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Jan 6 committee subpoenas Meta, Google, Reddit etc. after 'inadequate responses'

116 points by 60654 5y ago

gjsman-1000 5y ago
We have a First Amendment... but if you run a platform that does not even use the First Amendment, you'll get subpoenaed and harassed. In theory, I ran a platform that protected everything the First Amendment did, and protected nothing that the Amendment did not protect, I should be legally in the clear. But I'm not going to attempt such a thing - because it's clear Congress would do the ultimate shakedown.
- IgorPartola 5y ago
  How to misunderstand the situation 101: bring the first amendment into the discussion when that’s not what the discussion is about. Let me break this down for you: you host a weekly poker night. My buddies and I come and during these nights plan a crime. We than carry out a crime and get arrested. The investigators come to you and ask “what did those guys talk about at your poker nights?” You say “poker stuff”. They subpoena you to get a better answer. Where in all of this did the first amendment come into play?
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    - IgorPartola 5y ago
      Sounds like you haven’t seen much evidence then. https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/13/politics/oath-keepers-sedition-takeaways/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/13/politics/oath-keepers-seditio...
      - gjsman-1000 5y ago
        In that case, I am still not convinced, because how many people have ever heard of the Oath Keepers? To me, from what I can tell, this means that there was a bunch of people protesting there, as was their legal right. A very small group had plans to break in, and unexpectedly succeeded in doing so. Everyone else then followed even though this hadn't been pre-planned. So, from Facebook's perspective, you would have to censor at the level of squashing ants to have prevented this. Again, this is just from what I can see though and could be proven wrong.
        IgorPartola 5y ago
        Literally none of this is about censorship. I know it’s inconvenient but you have to read the actual articles posted, not just the headlines. I have heard of them and I am nowhere near those circles or even the news sites all that much. They are a rather infamous org (that’s not a good thing). It sounds like you keep moving the goal posts (“I have not seen any evidence… ok I have seen the evidence but it’s not good enough evidence… ok there is evidence but it wasn’t enough people…”) so I am not going to keep replying but I urge you to read first, post second.
      - satronaut 5y ago
    - commandlinefan 5y ago
      There’s actually video of capitol police waving them in.
    - ModernMech 5y ago
      You may have missed the indictment yesterday for seditious conspiracy against the Oath Keepers. It contains evidence of the kind you are looking for.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      I’m not a lawyer so I may be missing something here, but I would expect a bunch of pipe bombs to be evidence of rather more than a mere protest. Or is this one of those weird second amendment rights that makes no sense outside of the USA?
      - _-david-_ 5y ago
        Who planted the pipe bombs? Do you have proof that it was the rioters? If so please give the evidence to the FBI.
        ben_w 5y ago
        A trite response like that only makes sense if pipe bombs are so commonplace in the American Capitol that mere coincidence would not be surprising. I’m not American, so you tell me: are they?
        _-david-_ 5y ago
        Pipe bombs are not common. I'm sure you know that. The problem is we are in an extremely polarized time. Accusing people of an act like planting pipe bombs with no evidence is not going to lower the temperature.
        ben_w 5y ago
        > Pipe bombs are not common. I'm sure you know that. Good, but no, if you are insisting on a standard of evidence so high that you are not willing to accept that the evidence points towards the obvious conclusion, then I must use a standard of evidence that says that actually no I don’t know how common pipe bombs are in DC. I mean, seriously I don’t know that — Literally everything about the second amendment looks that mad from outside for USA. This is in fact why I bothered to ask and didn’t dismiss the idea inside my own head. > Accusing people of an act like planting pipe bombs with no evidence is not going to lower the temperature. Evidence isn’t ever absolute. If I put two coins in a bag one of which is fair and the other one is biased 99% heads, I draw out a coin at random, flip it and get tales, I can be fairly sure it’s the fair coin even though I don’t know for certain. We know someone planted them because they were found, and we saw a person putting at least one of them in place on camera. Coins from a bag, which do you think it might be? And “lower the temperature”? Guess who is being blamed for that in all the press that I, a foreigner not living in the USA, get to see? Hint: lots of them have already been convicted.
    - josefx 5y ago
      > I have not seen any evidence that the rioters in question planned to break into the Capital building. Isn't that what a subponea is for? A crime was committed, that is 100% sure, we know that the criminals used these services to organize, so these services are the obvious place to look for more evidence related to the crime. > That was a later unplanned innovation as far as I've seen. Of course, can you head over to help the police out next. They always seem to take ages to solve murders and having someone walk in look at the situation from outside and tell them how they think it happened with a quick glance at the directly visible facts would really speed things up. Who needs an investigation.
    - wvenable 5y ago
      The guy with zip-tie cuffs...
      - throwawaysea 5y ago
        Not that this condones zip tie guy of breaking the law on other counts, but I thought the zip tie cuffs were found to be immaterial to his charges, because he found them rather than brought them with him (https://www.yahoo.com/news/capitol-riots-zip-tie-guy-190644133.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/capitol-riots-zip-tie-guy-1906441... or https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/eric-munchel-lisa-eisenhart-released-riot/2021/03/29/7c9eacd6-90bb-11eb-a74e-1f4cf89fd948_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/eric-munch...). My understanding is that he claimed he found them and took them away so Capitol police would not use them to restrain protesters. To my knowledge, subsequent charges have not actually determined any further malicious act stemming from the zip-tie cuffs specifically.
  - MiroF 5y ago
    > They subpoena you to get a better answer Sure except the subpoena in question was not actually about records of conversations that the rioters had, it was about efforts FB did/didn't take to discount election misinformation. Election misinformation is covered by free speech.
    - IgorPartola 5y ago
      > Election misinformation is covered by free speech. In the same way as yelling “fire” in a theater.
      - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
        So? Illegal the legal according to then overruled by SCOTUS, and widely misunderstood when it’s used as a reference?
      - MiroF 5y ago
        > In the same way as yelling “fire” in a theater. Not at all? There's a clear moral (and certainly legal) dividing line between the two.
- Ardon 5y ago
  But this subpoena has nothing to do with the first amendment, they're demanding for more records, not levying a penalty for not removing these people.
  - barney54 5y ago
    Not necessarily. The First Amendment is implicated if the federal government is trying to get these companies to act on their behalf and censor speech.
    - Ardon 5y ago
      Right, but this subpoena isn't doing that. The 'inadequate response' in the title of the post is referring to the companies' response to congress' request for data, not saying the companies' response to the speech on their platform was inadequate.
      - barney54 5y ago
        Yes, I understand that. My point is that many in Congress want these companies to preemptively censor what happens on their platforms and these subpoenas is an attempt to build that case.
- shrimpx 5y ago
  What do Twitter and Reddit have to do with the first amendment?
  - throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
    If you assume the companies are operating in a vacuum, probably nothing. If the government is trying to influence a private company what rules to use for moderation then the lines are blurred. As other have said, this is a bit different then that since it's an investigation but I'm sure you can find some examples from the past years of politicians and government officials trying to influence moderation policies for better or worse.
- gilbetron 5y ago
  You have the first amendment right to talk about crimes you are planning, but the government still gets to use what you said against you if you actually commit that crime.
  - oneoff786 5y ago
    Seditious conspiracy is a crime in itself
pumaontheprowl 5y ago
These companies overwhelmingly support the Democratic party. The idea that they are deliberately stonewalling this investigation strains credulity. Poking some of their most powerful allies like this feels like a tactical error for the Congressional Democrats.
- davesque 5y ago
  In a way, that seems to suggest that the investigation is about ascertaining the facts instead of avoiding upsetting powerful allies.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
umvi 5y ago
The implication from the committee is that these companies should have monitored and suppressed/censored their users harder? Is the committee looking for a scapegoat or something?
- geodel 5y ago
  Well, I mean ofcourse. They are just "restoring" the democracy
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- shrimpx 5y ago
  They’re trying to find out if Facebook intentionally bypassed their own policies and allowed election propaganda to run wild because it was to their benefit. (E.g., a trump coup would have been good for Facebook.) Basically are they stupid or evil. And if they’re evil, is there a larger conspiracy involving other people of interest?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ben_w 5y ago
  Is it? What I got from the quotations the article chose to use was “we don’t have enough info and we think you have not told us everything we need to know to about what happened”.
- gilbetron 5y ago
  No, the "inadequate response" they are talking about is that the companies didn't give them the information the committee is asking for. So they are using subpoenas to get it. If there is a trump org, or connected org, that was pushing propaganda on Facebook trying to get people to do something violent, that is extremely important and fully within congress' mandate to have access to. Likewise, if the opposite occurred, and if there isn't any propaganda or misinformation, that's important as well.
- 5y ago
oxymoran 5y ago
Man, the democrats are really trying to hand republicans every election for the next decade.
- guerrilla 5y ago
  Not that I disagree, but how does this particular thing factor into that?
  - akomtu 5y ago
    This Jan6 committee doesn't look legit, to be honest. Issuing subpoenas and jail time for ignoring those subpoenas is the courts' territory. I dont understand how a bunch of legislators, who were elected to write laws, created an "emergency committee" with judical and executive powers.
    - jsnell 5y ago
      Isn't this power already a well-established (though also fictional) part of the US system? What I mean by the parenthetical statement is that while the legislative branch does have an established right to ask the disclosure of information, their power to actually compel is limited. Without cooperation from the other branches of government, what they directly control is a handful of operatives who maintain no facilities for detaining people for the long term.
    - ModernMech 5y ago
      To be clear, the Jan 6 Committee sent criminal referrals to the DoJ, so the judicial system is the one deciding the fate of these individuals, not the Committee. In fact Steve Bannon's due process has been preserved; he has a court date set and he is currently free on bail. Mark Meadows has not been charged yet, but that will also be decided by the DoJ. It's worth pointing out though, that Congress does in fact have a power of inherent contempt that enables them to enforce their own subpoenas. This is a separation of powers concern: what if Congress needs to subpoena someone in the Executive branch or DoJ in particular?
    - stjohnswarts 5y ago
RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
This kind of pressure on companies to censor seems like an end around on the first amendment. It technically is not the government censoring or mandating censorship, but it uses the threat of government power and the power to irritate and harass for companies that don't toe the line. Unfortunately, I can only see this getting worse. For example, if the Republicans come to power in 2022, I can see them having a committee hold hearings on the "riots" of 2020 and subpoenaing all these companies about how their platform was used to organize the protests/riots. Soon, companies will just censor any attempt to organize a protest online.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  > This kind of pressure on companies to censor seems like an end around on the first amendment. It technically is not the government censoring or mandating censorship, but it uses the threat of government power and the power to irritate and harass for companies that don't toe the line. Absolutely. These tech companies know they face the threat of regulation, whether on anti trust grounds or labor issues or whatever. When Twitter banned Trump, they wrote a blog post (https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...) that offered no good reason and pointed at things like his refusal to attend Biden’s inauguration. AOC also demanded that tech companies censor Parler (https://imgur.com/jJo0lEx https://imgur.com/jJo0lEx), and Apple/Google/Amazon all complied. The timing of this sudden and willing compliance from all these companies who historically would resist, was not coincidental. It happened because there was a coming change of administrations, and this compliance bought them favor. Glenn Greenwald has written many great articles on this topic, but here’s a particularly relevant one: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/how-silicon-valley-in-a-show-of-monopolistic https://greenwald.substack.com/p/how-silicon-valley-in-a-sho...
- cmiles74 5y ago
  The larger issue, in my opinion, is that people seem to be looking less for clear and understandable information about current events and more for skewed (possibly even false) information that they find entertaining, comforting, etc. I can understand why some people might think the next step would be to improve the quality of the information from the sources that are providing this skewed, stilted and possibly even false coverage, but I have trouble seeing this working well enough to improve things in any meaningful way. On the contrary, it seems like this kind of news will be even more sought after as it becomes harder to find. That said I don't have a good solution. Maybe somehow promoting better sources of news or making it easier for these more reliable news sources to generate income.
sleepysysadmin 5y ago
altgoogler 5y ago
Disclaimer: am googler, my opinions are my own. I have no non-public knowledge on this topic. It's not clear to me what the House committee is asking for. From what I read in their letters it's basically, "We think you have more than you've given us, so give it to us". That's not how this works. If you want to subpoena information, you need to be specific and targeted. If you don't get what you think you want, call people in to testify. Here's the actual Committee release [1]. Two quotes from the Alphabet letter: "For example, Alphabet has not produced any documents that fully explain non-public moderation discussions and policies" "Additionally, Alphabet has not produced documents relating to YouTube’s policy decisions" But, IIRC, YouTube (and Twitter) were pretty publicly vocal and specific about their policies for months preceding Jan 6th. I just don't see what warrants this round of grandstanding. [1] https://january6th.house.gov/news/press-releases/select-committee-subpoenas-social-media-companies-records-related-january-6th https://january6th.house.gov/news/press-releases/select-comm...
- creaghpatr 5y ago
  The press release is the endgame here.
- kerneloftruth 5y ago
  I think they're also sending a message: Censor more! (because the mid-terms are coming).
  - satronaut 5y ago
    - etataetaet 5y ago
      Almost no one (~5%) agree with lawmakers being able to trade stocks. This is one of the few things that basically all Americans agree on. https://thehill.com/homenews/news/588630-76-percent-of-voters-support-banning-lawmakers-from-trading-stocks-poll https://thehill.com/homenews/news/588630-76-percent-of-voter...
gjsman-1000 5y ago
- mindslight 5y ago
  The low level actions of the rioters on January 6th would be less relevant if the political leaders and operatives who mobilized them were being held to account. But rather the Republican Party is extremely disinterested in any sort of accountability or investigation, instead closing the ranks around autocracy. And so going after the low level useful idiots in hopes of building cases against the real perps is the only path forward.
- kerneloftruth 5y ago
  Yes -- I almost stopped early in the article at "the deadly attack". It was a disgusting action taken by the mob, but the nation heals more if the press acts _honestly_. Media bias (especially on that story) only divides and embitters people.
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    Yes... some people died, but it wasn't what the media made it to be. Two protesters died of heart attacks, one died of an overdose, and one died of being shot by a cop. One died of a stroke and was widely misreported of being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher when that didn't actually happen, and four cops later committed suicide. This is all according to FactCheck.org. Was it great? Absolutely not - but it wasn't anything remotely close to, say, even the most minor altercations between America and Britain.
    - dontreact 5y ago
      What do you think would have happened if things went a little differently and the mob got to Nancy Pelosi? They were very close to doing so.
      - gjsman-1000 5y ago
        We would have a funeral for Pelosi, but democracy would be no closer to dying. And while it's a tragedy for anyone to be murdered, hype about it "nearly killed democracy" is just inflammatory.
IgorPartola 5y ago
I get some kind of sick satisfaction out of watching a certain small subset of HN lose their mind trying to square the circle when it comes to stuff like this. On one hand “this is government overreach!” (it’s not because the committee here is on a specific task to investigate a specific crime) and “free market!” and on the other hand “big social media companies are evil and decide what’s right and what’s wrong.” Nevermind that this has nothing to do with “cancel culture”, “censorship”, or “mainstream media” and everything to do with an investigation. Just read the headline and get angry at… someone?
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  AFAICT political tribes rule everything now, and the actual policy issues are unimportant. I rarely see anyone discussing policy, everything is very shallow, very personal.
  - tsol 5y ago
    It feels like policy isn't correlated with action, sometimes even with the conversation
  - IgorPartola 5y ago
    Has policy ever been discussed as the main thing? It seems like at least American politics has always been about which faction you align with/how you self-identify.
    - beeboop 5y ago
      A lot of people are single or close to single issue voters. So there is policy discussion but it's usually extremely shallow
  - Sparyjerry 5y ago
    They make it extremely personal every time because that is was calls to action. My point is, yes, for politicians actual policy is an illusion and everyone is now on a team. They are exactly the most successful when they convince others to make it personal and join their team. I'd go as far as to say that policies issues don't even align exactly on party lines except when it benefits them. Look at the filibuster rule, the exact same politicians want to eliminate the rule that said it was the most important thing in our democracy, just because now eliminating the rule would benefit their side. I don't think it would surprise everyone that politicians are self serving only. There were a number of laws that democrats said they would not vote for specifically because it would make Trump look good, not because they didn't think the law as good for people, and they would say this out loud. This is what happens in this tribe based environment.
lukifer 5y ago
The Jan 6th event (whatever word one uses) was far from secret. Most of the coordination happened in public, and the participants were not shy about their intentions. After reddit shut down /r/TheDonald, the "pedes" migrated to thedonald dot win (which I think has since been shuttered and moved elsewhere). With all the claims being made about a stolen election, I was watching that site with morbid fascination in December and early January, including the planning for the 6th specifically (I assume it's still in the Wayback Machine). The talk ranged from vague protest, to a quasi-Occupy strategy of refusing to leave until results are overturned, to explicit calls to violence and far-right fantasies ("1776 solutions to 1984 problems", "day of the rope", etc). And the whole time, I assumed: obviously this is on the radar of the FBI and the "IC". These idiots are out of their depth: they don't even know how to use encryption to coordinate their attempted coup, and they're gonna walk right into a regiment of Feds on the capitol steps. Luckily Trump is fundamentally a coward, and Pence has some shred of integrity (or just sense), and the participants failed to galvanize a response from the more mainstream Trumpers. But if you want to talk about an "inadequate response": the gross incompetence of our bloated national security apparatus failing to do the only thing that justifies their existence really takes the cake; and I can't help but think all the Congressional hearings and hand-wringing and crocodile tears is a theatrical distraction from that institutional failure.
mzs 5y ago
Discord is missing, a lot of talk before Jan 6th happened there too. Maybe they already cooperated in better faith?
benpiper 5y ago
Ever heard of the McCarthy hearings? We went from "everyone we don't like must be a communist" to "everyone who says people cheat at elections is spreading misinformation." This pearl-clutching over "misinformation" is tiresome and pathetic.
RickJWagner 5y ago
It's an interesting idea. I can easily imagine that the next time the GOP controls congress they'll ask similar questions of outlets like CNN and MSNBC vis-a-vis the George Floyd riots. People should be more considerate of the opposition when they're in power. Payback is almost assured, and sometimes even with escalation.

116 points by 60654 5y ago

We have a First Amendment... but if you run a platform that does not even use the First Amendment, you'll get subpoenaed and harassed. In theory, I ran a platform that protected everything the First Amendment did, and protected nothing that the Amendment did not protect, I should be legally in the clear. But I'm not going to attempt such a thing - because it's clear Congress would do the ultimate shakedown.

IgorPartola 5y ago
How to misunderstand the situation 101: bring the first amendment into the discussion when that’s not what the discussion is about. Let me break this down for you: you host a weekly poker night. My buddies and I come and during these nights plan a crime. We than carry out a crime and get arrested. The investigators come to you and ask “what did those guys talk about at your poker nights?” You say “poker stuff”. They subpoena you to get a better answer. Where in all of this did the first amendment come into play?
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  - IgorPartola 5y ago
    Sounds like you haven’t seen much evidence then. https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/13/politics/oath-keepers-sedition-takeaways/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/13/politics/oath-keepers-seditio...
    - gjsman-1000 5y ago
      In that case, I am still not convinced, because how many people have ever heard of the Oath Keepers? To me, from what I can tell, this means that there was a bunch of people protesting there, as was their legal right. A very small group had plans to break in, and unexpectedly succeeded in doing so. Everyone else then followed even though this hadn't been pre-planned. So, from Facebook's perspective, you would have to censor at the level of squashing ants to have prevented this. Again, this is just from what I can see though and could be proven wrong.
      - IgorPartola 5y ago
        Literally none of this is about censorship. I know it’s inconvenient but you have to read the actual articles posted, not just the headlines. I have heard of them and I am nowhere near those circles or even the news sites all that much. They are a rather infamous org (that’s not a good thing). It sounds like you keep moving the goal posts (“I have not seen any evidence… ok I have seen the evidence but it’s not good enough evidence… ok there is evidence but it wasn’t enough people…”) so I am not going to keep replying but I urge you to read first, post second.
    - satronaut 5y ago
  - commandlinefan 5y ago
    There’s actually video of capitol police waving them in.
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    You may have missed the indictment yesterday for seditious conspiracy against the Oath Keepers. It contains evidence of the kind you are looking for.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    I’m not a lawyer so I may be missing something here, but I would expect a bunch of pipe bombs to be evidence of rather more than a mere protest. Or is this one of those weird second amendment rights that makes no sense outside of the USA?
    - _-david-_ 5y ago
      Who planted the pipe bombs? Do you have proof that it was the rioters? If so please give the evidence to the FBI.
      - ben_w 5y ago
        A trite response like that only makes sense if pipe bombs are so commonplace in the American Capitol that mere coincidence would not be surprising. I’m not American, so you tell me: are they?
        _-david-_ 5y ago
        Pipe bombs are not common. I'm sure you know that. The problem is we are in an extremely polarized time. Accusing people of an act like planting pipe bombs with no evidence is not going to lower the temperature.
        ben_w 5y ago
        > Pipe bombs are not common. I'm sure you know that. Good, but no, if you are insisting on a standard of evidence so high that you are not willing to accept that the evidence points towards the obvious conclusion, then I must use a standard of evidence that says that actually no I don’t know how common pipe bombs are in DC. I mean, seriously I don’t know that — Literally everything about the second amendment looks that mad from outside for USA. This is in fact why I bothered to ask and didn’t dismiss the idea inside my own head. > Accusing people of an act like planting pipe bombs with no evidence is not going to lower the temperature. Evidence isn’t ever absolute. If I put two coins in a bag one of which is fair and the other one is biased 99% heads, I draw out a coin at random, flip it and get tales, I can be fairly sure it’s the fair coin even though I don’t know for certain. We know someone planted them because they were found, and we saw a person putting at least one of them in place on camera. Coins from a bag, which do you think it might be? And “lower the temperature”? Guess who is being blamed for that in all the press that I, a foreigner not living in the USA, get to see? Hint: lots of them have already been convicted.
  - josefx 5y ago
    > I have not seen any evidence that the rioters in question planned to break into the Capital building. Isn't that what a subponea is for? A crime was committed, that is 100% sure, we know that the criminals used these services to organize, so these services are the obvious place to look for more evidence related to the crime. > That was a later unplanned innovation as far as I've seen. Of course, can you head over to help the police out next. They always seem to take ages to solve murders and having someone walk in look at the situation from outside and tell them how they think it happened with a quick glance at the directly visible facts would really speed things up. Who needs an investigation.
  - wvenable 5y ago
    The guy with zip-tie cuffs...
    - throwawaysea 5y ago
      Not that this condones zip tie guy of breaking the law on other counts, but I thought the zip tie cuffs were found to be immaterial to his charges, because he found them rather than brought them with him (https://www.yahoo.com/news/capitol-riots-zip-tie-guy-190644133.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/capitol-riots-zip-tie-guy-1906441... or https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/eric-munchel-lisa-eisenhart-released-riot/2021/03/29/7c9eacd6-90bb-11eb-a74e-1f4cf89fd948_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/eric-munch...). My understanding is that he claimed he found them and took them away so Capitol police would not use them to restrain protesters. To my knowledge, subsequent charges have not actually determined any further malicious act stemming from the zip-tie cuffs specifically.
- MiroF 5y ago
  > They subpoena you to get a better answer Sure except the subpoena in question was not actually about records of conversations that the rioters had, it was about efforts FB did/didn't take to discount election misinformation. Election misinformation is covered by free speech.
  - IgorPartola 5y ago
    > Election misinformation is covered by free speech. In the same way as yelling “fire” in a theater.
    - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
      So? Illegal the legal according to then overruled by SCOTUS, and widely misunderstood when it’s used as a reference?
    - MiroF 5y ago
      > In the same way as yelling “fire” in a theater. Not at all? There's a clear moral (and certainly legal) dividing line between the two.
Ardon 5y ago
But this subpoena has nothing to do with the first amendment, they're demanding for more records, not levying a penalty for not removing these people.
- barney54 5y ago
  Not necessarily. The First Amendment is implicated if the federal government is trying to get these companies to act on their behalf and censor speech.
  - Ardon 5y ago
    Right, but this subpoena isn't doing that. The 'inadequate response' in the title of the post is referring to the companies' response to congress' request for data, not saying the companies' response to the speech on their platform was inadequate.
    - barney54 5y ago
      Yes, I understand that. My point is that many in Congress want these companies to preemptively censor what happens on their platforms and these subpoenas is an attempt to build that case.
shrimpx 5y ago
What do Twitter and Reddit have to do with the first amendment?
- throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
  If you assume the companies are operating in a vacuum, probably nothing. If the government is trying to influence a private company what rules to use for moderation then the lines are blurred. As other have said, this is a bit different then that since it's an investigation but I'm sure you can find some examples from the past years of politicians and government officials trying to influence moderation policies for better or worse.
gilbetron 5y ago
You have the first amendment right to talk about crimes you are planning, but the government still gets to use what you said against you if you actually commit that crime.
- oneoff786 5y ago
  Seditious conspiracy is a crime in itself

pumaontheprowl 5y ago

These companies overwhelmingly support the Democratic party. The idea that they are deliberately stonewalling this investigation strains credulity. Poking some of their most powerful allies like this feels like a tactical error for the Congressional Democrats.

davesque 5y ago
In a way, that seems to suggest that the investigation is about ascertaining the facts instead of avoiding upsetting powerful allies.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

umvi 5y ago

The implication from the committee is that these companies should have monitored and suppressed/censored their users harder? Is the committee looking for a scapegoat or something?

geodel 5y ago
Well, I mean ofcourse. They are just "restoring" the democracy
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
shrimpx 5y ago
They’re trying to find out if Facebook intentionally bypassed their own policies and allowed election propaganda to run wild because it was to their benefit. (E.g., a trump coup would have been good for Facebook.) Basically are they stupid or evil. And if they’re evil, is there a larger conspiracy involving other people of interest?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ben_w 5y ago
Is it? What I got from the quotations the article chose to use was “we don’t have enough info and we think you have not told us everything we need to know to about what happened”.
gilbetron 5y ago
No, the "inadequate response" they are talking about is that the companies didn't give them the information the committee is asking for. So they are using subpoenas to get it. If there is a trump org, or connected org, that was pushing propaganda on Facebook trying to get people to do something violent, that is extremely important and fully within congress' mandate to have access to. Likewise, if the opposite occurred, and if there isn't any propaganda or misinformation, that's important as well.
5y ago

oxymoran 5y ago

Man, the democrats are really trying to hand republicans every election for the next decade.

guerrilla 5y ago
Not that I disagree, but how does this particular thing factor into that?
- akomtu 5y ago
  This Jan6 committee doesn't look legit, to be honest. Issuing subpoenas and jail time for ignoring those subpoenas is the courts' territory. I dont understand how a bunch of legislators, who were elected to write laws, created an "emergency committee" with judical and executive powers.
  - jsnell 5y ago
    Isn't this power already a well-established (though also fictional) part of the US system? What I mean by the parenthetical statement is that while the legislative branch does have an established right to ask the disclosure of information, their power to actually compel is limited. Without cooperation from the other branches of government, what they directly control is a handful of operatives who maintain no facilities for detaining people for the long term.
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    To be clear, the Jan 6 Committee sent criminal referrals to the DoJ, so the judicial system is the one deciding the fate of these individuals, not the Committee. In fact Steve Bannon's due process has been preserved; he has a court date set and he is currently free on bail. Mark Meadows has not been charged yet, but that will also be decided by the DoJ. It's worth pointing out though, that Congress does in fact have a power of inherent contempt that enables them to enforce their own subpoenas. This is a separation of powers concern: what if Congress needs to subpoena someone in the Executive branch or DoJ in particular?
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago

This kind of pressure on companies to censor seems like an end around on the first amendment. It technically is not the government censoring or mandating censorship, but it uses the threat of government power and the power to irritate and harass for companies that don't toe the line. Unfortunately, I can only see this getting worse. For example, if the Republicans come to power in 2022, I can see them having a committee hold hearings on the "riots" of 2020 and subpoenaing all these companies about how their platform was used to organize the protests/riots. Soon, companies will just censor any attempt to organize a protest online.

throwawaysea 5y ago
> This kind of pressure on companies to censor seems like an end around on the first amendment. It technically is not the government censoring or mandating censorship, but it uses the threat of government power and the power to irritate and harass for companies that don't toe the line. Absolutely. These tech companies know they face the threat of regulation, whether on anti trust grounds or labor issues or whatever. When Twitter banned Trump, they wrote a blog post (https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...) that offered no good reason and pointed at things like his refusal to attend Biden’s inauguration. AOC also demanded that tech companies censor Parler (https://imgur.com/jJo0lEx https://imgur.com/jJo0lEx), and Apple/Google/Amazon all complied. The timing of this sudden and willing compliance from all these companies who historically would resist, was not coincidental. It happened because there was a coming change of administrations, and this compliance bought them favor. Glenn Greenwald has written many great articles on this topic, but here’s a particularly relevant one: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/how-silicon-valley-in-a-show-of-monopolistic https://greenwald.substack.com/p/how-silicon-valley-in-a-sho...
cmiles74 5y ago
The larger issue, in my opinion, is that people seem to be looking less for clear and understandable information about current events and more for skewed (possibly even false) information that they find entertaining, comforting, etc. I can understand why some people might think the next step would be to improve the quality of the information from the sources that are providing this skewed, stilted and possibly even false coverage, but I have trouble seeing this working well enough to improve things in any meaningful way. On the contrary, it seems like this kind of news will be even more sought after as it becomes harder to find. That said I don't have a good solution. Maybe somehow promoting better sources of news or making it easier for these more reliable news sources to generate income.

sleepysysadmin 5y ago

altgoogler 5y ago

Disclaimer: am googler, my opinions are my own. I have no non-public knowledge on this topic. It's not clear to me what the House committee is asking for. From what I read in their letters it's basically, "We think you have more than you've given us, so give it to us". That's not how this works. If you want to subpoena information, you need to be specific and targeted. If you don't get what you think you want, call people in to testify. Here's the actual Committee release [1]. Two quotes from the Alphabet letter: "For example, Alphabet has not produced any documents that fully explain non-public moderation discussions and policies" "Additionally, Alphabet has not produced documents relating to YouTube’s policy decisions" But, IIRC, YouTube (and Twitter) were pretty publicly vocal and specific about their policies for months preceding Jan 6th. I just don't see what warrants this round of grandstanding. [1] https://january6th.house.gov/news/press-releases/select-committee-subpoenas-social-media-companies-records-related-january-6th https://january6th.house.gov/news/press-releases/select-comm...

creaghpatr 5y ago
The press release is the endgame here.
kerneloftruth 5y ago
I think they're also sending a message: Censor more! (because the mid-terms are coming).
- satronaut 5y ago
  - etataetaet 5y ago
    Almost no one (~5%) agree with lawmakers being able to trade stocks. This is one of the few things that basically all Americans agree on. https://thehill.com/homenews/news/588630-76-percent-of-voters-support-banning-lawmakers-from-trading-stocks-poll https://thehill.com/homenews/news/588630-76-percent-of-voter...

gjsman-1000 5y ago

mindslight 5y ago
The low level actions of the rioters on January 6th would be less relevant if the political leaders and operatives who mobilized them were being held to account. But rather the Republican Party is extremely disinterested in any sort of accountability or investigation, instead closing the ranks around autocracy. And so going after the low level useful idiots in hopes of building cases against the real perps is the only path forward.
kerneloftruth 5y ago
Yes -- I almost stopped early in the article at "the deadly attack". It was a disgusting action taken by the mob, but the nation heals more if the press acts _honestly_. Media bias (especially on that story) only divides and embitters people.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  Yes... some people died, but it wasn't what the media made it to be. Two protesters died of heart attacks, one died of an overdose, and one died of being shot by a cop. One died of a stroke and was widely misreported of being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher when that didn't actually happen, and four cops later committed suicide. This is all according to FactCheck.org. Was it great? Absolutely not - but it wasn't anything remotely close to, say, even the most minor altercations between America and Britain.
  - dontreact 5y ago
    What do you think would have happened if things went a little differently and the mob got to Nancy Pelosi? They were very close to doing so.
    - gjsman-1000 5y ago
      We would have a funeral for Pelosi, but democracy would be no closer to dying. And while it's a tragedy for anyone to be murdered, hype about it "nearly killed democracy" is just inflammatory.

IgorPartola 5y ago

I get some kind of sick satisfaction out of watching a certain small subset of HN lose their mind trying to square the circle when it comes to stuff like this. On one hand “this is government overreach!” (it’s not because the committee here is on a specific task to investigate a specific crime) and “free market!” and on the other hand “big social media companies are evil and decide what’s right and what’s wrong.” Nevermind that this has nothing to do with “cancel culture”, “censorship”, or “mainstream media” and everything to do with an investigation. Just read the headline and get angry at… someone?

rootusrootus 5y ago
AFAICT political tribes rule everything now, and the actual policy issues are unimportant. I rarely see anyone discussing policy, everything is very shallow, very personal.
- tsol 5y ago
  It feels like policy isn't correlated with action, sometimes even with the conversation
- IgorPartola 5y ago
  Has policy ever been discussed as the main thing? It seems like at least American politics has always been about which faction you align with/how you self-identify.
  - beeboop 5y ago
    A lot of people are single or close to single issue voters. So there is policy discussion but it's usually extremely shallow
- Sparyjerry 5y ago
  They make it extremely personal every time because that is was calls to action. My point is, yes, for politicians actual policy is an illusion and everyone is now on a team. They are exactly the most successful when they convince others to make it personal and join their team. I'd go as far as to say that policies issues don't even align exactly on party lines except when it benefits them. Look at the filibuster rule, the exact same politicians want to eliminate the rule that said it was the most important thing in our democracy, just because now eliminating the rule would benefit their side. I don't think it would surprise everyone that politicians are self serving only. There were a number of laws that democrats said they would not vote for specifically because it would make Trump look good, not because they didn't think the law as good for people, and they would say this out loud. This is what happens in this tribe based environment.

lukifer 5y ago

The Jan 6th event (whatever word one uses) was far from secret. Most of the coordination happened in public, and the participants were not shy about their intentions. After reddit shut down /r/TheDonald, the "pedes" migrated to thedonald dot win (which I think has since been shuttered and moved elsewhere). With all the claims being made about a stolen election, I was watching that site with morbid fascination in December and early January, including the planning for the 6th specifically (I assume it's still in the Wayback Machine). The talk ranged from vague protest, to a quasi-Occupy strategy of refusing to leave until results are overturned, to explicit calls to violence and far-right fantasies ("1776 solutions to 1984 problems", "day of the rope", etc). And the whole time, I assumed: obviously this is on the radar of the FBI and the "IC". These idiots are out of their depth: they don't even know how to use encryption to coordinate their attempted coup, and they're gonna walk right into a regiment of Feds on the capitol steps. Luckily Trump is fundamentally a coward, and Pence has some shred of integrity (or just sense), and the participants failed to galvanize a response from the more mainstream Trumpers. But if you want to talk about an "inadequate response": the gross incompetence of our bloated national security apparatus failing to do the only thing that justifies their existence really takes the cake; and I can't help but think all the Congressional hearings and hand-wringing and crocodile tears is a theatrical distraction from that institutional failure.

mzs 5y ago

Discord is missing, a lot of talk before Jan 6th happened there too. Maybe they already cooperated in better faith?

benpiper 5y ago

Ever heard of the McCarthy hearings? We went from "everyone we don't like must be a communist" to "everyone who says people cheat at elections is spreading misinformation." This pearl-clutching over "misinformation" is tiresome and pathetic.

RickJWagner 5y ago

It's an interesting idea. I can easily imagine that the next time the GOP controls congress they'll ask similar questions of outlets like CNN and MSNBC vis-a-vis the George Floyd riots. People should be more considerate of the opposition when they're in power. Payback is almost assured, and sometimes even with escalation.