Republican House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan is expanding his committee’s investigation into Big Tech’s collusion with the federal government to censor American speech.
On Monday, the Ohio lawmaker sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding details surrounding the company’s communication with federal officials as the Facebook founder launches his new platform alternative to Twitter, “Threads.”
“Given that Meta has censored First Amendment-protected speech as a result of government agencies’ requests and demands in the past,” Jordan wrote, “the Committee is concerned about potential First Amendment violations that have occurred or will occur on the Threads platform.”
Zuckerberg unveiled the new platform last week as a direct competitor to Twitter. Elon Musk, who took over Twitter last fall, threatened to sue Meta for misappropriation of trade secrets in its development of Threads.
Chairman Jordan warned the recent injunction handed down by a federal judge in the Western District of Louisiana barred the federal government from collaborating with Silicon Valley tech giants to implement a censorship regime. In Missouri v. Biden, Chief Judge Terry Doughty wrote that if the allegations of tech conglomerates’ participation in a federal censorship campaign prove true, the case “arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”
Attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri filed the lawsuit last year claiming White House officials abused their roles to pressure major online platforms into censoring certain perspectives about Covid-19, election integrity, and the president, among other items.
“The court recognized that
