It's not clear to me what the House committee is asking for. From what I read in their letters it's basically, "We think you have more than you've given us, so give it to us".
That's not how this works. If you want to subpoena information, you need to be specific and targeted. If you don't get what you think you want, call people in to testify.
Here's the actual Committee release [1]. Two quotes from the Alphabet letter:
"For example, Alphabet has not produced any documents that fully explain non-public moderation discussions and policies" "Additionally, Alphabet has not produced documents relating to YouTube’s policy decisions"
But, IIRC, YouTube (and Twitter) were pretty publicly vocal and specific about their policies for months preceding Jan 6th. I just don't see what warrants this round of grandstanding.
[1] https://january6th.house.gov/news/press-releases/select-comm...
They are asking for TV time
I'm sure there is some actual substance to these hearings and there most likely is info that they want to learn. But at this point I will say the whole thing around Jan 6 is 10% substance and 90% media theater.
Did you see what happened when they asked specific and targeted questions to the FBI?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DZQRetozhSY
If the FBI won't even answer basic questions why should companies have to give have random arbitrary data that probably won't help with the investigation? This January 6th committee is a complete joke and nothing but theater.
On one hand, a congressional subpoena for "non-public moderation discussions and policies" is broad. On the other hand, there is certainly some version of that request that is within reasonable scope for a subpoena. In the hypothetical world where passing legislation in the US were still possible and Congress was capable of regulating Big Tech (e.g. changing Section 230 or so on), this is exactly the sort of thing a Congressional Subpoena would make sense for, since there would be a germane policy making interest in obtaining this information.
> I just don't see what warrants this round of grandstanding.
The paradox of Big Tech: everyone hates Big Tech because they think their political adversaries control Big Tech.
The Left views Big Tech as monopolies controlled by techno-libertarian ultra-billionaires. The Right views Big Tech as Democrat companies controlled by radical leftist censors.
(As an aside: in a sense, both views have a kernel of truth. Big Tech employees skew left, especially on social issues, although not nearly as homogeneously as the right seems to think and individual FAANG employees have far less power than people seem to imagine. On the other hand, the leadership of these companies are definitely not natural allies of progressives, but are also not -- AFAICT -- nearly as villainous as the left seems to think.)
But the real thing that both have in common is conspiratorial brain candy with Big Tech as the modern stand-in for Illuminati or whatever.
Leftists are anti-corporate power in the public sphere.
None of this is paradoxical.
> The Left views Big Tech as monopolies controlled by techno-libertarian ultra-billionaires. The Right views Big Tech as Democrat companies controlled by radical leftist censors.
I guess it's only a paradox if you are partisan and think there are only two types of people. I don't consider myself left or right and big tech is definitely an adversary to me and my beliefs.
There is no way the full scope, procedures, code, algos, and more are public for all moderation methods and channels.
I suspect people are hoping trade secret law will protect, but I think the House wants to see regardless!
To be frank, no matter what side of the political spectrum, we're in very, very deep trouble here.
Our very democracies are at risk, and the manipulation by media, and enemies of our democracies will only get worse and worse.
Hell, even manipulation by members of our democracies, from special interest groups, political parties, to even just nutbars, what we've seen so far, has shown us that people will buy into anything, if it's all they hear.
Our civilization, our world, will live or die by how we all get a handle on misinformation.
And while I embrace democracy, and capitalism, I couldn't care one bit of the required fix tanks Google, Facebook, Twitter and more.
Quite literally, everything is at stake here.
If a crime was committed by the US Executive branch (e.g., President, e.g., Nixon), should the Executive branch investigate itself?
Congress investigating things goes back a few centuries:
> On November 4, 1791, some 900 U.S. army troops under the command of Gen. Arthur St. Clair, a Revolutionary War veteran, were killed or wounded in a surprise attack by Native American warriors on the Ohio frontier. The following year, in what was the new nation’s first congressional investigation, a House committee was formed to look into the debacle, which became known as St. Clair’s Defeat. As part of the investigation, the committee asked President George Washington for paperwork pertaining to his administration’s management of the failed expedition.
* https://www.history.com/news/6-famous-congressional-investig...
Do you earnestly believe this?
That seems to be the current state of the internetz everywhere. I have to print that on a sticker or something.
That's not looking for a scapegoat; it's looking for a set of root causes
It's a scapegoat. If you want people to stop looking up content about distrusting the government, the solution is a more transparent government, not to stop them from watching the content.
I wouldn't say they are looking for a scapegoat, it's just political theater and tactical expediency. Furthermore, I'd also say "root causes" is not quite right either. At the end of the day, this is a very partisan committee and I believe they understand the power in getting these big social media companies to crack down on conservative content under the guise of preventing "extreme/radical content".
I think that if the current administration continues on it's trajectory, people will simply care less and less about j6. Because their everyday lives are being impacted more and more by hostile policies.
Keeping prisoners held in inhumane conditions while awaiting trial is also not helping. Even Democrats are calling this issue out. It was sickening when we did it to foreigners in gitmo, and it's sickening now.
I wish we saw some honest attempts and transparency at figuring out what happened, but... without that- the schism is only widening.
I can understand why some people might think the next step would be to improve the quality of the information from the sources that are providing this skewed, stilted and possibly even false coverage, but I have trouble seeing this working well enough to improve things in any meaningful way. On the contrary, it seems like this kind of news will be even more sought after as it becomes harder to find.
That said I don't have a good solution. Maybe somehow promoting better sources of news or making it easier for these more reliable news sources to generate income.
I think the basic idea is that the government shouldn't be involved in institutionalizing or promoting preferred media narratives of any form.
I disagree that the "larger issue" is that people are misinformed. In fact, I would suggest that there have been several thousand years where people were horribly misinformed on a number of topics.
Absolutely. These tech companies know they face the threat of regulation, whether on anti trust grounds or labor issues or whatever. When Twitter banned Trump, they wrote a blog post (https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...) that offered no good reason and pointed at things like his refusal to attend Biden’s inauguration. AOC also demanded that tech companies censor Parler (https://imgur.com/jJo0lEx), and Apple/Google/Amazon all complied. The timing of this sudden and willing compliance from all these companies who historically would resist, was not coincidental. It happened because there was a coming change of administrations, and this compliance bought them favor.
Glenn Greenwald has written many great articles on this topic, but here’s a particularly relevant one: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/how-silicon-valley-in-a-sho...
I can easily imagine that the next time the GOP controls congress they'll ask similar questions of outlets like CNN and MSNBC vis-a-vis the George Floyd riots.
People should be more considerate of the opposition when they're in power. Payback is almost assured, and sometimes even with escalation.
After reddit shut down /r/TheDonald, the "pedes" migrated to thedonald dot win (which I think has since been shuttered and moved elsewhere). With all the claims being made about a stolen election, I was watching that site with morbid fascination in December and early January, including the planning for the 6th specifically (I assume it's still in the Wayback Machine). The talk ranged from vague protest, to a quasi-Occupy strategy of refusing to leave until results are overturned, to explicit calls to violence and far-right fantasies ("1776 solutions to 1984 problems", "day of the rope", etc).
And the whole time, I assumed: obviously this is on the radar of the FBI and the "IC". These idiots are out of their depth: they don't even know how to use encryption to coordinate their attempted coup, and they're gonna walk right into a regiment of Feds on the capitol steps.
Luckily Trump is fundamentally a coward, and Pence has some shred of integrity (or just sense), and the participants failed to galvanize a response from the more mainstream Trumpers. But if you want to talk about an "inadequate response": the gross incompetence of our bloated national security apparatus failing to do the only thing that justifies their existence really takes the cake; and I can't help but think all the Congressional hearings and hand-wringing and crocodile tears is a theatrical distraction from that institutional failure.
In theory, I ran a platform that protected everything the First Amendment did, and protected nothing that the Amendment did not protect, I should be legally in the clear.
But I'm not going to attempt such a thing - because it's clear Congress would do the ultimate shakedown.
Let me break this down for you: you host a weekly poker night. My buddies and I come and during these nights plan a crime. We than carry out a crime and get arrested. The investigators come to you and ask “what did those guys talk about at your poker nights?” You say “poker stuff”. They subpoena you to get a better answer. Where in all of this did the first amendment come into play?
Sure except the subpoena in question was not actually about records of conversations that the rioters had, it was about efforts FB did/didn't take to discount election misinformation.
Election misinformation is covered by free speech.
As other have said, this is a bit different then that since it's an investigation but I'm sure you can find some examples from the past years of politicians and government officials trying to influence moderation policies for better or worse.
