The GOP-led House Judiciary Committee wants Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to hand over the moderation policy for his new “Twitter killer” app as it probes the Biden administration’s alleged pressure on Big Tech to censor political dissent.
In a letter sent Monday, House Judiciary Chair Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) informed the Meta boss that Threads won’t be immune to an investigation launched earlier this year against other tech firms including Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft.
“Threads raises serious, specific concerns because it has been marketed as a rival of Elon Musk’s Twitter, which has faced political persecution from the Biden Administration following Musk’s commitment to free speech,” Jordan wrote.
He pointed to a recent move by the Federal Trade Commission for Twitter to divulge internal communications as part of a probe into whether Musk’s social media platform could still adequately protect consumer information.
Earlier this month, a federal judge blocked Biden administration officials from contacting social media companies in a landmark order targeting government censorship and suppression of online postings.
US District Court Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, determined that the White House likely colluded with Big Tech to censor protected speech during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Since the Committee’s [Feb. 15] subpoena to Meta, we have obtained additional evidence that the federal government has coerced or colluded with technology, social media, and other companies to moderate content online,” Jordan wrote.
“These examples reinforce the Committee’s serious concerns about whether the Executive Branch is engaging in censorship by proxy — using surrogates to censor, suppress, or discourage speech in a manner that the government is unable to do itself.”
Threads, which has garnered more than 150 million users since launching this month, has already been accused of censoring conservative voices such as Donald Trump Jr.
Meta-owned Facebook also blocked The Post from sharing Hunter Biden laptop coverage and banned former President Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 riots.
“Given that Meta has censored First Amendment-protected speech as a result of government agencies’ requests and demands in the past, the Committee is concerned about potential First Amendment violations that have occurred or will occur on the Threads platform,” Jordan wrote.
“Despite launching only 12 days ago, there are reports that Threads is already engaging in censorship, including censoring users but offering no grounds for appeal.”
The Post has sought comment from Meta.
Last year, Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook erred by banning the sharing of The Post’s exclusive report on Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 election.
He told Spotify podcaster Joe Rogan last August that Facebook opted to limit sharing on the story — but not halt it entirely — after the FBI told Meta employees to be wary of Russian propaganda ahead of the election.
“The FBI basically came to us… [saying], ‘Hey, you should be on high alert. We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on a notice that there is about to be some kind of a dump that is similar to that, so be just vigilant’,” Zuckerberg told Rogan.
More than 50 former senior intelligence officials signed on to a letter that claimed the laptop story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
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