When Republican lawmakers took over the House of Representatives late last year, they made immediately clear their intent to hold up alleged tech censorship of conservatives as a top 2023 issue. They kicked off what’s looking like a long year’s worth of hearings and investigations into tech companies this week by zeroing in on Twitter’s October 20220 decision to limit the reach of a New York Post story detailing the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
House Republicans used the hearing as a platform to pummel former Twitter executives over their handling of the story and beat down Joe Biden’s family with accusations of corruption and scandal. Though ostensibly focused on Hunter Biden’s laptop, the hearing quickly took a turn as Republicans lashed out at the former representatives for roles they may have had in suppressing or banning conservative accounts found to have repeatedly violated the company’s terms. Democrats, on the other hand, repeatedly whined that the hearing was a “waste of time,” and often tried to steer the conversation away from Biden and towards former president Donald Trump and the January 6 attacks on the capitol. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene smeared Twitter’s former safety head as a pedophile. The power went out. The public learned Trump tried to get a mean tweet from Chrissy Teigen removed. A Louisiana congressman threatened to jail a witness.
Aside from a handful of interesting, good faith exchanges between lawmakers and the former Twitter employees acknowledging the complex speech tradeoffs needed to effectively run a large social media platform, the majority of the hearing was a poorly run mess of grandstanding, bloviating, straight up lies, and overall dysfunction. Here are just a few of the most bizarre moments.
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Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s no stranger to delusional conspiracy theories, an attribute she displayed in full force once again on Wednesday. During her line of questioning, Greene spoke directly to Yoel Roth, Twitter’s Former Global Head of Trust & Safety, and resurfaced right-wing rumors amplified by Elon Musk connecting the official to pedophilia.
“Here’s something that disgusts me about you,” Greene said after questioning Twitter’s ability to adequately remove child exploitation material. “In your dissertation entitled ‘Gay Data’ you argued that minors should have access to Grindr, an adult male gay hookup act. Minors, really?”
That intentional misinterpretation of Roth’s work exploded in right-wing media circles late last year after Musk tweeted a snippet of the paper in a tweet saying “Looks like Yoel is arguing in favor of children being able to access adults.” In reality, Roth’s point was more nuanced, and encouraged apps like Grindr to focus on safety since young users are already using the sites despite their age restrictions.
The misinformation sent a wave of angry messages towards Roth last year so severe that he felt forced to flee his home.
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House lawmakers made it about two hours into their questioning before the lights suddenly switched off. The sudden power outage forced House Oversight Chair James Comer to call a recess that put the hearing on hold for over an hour. Stumbling through the dark, several lawmakers could be heard over microphones cracking jokes with one saying, “there’s the green new deal for you.”
The power outage occurred just moments after Alabama Republican Gary Palmer uttered Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s name, leading some Republican lawmakers to take to Twitter questioning the “coincidental” timing.
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Much of the Republican argument against Twitter leading up to the hearing focused on the social media company’s alleged attempts to censor conservatives at the behest of Democratic party officials. While executives testified that Democratic lawmakers can flag violating content to Twitter for review, they aren’t the only ones. In fact, one of the more dramatic political takedown requests came not from a Democrat but from former President Donald Trump.
In 2019, the former president allegedly reached out to Twitter and begged them to remove a tweet from online influencer Chrissy Teigen calling the president a “pussy ass bitch.” That tweet came in response to the president attacking Teigen’s husband John Legend and his “filthy-mouthed wife.” Teigen eventually deleted the tweet herself.
“We had received a request from the White House to make sure we evaluated this tweet, and that they wanted it to come down because it was a derogatory statement,” former Twitter safety policy team expert Anika Collier Navaroli testified.
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Republican lawmakers may not have had many kind words for Twitter or its employees, but there is one person associated with the company many were eager to praise: Elon Musk.
The newly minted Twitter CEO, who’s recently taken a turn towards right-wing conspiracy theories, was repeatedly proclaimed as the patron saint of free speech by lawmakers at hearing. Apparently none of them are aware of Musk’s wave of petty account takedowns since he’s assumed the CEO role. Multiple lawmakers, Marjorie Taylor Greene and South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace among them, thanked their holy creator for the South African billionaire.
“Thank god for Matt Taibbi, thank god for Elon Musk,” Mace said, referencing a former Rolling Stone journalist who released the “Twitter Files.”
“I’m so glad you’re [Roth] censored now and I’m so glad you lost your jobs,” Greene said later. “Thank God Elon Musk bought Twitter.”
Texas Rep. Pete Sessions, meanwhile, said “God bless Elon Musk.” The representative went on to say thank Musk for revealing data that “uncovered the disturbing cabal.”
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The bulk of the hearing, titled, “Twitter’s Role in Suppressing the Biden Laptop Story,” was, as the title suggests, intended to focus on Twitter’s decision to limit the Biden story’s reach, however, many Democrats avoided broaching the topic at all. Instead, several, including top committee Democrat Jamie Raskin, opted to shift the conversation towards Twitter’s actions during and around the January 6 attacks on the Capitol. Rather than suppress right-wing speech, Raskin said Twitter opted to allow it and to “knowingly spread misinformation.”
Democrats used the January 6 example to argue Twitter actually should moderate more content, not less, and that the platform’s current enforcement policies actually aid right-wing extremists. In other cases, the former Twitter employees testifying claimed the company’s concerns over potentially being seen as biased against conservatives was hamstringing their ability to take enforcement actions against hate speech and other harmful content violating their rules.
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One of the lesser reported revelations from the Twitter hearing was an admission from Yoel Roth that the U.S. Department of Defense asked Twitter to whitelist certain accounts it was using to engaging in a disinformation campaign in the Middle East. That propaganda effort, first reported by The Intercept last year, led to a network of accounts spreading news and memes intended to steer public opinion in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Kuwait.
“That request was made of Twitter,” Roth said during the hearing. “To be clear, when I found out about that activity, I was appalled by it.”
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It wouldn’t be a mid-week congressional hearing without Marjorie Taylor Greene acting out in a desperate plea for attention. The Hunter Biden Twitter hearing was no exception. Greene interrupted a line of questioning directed at Roth explaining to lawmakers why Greene’s Twitter account was banned.
The Georgia representative tried to speak over the microphone saying she “would like to take a point of personal privilege,” since her name was directly mentioned. That request led to a rebuttal from Jamie Raskin before House Oversight Chair James Comer ultimately granted the point of privilege. Greene then addressed Roth, asking, “who made you in charge of what is true and what is not true?”
Lawmakers erupted in jeers with many annoyed that Greene appeared to be opening up a new line of questioning. Comer, clearly embarrassed, fumbled his way through a jumbled assortment of words before ultimately returning back to California representative Jimmy Gomez.
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House Republicans and Twitter officials spent a decent chunk of the hearing sparring over the correct definition of “shadow banning.” Ohio representative and Trump sycophant Jim Jordan was particularly interested in the issue, and demanded former Twitter Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde explain the difference between shadow banning, which she claims Twitter does not engage in, and “visibility filtering.”
In her explanation, Gadde said Twitter will in fact take action to limit the reach and visibility of certain accounts that consistently violate the company’s rules. That sounds an awful lot like shadow banning, but Gadde claimed it wasn’t, in part, because Twitter explains its rules publicly. That explanation wasn’t received well by several lawmakers, including Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert, who claimed her own account had been shadow banned.
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While hard evidence of Twitter colluding with the government to censor Republicans was in short supply at the hearing, posters were not. Both Democrats and Republicans busted out the Congressional credit card at OfficeMax this week and walked away with a wide assortment of white poster boards.
Many of those featured cut out copies of Tweets. Republicans tended to highlight tw Source: Gizmodo