Eric Lendrum
American Greatness
January 18, 2021

The former Chief Security Officer of the tech giant Facebook called for major cable companies to silence conservative television networks over what he claims to be misinformation, according to The Daily Caller.

Former Facebook official Alex Stamos made the statements in an appearance on CNN, after host Brian Stelter falsely claimed that questioning the results of the 2020 election had led to a “crisis,” partially fueled by platforms such as Facebook.

Stamos responded by singling out the cable news networks One America News (OAN) and Newsmax, claiming that these networks have been “trying now to outflank Fox on the right” after Fox “introduced any kind of realism into their reporting,” so that some viewers could “put themselves in a sealed ecosystem.” Stamos even compared the networks to the radical Islamist terrorist organization ISIS, suggesting that Big Tech companies should “collaborate” and “make it impossible for them to use the internet” just as they did with ISIS.

After calling on Big Tech to censor such networks, Stamos then turned to the cable providers of such channels, saying that “I’m not sure we need Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, and such to be bringing them into tens of millions of homes.”

Both channels, which had long been seen as more conservative alternatives to Fox News, saw an increased amount of attention following the 2020 election, where Fox was heavily criticized for calling Arizona for Joe Biden long before any other network did so. Of the two, Newsmax in particular has seen a massive influx of viewers who left Fox for the alternative channel. The exodus has been so great that Newsmax has even scored several ratings wins over Fox in at least one hourly bloc, while Fox as a whole has dropped behind several of its left-wing competitors, including CNN and MSNBC, for the first time in 20 years.