Republican Representative Jim Jordan, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, is calling on Twitter to release documents regarding its recent crackdown on President Trump’s tweets.
Jordan accused the tech giant of increasingly exerting “editorial control” over prominent conservatives, including the president, and how it “has not taken similar actions” with prominent liberals, which the congressman says questioned whether Twitter “is not moderating user content in a viewpoint-neutral manner,” according to Fox News.
Read the full letter below:
🚨#NEW: @Jim_Jordan & @JimPressOffice demand answers from @Twitter on content moderation and discrimination of conservative speech. pic.twitter.com/tx0YrEj31v
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) July 8, 2020
Jordan pointed to the recent “fact-check” label Twitter added to Trump’s May 26 tweet shedding light on the potential mail-in voter fraud in California as well as the “abusive behavior” label added to Trump’s June 23 tweet threatening “serious force” to any autonomous zone established in Washington D.C., something Twitter insisted violated its policies.
“While Twitter has sought to silence conservative voices, including the President of the United States, on its platform, Twitter has allowed violent extremists to use its platform with apparent impunity,” Jordan wrote before citing tweets made by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. “Twitter’s discrimination against conservative voices is extremely alarming. These actions give rise to concerns that the company is systematically engaged in the disparate treatment of political speech and is deceiving users of the platform by not uniformly applying its terms of service.”
Jodan requested information pertaining “all content moderation decisions made by Twitter over the past year for users located within the United States, including which Twitter rule or policy the user allegedly violated and the content of the moderated tweet” as well as “all documents and communications” regarding Twitter’s decision to add the “fact-check” and the “abusive behavior” labels to Trump’s tweets.
Jim Jordan Sends Letter To Parler CEO Asking Them To Discuss Social Media Alternatives In Congress https://t.co/dD4DsCw2QN
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) July 9, 2020
Jordan also sent a letter to John Matze, the CEO of Parler, a competing social media platform that has seen a recent surge in users as conservatives have flocked to the tech company in hopes of having more freedom to express themselves.
Will Rep. Jim Jordan bring an end to Twitter’s censorship?