Dem
51
GOP
49
The Select Committee turned over a lot of rocks and talked to a lot of people, but its focus never wavered from "whose fault was it" (Spoiler alert: The members concluded it was Donald Trump's fault). But although they had a lot of evidence on the subject, the Committee was reluctant to name another major contributor: social media companies. A 122-page memo circulated among Committee members delved into the roots of the violence and presented plenty of evidence that the failure of the social media companies to address online extremism was a big part of the problem. There was almost nothing in the final report about what they found due to a fear of angering the big, powerful companies.
The memo contained this text:
The sum of this is that alt-tech, fringe, and mainstream platforms were exploited in tandem by right-wing activists to bring American democracy to the brink of ruin. These platforms enabled the mobilization of extremists on smaller sites and whipped up conservative grievance on larger, more mainstream ones.
None of this sentiment appeared in the final report.
The Committee's own investigators discovered that employees at Twitter and other social media companies warned management about violent rhetoric on their platforms, but management didn't do anything for fear of offending conservatives. One former Twitter employee told the Committee: "Twitter was terrified of the backlash they would get if they followed their own rules and applied them to Donald Trump Only after Jan. 6, 2021, did they take some steps to rein in violent speech. And at Twitter, Chief Twit Elon Musk is busy undoing the small steps they took.
The effort to shield the big tech companies was bipartisan. Then-Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) wanted to keep the focus entirely on Trump and saw everything else as a distraction. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), who represents a part of Northern California that includes Silicon Valley, didn't want to anger a large number of her constituents and donors, so she resisted having the final report put part of the blame on the social media companies. There was a bit here and there, but not a complete section or appendix on the subject.
The Committee's Purple Team spent a year going through tens of thousands of documents from multiple companies and interviewed numerous executives and employees from Facebook down to Gab and Discord. Yet its findings didn't make it into the final report, even though its memo showed how 15 social media sites played a big role in the events of Jan. 6. The Purple Team also showed how many platforms bent their own rules to avoid penalizing conservatives out of fear of reprisals. This is just the opposite of what conservatives say, that social media platforms is biased against them. In reality, the platforms allowed conservatives to repeatedly violate the rules without any punishment.
Since the final report was published, some of the evidence has come out in the transcripts. For example, Anika Collier Navroli, one of the longest-serving members of the Twitter safety team, described what happened when the #ExecuteMikePence hashtag started trending. She saw thousands of death threats and hateful messages and tried to remove them one by one. She said that she and a few other Twitter employees working with her for hours on Jan. 6 didn't stand a chance. The torrent of hate was too big. She faulted top executives for not blocking certain hashtags completely so that the tweets didn't have to be removed one by one.
When Post reporters called the social media companies to ask for comments, either they answered with "no comment" or recited their own published rules about hate speech, none of which they actually enforced.
Not pointing out the failure of the social media companies' role in fomenting violence may have consequences going forward. Both Texas and Florida have passed laws restricting what content social media companies can remove from their sites. Other states could follow, but it is not clear how any of them could enforce the law except for companies headquartered in their respective states. If Congress were to get involved, by contrast, it might do something based on its powers to regulate interstate commerce. But Congress apparently doesn't want to touch this hot potato. (V)