Ha! As if. Twitter, a platform once known for its 140 character limit and now for its censorship and shadow banning practices, has been caught red-handed. The former executives of the so-called “free speech” platform faced questioning at a House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing on Wednesday, where they were grilled about the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
The chairman of the committee, James Comer, accused Big Tech companies like Twitter of being controlled by individuals who oppose free speech and collaborating with government agencies to censor stories that are unfavorable to President Biden and his family. Comer stated that his investigation team had confirmed the existence of collaboration between the government and Big Tech to limit free speech and disrupt democracy, which began before Twitter censored the New York Post articles in October 2020 regarding the contents of the Hunter Biden laptop.
James Baker, former deputy general counsel at Twitter, tried to defend the company by saying it was not acting as a representative of the state and that he was not aware of any illegal coordination. But, let’s be real, the truth is that Twitter worked hand-in-hand with the FBI to monitor the protected speech of Americans, receiving millions of dollars to do so. And Baker’s response when Ohio GOP Representative Jim Jordan questioned him about whether he had ever discussed the Hunter Biden laptop with the FBI? “I don’t recall speaking to the FBI at all about the Hunter Biden matter, laptop.”
Vijaya Gadde, former chief legal officer at Twitter, confirmed that the company received requests from federal agencies to remove specific content from the platform, though she did not mention whether the Hunter Biden laptop story was among them. She stated that Twitter employs labels such as “do not amplify” to prevent certain tweets from being recommended to users, referring to it as “visibility filtering.”
Comer expressed concern that the federal government is utilizing Twitter, a private company, to restrict free speech, something it is not allowed to do under the Constitution. But let’s be real, the government doesn’t need Twitter to restrict free speech when Twitter is already doing a bang-up job on its own.
So there you have it folks, Twitter, the beacon of free speech it claims to be, is nothing more than a biased platform controlled by individuals who are hostile to the fundamental American principles of free speech and expression protected in the U.S. Constitution. And Twitter’s response to all of this? “Twitter made a mistake. I’ll be the first to admit that we didn’t always get it right.” No kidding.
