The United States House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Republican Jim Jordan, this week sent subpoenas to Tim Cook and the CEOs of other major tech companies ordering them to share information on their content moderation policies, says a Wall Street Journal report.
The documents and communications were sent to Mark Zuckerberg of Meta Platforms Inc., Sundar Pichai of Alphabet Inc., Satya Nadella of Microsoft Corp. , Tim Cook of Apple Inc., and Andy Jassy of Amazon.com Inc. Oddly, nothing was sent to Twitter CEO Elon Musk, even though Twitter is a major social network.
In an announcement about the subpoenas, Jordan said that the House Judiciary Committee has “attempted to engage” with Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Alphabet since last year, but has been unsuccessful.
However, some of the tech companies said they already were working with the Judiciary panel.
“We have started producing documents, are engaged with the committee, and committed to working in good faith,” said Kate Frischmann, spokeswoman for Microsoft. Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has “already begun producing documents in response to the committee’s requests and will continue to do so moving forward.”
🚨HUGE BREAKING NEWS: @Jim_Jordan subpoenas Big Tech CEOs. pic.twitter.com/WuOWccu2ZC
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) February 15, 2023
Mr. Jordan said the committee is seeking to understand “how and to what extent the Executive Branch coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech,” on issues like COVID-19.
Republican lawmakers have suggested that social networks and tech companies engaged in anti-conservative bias by suppressing conservative voices on certain issues.
Apple and the other companies will be required to provide documents and communications to the U.S. government by March 23.
