House Republicans to probe Biden administration pressure on Twitter.<\/strong> As one of their first orders of business in the new Congress, House Republicans plan to probe the pressure the Biden administration put on social media companies to suppress certain sorts of content. The inquiry will come as part of a new Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.<\/p>\n

The subcommittee “will demand copies of White House emails, memos and other communications with Big Tech companies,” reports<\/a> Axios<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A series of recently released internal documents\u2014some as part of a lawsuit<\/a> filed by Missouri and Louisiana and some as part of documents that new Twitter CEO Elon Musk has been sharing<\/a> with journalists\u2014showcase requests by the federal government to control the flow of content and information on Facebook and Twitter. During both the Biden and Trump administrations, federal officials were in close contact with these Big Tech companies. They warned of potential misinformation around elections and COVID-19 and frequently flagged specific content they considered dangerous or suspect.<\/p>\n

To be clear, there’s nothing strictly<\/em> wrong with such warnings and requests. So long as officials aren’t demanding <\/em>content be taken down, or threatening adverse action if it is not, then these officials do not run afoul of the First Amendment.<\/p>\n

But things get a bit sticky when you look at what might be considered implied threats here. At the same time as government officials were asking Twitter and its ilk to suppress certain sorts of content, Big Tech companies were being harangued<\/a> from\u00a0just about every angle<\/a> the government could muster<\/a>. They faced executive orders and comments related to taking them down a peg. They faced a flurry of bills<\/a> that aimed to regulate<\/a> them more intensely. Lawmakers bashed them in the media constantly, while demanding their leaders repeatedly answer antagonistic questions in public hearings and turn over all sorts of documents to congressional panels. Meanwhile, state attorneys general and the federal government filed numerous<\/a> lawsuits<\/a> against Big Tech companies.<\/p>\n

When you consider all of the anti-tech action from myriad branches and levels of government, it throws into question the idea that federal officials could ever be just asking<\/em> for cooperation with their censorship schemes.<\/p>\n

The new subcommittee, chaired by House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R\u2013Ohio), “will look for government pressure that could have resulted in censorship or harassment of conservatives \u2014 or squelching of debate on polarizing policies, including the CDC on COVID,” Axios<\/em> says.<\/p>\n

To the extent that the new subcommittee plans to investigate whether the government acted inappropriately here, good.<\/p>\n

“This oversight is an infinitely better use of Congress’ time than past anti-Big Tech efforts,” said Jessica Melugin, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Technology and Innovation. “The only real threat all along has been the use of government coercion to pressure these companies to make politically-motivated decisions they might not otherwise have made.”<\/p>\n

But to the extent that their probe winds up being yet another opportunity to excoriate tech companies, House Republicans will be exacerbating the very conditions that have created the current mess we’re in. The more federal lawmakers, agencies, law enforcement, and administration officials demand answers about exactly why and how these companies make internal decisions, the more they demonize them in public and in the press, and the more they bully these companies to conform with their (competing) visions of good content stewardship, the less likely it is that these companies will feel empowered to resist “friendly requests” from the federal government.<\/p>\n