‘I’ve Changed My Mind’ — Rand Paul Does Major About Face On Big Tech
On Monday, Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul changed his stance on Google and YouTube, writing, “YouTube and its parent company Google deserve to be sued,” in an opinion piece for the New York Post (NY Post).
Paul, who has long supported private property rights for Internet companies, changed his position because of a video that YouTube refused to remove that accused Paul of taking money from the captured, deposed and indicted Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro. Paul called the video a “lie” that is “essentially an accusation of treason,” prompting death threats against him, leading him to pursue legislation to hold platforms accountable for spreading defamatory content. (RELATED: Rand Paul suspended from YouTube for seven days after allegedly violating COVID-19 ‘misinformation’ rules)
“Google’s arrogance in continuing to host this defamatory video and the resulting death threats have caused me to rethink Congress’s blind allegiance to liability shields,” Paul wrote for the NY Post in the article titled: “I’ve changed my mind: Google and YouTube cannot be trusted to do the right thing and must be reined in.”
“Liability protection now encourages bad actors, many of whom are actually paid for their bad actions,” the senator added.
Paul, a staunch libertarian-conservative, wrote in his op-ed that although he had previously advocated protecting social media sites from liability under the right to free speech, he had never thought enough about how Internet service providers could host content accusing people of committing crimes. Paul asked a Google executive if it would be OK to post defamatory comments calling the mayor of a small town a “pedophile,” to which the executive responded that YouTube does not monitor their content for truth and factual evidence.
However, YouTube has removed videos throughout the COVID-19 pandemic that it deemed false, such as Paul’s pandemic video claiming that “cloth masks don’t work,” the senator explained in his NY Post op-ed.
“It is not Google’s general policy to refrain from evaluating the truth. Google chooses to evaluate what it believes to be true when it suits it and is consistent with its own biases,” Paul wrote for the outlet.
WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 07: U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) walks through the halls of the U.S. Capitol following a closed-door briefing with U.S. Senators on the capture of Venezuelan Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, at the U.S. Capitol on January 7, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
The Kentucky Republican claimed in his op-ed that Google and YouTube only have moderate speeches they don’t like, saying the latter platform in 2020 removed a clip of a constitutionally protected Senate speech he gave. Paul wrote that even despite “obvious left-wing censorship,” he defended the private property rights of platforms at the time.
Paul then directly cited Google’s content moderation policy, saying that if the person who created the defamatory video had “also ridiculed my race or sexuality, Google would happily remove the post.”
Paul’s office did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Although the senator, widely described as a non-interventionist, clearly supported unsuccessful efforts to prevent President Donald Trump from using military force against Venezuela without congressional authorization, he has not expressed support for Maduro.
Censorship within social media and tech giants has long been a focal point of Congress.
Republican Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, and James Comer of Kentucky, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, have launched a crusade against alleged censorship of conservative speech by big tech companies.
After years of criticism, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally won praise from Republican lawmakers and President Donald Trump for ending the company’s previous fact-checking system in early 2025.
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