Democratic lawmakers ask Musk for info on possible Chinese manipulation of Twitter

Three Democratic House members are calling on Twitter’s new proprietor and CEO Elon Musk to offer details about a possible “platform manipulation marketing campaign” on the social media platform that “restricted entry to information in regards to the protests within the People’s Republic of China (PRC)” in latest weeks.

In a letter to Musk on Tuesday, Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Jackie Speier, D-Calif., cited a report from The Washington Post that discovered many Chinese-language accounts started spamming Twitter with hyperlinks to escort companies and different choices within the wake of protests over China’s restrictive Covid management measures.

“To make sure that the United States is ready to counter, thwart, and deter international affect threats on-line, it’s important that we perceive the extent of the PRC’s potential manipulation of Twitter and establish how latest modifications at Twitter are affecting the risk of CCP international affect operations on social media,” the lawmakers wrote.

They requested whether or not Twitter had any indication that the “obstruction of entry to Tweets” in regards to the protests was led by Beijing and whether or not it has proof that any state actors have sought to intentionally suppress entry to data by means of bots or different manipulative techniques.

The legislators additionally requested whether or not the platform has the capability to establish large-scale misinformation and knowledge suppression campaigns and about what measures Twitter has to dam efforts to suppress data entry on its service. They requested that Musk reply by the top of the 12 months.

The letter comes after Musk — who can also be CEO of SpaceX, a U.S. protection contractor, and Tesla, a multinational electrical automobile firm with an important manufacturing unit in Shanghai — started releasing inner communications from Twitter this previous week to politically conservative writers together with Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss. Taibbi has an unique podcast cope with Musk’s buddy and Twitter investor David Sacks through his podcasting platform, Callin. Taibbi and Weiss each write newsletters on Substack, which is partly funded by Andreessen Horowitz, a co-investor in Twitter with Musk.

Musk launched what he stated is the primary set of “Twitter Files” to help claims that the corporate’s prior administration dealt with content material moderation in a method that was biased towards conservatives. Musk has even gone as far as to say that Twitter, which he now owns and leads, interfered with U.S. elections. During a Twitter Spaces dialogue, Musk instructed extra recordsdata could be launched concerning how Twitter dealt with the 2020 presidential election, the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on the U.S. Capitol and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Research performed earlier than Musk acquired it discovered that Twitter’s content moderation strategy was not politically biased, however the firm did droop tweets or accounts sharing some extensively agreed-upon misinformation.

Twitter’s former deputy basic counsel, James Baker, “was exited” from the enterprise this week as properly, Musk said, as a result of of “issues about Baker’s possible position in suppression of data necessary to the general public dialogue.” Musk didn’t elaborate on the matter.

Taibbi has written that Baker was concerned within the evaluate of the “Twitter Files” earlier than they have been launched to him and Weiss.

Baker beforehand labored as a federal prosecutor, and as basic counsel for the FBI from 2014 to 2018. Former President Donald Trump has alleged that the FBI “spied on” him.

During Baker’s tenure, the FBI investigated Trump to find out whether or not he might have obstructed justice when he fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017 and whether or not or how Russia had interfered within the U.S. electoral course of resulting in Trump turning into president.

Musk is just not fully against working with former FBI or Democratic Party-affiliated individuals, nevertheless. According to their profiles on LinkedIn, Musk employs at Tesla a 23-year veteran of the FBI named Julia Jolie, in addition to Albert Gore, the son of former Vice President Al Gore, and Rohan Patel, who was beforehand a particular assistant to former President Barack Obama.

Alex Spiro, an legal professional for Twitter and Musk, was not instantly out there to remark.

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