Conservatives have claimed for a number of years, usually with primarily anecdotal proof, that social media corporations are “censoring” conservative viewpoints on-line and favoring Democrats. Final week, the Republican-led Home held a listening to with former Twitter executives concerning the social media firm’s choice to briefly block sharing a New York Publish story about Hunter Biden.
The previous executives pushed again on the narrative that the tech firm was colluding with Democrats, however Republicans continued with the years-long hypothesis.
Social media corporations have come below common hearth from either side of the aisle for his or her dealing with of high-profile occasions and the unfold of misinformation on-line. Democrats have usually defended the businesses’ choices to take doubtlessly dangerous data down and have known as for the businesses to be extra proactive, whereas Republicans have accused the businesses of halting free speech.
Twitter was absent from Jordan’s subpoenas Wednesday. The social media firm is now run by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has signaled that he’s sympathetic to the conservative concern and has mentioned he’s involved about on-line “free speech suppression.”
Congressional subpoenas pointed at tech corporations are comparatively uncommon. The previous Twitter executives have been subpoenaed to testify at their very own request. And a Democrat-led Home panel subpoenaed a number of tech corporations abut election misinformation whereas investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.
Spokespeople for Microsoft and Meta mentioned the businesses had began producing paperwork for the committee. Amazon declined to remark. Apple and Alphabet didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
Cat Zakrzewski contributed to this report.
