The first full hearing of the new GOP majority’s House Oversight Committee focused on Hunter Biden and the role Twitter played in suppressing a shocking New York Post story about the contents of a laptop allegedly belonging to the president’s son belongs
Weeks before the presidential election, Twitter restricted the Post’s account to curb the spread of the article, declaring it potentially “harmful material” and violating a policy on hacked material. After an outcry, particularly on the right, accounts were restored, and Twitter executives later acknowledged the company had taken the action was wrong.
The premise of Wednesday’s hearing was that Twitter worked with the FBI to suppress the story and tip the balance in the presidential election to Joe Biden.
The trial included testimony from four former Twitter executives who said they were not involved in any conspiracy to sideline the story.
“I’m not aware of any collusion or advice from any government agency or political campaign about how Twitter should have handled the Hunter Biden laptop situation,” said James Baker, Twitter’s former deputy general counsel, who previously served as general counsel at the FBI served, said. . .
Baker also defended revelations about his work from new Twitter owner Elon Musk’s release of “Twitter Files” and advised Twitter officials to be “careful” when considering what to do with the tweets about the laptop’s history of Hunter Biden should do. “Not surprising advice from a corporate lawyer,” Baker said.
However, Jim Jordan (R-OH) claimed Twitter was “played down” by the FBI because the company was concerned about Russian interference in the 2020 election. He pressed Twitter officials about how many employees have security clearances, but they could not answer.
“The company made a decision that showed it was breaking the law [the hacked materials] Politics,” said Yoel Roth, former global head of trust and security. “It was not my personal assessment at the time, but the decision was communicated to me by my line manager. In the end, I didn’t agree enough to object.”
But Jordan argued that since Twitter officials had regular meetings with FBI officials, “I think they wanted to remove it.” He pointed to email requests from an FBI agent that suggest Twitter officials are reviewing certain posts for terms of service violations, Jordan said, raising questions about whether that violates the First Amendment.
“Do I think this is a valuable use of FBI time? NONE. But I see no problem under the First Amendment in a motion for review,” Roth said.
Democrats, meanwhile, pointed to an instance where then-President Donald Trump tried to get Twitter to remove one of Chrissy Teigen’s tweets about him. The White House then contacted Twitter to remove the tweet, according to Anika Collier Navaroli, a whistleblower and former Twitter staffer.
“I felt this was an inappropriate action by any government official, let alone the White House,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) said sarcastically during the hearing. “But it wasn’t about Joe Biden, it wasn’t about his son’s laptop. It was Donald Trump because he didn’t like what Chrissy Teigen had to say about him.” The tweet has not been deleted. Navarolli said it’s a “slippery slope” for a president to pressure a social media company to take down content.
Meanwhile, the media confirmed the authenticity of the laptop delivered to a workshop in 2019. Hunter Biden’s lawyers recently asked state and federal agencies to investigate the spread of information from the computer.
It’s been nearly five years since Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was called before Congress in a marathon Senate hearing that set the stage for what was to come: Republicans complaining that tech giants are biased in controlling social media, and Democrats grumbling that Silicon Valley don’t do enough to stop inflammatory content.
Not surprisingly, not much has been done to limit the power of platforms. There was bipartisan support for a robust set of antitrust laws targeting the tech giants, but none made it to the last Congress. Jordan has been one of the social media platforms’ loudest congressional critics, but he opposed the antitrust laws, arguing they were abuses of power by government agencies. He also replaced one of the bills’ sponsors, Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), as the top Republican on the House Antitrust Subcommittee. Instead, MP Thomas Massie (R-KY), who spoke out against government interference.
Politicians on both sides have also discussed reforming or even scrapping Section 230, the provision of a 1996 law that shields platforms from liability for how they moderate third-party content. But even these efforts yielded nothing.
So what’s left when it comes to social media? Hearings, a common and not too subtle way to put pressure on a tech giant or a private company. In the case of Twitter, however, the testified executives no longer work there, as Musk has released a plethora of internal emails and other documents from the previous regime.
The former Twitter executives appeared to suggest that the decision to block Hunter Biden’s laptop story was a case of overcorrection after years of listening to Russian social media influence before the 2016 presidential election.
Baker said he believes “the best reading of the law is that the First Amendment protects Twitter as a private entity in its content moderation decisions.” I do not think the publicly available facts indicate that Twitter has become a state actor as that concept is defined under existing precedent that the First Amendment would have limited it.
However, some Republicans continued to suggest that Twitter managers were breaking the law, even going so far as to argue that hiding the laptop’s history reached the level of interfering with voting rights or the election in general. The October 2020 Twitter action received extensive coverage at the time, and the committee went undisclosed about whether it drove interest in the laptop story and web traffic to the Post’s website.
The oversight committee’s hearing was briefly delayed due to a power outage that darkened the hearing room.
It was just a dramatic moment during the trial. Rep. Committee member Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) used her allotted time to accuse Twitter executives of suspending her account for peddling Covid misinformation. “I’m so glad you lost your job,” she said.
During his tenure, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) accused Twitter of spreading misinformation in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. “Soon the internet was full of incitement to civil war, race wars, uprisings, revolution and mob violence,” he said.
Source: Deadline
Mary Crossley is an author at “The Fashion Vibes”. She is a seasoned journalist who is dedicated to delivering the latest news to her readers. With a keen sense of what’s important, Mary covers a wide range of topics, from politics to lifestyle and everything in between.
