Posted on 08/02/2018 8:22:10 PM PDT by yesthatjallen
House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) wants Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee about allegations that Dorsey's platform participated in "shadow-banning" of conservative users.
Axios reports that McCarthy sent a letter to the committee's chairman, Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), urging him to request a hearing with Dorsey to learn more about "filtering and censorship practices on his platform.”
“Any solution to this problem must start with accountability from companies like Twitter, whose platforms have enormous potential to impact the national conversation — and unfortunately, enormous potential for abuse,” McCarthy said, according to Axios.
“In particular, I would like to request a hearing with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey so that the American people can learn more about the filtering and censorship practices on his platform," he added.
McCarthy's letter comes after the tech giant denied in a blog post that it practiced "shadow-banning" — or hiding tweets and profiles of misbehaving Twitter users without removing them from the site — of users based on political leanings.
"We do not shadow ban. You are always able to see the tweets from accounts you follow (although you may have to do more work to find them, like go directly to their profile). And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology," Twitter developers wrote.
“For the most part, we believe the issue had more to do with how other people were interacting with these representatives’ accounts than the accounts themselves,” the company added.
Twitter declined to comment to Axios on McCarthy's letter, while Dorsey is planning to testify later this year in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee on election interference and disinformation on his platform.
Twitter and other social media companies have faced criticism since the 2016 election over the platforms' potential to be used by foreign actors to spread disinformation and political advertisements with limited transparency.
Both Twitter and rival company Facebook have pledged to improve transparency following the increased scrutiny after the 2016 elections.
GOP House leader says Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey should testify
F U N D . T H E . W A L L
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Kevin sure loves his grandstanding. It’s a shame Jordan is kind of introverted.
I don’t want Twitter to fix anything. Nor do I want Twitter to explain why it has or has not done certain things. What I want is for Twitter to be broken up as a monopoly. Ditto for Facebook. Ditto for Google. These companies exercise way too much power, and they are completely unregulated. Either they get regulated very severely (which opens up a whole can of statist worms), or they are broken up and have to face competition in the marketplace. But someway, somehow, the domination of these companies over the discussions that Americans have with each other must be broken.
bookmark
I like how libs suddenly believe in free market and private business rights when ever anybody brings up the stranglehold that SV companies have on the internet.
OR.STOP.SIGNING.CHUCK.N.NANCY.SPENDING. At least obama stood his ground if his agenda wasnt funded. He vetoed a budget without ibamacare. Unless the agenda is to not build the wall. What else could it be? After midterms, there wont be any opportunity. Then you can blame congress.. but for now, we know you really dont want the wall built, or you would have acted.
Do we even break up monopolies any more?
Forget federal legislation. Twitter wants to shadow ban? It’s Dorsey’s forum. Let him mismanage it how he wants. What he needs is competition. Build alternate forums that either won’t shadowban anyone, or only shadowban leftards. Either is within the 1st Amendment, and either will cause Dorsey more grief than some damned new law that will merely complicate the Internet.
Same with Facebook. Hurt their market share.
>Do we even break up monopolies any more?
Why would they? The biggest monopoly (big GOVT) is in bed w/ most (big) biz. Gonna shoot itself in the foot??
Testify for what.....all this dumbarses are going to do absolutely NOTHING about the issue, at all.
Maybe there is something there, but I am skeptical.
The only allegation I have heard of shadow banning is from Rafael “Ted” Cruz Jr., who I don’t believe anybody gives two bits about in the first place.
I receive the President’s tweets?
Fine, I don’t care about any other politician. At all.
Nah. Obama could shut down the government, no questions asked. Watch when our side does it.
Trump has followed the Constitution in his dealings. He waited on Congress.
Congress has already shown it’s stripes.
With the ability to do almost anything it wants, Congress has elected to do very little.
Trump would sign any Conservative legislation they sent his way.
Defund Planned Parenthood
Build the wall
Stop the indoctrination of our kids in K-university level...
Stand behind Trump as he works to get us a level playing field with regard to trade
No, they act against us.
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