Things are about to get spicy once again in these social media streets. Earlier this summer, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, made headlines when he was forced to testify on Capitol Hill. It appears that Twitter CEO, Jack Patrick Dorsey, may have an opportunity to out do his Silicon Valley counterpart. House Majority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, has decided to make a public push for the CEO to testify in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee because he would like to know more about “filtering and censorship practices” on Twitter. McCarthy told Axios, “Any solution to this problem must start with accountability from companies like Twitter, whose platforms have enormous potential to impact the national conversation — and unfortunately, enormous potential for abuse.”
McCarthy’s call for Dorsey to testify comes just a short time after the social media site was called out for the alleged practice of “shadow banning”, the act of hiding tweets or profiles of threatening users without actually removing them. Twitter denied the allegations in a blog post that stated, “We do not shadow ban. You are always able to see the tweets from accounts you follow (although you may have to do more work to find them, like go directly to their profile). And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.” Twitter also stated, “For the most part, we believe the issue had more to do with how other people were interacting with these representatives’ accounts than the accounts themselves.”
Twitter has not officially issued a statement on McCarthy’s recent statements, but Dorsey will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee later this year.
