Republicans wasted no time dragging Big Tech into the culture wars in 2022

Almost exactly one year after the Capitol insurrection that led to former President Donald Trump being suspended from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, Big Tech was again in the political crosshairs this week for cracking down on an account from another Republican.

On Sunday, Twitter permanently banned one of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's accounts over multiple violations of the company's Covid-19 misinformation policy. The final straw, a person familiar with the decision told CNN, was a tweet containing a graph that misleadingly purported to show deaths related to Covid-19 vaccines, a statistic Greene claimed has been ignored. (All Covid-19 vaccines available in the United States have been scientifically proven to be extremely safe and highly effective.)

Since the insurrection, Republicans have only stepped up their attacks on Big Tech platforms as mustache-twirling manipulators of partisan politics. And judging by the backlash from Greene and her allies this week, Republicans seem determined to make Big Tech a central ideological villain in 2022. But even as many have labeled this year a "do or die" moment for tech regulation, the strident, almost gleeful attempts by some politicians to caricature tech platforms risks setting back the effort and further endangers those who would benefit the most from tougher tech oversight — everyday users, including their own constituents who are being bombarded daily by public health misinformation and conspiracy theories.