By Jessica Kwong
Staff Writer
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President Donald Trump's eldest son Donald Trump Jr., who is campaigning for his father and Republicans ahead of the 2018 midterms, said he wants a conservative Facebook-like social network to be created for Trump supporters.
Trump Jr. said that if a Trump supporter built such a conservative network, he would encourage other supporters of his father to ditch Facebook for it. And Trump Jr. wants a supporter in the tech industry to launch it for the president's reelection campaign in 2020.
"I'd love to do it. But what I would prefer is, take one of the two Silicon Valley conservatives and let them start it," Trump Jr. told Axios on Thursday. "And then I'd help promote the platform and be all over that."
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Trump Jr. that morning also tweeted that he would "even support an unbiased version of any of them."
"I'm not looking for an echo chamber, I'm just looking for a level playing field. No more bias!" he tweeted. "No more BS!"
Trump Jr. has some people on his side. Last week, senior Facebook engineer Brian Amerige in an internal message board post spoke out against the company's "political monoculture" and more than 100 employees have since formed a group advocating for more tolerance of conservative views.
"We are a political monoculture that's intolerant of different views," Amerige wrote in the post obtained by The New York Times. "We claim to welcome all perspectives, but are quick to attack—often in mobs—anyone who presents a view that appears to be in opposition to left-leaning ideology."
Trump Jr. said there is "exactly zero doubt in my mind" that a tech bias exists.
"I don't think [this issue] is going away, because I don't think it's changing," he said.
The president's eldest son also said big tech companies need to self-regulate better. The Trump administration has wanted to crack down on big tech.
"Many of these platforms get many benefits from the government," said Trump Jr., who frequently touts his father and bashes opponents on his Twitter and Instagram accounts.
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Trump earlier this month also bashed social media companies for allegedly stifling conservative views.
"Social Media is totally discriminating against Republican/Conservative voices. Speaking loudly and clearly for the Trump Administration, we won't let that happen," Trump tweeted. "They are closing down the opinions of many people on the RIGHT, while at the same time doing nothing to others......."
Social media networks like Gab that claim to allow content of all types and have a large proportion of conservative users exist, but have a small membership compared to Facebook.
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