For years, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley has called out tech companies, arguing they exploit users' private information.
The senior senator from Missouri says individuals should have control over their information, not big tech. "If they want to purchase it from us, fine," Hawley told NPR. "If they want to compensate us in some way, sure. But what's happening now, with our entire model based on taking this information from us and targeting our kids, we just can't let that go on."
Hawley also argues that these platforms have censored conservative voices.
It's an allegation that arose among those on the right after President Biden pressured social media companies to fact check users and go after hate speech online.
There's no clear evidence of an anti-conservative bias, and both the left and right have alleged suppression of speech online.
Now that President Trump is back in the White House, relationships with big tech are shifting. Meta, for example, has stopped fact-checking in the United States.
Hawley says his mission to hold tech firms accountable hasn't changed.
Leila Fadel, host of NPR's Morning Edition, asked Hawley about that, and whether his concerns about social media companies extended to tech titan Elon Musk's involvement in government cuts.
This interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.
Leila Fadel: Senator, I want to start with a longtime issue for you. Big Tech's access to private data of American citizens. Meta, OpenAI, Amazon, Google, X. Are you pushing for more specific regulations on these companies?
Sen. Josh Hawley: I think the fact that they can take our data without our knowledge, they can sell it without our permission, they can market it without our control — all of these are huge problems. We should give every single American the right to go to court and to sue these companies when they violate our property rights, when they take it from us without our consent and without any form of compensation. And also when they harm our children, when our kids are exposed to sexually exploitative material, we ought to be able to go to court and sue these companies. Right now, we can't. And that needs to change.
Fadel: When you saw these big tech titans who head Meta, Google, Amazon and X standing right behind President Trump on Inauguration Day, what was going through your mind as someone who has long fought against big tech's dominance in Washington?
Sen. Hawley: What really struck me is that they can read an election return. I mean, they know that what they have been doing for the past 10 years and more, which is taking our personal property and then using it to control the flow of news and to put their thumb on the scale against conservatives and against Donald Trump, they realize that that's not popular any longer. Donald Trump won the election. They want to have the business of millions of Americans who voted for Donald Trump. And the other thing they're trying to do is to avoid any kind of accountability. It's classic behavior from titans, from robber barons, where they try to cozy up to the government. Listen, if they're willing to go out and say now that they're going to stop their censorship against conservatives, I'm all for that. Does that mean, though, as a conservative myself, that I trust them? Absolutely not.
Fadel: The big concern for some voters, as polling shows and town halls this weekend show, is tech titan Elon Musk's direct line to the president. And he and his team of engineers are seeking to access private data of American citizens in their work at the government entity, DOGE, tasked with cutting costs. Does this concern you?
Sen. Hawley: I think that any decisions here that are made in terms of rightsizing the federal workforce, I want to make sure that all of that goes forward. And in terms of privacy and data, of course, the DOGE team, anybody who is a government employee, needs to comply with all of the relevant and requisite security laws, all of the privacy laws, that should go without saying.
Fadel: I'm curious when you say proper security laws, whose job is it to assure that Musk and his team have the proper security clearance to access American citizens' data?
Sen. Hawley: It's probably OPM [the U.S. Office of Personnel Management] I mean, this is the agency that is in charge of federal hiring. My understanding is that most of the so-called DOGE team are what we call special government employees, they're subject to the usual rules and laws. And that would certainly apply to anybody who's a government employee in any capacity, special or otherwise, including the DOGE team. So these people all ultimately work for Donald Trump. He's the one who was elected and he's made very clear he's the one who's making the decisions here.
Fadel: The power of the purse, though, is Congress' job. They allocated spending. And there again, we heard Americans asking in town halls over the weekend, in Republican states, why Congress seems to be ceding this power as an equal branch of government?
Sen. Hawley: Well I don't think Congress has ceded any power. We have not yet even begun to budget for the year. That is ahead [of us]. And certainly it's Congress' responsibility to make both the authorization and appropriations to decide what can be spent and where it will be spent. We do that, obviously, in cooperation with the executive branch, but that is all to come and there'll be lots of decisions to be made there. And again, if the question is, do we want to reduce the size of the federal workforce? Yeah, I do. In fact, what I would like to do is I'd like to move whole bunches of federal employees out of Washington, D.C., and move them into the states, closer to the people that they serve.
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