Nothing to see here. Twitter may want to move on from the firestorm of criticism it received following last week’s censorship of a bombshell New York Post article, but the Senate GOP has not forgotten about it.
In a shocking story released by the New York Post (the Post) on Oct. 14, purported emails from Democratic presidential candidate Biden’s son Hunter Biden reportedly exposed the alleged corrupt dealings of both father and son in Ukraine. Facebook Policy Communications director Andy Stone announced on Twitter that Facebook would “reduce [the story’s] distribution on our platform” when the bombshell story broke last week. Twitter soon followed suit, taking things a step further and disabled the link across the platform.
The United States Senate Judiciary Committee plans to vote on whether to subpoena Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Tuesday, October 20 in response to the platform disabling the link to the Post’s article last week.
“The subpoena would require the Twitter executive to testify on Oct. 23 before the committee, according to the Republicans who announced the hearing,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
But Twitter was not the only platform that censored the Post’s article. Facebook reduced the article’s circulation as well, and Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) doesn’t appear to want to let Facebook off the hook. Hawley’s press office tweeted October 14 that “he will call @Twitter and @Facebook to testify on potential violations of federal election law in their censorship of the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden.”
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) appeared to be willing to follow Hawley’s lead. “Graham and other Judiciary leaders said Thursday that they plan to vote Tuesday to compel Dorsey to testify about allegations of an anti-conservative bias on social media. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), chair of Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, went a step further and called for the full committee to also authorize subpoenas for Zuckerberg,” according to Politico. “Graham was campaigning in North Charleston, S.C., on Friday, and indicated to POLITICO that he would follow through on the suggestion. ‘Yeah, I think I will,’ Graham said when asked about Hawley’s remarks.”
The next two weeks are shaping up to be tough for Big Tech. A separate hearing on October 28, held by the Senate Commerce Committee, will “examine whether Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has outlived its usefulness in today’s digital age. It will also examine legislative proposals to modernize the decades-old law, increase transparency and accountability among big technology companies for their content moderation practices, and explore the impact of large ad-tech platforms on local journalism and consumer privacy,” according to an announcement from the committee.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact Facebook headquarters at 1-650-308-7300 and Twitter at (415) 222-9670, and contact your state representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
