Elon Musk’s Twitter profile is seen on a smartphone positioned on printed Twitter logos on this image illustration taken April 28, 2022.
Dado Ruvic | Reuters
Three Democratic House members are calling on Twitter’s new proprietor and CEO Elon Musk to offer details about a potential “platform manipulation campaign” on the social media platform that “restricted access to news about the protests in the People’s Republic of China (PRC)” in current weeks.
In a letter to Musk on Tuesday, Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Jackie Speier, D-Calif., cited a report from The Washington Post that discovered many Chinese-language accounts started spamming Twitter with hyperlinks to escort providers and different choices within the wake of protests over China’s restrictive Covid management measures.
“To ensure that the United States is prepared to counter, thwart, and deter foreign influence threats online, it is critical that we understand the extent of the PRC’s potential manipulation of Twitter and identify how recent changes at Twitter are affecting the threat of CCP foreign influence operations on social media,” the lawmakers wrote.
They requested whether or not Twitter had any indication that the “obstruction of access to Tweets” in regards to the protests was led by Beijing and whether or not it has proof that any state actors have sought to intentionally suppress entry to info by way of bots or different manipulative techniques.
The legislators additionally requested whether or not the platform has the capability to establish large-scale misinformation and data suppression campaigns and about what measures Twitter has to dam efforts to suppress info entry on its service. They requested that Musk reply by the top of the yr.
The letter comes after Musk — who can also be CEO of SpaceX, a U.S. protection contractor, and Tesla, a multinational electrical car firm with a significant manufacturing unit in Shanghai — started releasing inner communications from Twitter this previous week to politically conservative writers together with Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss. Taibbi has an unique podcast take care of Musk’s buddy and Twitter investor David Sacks through his podcasting platform, Callin. Taibbi and Weiss each write newsletters on Substack, which is partly funded by Andreessen Horowitz, a co-investor in Twitter with Musk.
Musk launched what he stated is the primary set of “Twitter Files” to help claims that the corporate’s prior administration dealt with content material moderation in a approach that was biased towards conservatives. Musk has even gone as far as to say that Twitter, which he now owns and leads, interfered with U.S. elections. During a Twitter Spaces dialogue, Musk steered extra recordsdata could be launched relating to how Twitter dealt with the 2020 presidential election, the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on the U.S. Capitol and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Research carried out earlier than Musk acquired it discovered that Twitter’s content material moderation strategy was not politically biased, however the firm did droop tweets or accounts sharing some broadly agreed-upon misinformation.
Twitter’s former deputy common counsel, James Baker, “was exited” from the business this week as properly, Musk stated, due to “concerns about Baker’s possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue.” Musk didn’t elaborate on the matter.
Taibbi has written that Baker was concerned within the assessment of the “Twitter Files” earlier than they had been launched to him and Weiss.
Baker beforehand labored as a federal prosecutor, and as common counsel for the FBI from 2014 to 2018. Former President Donald Trump has alleged that the FBI “spied on” him.
During Baker’s tenure, the FBI investigated Trump to find out whether or not he could have obstructed justice when he fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017 and whether or not or how Russia had interfered within the U.S. electoral course of resulting in Trump changing into president.
Musk isn’t solely against working with former FBI or Democratic Party-affiliated folks, nonetheless. According to their profiles on LinkedIn, Musk employs at Tesla a 23-year veteran of the FBI named Julia Jolie, in addition to Albert Gore, the son of former Vice President Al Gore, and Rohan Patel, who was beforehand a particular assistant to former President Barack Obama.
Alex Spiro, an legal professional for Twitter and Musk, was not instantly obtainable to remark.