House Committee Investigating January 6th Capitol Invasion Goes On Social Media Fishing Expedition; Companies Should Resist
from the not-cool dept
Whatever you think of what happened on January 6th, people should be concerned about the House Select Committee that is investigating those events now demanding information from various social networks. As the committee announced in a press release, it was demanding records from a long list of social media companies.
The letters to the social media companies seek a range of records, including data, reports, analyses, and communications stretching back to spring of 2020. The Select Committee is also seeking information on policy changes social media companies adopted—or failed to adopt—to address the spread of false information, violent extremism, and foreign malign influence, including decisions on banning material from platforms and contacts with law enforcement and other government entities.
The following companies received record demands from the Select Committee:
Some of the information requested may be reasonable to ask for, but the requests are fairly sweeping. I've seen some argue that since the requests are so broad, it shows that they're not biased, but it's not bias I'm concerned about. The reports are demanding over a year's worth of details from each of these websites regarding things like:
All accounts, users, groups, events, messaging forums, marketplaces, posts, or other user-generated content that was sanctioned, suspended, removed, throttled, deprioritized, labeled, suppressed, or banned from your platform(s) related to any of the items detailed in request 1(i)-(iv) above.
The (i)-(iv) discussed are the following:
i. Misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation relating to the 2020 election;
ii. Efforts to overturn, challenge, or otherwise interfere with the 2020 election or the certification of electoral college results;
iii. Domestic violent extremists, including racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, militia violent extremists, sovereign citizen violent extremists, QAnon, or other extremists associated with efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including the January 6, 2021, attack, attacks against other State capitols, and attempted attacks against the January 20, 2021 inauguration of President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.; and
iv. Foreign malign influence in the 2020 election, including known or suspected coordination between foreign and/or domestic influences to interfere in the 2020 elections, or cause domestic unrest.
Forcing every company to turn over such information seems like a very, very slippery slope towards the government turning that information back around and threatening or intimidating companies over their very much 1st Amendment protected moderation decisions.
There are also things like this -- which it's not clear the government should have access to:
Internal communications, reports, documents, or other materials relating to internal employee concerns about content on the platform associated with any of the items detailed in request 1(i)-(iv) above.
Those kinds of internal deliberations are not particularly relevant to what happened on January 6th -- which the committee is supposedly investigating. It seems a lot more relevant to pressuring social media companies to moderate in a government approved manner. I understand that the Committee is likely investigating whether or not some of those providers eagerly supported those who invaded the Capitol, but this is not a narrowly targeted request, and the potential intimidation factor is high.
Filed Under: capitol hill, fishing expedition, house select committee, insurrection, january 6, policies, social media
