Wednesday, December 21, 2022

Twitter disclosures spur demand from Americans across political spectrum for online censorship probe

A recent survey by the Harvard Center for American Political Studies and Harris Insights & Analytics found that 71% of Republicans, 65% of Democrats and 68% of independents think Congress and the FBI should thoroughly investigate potential civil and First Amendment violations by Twitter.

The Twitter Files revealed the close coordination between social media companies and federal officials to moderate content, including requests by the FBI to censor individual posts and ban certain users.

...A recent survey by the Harvard Center for American Political Studies and Harris Insights & Analytics found that 71% of Republicans, 65% of Democrats and 68% of independents think Congress and the FBI should thoroughly investigate potential civil and First Amendment violations by Twitter.

...In one internal Slack exchange disclosed by Matt Taibbi, one of several independent journalists given access to Mr. Musk’s vault, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, wrote that he met with federal officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security on Twitter’s censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

...The Harvard-Harris poll found that 74% of voters think Twitter employees should be criminally prosecuted if they were found to be working with federal officials to suppress content in violation of people’s First Amendment rights. That figure includes 82% of Republicans, 69% of Democrats and 73% of independents. 

Most voters, 64%, also think Twitter “engaged in political censorship” during the 2020 election. That majority includes 59% of Democrats.

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