Republicans held a hearing to prove Twitter's bias against them. It backfired in spectacular fashion | CNN Business
By: Oliver Darcy (CNN)
Another day, another phony Republican committee hearing.
Trolling, taunting, spamming, and off topic comments may be removed at the discretion of group mods. NT members that vote up their own comments, repeat comments, or continue to disrupt the conversation risk having all of their comments deleted. Please remember to quote the person(s) to whom you are replying to preserve continuity of this seed. Any use of the phrase "Trump Derangement Syndrome" or the TDS acronym in a comment will be deleted.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Republicans are living in a reality distortion field.
That is the only conclusion that can be drawn from Wednesday's hearing on Capitol Hill where GOP lawmakers continued to push a factually unsupported narrative about the federal government secretly colluding with Twitter to censor the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020.
Despite no real evidence to support this weighty and consequential claim, Republicans were unrelenting in peddling it to the American public. At Wednesday's hearing they showed no regard for misinforming those who turn to them for accurate information or the fact that they were smearing a private business and its former executives in the process.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, who seems to want to be taken seriously by the Washington elite while tossing asinine red meat to the Republican base, claimed Twitter happily followed supposed FBI instructions to censor the Hunter Biden story because they were "terrified of Joe Biden not winning the election."
The unsupported claim is nothing new for him. Comer has long pushed the notion that Elon Musk's release of the so-called "Twitter Files" showed "evidence that the Biden campaign colluded with Big Tech to suppress a story that we now know is 100 percent true." That, of course, is not what the selectively released company documents show.
But Comer's statements get to the heart of the matter: By pushing the narrative that there was "collusion" between Big Tech and the FBI to "censor" the Post's Hunter Biden story, Republicans are not so subtly feeding their election denying base reason to believe that the 2020 election was effectively rigged against Donald Trump.
Right-wing media outlets and personalities are happy to amplify these claims and spread them to millions of viewers who turn to them for their news. Fox News, for instance, hyped the GOP claims from the hearing on Wednesday, portraying the nonsense coming out of the hearing as if it were a serious affair uncovering considerable wrongdoing.
The facts — reality — simply do not matter. It didn't move one Republican when the Twitter executives they had subpoenaed before the committee refuted their claims. And it didn't matter much to the right-wing media apparatus that blindly repeated them to their audiences.
"I am aware of no unlawful collusion with, or direction from, any government agency or political campaign on how Twitter should have handled the Hunter Biden laptop situation," James Baker, Twitter's former deputy counsel, told the committee while under oath.
And Matt Taibbi, one of the journalists Musk handpicked last year to comb through Twitter's internal messages for evidence of free speech violations, said himself that "there is no evidence — that I've seen — of any government involvement in the laptop story."
Such statements from Baker, former Trust and Safety head Yoel Roth, and former general counsel Vijaya Gadde saturated Wednesday's hearing — but they fell on deaf ears. Republicans showed, once again, that they are married to pushing claims that Silicon Valley is intentionally and unjustly censoring conservative views, even when the facts do not contort with their narrative.
Ironically, the hearing appeared to reveal that Twitter had acquiesced to Trump and changed its policies after it concluded that he had violated its rules.
Anika Collier Navaroli, a former senior employee on Twitter's content moderation team, testified that the social media company ended its ban on abusive language against immigrants to "go back to where they came from" so that Trump would not face repercussions for his racist 2019 attack on four minority Democratic congresswomen. "So much for bias against right-wing on Twitter," Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez replied.
And the hearing hinted that the Trump White House attempted to censor the speech of at least one American: Chrissy Teigen. When Teigen called Trump a series of expletives in 2019, Navaroli testified that she was told the Trump White House contacted Twitter and demanded that it be removed.
Strangely enough, Republicans showed no interest in drilling down on this allegation of censorship. It's no wonder why.
Tags
Who is online
436 visitors
The only evidence of censorship uncovered by this hearing was the Trump White House attempt to censor Chrissy Teigen. Why isn't that a surprise?
republicans further demonstrating their impotent approach to governance...
Whatever the damn gop is hair on fire outraged about Democrats allegedly doing they are doing!
It's been like that for as long as I can remember.
this doesn't even take into account the number of elected trumpsters that got sued for blocking americans from their official twitter accounts...
republican = hypocrite
Doesn't surprise me. He wanted SNL canceled because of their mockery of him
heh, there going to have to encase the horses and the buckboard in a plexiglass box when that POS gets his feet first trip down pennsylvania ave.
She precisely described the former 'president' as a pussy ass bitch and like the whiny little bitch that he is, wants it censored.
The reality is that Twitter banned Washington Post reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop. The claim really was that the Washington Post's reporting was disinformation. And Russian involvement really was cited in declaring the reporting was disinformation. Are we to believe that Twitter executives were in a position to make that determination?
Twitter didn't ban some yahoo or political group. Twitter overrode the editorial decisions of a news organization. Twitter became a surrogate editor in chief for the Washington Post. Twitter, as with other social media platforms, deny they are broadcasters or publishers yet act as editors of content. That position is self-contradictory. Why shouldn't Twitter be regulated the same as other broadcasters and publishers?
The after-the-fact narrative presented in the seeded article doesn't align with reality. Twitter really did engage in censorship. How does Twitter make editorial decisions that justifies censorship? Who advises Twitter on those editorial decisions? And if Twitter makes editorial decisions then why shouldn't Twitter be regulated the same as other broadcasters and publishers?
Don't you mean New York Post ?
Yes, my mistake. Twitter censored the reporting by the New York Post and not the Washington Post, as I indicated.
How does my error change the fact that Twitter made its own editorial decision to censor reporting by a news organization?
I didn't say it did.
Twitter as you know is a private company. You can criticize them all day long, they will still make decisions as they see fit.
meh, what can you expect from the "lying is protected freedom of speech" crowd ...
[deleted]
You're still wrong.
I just reviewed the list of the top 125 news sources in the USA.
Twitter & Facebook aren't on the list. (The Onion is )
They are private companies with their own rules and aren't subject to brow beating by Congressional people of any sort.
You don't pay for Twitter or FB on cable TV, so no FEC regulations.
They offer a place for social intercourse over any subject and they do so to sell advertising.
Like Gab and Truth Social... they have a certain flavor.
Ironically Twitter's own research BEFORE the Elon Musk take over was that
Twitter leaned to the right... now it apparently leans further to the right.
Don't like the fact that they chose not to run a few stories or delayed them,
cry your heart out and don't use them as a "news source".
You don't have a leg to stand on and neither do any Congress persons.
Dude! That Hunter Biden story was everywhere!
It was overplayed for sourced by Project Veritas.
40 years ago, silencing a news organization for reporting factual information would be a national scandal. At one time, crazy as it is to believe now, the left stood up for free speech. Now they just say "old news."
With their capture of institutions, free speech and an honest media has gone the way of the dinosaur. The modern leftist has ditched the concept civil liberties and embraced censorship. It helps them maintain power and they aren't broad minded enough to realize that power could actually be wielded by somebody who doesn't think like they do. Like a goldfish, they can't conceive of a reality that is different than todays. Since they control the media and the government today , they think they will always control them.
40 years ago media censored all kinds of shit, starting with Reagan's dementia...
[deleted]
Comment 2.3 is truly bizarre. It is the modern right wing extremists, best exemplified by MAGA Republicans, who have "ditched the concept of civil liberties and embraced censorship". DeSantis's moves to turn Florida into a reactionary authoritarian bastion are among the most prominent, although several other reactionary controlled states are engaged in the same type of conduct. Of course, as we know, accusing their opposition of engaging in the nefarious activities the right wingers are actually pursuing is a standard right wing propaganda technique.
Well, it's truly bizarre the most important news platform in the country censored a news story and pushed a false narrative about it being Russian misinformation on the eve of an election.
Lol. It's good hyperbole is not fatal or you could murder someone with this. .
I don't even have a twitter account yet I managed to hear about it.
Sorry but twitter is not the end all be all of society.
You might want to think that through.....
How so? I don't have twitter yet I heard all about the Hunter story.
Twitter did not stop the original source from publishing what they did. The readers still had it available.
c'mon dude, don't harsh on their victimization screeds...
This thing with the republicans acting like a social media site is the only main source of news is getting beyond moronic.
What's getting moronic is the strawman you created.
So what? Do you think that means Twitter didn't censor the story?
What is moronic is people thinking twitter is the only source for news.
What is moronic is people thinking twitter is the only source for news.
What people? Who claimed that?
Do we censor here? Are you going to have some kind of hearing because you had a comment deleted from a social media site?
Twitter did nothing illegal which is why they are having their stupid rantings on the capitol.
What level do you think this rises to? What crime has been committed?
Lol Of course. You have mods in this group who will delete anything that goes against the progressive bible when he's having one of his tantrums. Not to mention the partisan moderation.
As I said, that's why so many progressives love censorship, they can't fathom it being used against them, because it never is.
Are you going to have some kind of hearing because you had a comment deleted from a social media site?
Of course not. No one gives a shit about a site with 50 people participating.
Twitter did nothing illegal
That is definitely the democrats motto. They don't care about doing what's right, or what's good for the country. It's "what can we do that's not obviously illegal."
Corporatists love corporatism. I get it. I don't. I believe in old liberal ideas like the marketplace of ideas and let the best arguments win on merit.
That made no sense whatsoever.
I have to ask, do you have a twitter account?
No they didn't Nerm.
It's a good thing you have Truth Social now so this can never happen again.
Why do people think twitter controls the news. Just because it was not on twitter for a time doesn't mean twitter ran out and stopped the news story from every other source out there.
The calls about censorship are over blown and getting ridiculous.
I read a quick story about Boebert this morning. She sounded like a lunatic gone off the rails.
you can recap all the legitimate news broadcasts/stories on youtube. I watched this hearing story on a few legitimate news sources and it got panned hard. the general consensus was that the alleged best and brightest stars on the right made complete fools of themselves. I stopped watching after the newest GOP token started yelling at the twitter exec demanding to know why they took hunter biden's dick pics down off their site. wtf? duh
I watched her rant. Angry victim, shouting that she was "shadow banned" for breaking the rules she signed up for when joining a free social media site.
How dare they ! She's (unfortunately) a member of Congress!!!
Barnum and Bailey would be proud of the Circus that the republicans have going.
Pass the popcorn, please.
way too many clowns...