The United States CEOs of social media companies to appear at the US Congress, with the explicit intent to pressure and coerce them to censor more content from their platforms. This is for the third time in less than five months, a situation of this sort has occurred.
On March 25, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will interrogate Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai at a hearing which the Committee announced will focus “on misinformation and disinformation plaguing online platforms.”
“This hearing will continue the Committee’s work of holding online platforms accountable for the growing rise of misinformation and disinformation” said the Committee’s Chair, Frank Pallone, and two Chairs of Subcommittees holding the hearings, Mike Doyle and Jan Schakowsky.
However, there is no question that the First Amendment does not permit indirect censorship through regulatory and legal threats.
“We must begin the work of changing incentives driving social media companies to allow and even promote misinformation and disinformation. Big tech has failed to acknowledge the role they’ve played in fomenting and elevating blatantly false information to its online audiences.” said the Committee in a statement.
Following this, Tesla owner Elon Musk made a tweet saying, “Can you say more about this: “…. pressures that the government may have placed on Twitter …”
