On Friday's broadcast of Morning Joe, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough turned a discussion on Facebook refusing to say if Russia and Trump's campaign ads targeted the same users into a rant about how the aforementioned website and other social media outlets including Twitter and search engines like Google have promoted, through their algorithms, "heinous" stories about him. Scarborough called for regulation and said it's "time we start changing the laws" to "protect democracy."



"I'll tell you what's important to remember, too, they operate in the United States of America and they have American customers and they're subject to our jurisdiction, and it's time that we start changing the laws so we can protect the democracy and also protect people's reputation," Scarborough said.



Moments prior, guest panelist Donny Deutsch criticized Trump for a tweet that suggests the government should step in and challenge the licenses of networks that have "become so partisan, distorted and fake."











Scarborough shared he approached Google to stop the search engine from producing results that direct people to said stories but was rebuffed. In his rant, Scarborough laid the framework for why these platforms should be regulated like news networks are.



"It's unregulated," Scarborough complained. "By the way, I've been dealing with fake news personally for a very long time."



"Yes you have," Mika Brzezinski, his co-host, said.



"There have been heinous stories that have been written about me. I actually went to Google after awhile," he said.



"I'm so tired of Google and Facebook and Twitter acting like they're living in another world, in another dimension and that somehow all the laws that bind all of us together, all the norms, that, that, that bind everybody together, don't apply to them, they're no better than Donald Trump in that belief, that the standards that apply to the rest of us do not apply to them," Scarborough said.



"This is about freedom!" Scarborough declared.



Scarborough also likened the "heinous" stories about him found via search engines and social networks to a world where Walter Cronkite was promoting Soviet propaganda on CBS.



"If he allowed Russians to come on his show and spout Soviet propaganda, the government would rightly step in and regulate him," the Morning Joe host said. "If he every day passed false information out there knowingly, objectively false information that you could get judicial notice from every court in the land was false -- this is not Donald Trump false, this is objectively false -- the government would step in."



Scarborough's full commentary:





DONNY DEUTSCH, GUEST: What Trump threatened yesterday about taking away the license of NBC is no less threatening than what is going on now with these social media platforms. This is the biggest threat to our democracy that we have right now. We should take this as seriously as the Korean nuclear threat, the fact that right now Facebook and others basically have the pipes to communicate to the world a thousand-fold that these networks have and are completely unregulated, it's frightening. You want to know the definition of fake news? That.



JOE SCARBOROUGH: It's unregulated. By the way, I've been dealing with fake news personally for a very long time.



MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Yes, you have.



SCARBOROUGH: There have been heinous stories that have been written about me. I actually went to Google after awhile. They said, you know, I could cure cancer it would never be in your suggested search, it would never be anywhere up there because you guys keep -- they go, no, no, no, that's not us. We're just a -- I said, no, you publish it. You're a publisher and you're starting to get sued in Europe.



I'm so tired of Google and Facebook and Twitter acting like they're living in another world, in another dimension and that somehow all the laws that bind all of us together, all the norms, that, that, that bind everybody together, don't apply to them, they're no better than Donald Trump in that belief, that the standards that apply to the rest of us do not apply to them.



I will say it again. Over 50% of Americans get their news from Facebook as a primary source. If Walter Cronkite got over 50% of the news viewers back in the 1970s -- if more than 50% of people that got their news got it from Walter Cronkite and CBS Evening News, if he allowed Russians to come on his show and spout Soviet propaganda, the government would rightly step in and regulate him.



If he every day passed false information out there knowingly, objectively false information that you could get judicial notice from every court in the land was false -- this is not Donald Trump false, this is objectively false -- the government would step in. At what point do we step in and say we're not going to allow the Russians, we're not going to allow the Chinese, we're not going to allow the Iranians, we're not going to allow the North Koreans to continue to corrupt our democracy while people in Silicon Valley go, oh, we're just above this. You can't -- this is about freedom!