The new social media platform formed by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta — Threads — is barely up and running. Twitter owner Elon Musk has already threatened a lawsuit for allegedly misappropriating Twitter trade secrets in the construction of Threads. “Competition is fine, cheating is not,” Musk declared.
Some liberals immediately declared they were throwing over Twitter for Threads but then hilariously found themselves crawling back to Twitter, as my colleague Jennifer Oliver O’Connell explained.
There have already been a lot of problems with Threads reportedly censoring people and posts with no grounds for appeal, not to mention they’re collecting data on users. Among the people initially censored was Donald Trump Jr., and among the threads censored was one about the White House cocaine. Andy Stone, head of communications for Meta, admitted it and called it a mistake that shouldn’t have happened.
This was an error and shouldn’t have happened. It’s been fixed.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) July 7, 2023
Now House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan is demanding answers. The House has already been looking into Big Tech censorship, and he sent a new letter on Monday to Zuckerberg:
Is Mark Zuckerberg’s “Threads” already working with the federal government to censor Americans? pic.twitter.com/OdQeq1mCHQ
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) July 17, 2023
“Given that Meta has censored First Amendment-protected speech as a result of government agencies’ requests and demands in the past,” Jordan wrote, “the Committee is concerned about potential First Amendment violations that have occurred or will occur on the Threads platform.”
Jordan pointed to the decision in Missouri v. Biden, where the judge wrote that the allegations involved arguably “the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”
Attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri filed the lawsuit last year claiming White House officials abused their roles to pressure major online platforms into censoring certain perspectives about Covid-19, election integrity, and the president, among other items.
“The court recognized that Meta played a central role in this censorship scheme, frequently acquiescing and catering to the government’s requests and demands,” Jordan wrote. [….]
“The Committee’s February 15 subpoena to Meta requires, among other things, the production of material concerning Meta’s engagement with the Executive Branch and Meta’s decisions and policies regarding content moderation,” Jordan wrote Monday. “The subpoena is continuing in nature, and the instructions and definitions accompanying the subpoena make clear that documents and information related to Threads, a social media platform as described and marketed by Meta, are within the scope of the subpoena.”
Jordan demanded any documents that had to do with any such censorship on Threads be turned over to the Committee by July 31 and that related records or materials be preserved.
Continued…
Approved ~ MJM
