Stunning and excellent story from the Washington Post with the headline below that shows that the January 6
committee had evidence proving that the DEMS did not stymie social media to “hurt
or silence Republican conservatives” as many in congress falsely and still freely
peddle:
“What the January 6 probe
found out about social media, but didn’t report”
The January 6 House Select Committee spent months gathering
stunning new details on how social media companies failed to address the online
extremism and calls for violence that preceded the Capitol riot. However, it was
not officially put in the final report.
Short introduction from the article:
The evidence they collected was written up in a 122-page .pdf memo that was circulated
among the committee, according to a draft viewed by The Washington Post. But in
the end, committee leaders declined to delve into those topics in detail in
their final report, reluctant to dig into the roots of domestic extremism
taking hold in the Republican Party beyond Trump and
concerned about the risks of a public battle with powerful tech companies,
according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition
of anonymity to discuss the panel’s sensitive deliberations.
Congressional investigators found evidence that tech
platforms — especially Twitter — failed to heed their own employees’ warnings
about violent rhetoric on their platforms and bent their rules to avoid
penalizing conservatives, particularly then-president Trump, out of fear of
reprisals. The draft report details how most platforms did not take “dramatic”
steps to rein in extremist content until after the attack on the Capitol,
despite clear red flags across the internet.
Staffers wrote in part: “The sum of this is that alt-tech, fringe, and mainstream platforms were exploited in tandem by right-wing activists to bring American democracy to the brink of ruin. These platforms enabled the mobilization of extremists on smaller sites and whipped up conservative grievance on larger, more mainstream ones.”
But little of the evidence supporting those findings
surfaced during the public phase of the committee’s probe, including its
845-page report that focused almost exclusively on Trump’s actions that day and
in the weeks just before.
That focus on Trump meant the report missed an opportunity
to hold social media companies accountable for their actions, or lack thereof,
even though the platforms had been the subject of intense scrutiny since
Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2016, the people familiar with the
matter said.
Confronting that evidence would have forced the committee to
examine how conservative commentators helped amplify the Trump messaging that
ultimately contributed to the Capitol attack, the people said — a course that
some committee members considered both politically risky and inviting
opposition from some of the world’s most powerful tech companies, two of the
people said.
Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the nonprofit Global Project
Against Hate and Extremism wrote this (Her full remarks in the main article): “Given
the amount of material they actually ultimately got from the big social media
companies, I think it is unfortunate that we didn’t get a better picture of how
‘Stop the Steal’ was organized online, how the materials spread. They could
have done that for us.”
More Background Related
to and from the Article:
1. The January 6 committee members final report key summary here in 4-minutes
2. Inside Facebook, January 6 violence fueled anger, regret over
missed warning signs
3. Two years after January 6, Facebook mulls if Trump is still athreat
4. Twitter bans Trump’s account, citing risk of further violence
My 2 Cents: As I said, what an
excellent WaPo article – long but worthwhile to read in full details.
As for me, I see no malice on the part of any DEM or January 6 committee member or elsewhere in Congress then and now who says: “Social media is hampered or used by the DEMS to harm and attack Republicans and especially Republican conservatives in any way they can– except for their own political gain across rightwing media.”
That in my view is a serious GOP disinformation spreading gimmick – although they would ever admit it, but I
think the facts of this story prove that beyond a reasonable doubt.
This new GOP-run House,
however now with Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) in charge as the new Speaker is just barely hanging on with harsh rightwing zealots. He is apt to please and
appease them for anything they want, so hang on tight because it’s gonna be
very ugly for the next two years.
Thanks for stopping by.
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