Former Twitter Execs Tell Congress: We Didn’t Meddle In 2020 Election And Also We Need To Do It More

2/9/23
 
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from The Federalist,
2/8/23:

Former Twitter executives denied efforts at partisan censorship while also suggesting their censorship hadn’t gone far enough.

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee confronted several former Twitter executives on Wednesday about their censorship activism and election meddling — specifically the Big Tech company’s suppression of the New York Post’s legitimate reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop. The decision, as the recent release of the “Twitter Files” under Elon Musk further exposed, was motivated by partisanship, not Twitter policy.

Some Democrats tried to pivot the hearing away from its purpose by inviting surprise witness Anika Navaroli, a member of Twitter’s censorship team who was hailed as a hero after she helped the weaponized Jan. 6 Committee advance its anti-free speech agenda, to testify about Twitter’s need for more censorship.

Others, such as recently elected Democrat Rep. Maxwell Frost, even suggested the hearing was the result of GOP frustration about the 2020 presidential election results. According to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the hearing was a waste of time because it centered on a piece of “disinformation.”

The witnesses, former Deputy General Counsel of Twitter James Baker (who also used to serve as lead counsel for the FBI), former Chief Legal Officer of Twitter Vijaya Gadde (who was fired by Elon Musk shortly after he bought the company), and former Global Head of Trust & Safety of Twitter Yoel Roth, were all deeply involved in the decision to stop the story’s spread.

They may be former employees and they were under oath, but that didn’t stop Baker or any of the others from lying about the role they played in controlling dialogue in the public square.
Mistake or Calculated Strategy?

Right off the bat, Gadde and Roth both repeatedly stated that hindsight indicated the suppression of the New York Post’s legitimate reporting was a “mistake,” as former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also indicated in 2021.

Republicans weren’t buying it.

“There are mistakes that have been made and we keep looking back at these mistakes and say ‘oh that shouldn’t have happened that way. We are going to have a new policy to avoid that from happening again.’ But every mistake benefits one side,” Republican Rep. William Timmons said.

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