On Tuesday (April 26), US Senator Josh Hawley wrote a letter to Elon Musk, asking him to reveal details of past censorship attempts made by Twitter. He has sought an independent, third-party audit of the platform and demanded that the audit report be made available to the public.
The development came hours after the Tesla CEO acquired the micro-blogging platform for a 44 billion dollar bid. In his letter, Hawley said, “Your commitment to free speech is rare in the world of social media. and I am hopeful you will indeed help Twitter become a platform that values and protects it.”
“Twitter has largely evaded public accountability over the past several years. Since I’ve been in the Senate, I’ve sent a number of oversight inquiries to the company. These letters cover subjects as diverse as content moderation policies. viewpoint discrimination, suppression of content, and Twitter’s own security. Twitter, not surprisingly, has effectively ignored these requests,” he further added.
Senator Josh Hawley informed that he urged Twitter in 2019 to conduct a third-party audit and release the details of the report to the public. He expressed hope that such an audit could be possible under the leadership of Elon Musk.
While accusing the micro-blogging platform of being ‘partisan’, the US Senator pointed out, “Algorithms didn’t make those calls; employees did. And at this point, the American people deserve to know the truth about what went on at Twitter for years behind closed doors.”
He listed 5 questions for Twitter to probe during the said third-party audit.
- Who was responsible for deliberately suppressing the New York Post’s now-vindicated reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop and business dealings?
- How many Twitter users have had their accounts suspended and why?
- How many Twitter users have been shadowbanned and why?
- Do Twitter’s shadowbanning and suspension patterns evince a consistent political bias?
- Have Twitter employees, since news of your acquisition of the platform became public, made changes to the platform or deleted records of their time at the service?
”A public audit like this will prove essential, as you start to rebuild a culture of free speech and open discourse at Twitter, to determine where exactly things went wrong on the platform and who is principally responsible. No doubt the results will be illuminating for all of us,” Josh Hawley concluded.
Elon Musk slams Twitter censorship of Hunter Biden story
On Wednesday (April 27), Elon Musk slammed Twitter’s top lawyer Vijaya Gadde over the ‘incredibly inappropriate’ censorship of Hunter Biden’s laptop story. Vijaya Gadde is the chief legal officer and general counsel of Twitter. She had played a vital role in terminating ex-President Donald Trump’s account on Twitter.
In a tweet, Musk wrote, “Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate.” He was talking about the 2020 New York Post report on Biden’s son Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2022
Initially, the left and liberal cabal deemed the story fake, but later it was proven true that the content of the laptop indeed belonged to Hunter Biden. After the ban on NYP, Twitter justified the move by saying its regulations prohibit the distribution of hacked material.
