Missouri U.S. Senator Josh Hawley wants Twitter’s new owner, multi-billionaire Elon Musk, to conduct a “comprehensive public audit” of the social media platform.
Hawley used Twitter to call for the audit, proposing that Musk quote, “open the books on who Twitter has shadow-banned, who’ve they throttled, and who was responsible for the egregious censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop reporting. Make it all public.” Hawley also sent a formal letter requesting an audit, in which he accuses the platform of long suppressing the free speech rights of conservative members. In February, Twitter suspended the personal account of Missouri Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler for a tweet that was considered insulting to transgender athletes.
Senator Hawley writes, “In recent years, Twitter has intervened in American discourse with an increasingly heavy hand, attempting to shape the information environment for overtly partisan reasons. Algorithms didn’t make those calls; employees did. And at this point, the American people deserve to know the truth about what went on at Twitter for years behind closed doors.”
He continues, “A public audit like this will prove essential, as you start to rebuild a culture of free speech and open discourse at Twitter, to determining where exactly things went wrong on the platform and who is principally responsible.”
In April 2019, Senator Hawley sent a letter calling on former CEO Jack Dorsey to conduct a similar audit of Twitter’s suspension policies.
You can read the full text of the letter sent to Elon Musk at this link.
(Elon Musk photo courtesy Wikipedia)
