Social media titans suffer Trump snub
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is gathering conservative groups at the White House this week for a “summit” on social media that will prominently snub the tech titans who run big platforms on Facebook, Twitter and Google.
It’s a sharp contrast to earlier days in Trump’s tenure when tech executives were occasional celebrity guests at the White House, serving as a fresh indication of the president’s escalating battle with Big Tech.
Now, Trump regularly accuses the big social media platforms of suppressing conservative voices. He has suggested the companies may be acting illegally and should be sued by U.S. regulators.
White House spokesman Judd Deere said the White House conference Thursday would bring together “digital leaders for a robust conversation on the opportunities and challenges of today’s online environment.”
But Google, Facebook and Twitter weren’t invited, their representatives confirmed. And their leaders may be more likely to turn up Thursday at an annual media industry conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, a venue oriented more toward highstakes deal-making than reflections on perceived bias in online communications.
The White House had no comment on why top tech officials weren’t invited or on whether the conference was deliberately scheduled to overlap with the meeting in Idaho.
Among the conservative organizations that are expected to participate in the White House meeting: Turning Point USA; PragerU, short for Prager University, which puts out short videos with a conservative perspective on politics or economics; and the Washington think tank Heritage Foundation.
Trump and some supporters have long accused Silicon Valley companies of being biased against them. Accusations commonly leveled against the platforms include anti-religious bias, a tilt against those opposed to abortion and censorship of conservative political views. While some company executives may lean liberal, they have long asserted that their products are without political bias.
Representatives for Facebook, Google and Twitter declined to comment specifically on Thursday’s meeting. But the Internet Association, the industry’s major trade group representing Facebook, Google and dozens of other companies, said the internet “offers the most open and accessible form of communication available today.”
Its members’ platforms “don’t have a political ideology or political bias,” the group’s president and CEO Michael Beckerman said in a statement. He added that the companies “succeed and grow by building a broad user base regardless of party affiliation or political perspectives.”
Thursday’s conference raised questions about whether Trump would use the forum to signal tough actions ahead by his administration against the big companies in the areas of competition and privacy.
Big tech companies already are under closer scrutiny than ever by regulators and in Congress following a stream of scandals including Facebook’s lapses opening the personal data of millions of users to Trump’s 2016 campaign. Regulators at the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission are pursuing antitrust investigations of Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon. The House Judiciary Committee has opened a bipartisan probe of the tech giants’ market dominance.
Trump said last week on Fox News that Google, Facebook and Twitter “are fighting me hard right now, which is incredible because I think the Democrats want to shut them up and, frankly, so do a lot of the Republicans want to shut them up.”
Asked whether tech companies may be acting illegally and whether the Justice Department should determine that, Trump replied, “Well, they could be and I don’t want to even say whether or not they’re doing something, but I will tell you, there are a lot of people that want us … to take action against Facebook and against Twitter and, frankly, against Amazon.”