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Journalism of Courage
On Wednesday, the United States’ House Oversight Committee grilled former Twitter employees including chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde over the social media company’s decisions to take down or limit the reach of certain political material on the platform.
The exchanges between during the session were extremely dramatic, including allegations of interference in the US Presidential elections, allegations of collusion with the FBI and censoring of conservative voices on Twitter.
“Who the hell do you think you are!?” asked Lauren Boebert, a divisive far right figure in the GOP, to Gadde.
Hyderabad-born Gadde, the former head of Legal, Policy and Trust at Twitter, former deputy general counsel James Baker and former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth were appearing before the US House Oversight Committee.
A major issue raised was Twitter’s decision on a New York Post article on the business deals of US President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, before the 2020 election. Leaked information last year on how Twitter decided to suspend the tabloid website’s account was dubbed “Twitter Files” by the platform’s owner, Elon Musk.
Gadde has been one of the most visible figures throughout the controversy surrounding Twitter’s policies. Born in Hyderabad, her family moved to Texas, US, when she was three years old. She is a graduate of Cornell University and the New York University School of Law.
At Twitter, she led a team that presided over content moderation and the platform’s safety policy. A picture of her standing with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who was holding a poster that read “Smash Brahmanical Patriarchy” went viral in 2018, causing controversy in India.
Critics accuse her of left-wing bias, claiming that she was responsible “shadowbanning” — reducing the reach of someone’s Twitter account without explicitly removing it — accounts whose ideologies she did not subscribe to. This, they claim, includes the banning of former US President Donald Trump over his tweets on his supporters storming the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021.
Gadde was fired in 2022, following Musk’s takeover of Twitter.
The US House Oversight Committee conducts hearings “to ensure the efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability of the federal government and all its agencies.” The concerns on Twitter were part of the meeting for “Protecting Speech from Government Interference and Social Media Bias, Part 1: Twitter’s Role in Suppressing the Biden Laptop Story”.
A Republican lawmaker questioned the restrictions imposed on her account, as part of the alleged shadowbanning. “Mr Roth, and Miss Gaddy, did either of you approve the shadow banning of my account at Lauren Bobert? Yes or no? No. I did not. Not to the best of my recollection…Well, let me refresh your memory, because, on March 12, 2021, and Mr Ross, I know you looked at it because fascist Twitter 1.0 had a public interest exceptions policy, which means for members of Congress to be shadowbanned, it had to go before you, Mr Roth,” asked Congresswoman Lauren Boebert.
Another former executive, Jim Baker was an FBI lawyer before he came to work for Twitter. “We have Mr Baker here, a former FBI agent, and there seems to be a revolving door between the FBI and Twitter itself,” Boebert alleged.
“You silenced members of Congress from communicating with their constituents. You silenced me from communicating with the American people over a freaking joke. Now, who the hell do you think you are? Election interference? Yeah, I would say that that was taking place because of you four sitting here. The Hunter Biden laptop story was suppressed…I bet that Putin is sitting in the Kremlin, wishing he had as much election interference as you four here today,” Lauren Boebert said.
Ostensibly an enquiry into Twitter’s malpractices, the hearings turned into a political slugfest with members of the Republican Party using it to hurl accusations at “liberals” and Joe Biden.
A peek into Twitter’s moderation policy was offered with the leak of internal information. The ‘files’ released as part of screenshots by Substack writer Matt Taibbi in December 2022 claimed to detail the decisions behind censoring a 2020 New York Post story, which contained unverified claims about Hunter Biden’s business activities in Ukraine. The story portrayed Hunter as an entitled brat who claimed to businessmen that he could get meetings secured with his father, then the Vice President.
In 2020, close to the US Presidential elections, Twitter said that it censored the story because it violated its “hacked materials” policy. On October 31, Twitter reversed its policy, following what Gadde called critical and supportive feedback over their decision. Jack Dorsey also expressed regret, terming it “a total mistake”.
Notably, the Federal Election Commission in 2021 ruled that Twitter did not violate federal laws in restricting access to the NY Post story on Hunter while deliberating on a complaint filed by the Republican National Committee. The FEC found that the blocking of sharing of the article was “undertaken for commercial reasons and not for the purpose of influencing an election,” a statement read.
It has to do with the wider problems that have emerged in recent years, as the role of social media is increasingly being questioned in influencing politics. Particularly in the US, many right-wing groups and some Republicans have stressed that the likes of Facebook and Twitter are censoring only one ideology.
Tech companies, on their part, have faced criticism from all shades of supporters over the inability to weed out fake news, bots and trolls. Russian interference through bots has also been cited as an area where the companies did not take timely action in the previous election. Twitter executives argued that the heightened focus on combating disinformation complicated their decision-making process.
According to CNN, Gadde said that after changing their stance on blocking the Hunter Biden story, they should have reinstated the New York Post’s account right away. Twitter’s former Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth testified there was a lot of confusion over how to handle the story amid an increased emphasis on tackling misinformation. “It isn’t obvious what the right response is to a suspected but not confirmed cyberattack by another government on a presidential election,” Roth said. “I believe Twitter erred in this case because we wanted to avoid repeating the mistakes of 2016.”
