US Senate Republican Asks Tech Firms About Account Removals

Twitter had said on Friday it would permanently suspend account Removals QAnon content, banning prominent right-wing boosters of its conspiracy theories. 

US Senate Republican Asks Tech Firms About Account Removals

The outgoing Republican chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee asked the chief executives of major US tech firms Apple Inc, Facebook Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Alphabet Inc and Twitter to answer detailed questions about decisions to restrict or permanently ban accounts of conservative users and other steps to restrict content or platforms. 

Senator Roger Wicker said, “thousands of conservative users’ accounts and content” have been “restricted or permanently removed from platforms.” 

He also cited a series of decisions causing social media site Parler to shut down operations temporarily. 

“Americans deserve transparency and accountability for what appears to be politically biased censorship – silencing the voices of users and public figures alike,” Wicker wrote. 

Before this, Twitter Inc said it has suspended more than 70,000 accounts since Friday that were primarily dedicated to sharing QAnon content after last week’s violence in Washington when supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol. 

“Given the violent events in Washington, DC, and increased risk of harm, we began permanently suspending thousands of accounts that were primarily dedicated to sharing QAnon content on Friday afternoon”, Twitter said in a blog late last week. 

“These accounts were engaged in sharing harmful QAnon-associated content at scale and were primarily dedicated to the propagation of this conspiracy theory across the service”, the company said. 

QAnon backers have pushed conspiracies on social media that include the baseless claim that Trump secretly is fighting a cabal of child-sex predators, among them prominent Democrats, figures in Hollywood and “deep state” allies. 

Twitter had said on Friday it would permanently suspend account removals QAnon content, banning prominent right-wing boosters of its conspiracy theories. 

The storming of the Capitol building last week by Trump supporters delayed the certification of Biden’s election victory. 

Lawmakers were forced to flee, as the building was mobbed by the president’s supporters who overwhelmed security forces. Five people died in the violence including one Capitol Police officer who was beaten as he tried to ward off the crowds. 

Originally published at Tolo news