Politics

Senate Judiciary Votes To Subpoena Facebook And Twitter CEOs

Anders Hagstrom White House Correspondent
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The Senate Judiciary Committee voted to subpoena Facebook and Twitter to testify on alleged political censorship on their platforms Thursday.

Republicans in the committee voted unanimously in favor of the subpoenas, which come more than a week after Facebook and Twitter censored articles from the New York Post about Hunter Biden. The subpoenas will compel Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to testify before the committee regarding the actions of their platforms.

Between the two platforms, Twitter took the most drastic action to censor the Post allegations, going so far as to ban the sharing of the article’s URL both through tweets and direct messages. Dorsey later released a statement saying the action was too drastic. Nevertheless, Twitter locked numerous accounts for sharing certain aspects of the articles.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany had her personal account locked for sharing screenshots from the article as well as the official Trump campaign account.

Post editors remain locked out of their outlet’s official account because they refuse to delete the original tweets featuring the articles.

“7 days have passed since the Post published the first story in our Hunter Biden laptop exposé,” New York Post’s Deputy Politics Editor Emma-Jo Morris said on Twitter. “We still cannot access @nypost Twitter account, despite @jack’s apology.”

Facebook limited the spread of the Post reports but did not outright ban posting or sharing the articles. (RELATED: ‘Attempting To Undermine America’: Mike Pompeo Calls Twitter’s Censorship Of New York Post’s Hunter Biden Hard Drive Story ‘Dangerous’)

The actions from the platforms let loose a storm of anger from Republicans across the government, with many calling for the repeal of Section 230, the portion of law that grants social media platforms immunity from certain lawsuits.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced last week that his agency would be releasing new rules to “clarify” Section 230 in the coming weeks, though he did not provide specifics on any changes.

Section 230 prevents all internet websites from being held accountable for the third-party content posted on the site, meaning a website cannot be held responsible for the content in its comment section, so long as it moderates comments in “good faith.”

Similarly, existing law allows Twitter and Facebook to not be held accountable for their users’ content so long as the companies moderate that content in good faith.