advantage of their position to restrict innovation, adding that the hearing was informative as CEOs were unable to respond to the specific examples they were being faced with. Buck opened up about the theory that anti-competitive practices trigger political bias and eventually lead to censorship of specific materials online, with regard to news and media.
Buck noted that the people of America can choose from at least hundreds of news sources, but some people on the left and likely to claim that Wall Street or Fox News is biased on the right. But if there's only one platform, Google, for instance, people have no chance of complaining about the search engine giant not meeting their needs even if they drop Breitbart to the 19th page or Trump Jr. to the 23rd page simply because they aren't going to find another search engine.
He went on to explain that the situation is quite different when dominating platforms such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter are involved in political bias. He recalled remarks made by Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y. during the hearing about Facebook acquiring Instagram, claiming that the deal was made under suspicious circumstances and the federal government should investigate it.
Buck said this matter should have ideally been dealt with by Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, and his administration since the acquisition took place during his administration. According to Buck, Facebook used pressure to acquire Instagram, by threatening to put them out of business unless they agreed to sell. The chief executive of Instagram said this at the time, Buck added.