Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) on Thursday said he will seek to have social media companies place lifetime bans on users who celebrated the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist shot Wednesday while speaking on the campus of Utah Valley University.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to use Congressional authority and every influence with big tech platforms to mandate immediate ban for life of every post or commenter that belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk,\u201d Higgins wrote in a post<\/a> on the social platform X.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they ran their mouth with their smarta– hatred celebrating the heinous murder of that beautiful young man who dedicated his whole life to delivering respectful conservative truth into the hearts of liberal enclave universities, armed only with a Bible and a microphone and a Constitution\u2026 those profiles must come down,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n The Louisiana lawmaker said he will lobby Big Tech to “have zero tolerance for violent political hate content.\u201d<\/p>\n Most social media companies have scaled back their efforts to police content over the past year, though most maintain rules against direct threats toward individuals. <\/p>\n Earlier this year, Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, relaxed its rules<\/a> surrounding hate speech, dropping some protections for LGBTQ individuals specifically.<\/p>\n Their model now follows Elon Musk\u2019s social platform X, where users are asked to submit notes or corrections to posts that are potentially misleading or lack context. <\/p>\n Kirk’s killing has spurred a surge of anger on the right as authorities seek to track down the shooter. Some of Kirk’s critics have suggested his divisive rhetoric invited violence. <\/p>\n \u201cHe was constantly pushing this sort of hate speech aimed at certain groups,\u201d Matthew Dowd, a political operative and contributor to MSNBC, said on the network Wednesday. \u201cAnd I always go back to: Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.”<\/p>\n