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House Panel Issues Subpoenas to Tech CEOs for Information on Content Moderation

February 15, 2023

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan has sent subpoenas to the chief executives of five large U.S. tech companies, demanding information on how they moderate content on their online platforms.

The queries are part of House Republicans’ plan to scrutinize communications between the Biden administration and big technology and social-media companies to probe whether they amounted to the censorship of legitimate viewpoints on issues such as Covid-19 policy that ran counter to White House policy.

The letters were sent to Mark Zuckerberg of Meta Platforms Inc., Sundar Pichai of Alphabet Inc., Satya Nadella of Microsoft Corp., Tim Cook of Apple Inc., and Andy Jassy of Amazon.com Inc.

The subpoenas and cover pages they were sent with were viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The committee didn’t demand information from Twitter Inc., which was purchased by billionaire Elon Musk last year and is seen as more friendly to conservative voices since its change in ownership.

Mr. Jordan, an Ohio Republican who chairs both the Judiciary panel and the newly created House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, asked the companies to produce documents and communications by March 23 that show any communication between them and the executive branch of the U.S. government relating to moderation, deletion, suppression or reduced circulation of content.

Mr. Jordan first asked for these documents last year before Republicans formally took the majority and is now stepping up his requests for them as chairman who has the power to subpoena documents.

Republicans have claimed for years that tech companies have limited the reach of conservative voices, limiting their reach and views on the platforms and preventing them from reaching voters. Democrats have denounced the effort as partisan and have defended some of the tech companies’ decisions to filter content as a way to prevent false information about the Covid-19 vaccine or other controversial topics.

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