hanimmal
Well-Known Member
It really does seem like a matter of time.Now that the oath keepers are indicted, how long before Roger Stone is?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/13/meta-alphabet-twitter-reddit-subpoenas-house-committee/
Congressional investigators on Thursday issued subpoenas to the parent companies of Facebook, Google, as well as Twitter and Reddit, for failing to provide complete information on how their social media platforms spread falsehoods that fomented the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The move, a sharp escalation in a long-brewing standoff between investigators and the companies, came after months of seeking data from the companies that yielded “inadequate responses” to the House committee investigating the Capitol siege, said its chairman, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), in a news release. Twitter and Reddit also were served with subpoenas by the committee on Thursday.
“We cannot allow our work to be delayed any longer,” Thompson said in a statement. “Two key questions for the Select Committee are how the spread of misinformation and violent extremism contributed to the violent attack on our democracy, and what steps — if any — social media companies took to prevent their platforms from being breeding grounds to radicalizing people to violence.”
Thompson said that, despite requests for information sent in August, “we still not have the documents and information necessary to answer those basic questions.”
Facebook groups topped 10,000 daily attacks on election before Jan. 6, analysis shows
Spokespeople for the companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Facebook’s parent company is Meta. Alphabet owns Google and YouTube.
Trump and his supporters used social media sites to spread falsehoods about the validity of Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the November 2020 presidential election, with many posts calling for extraordinary action — including violence in some cases — to prevent Biden from ascending to the White House. On Jan. 6, Congress was meeting to certify the election’s results, a procedural formality, when hundreds of Trump supporters bashed their way into the building as part of clashes that left five people dead.
No social company has provided an exhaustive account of its role in spreading these ideas, and a request in August for evidence did not yield as much information as the committee wanted for its investigation.
Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have been sharpening their bipartisan criticism of technology companies for years, regularly demanding that executives appear for hearings and accusing them of a variety of misdeeds — antitrust, bias, spreading misinformation and more — at a time when polling consistently shows Americans disenchanted with the industry. At the same time, their stock prices have soared to record heights during the covid-19 pandemic.
Demands for answers about social media’s role in the Jan. 6 violence have come mainly from Democrats, and the companies have at once sought to play down their role while quietly resisting demands for evidence that might provide a fuller picture. An investigation by ProPublica and The Washington Post recently found that more than 650,000 posts in Facebook groups attacked the integrity of the election — a pace averaging more than 10,000 a day — in the weeks leading up to the Capitol attack. Many called for arrests, executions and other violence against those seeking to keep Trump from maintaining the presidency in the face of his electoral loss.
In a letter sent to Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, Thompson said the committee had specifically asked Facebook for information about reports that the company had disbanded a Civic Integrity Team that was focused on election misinformation after the election. “However, despite repeated and specific requests for documents related to these matters, the Select Committee still has not received these materials,” Thompson wrote.
A letter to Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, asked for specific information regarding YouTube, a platform it described as providing “significant communications by its users that were relevant to the planning and execution of January 6th attack on the United States Capitol.” The letter noted that former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon had live-streamed his podcast on YouTube in the days before and after Jan. 6, 2021, and that images of the Capitol insurrection were carried live on YouTube.
“The Select Committee believes Alphabet has significant undisclosed information that is critical to its investigation, concerning how Alphabet developed, implemented, and reviewed its content moderation, algorithmic promotion, demonetization, and other policies that may have affected the January 6, 2021 events,” the letter said.
Twitter was similarly reprimanded in a letter accompanying the subpoena. Thompson wrote that “Twitter has failed to disclose critical information …For example, Twitter has not produced important documents relating to warnings it received regarding the use of the platform to plan or incite violence on January 6th.”
Similar complaints were lodged in a letter to the CEO of Reddit which hosted “r/The_Donald,” which grew significantly on Reddit before migrating to a separate website in 2020. Thompson’s letter said that site “ultimately hosted significant discussion and planning related to the January 6th attack” and he criticized the company for not responding to previously requested information.
