On Friday, a trove of information was made public, via reporting by journalist Matt Taibbi, on content moderation practices at Twitter, including the events surrounding the platform’s censorship of the New York Post’s story on Hunter Biden’s laptop in October 2020.
These latest revelations add further evidence to the case made in the American Principles Project (APP) report “Big Tech vs. Democracy” that platforms such as Twitter acted in 2020 to effectively swing the presidential election to Joe Biden.
In light of the new info, APP Policy Director Jon Schweppe, a co-author of the report, called on House Republicans to form a select committee to investigate Big Tech’s actions:
“(Friday night), we finally obtained the smoking gun proving what we always suspected: Twitter directly interfered in the 2020 election by censoring the New York Post’s Hunter Biden exposé. We also learned there was a deliberate effort internally to maintain the ‘hacked materials’ lie as a justification for censorship despite significant pushback from staff within the company and even from a Democratic member of Congress. It is now clear that we need a congressional investigation to learn exactly who knew what when, and what communications Twitter employees like Vijaya Gadde and Yoel Roth had with the Biden campaign and left-wing activists.
“American Principles Project is calling on Kevin McCarthy to form a Select Committee to Investigate Big Tech Election Interference, with full subpoena power and the same level of authority as the January 6th committee. Just 44,000 votes in three states determined the results of the 2020 election. Did Twitter’s actions sway the results? And what happened at Facebook, which also interfered in the election in a similar way when it decided to censor the same story?
“We need answers, and we need them now. We can’t have free and fair elections when Big Tech monopolists are actively suppressing speech and journalism. Big Tech’s ongoing attempts to control the electorate are the most serious threat to American democracy we currently face, and House Republicans must make exposing and thwarting these efforts a top priority.”
