OAN Roy Francis
12:58 PM PT – Wednesday, February 8, 2023
The Republicans House Oversight Committee held a hearing on free speech and Twitter’s censorship of content on their platform.
The hearing was titled “Protecting Speech from Government Interference and Social Media Bias Part 1: Twitter’s Role in Suppressing the Biden Laptop Story.”
In his opening statement, Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) talked about Twitter’s actions and the unethical and illegal things that had been occurring and how they were controlling what was available to the public.
Former Twitter executives were called to testify at the hearing. Yoel Roth former head of trust and safety at Twitter, former Deputy Counsel James Barker were all present, former Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde, and Anika Collier Navaroli former Twitter executive turned whistleblower former Deputy Counsel James Barker were all present.
The main purpose of the hearing was to examine in deeper detail Twitter’s censorship of free speech across the platform. The committee also examined the depth of the relationship between Twitter executives and government officials.
One of the major points that was pointed out in the hearing was the Hunter Biden Laptop Story that was censored and suppressed by Twitter when it was first released.
Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) questioned Yoel Roth whether the FBI had pressured Twitter to take down the story of the laptop from the platform. He questioned why the tech executives took action to suppress the story, when they admitted that it did not violate their policies.
“I think you guys wanted it to be taken down,” he said. “I think you guys got played by the FBI.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene took another approach and demanded to know why at the time the Twitter executives did not remove child pornography from the platform, but they had previously deleted her account.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) questioned the reason as to why Twitter removed tweets from health professionals in the United States and government representatives but would not remove Iran’s Ayatollah tweet about Israel being a “malignant tumor that has to be removed.”
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) demanded to know why they removed health professionals’ tweets from the platform. She said that those professionals had studied in the best educational institutes in the world but Twitter executives, who had no medical background, censored their tweets because they disagreed with them.
She went on to admit that ever since she received the COVID vaccine, she has developed different health issues that she did not have before. Some of the issues that she developed, the medical professionals who were censored on Twitter had been warning about but could not get their message out.
Democrats on the committee protested to the hearing, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez objected by saying that it is an abuse of public resources and time by holding this hearing about this subject.
The Democrat claimed that the laptop story was irrelevant, calling it “half fake.” Ignoring the repercussions that came from it. She said that the committee should be focusing on other things.