Lacking federal demands, user safety has not exactly proven to be a chief priority for these corporations. Ultimately, social media companies would like to keep the government out of their business—and their expenditures show just how far they’re willing to go to do so. Some of the most popular digital entities in the U.S., including Meta, Alphabet, Snap, and ByteDance, have spent enormous sums of money in recent years to keep regulation away from their industry. Over the course of 2024, Meta alone spent a record $24.4 million lobbying Washington. The company is already on track to top that this year, according to projections from OpenSecrets.
It seems clear, then, that there is much lawmakers on both sides of the aisle can do to actually make the internet a less dangerous place. In particular, Republicans—who control the House, Senate, and White House—could pass nationwide regulations against online hate speech, crack down on Big Tech’s lackluster safety rules, or even just convince Trump to tone down his own violent rhetoric.
But lawmakers need to step carefully when passing these regulations, lest they unwittingly infringe on the right to free speech of which Kirk himself was so fond.
