Twitter denied a request from the January 6 House Committee for the company’s internal communications, including Slack discussions, concerning how it regulated tweets about the Capitol attack, according to a report.
While citing sources familiar with the matter, Rolling Stone said that in response to the request, Twitter claimed its First Amendment privilege, which had the committee concerned.
The committee’s request for Slack messages would help flesh out how Twitter dealt with insurgency-related information in greater detail, but Twitter claims that sharing such granular-level deliberative data breaches its constitutional rights.
According to the report, members of the committee believe the conversation logs will help paint a clear picture of how pro-Trump extremism played a role in the Capitol attack.
The announcement comes as the first of the committee’s six primetime hearings is set to begin on June 9 and interest will grow in what will be disclosed in public testimony.
In August last year, the committee subpoenaed key executives and founders of social media behemoths such as Twitter, Meta, and Alphabet, the parent company of Google, to see how they managed their platforms as misinformation about the 2020 election spread like wildfire ahead of the deadly Capitol riot.
However, the committee later stated that the corporations’ responses were “inadequate” and requested additional documents.
In January, Committee Chair Bennie Thompson said: “It’s disappointing that after months of engagement, we still do not have the documents and information necessary to answer those basic questions.”
But such requests have sparked debate over how far the government may — and should — go when pushing social media companies to give material and testify in a national security inquiry.
However, Twitter told Rolling Stone: “Since last year, we have had an ongoing, productive engagement with the Select Committee, and have provided appropriate, relevant information to contribute to this important investigation.”
The microblogging platform also stated that it will continue to work with the committee.
Additionally, Twitter said that it takes “a principled approach to responding to requests for information from governments, and will continue to closely evaluate the merits of each request to protect the rights of the people who use our service, as well as the rights of Twitter and its employees”.
Thompson had requested three particular types of records that he claimed Twitter had neglected to provide to the committee in a letter that accompanied the subpoena submitted to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal in January this year.
They included documents relating to warnings [Twitter] received regarding the use of the platform to plan or incite violence on January 6, as well as an alleged failure to “even commit to a timeline” for sending over internal company analyses of “misinformation, disinformation, and malformation” relating to the 2020 election.
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