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(The Guardian) Former Twitter executives testify in Congress on handling of Hunter Biden laptop reporting
Former senior staff at Twitter began testimony on Wednesday before the House oversight committee about the social media platform’s handling of reporting on Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden.
The hearing has set the stage for the agenda of a newly Republican-controlled House, underscoring its intention to home in on longstanding and unsubstantiated allegations that big tech platforms have an anti-conservative bias.
Recently departed Twitter employees speaking include Vijaya Gadde, the social network’s former chief legal officer, former deputy general counsel James Baker, former head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth and former safety leader Anika Collier Navaroli.
The hearing centers on a question that has long dogged Republicans – why Twitter decided to temporarily restrict the sharing of a story about Hunter Biden in the New York Post, released in October 2020. The Post said it received a copy of a laptop hard drive from Donald Trump’s then-personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, that Hunter Biden had dropped off 18 months earlier at a Delaware computer repair shop and never retrieved. Twitter initially blocked people from sharing links to the article for several days, citing concerns over misinformation and spreading a report based on potentially hacked materials.
“Americans deserve answers about this attack on the first amendment and why big tech and the swamp colluded to censor this information about the Biden family selling access for profit,” said the Republican committee chairman James Comer ahead of the hearing, referring to Trump’s characterization of the Democratic political establishment as a swamp. “Accountability is coming,” he added.
In opening statements on Wednesday, the former Twitter staffers described the process by which the story was blocked, stating that it triggered Twitter’s rules against sharing hacked materials.
The article had been greeted with skepticism due to questions about the laptop’s origins, and Twitter policy restricted the sharing of unlawfully accessed materials. While the company explicitly allowed “reporting on a hack, or sharing press coverage of hacking”, it blocked stories that shared “personal and private information – like email addresses and phone numbers” – which the Post story appeared to include. The platform amended these rules following the Biden controversy.
Roth, the former head of safety and integrity, said Twitter had acknowledged that censoring the story was a mistake. -- “Defending free expression and maintaining the health of the platform required difficult judgment calls,” he said. “There is no easy way to run a global communications platform that satisfies business and revenue goals, individual customer expectations, local laws and cultural norms and get it right every time.”
Former senior staff at Twitter began testimony on Wednesday before the House oversight committee about the social media platform’s handling of reporting on Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden.
The hearing has set the stage for the agenda of a newly Republican-controlled House, underscoring its intention to home in on longstanding and unsubstantiated allegations that big tech platforms have an anti-conservative bias.
Recently departed Twitter employees speaking include Vijaya Gadde, the social network’s former chief legal officer, former deputy general counsel James Baker, former head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth and former safety leader Anika Collier Navaroli.
The hearing centers on a question that has long dogged Republicans – why Twitter decided to temporarily restrict the sharing of a story about Hunter Biden in the New York Post, released in October 2020. The Post said it received a copy of a laptop hard drive from Donald Trump’s then-personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, that Hunter Biden had dropped off 18 months earlier at a Delaware computer repair shop and never retrieved. Twitter initially blocked people from sharing links to the article for several days, citing concerns over misinformation and spreading a report based on potentially hacked materials.
“Americans deserve answers about this attack on the first amendment and why big tech and the swamp colluded to censor this information about the Biden family selling access for profit,” said the Republican committee chairman James Comer ahead of the hearing, referring to Trump’s characterization of the Democratic political establishment as a swamp. “Accountability is coming,” he added.
In opening statements on Wednesday, the former Twitter staffers described the process by which the story was blocked, stating that it triggered Twitter’s rules against sharing hacked materials.
The article had been greeted with skepticism due to questions about the laptop’s origins, and Twitter policy restricted the sharing of unlawfully accessed materials. While the company explicitly allowed “reporting on a hack, or sharing press coverage of hacking”, it blocked stories that shared “personal and private information – like email addresses and phone numbers” – which the Post story appeared to include. The platform amended these rules following the Biden controversy.
Roth, the former head of safety and integrity, said Twitter had acknowledged that censoring the story was a mistake. -- “Defending free expression and maintaining the health of the platform required difficult judgment calls,” he said. “There is no easy way to run a global communications platform that satisfies business and revenue goals, individual customer expectations, local laws and cultural norms and get it right every time.”
