US House Panel Subpoenas Alphabet Over Content Moderation (yahoo.com) 39
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Alphabet on Thursday seeking its communications with former President Joe Biden's administration about content moderation policies. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, a Republican, also asked the YouTube parent company for similar communications with companies and groups outside government, according to a copy of the subpoena seen by Reuters. The subpoena seeks communications about limits or bans on content about President Donald Trump, Tesla CEO and close Trump ally Elon Musk, the virus that causes COVID-19 and a host of other conservative discussion topics. "Alphabet, to our knowledge, has not similarly disavowed the Biden-Harris Administration's attempts to censor speech," Jordan said in a letter.
Meanwhile, Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said the company will "continue to show the committee how we enforce our policies independently, rooted in our commitment to free expression."
Meanwhile, Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said the company will "continue to show the committee how we enforce our policies independently, rooted in our commitment to free expression."
The most important matter right now (Score:3, Funny)
Doesn’t president Elon have more veterans to fire today?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
What's the matter MAGA, afraid of the truth? https://www.military.com/daily... [military.com]
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Fascists consider controlling the media to be very important, top of their list. The message from Elon's administration is very clear - push our narrative and censor our critics, or face our wrath.
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It seems President Elon has been taking lessons from Shaggy. his excuse for firing people? It wasn't me.
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Check the cabana room at Mar a Lago.
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Wrong administration, try again.
It's a legit question. If there were communications between Biden's people and Alphabet, there should be records.
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Email doesn't delete itself. Texts don't either.
Re:Two way street (Score:5, Informative)
No, because that would be a violation of the Presidential Records Act.
They have those records, but there isn't anything in them worth publishing, so it's time for a witch hunt show trial over culture war bullshit rather than doing real oversight of the idiots lighting everything on fire - that's what this Congress does best.
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How exactly would it be a violation of the Presidential Records Act if the House requested records from the Trump administration related to the activities of a previous administration and the Trump administration agrees to supply them?
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It wouldn't, but your suggestion that the Biden team destroyed the records would be.
This might sound crazy but not every administration is as comically and openly criminal as Trump's.
=Smidge=
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But the House would have no need of issuing a subpoena to Alphabet if records existed at the White House.
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You might want to sit down for this...
Maybe the White House/National Archives doesn't have any records of it because it never happened.
Maybe it's entirely a product of their wild imagination; part drinking their own Flavor-aid, part theatrics for their voter base, part misguided retribution for slights real and imagined.
Would not be the first time.
=Smidge=
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They have those records, but there isn't anything in them worth publishing
We didn't hear anything from the government about the Biden admin demanding or (if Zuck is to be believed) even yelling at Fuckerbook moderators to remove content, even if the content was factually correct. We didn't hear anything about that for twitter either. All of that in fact came from the companies themselves. Progressives went fucking nuts when even their past favorites started looking into it, labeling them as Trumpers and shit like that even when they're plain as day obviously not:
https://www.youtu [youtube.com]
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The only administrations that I'm aware of in my lifetime that have purposefully destroyed records are: (i) Nixon (related to Watergate), (ii) Reagan (related to Iran Contra), and the trump administrations (multiple, including erasing swathes of records in the past 2 months to erase history related to January 6). If the Biden administration erased records, we
Footgun? (Score:4, Insightful)
If the implied records do in fact exist - and even if they don't - it seems likely that equivalent records for similar Republican requests also exist. Alphabet might choose to publicly release ALL such records. I'm sure that would make highly informative and entertaining reading.
Also entertaining would be the various interested parties' attempts to lie about, obfuscate, distract from, and spin the resulting data. So yes, by all means, release the records!
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Good.
Let's get a public realtime censorship, demonitization, and deletion log too.
And next week (Score:3)
They will subpoena the numbers...
How dare they! (Score:5, Insightful)
A witch hunt. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Let's start first with eXt, TS, and FaceXook/IntaXram and all the rest of them... TikTok may still be usable?
Jim Jordan (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Jim Jordan (Score:5, Informative)
He's also been in Congress for 17 years and has authored exactly zero pieces of legislation, passed or otherwise. And he has sponsored only a handful of bills. In fact, the non-partisan Center for Effective Lawmaking - a joint project between the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University has rated his effectiveness as a legislator thusly:
Last Congress, only four lawmakers ranked below him.
He has ranked in the bottom five among House Republicans each of the past four Congresses.
He has ranked in the bottom quarter of House Republicans in every full Congress he served in.
Before this Congress, its data don’t record any bills Jordan sponsored passing or receiving any action — whether in committee or on the floor.
All he does is stir shit up and act like an asshole. I can't fathom why middle Ohio keeps sending him back when he's doing literally nothing for them.
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He talks big on TV.
The MAGA people are sick of his "strongly worded letters" and call him trash for never taking action.
"All hat, no cattle," as they say in Amarillo.
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He talks big on TV.
The MAGA people are sick of his "strongly worded letters" and call him trash for never taking action.
"All hat, no cattle," as they say in Amarillo.
The country boys up nort' call it, "Alligator mouth, hummingbird ass." Seems to describe about all of our elected officials these days.
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So a DEI hire then?
Gym Jordan at it again (Score:4, Insightful)
the Alphabet Biden-Harris Censorship Efforts (Score:1)
“During the 118th Congress, the Committee's oversight uncovered how the Biden-Harris Administration repeatedly pressured online platforms to censor Americans directly and by proxy.”
“Following this oversight, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, admitted that it was wrong to bow to the Biden-Harris Administration's demands, publicly committed to restoring free speech on its platforms, and
Zuck already outted Biden for censorship (Score:1, Flamebait)
Kinda funny to see all the mindless bots bad mouthing Trump. There are plenty of real reasons to bad mouth trump, you don't have to make shit up.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/0... [cnn.com]
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I believe it should be a felony to knowingly spread false medical info during a pandemic.
There are fair disclaimers one can be required to add, such as the fact the quoted doctor may be an outlier or other doctors were not consulted. Or if Dr's field is unrelated to claim made.
Microsoft is next (Score:2)
All the no-shows-to-inauguration are considered rogue. It's open season.
The echo chamber is real (Score:2)
the virus that causes COVID-19 and a host of other conservative discussion topics
Who in their right mind approved this sentence? Why is "the virus that causes COVID-19" (and thus the global pandemic that was the most important thing since 9/11 in defining modern life) a "conservative discussion topic"? That should be an "everyone discussion topic."