Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has agreed to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on September 5 about Twitter’s algorithms and content monitoring, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced Friday.
McCarthy, in a statement about Dorsey’s upcoming testimony, complained about “one-sided conversations” dominated by the left.
“Social media platforms are increasingly serving as today’s town squares. But sadly, conservatives are too often finding their voices silenced,” McCarthy wrote. “Over the past several months, I have seen more and more examples of censorship that impact public officials and concerned citizens expressing conservative thought. One-sided conversations are an affront to the public mission that serve as the foundations for these social media platforms – including Twitter.”
He said that in conversations with Dorsey and the chairman of the committee, Rep. Greg Walden, R-Oregon, they had all agreed that “transparency is the only way to fully restore Americans’ trust in these important public platforms.”
Walden said in a statement, “This committee intends to ask tough questions about how Twitter monitors and polices content, and we look forward to Mr. Dorsey being forthright and transparent regarding the complex processes behind the company’s algorithms and content judgement calls.”
Walden called Twitter “an incredibly powerful platform that can change the national conversation in the time it takes a tweet to go viral.”
“When decisions about data and content are made using opaque processes, the American people are right to raise concerns,” he said.
On September 5, Dorsey is also expected to testify about election security alongside Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and a representative from Google before the Senate Intelligence Committee. On the same day, Judge Brett Kavanaugh is expected to testify at his confirmation hearing to be a Supreme Court justice.
Rebecca Kaplan and Olivia Gazis contributed to this report.
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