Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Appears to Have Lied to Congress, and Congress Is Asking Questions About That

Top House Committee investigating Dorsey's testimony for lies.

A top House committee that oversees the U.S. telecommunications industry is now reviewing whether Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey lied to Congress during a hearing about Twitter’s controversial history of arbitrarily censoring content published by the site, an aide for the House Energy and Commerce committee told The Federalist.

"The committee is aware of Twitter’s actions and is currently reviewing Mr. Dorsey's testimony," the aide said after Twitter suddenly banned Jesse Kelly, a Marine combat veteran, writer, and popular radio talk show host, without explanation.

As The Federalist reported on Monday, Dorsey was not truthful about his or his company’s response to death threats against prominent conservatives -- including against Meghan McCain shortly after the death of her father, former Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) -- nor was he truthful about whether Twitter policies discriminated against users based on their politics. It is a federal crime to provide false testimony to Congress.

During testimony before the committee, which has broad authority to oversee and regulate telecommunications companies and social media publishers like Twitter, Dorsey repeatedly claimed that neither Twitter’s policies nor its algorithms took users’ political views into account when censoring content published by the site.

"I want to start by making something very clear," Dorsey testified on September 5, 2018. "We don't consider political viewpoints, perspectives, or party affiliation in any of our policies or enforcement decisions, period."

"Our policies and our algorithms don't take into consideration any affiliation, philosophy, or viewpoint," Dorsey claimed again later in the hearing.

A review of Twitter's so-called hateful conduct policy, however, shows that the company has explicitly codified political views into its policies. For example, the social media publisher states that it will ban users if they accurately refer to the biological sex of "transgendered" individuals who believe without evidence that biological men can become biological women, and vice versa.

Unfortunately, the NeverTrump rich suburban white women and other liberal Republicans/RINOs gave the House to the Democrats, so the House will take no action on this matter.

But incoming Senator Jack Hawsey of Missouri is interested in examining Twitter's claim of exemption from lawsuits based on third-party speech, given that that exemption is only available to "neutral" content platforms and not "publishers" which peddle their own editorial line:

The #MuhPrivateMonopoly conservative shills, who think their favorite Tech Giants should have all the special advantages the law entitles them too as well as the special advantages they are not entitled to -- because being a conservative means, it turns out, claiming that monopolies should have the benefit of laws without satisfying the actual requirements the law sets for obtaining that benefit -- are all shrieking hysterically.

They're not conservative. They're just pansies who worship corporate executives but who never had the stones or drive to actually try climbing the corporate ladder themselves. So they're just corporate jock-sniffers. They have the sort of idealized image of what Corporate Life must be like that only a naive outsider could have.

The older guys, I think, have some weird Alex P. Keaton fantasy life going on somewhere inside their heads.

I didn't get into conservatism so I could service corporate desires like I'm a six-dollar hooker who does the dirty stuff for three buck more.

At some point, people should maybe matter too, a little bit -- just a little bit.

posted by Ace of Spades at 04:13 PM

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