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U.S. Senate Republican asks tech firms to explain account, content removals

Published 01/15/2021, 04:14 PM
Updated 01/15/2021, 06:35 PM
© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Tech CEOs testify at U.S. Senate hearing about internet regulation

By David Shepardson and Nandita Bose

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The outgoing Republican chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee asked the chief executives of five major U.S. tech firms to answer detailed questions about decisions to restrict or permanently ban accounts of conservative users.

Senator Roger Wicker sent letters to Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc and Twitter in which he said "thousands of conservative users’ accounts and content" have been "restricted or permanently removed from platforms."

The companies took their strongest actions yet against President Donald Trump to limit his reach, fearing continued violence stemming from his posts after his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol building last week.

Apple, Google and Amazon also suspended Parler - a pro-Trump app where users have threatened more violence - from their respective app stores and Web-hosting services, a set of moves that stand to severely handicap the service.

Wicker also sought explanation for the moves against Parler.

"Americans deserve transparency and accountability for what appears to be politically biased censorship - silencing the voices of users and public figures alike," Wicker wrote.

Twitter said on Friday the company has received the letter and will be responding to it. Facebook pointed Reuters to founder Mark Zuckerberg's comments explaining the ban on the president's accounts. The other companies did not immediately respond to a requests seeking comment.

 

Latest comments

To be perfectly clear about all this : Sometimes the Left is right and the Right is wrong. but sometimes, just the contrary, right ??
Look at Wicker. He probably has a pager in his pocket. He has no clue about the impact of social media, good or bad.
The answer is very simple. Because it’s bad for business. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube all know their business will prosper less with no democracy and frankly a civil war going un. So they finally did half the right think. Ban the instigators. But the other half should be stop existing completely. No such thing as social media. Social media is the downfall of civilization as we know it.
republicans only believe in what they say or rather what right wing supremacist say everyone else doesn't matter.
that's what happens under fascist regimes. that's only just the beginning.
their company. their rules. pretty simple
unless someone does it to them and they scream racism, misogony, xenophobia, etc... bunch of faxcist hypocrites.
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