Sen. Ted Cruz grilled Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey today on their censoring and suppressing the New York Post's reporting on Hunter Biden's alleged influence peddling.
"Mr. Dorsey, who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear? And why do you persist in behaving as a Democratic superpac, silencing views to the contrary of your political beliefs?" Cruz asked.
Cruz asked why the Post was still locked out of their account, and Dorsey said that the Post, a 200 year old outlet with the 4th largest circulation in the country, could have their account back if they delete their original posts sharing their stories.
Dorsey said that the reason the Post's stories were suppressed was because Twitter didn't know where the information the Post reported came from. He said that they had included screenshots, which, if they came from a hacked source, would be against the terms of service.
"We found that the New York Post, because it showed the direct materials, screen shots of the direct materials, it was unclear how those were obtained. That it fell under this policy," Dorsey said.
Cruz pointed out that the Post had detailed, as part of their reporting, exactly how they came to obtain the information they had reported. "Is it your position that Twitter, when you can't tell the source, blocks press stories?"
"No, not at all," Dorsey said. He said that they changed their policy, after realizing that it was not an effective policy that resulted in the Post's banning from the platform.
"We realized we need to earn trust more," Dorsey said, noting that they had changed their terms of service within 24 hours of the Post suppression.
Cruz tried to find out why Twitter didn't block The New York Times reporting of images and information President Trump's tax returns, when there was no reason to believe that the information contained in that reporting wasn't illegally obtained.
Dorsey had said earlier, via his own platform, that he was acting in "good faith." Cruz said that he believed Dorsey's assertions as to why they blocked the Post to be dubious.
We can talk about “good faith” when you restore @nypost mmk? https://t.co/6MRPLic0Na
— Emily Domenech (@ehdomenech) October 28, 2020
Dorsey told Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb) that he is interested in more transparency, and that they are working on a system where users can either choose or turn off the algorithms that drive content.
Big tech CEO's Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sundar Pichai were called before the Senate today to submit to questioning as to their content oversight, search, and ads functioning.
Democrats and Republicans had bi-partisan concerns regarding transparency, bias, and undue influence on the American population.
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