Twitter Fights Back Against January 6th Committee’s Dangerously Intrusive Subpoena Demands
from the good-for-them dept
With the whole Congressional January 6th Committee effort moving into prime time this week, this is probably pretty far down on the list of issues around it, but apparently Twitter is quietly fighting demands from the Committee to reveal internal communications.
The social media giant is asserting a First Amendment privilege to push back on the panel’s demand for communications about moderating tweets related to the Capitol insurrection.
Twitter’s pushback, the sources say, has caused consternation among the committee, whose members believe the internal communications would help them paint a fuller, more accurate portrait of how online MAGA extremism contributed to the day’s violence and mayhem. But the fact that the company is being asked for its internal communications at all raises tricky issues about the balance between free expression and the government’s authority to investigate an attempt to subvert democracy. And it shows just how wide Congressional investigators have been willing to cast their net in the run-up to their primetime hearings, which begin this week.
As you may recall, we talked about this issue last summer, when the Committee first sent information demands to a long list of social media companies, trying to understand the policies those sites had in dealing with extremism on their sites. At the time, we said that the companies should resist those demands, in part because some of the information that was being requested seemed very likely to lead to Congress threatening and intimidating companies over their 1st Amendment protected editorial decision making.
And that definitely appears to be the case. From the article, it appears that at least some of the companies did resist, leading Congress to step things up from a mere request for information to an actual subpoena.
The panel escalated the issue in January and sent formal subpoenas to Twitter, Meta, Google, and Reddit in January, citing “inadequate responses to prior requests for information” by the companies.
Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson lamented that the committee “still do[es] not have the documents and information necessary to answer” questions about how the tech companies handled January 6th-related communications, more than four months after its initial request.
With Twitter, at least, the demands seem deeply intrusive on basic editorial decision making, including some fairly basic internal communications.
In a letter accompanying the subpoena sent to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal in January, Thompson demanded three specific categories of documents that he said Twitter had failed to turn over to the committee. They included “documents relating to warnings [Twitter] received regarding the use of the platform to plan or incite violence on January 6th” and an alleged failure to “even commit to a timeline” to send over “internal company analyses of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation relating to the 2020 Election.”
Thompson also faulted Twitter for failing to turn over material concerning Twitter’s decision to suspend Trump from the platform two days after the insurrection—a decision set for reversal should billionaire Elon Musk complete his planned acquisition of Twitter.
The demands are asking for some internal communications, including internal Slack messages about moderating tweets regarding the invasion of the Capitol on January 6th. Even if you agree with the work of the Committee, this should greatly concern you for multiple reasons. First, opening up internal communications regarding editorial decisions raises all sorts of 1st Amendment issues. Imagine Congress similarly demanding internal editorial discussions for Fox News or the NY Times or CNN. People would be rightly concerned about that.
Second, Slack messages, in particular, are designed to be more informal. It’s quite easy to see how Slack messages, taken out of context, could be completely misrepresented to suggest something inaccurate.
Third, just the idea that such internal messages may go before a Congressional Committee (and potentially be released to the public) creates massive, stunning, chilling effects on the kinds of internal discussions that trust and safety teams need to have all the time as they figure out how to deal with dynamic, rapidly changing scenarios. It’s important that teams be able to communicate freely and discuss different ideas and perspectives about how to deal with different challenges, and if they’re constantly worried about how those messages will look when someone in Congress reads them from the floor, that’s going to create huge chilling effects, and make it much more difficult for people at these companies to do their job.
Finally, just think about how this power will be abused. If you support the Jan. 6 Committee, it’s quite likely that the Republicans will be the majority in Congress next year. Do you think they should then be able to demand these same internal communications from Twitter, Facebook, and others about their moderation choices? Do you honestly think that they will do so in good faith, and not to try to pressure and intimidate these companies into leaving up partisan propaganda and nonsense?
And, if you’re on the other side, and believe that the Jan. 6th Committee is a fraud on the American public, then you should already be concerned about these demands, but think about how those same powers might be used against companies you like. Should Congress be able to investigate Fox News or OAN’s internal editorial meetings and decisions about who they’ll put on air? Should Congress be able to subpoena Truth Social to find out why it’s blocking critics of President Trump?
There are some things Congress should not be able to do, and that includes interfering with the editorial choices of companies. It’s offensive to the 1st Amendment.
Filed Under: bennie thompson, committee, content moderation, editorial discretion, fishing expedition, insurrection, january 6th
Companies: twitter
Comments on “Twitter Fights Back Against January 6th Committee’s Dangerously Intrusive Subpoena Demands”
I don’t know. I think such a picture could more usefully be gained by the committee viewing the tweets in question. It’s not often I’m on Twitter’s side, especially when it comes to their moderation practices, but I am in this.
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Given the moderated tweets’ were originally public, I do not see anything wrong with a subpoena to extract now non-public tweets.
Getting Twitter’s internal discussion documents, emails, memoes, etc, I do not see how that would be relevant except for any employees and contractors that engaged in the January 6th insurrection and used Twitter resources for that communication.
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Which is pretty much what I said.
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Show The Work
Yes, and yes. Investigations already regularly occur in other industries, and perhaps it’s time to shine some sunlight into the decision making process of media groups to see how they arrive at their end product. You can have freedom of speech, but if you can’t explain how you arrived at your decision then there’s probably something embarrassing and corrupt occurring behind the scenes. While the editorial decisions might be protected and un-punishable by law, the credibility (or lack thereof) of media corporations is important nonetheless.
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And that’s reason enough to violate someone’s rights…how, exactly?
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To paraphrase a myth from the Vietnam war: We had to burn their rights in order to preserve them.
Re: Re: Old gypsy curse no doubt
He can’t explain how he came to that excision.
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You… have a point. Let Techdirt get a subpoena for your medical records to find out exactly what it it you’ve been taking. 😼
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Why? And even if it is justified, why is it the job of Congress/Government to do it?
Should you be required to explain to the government the reasoning behind all of your decisions as well? If not, why media companies and not you?
If it’s protected and un-punishable by law, then why is it any of Congress’ business?
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Noone else is in a position to do so. Also, matters of national media broadcast rather certainly fall under the purview of federal oversight.
No. McGrain v. Daugherty (1927). Congress can’t investigate private affairs. But they can potentially form a legitimate investigative committee regarding things such as public affairs, corporate oversight, or pending legislation.
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Also, matters of national media broadcast rather certainly fall under the purview of federal oversight.
True. Just one little problem; Twitter’s a social media website, not a broadcaster.
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Please show me how any social media service or any Internet communications service/protocol falls under the same banner as the major broadcast networks.
I’ll wait.
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Also, matters of national media broadcast rather certainly fall under the purview of federal oversight.
True, but there’s just one thing; Twitter’s a social media platform, not a broadcaster.
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It shouldn’t matter how loudly I shout or how many people can hear me. The government doesn’t get to tell me what I can or can’t say.
But if the thing they’re “investigating” is protected and unpunishable, then how is the committee legitimate?
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Perhaps youd be happy to be the first twst subject on this:
So please, explain how youve arrived at your decision on this.
Re: A new low
Koby, I knew you were an ignorant fool, but this is truly a new low.
I never took you for a communist, Kobes.
You are against free speech. If you have to defend your editorial choices to a government board, you don’t have free speech. You have gov’t control over speech. But good of you to now admit that’s what you want.
Not that I didn’t know it before, but you have made it clear that you are against basic fundamental rights, and not someone to be taken seriously.
… said nobody with the slightest bit of understanding of how moderation works, ever.
“Third, just the idea that such internal messages may go before a Congressional Committee (and potentially be released to the public) creates massive, stunning, chilling effects on the kinds of internal discussions that trust and safety teams need…”
What would happen should this become a worry will be no recorded nor text over a topic. They’d wind up having a closed door meeting, no phones, recorders, nor writing allowed. No record would be recorded to create a paper trail.
It’s almost as if the Congressional January 6th Committee is planning on using the hearings as a springboard from which to launch a performative, by-implication assault on what’s referred to these days as “the tech industry”, and the First Amendment editorial rights of platforms in general. What better way to obtain public support for punitive regulation of social media platforms and other information-disseminating services than obtaining any and all internal documentation that could be construed to be smoking guns when interpreted out of context for the benefit of the credulous stenographers from the mainstream media.
It would be difficult to be surprised if the those running the hearings attempted to assign most of any blame to be found to those platforms that turned out to be “complicit” in “enabling” the Insurrection, with a few random January 6th participants thrown in for good measure.
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Possible, but unlikely. The focus of the committee is, ostensibly, to lay out the case for how numerous Republican operatives and officeholders—possibly including Donald Trump himself—tried to incite the insurrection as the last-ditch effort of a wide-ranging (but ultimately foiled) fascist plot to undermine American democracy. That social media companies may have information related to the investigation is relevant only if that information is about users (and perhaps specific employees) who used social media platforms to plan the insurrection. A fishing expedition for a wide-ranging of irrelevant information would only serve to distract from the focus of the investigation.
Granted, I wouldn’t put it past the committee to fight for such a thing. They are still members of Congress, after all. But I can’t see this becoming a major spoke of the investigation unless the committee can lay out a compelling case for why they need all the information they’re looking for. So far, I’m not seeing anything from them that makes me believe they need all this info.
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Is we are congress not reason enough?
/sarc
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If they were doing it in good faith then they wouldn’t be screwing around with moderation in a hearing about exposing the conspirators. Given the lack of precedent and procedure Even assuming that Twitter somehow made things materially worse it wouldn’t be fair to blame Twitter for it. A putsch isn’t something you had previously expected. The question would be then what is the right thing to do if something like that came up in the future, likely in the form of non-binding directions as good citizenship. Technically you aren’t legally obligated to call 9-11 when you hear gunshots in the middle of the night but it helps.
That they even bothered asking for it shows that it is just more of typical congress fucking around to try to extort social media for favorable coverage. In a matter far too important to de-legitimize with that bullshit abuse of power.