GOP senators are ready to go on the attack against two Big Tech CEOs at a Senate hearing tomorrow about how online censorship influenced the election.
The hearing, entitled “Breaking the News: Censorship, Suppression, and the 2020 Election,” will feature testimony from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Senate Republicans are ready for round two.
The timing for this hearing is fitting, considering Twitter and Facebook’s constant censorship of posts related to the election, especially the Hunter Biden scandal.
According to the motion made by Chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the CEOs will testify about:
- “(1) the suppression and/or censorship of two news articles from the New York Post titled ‘Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad’ and ‘Emails reveal how Hunter Biden tried to cash in big on behalf of family with Chinese firm,’
- “(2) any other content moderation policies, practices, or actions that may interfere with or influence elections for federal office, and
- “(3) any other recent determinations to temporarily reduce distribution of material pending fact-checker review and/or block and mark material as potentially unsafe.”
In a previous hearing in the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Dorsey and Zuckerberg joined Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and were thoroughly grilled regarding the censorship of the aforementioned New York Post story.
“Preventing a news story from being shared is what China does on Weibo and it’s what Twitter did to the New York Post. Tomorrow, I look forward to hearing from Facebook and Twitter CEOs about how they censored and suppressed voices during the 2020 election,” said Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) in a statement to NewsBusters.
As CNet pointed out, “An interesting wrinkle in the proceedings will be the presence of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, a California Democrat. Harris has close ties to Silicon Valley and is friendly with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Still, expect Harris, who has supported laws on digital privacy, online harassment and app-based gig worker protections, to go tough on the witnesses.”
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) celebrated the Committee’s decision to subpoena Dorsey and Zuckerberg on Twitter in October, saying: “#BigTech CEOs are drunk on power & must be held accountable for interfering in this election. Last week I led calls to subpoena @Twitter & @Facebook’s CEOs to testify before @senjudiciary. Today my colleagues passed that subpoena. We will get answers for the American people.”
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.
