The 36-year-old Gaetz, elected to the House of Representatives from Florida’s 1st Congressional District in 2016, is a favorite of Fox News and a rising GOP star. Question: Is Matt Gaetz the most despicable and shameless member of the United States Congress? Parliamentary inquiries follow on reprimanding members for being untruthful and audience member disruptions. is interrupted by Manuel Oliver, father of Majory Stoneman Douglas shooting victim Joaquin "Guac" Oliver. And then he doubled down on his ridiculous and racist claim that “if we really cared about safer streets, we would build the wall and secure the border.” How did Gaetz respond to the interruption? He jabbed his finger at Oliver while loudly demanding that this grieving father of a teenager killed in one of the deadliest shootings in modern American history be kicked out from the hearing. “That’s not true.” (For the record, Joaquin’s killer was a U.S.-born citizen.) “That’s a lie,” Manuel Oliver shouted as he stood up. That’s because Musk is using Twitter the right way, and, with Jordan, he will always have an ally in government who will help him stay the course… even by trying to intimidate the competition.Deconstructed Podcast Mehdi Hasan unpacks the most consequential news of the week. Musk is not violating anybody’s First Amendment rights by promoting his right-wing views.īut, unlike Zuckerberg, he will never draw the ire of congressional Republicans and receive vaguely threatening letters. In any case, shaping speech in a way that suits his personal beliefs is much more valuable.Īs the owner of Twitter, that is absolutely his prerogative. He has paid a price for doing so ( quite literally), but a few billion dollars more or less don’t make much of a difference to him. Musk has transformed Twitter into a right-wing social media platform. Well, well, well… who is taking sides now and trying to engage in political persecution by sending an ominous letter to the head of a company that competes with an ideologically aligned business? “Indeed, Threads raises serious, specific concerns because it has been marketed as rival of Elon Musk’s Twitter, which has faced political persecution from the Biden Administration following Musk’s commitment to free speech,” Jordan wrote. However, the next line in Jordan’s letter gets to the heart of the matter, which, as it turns out, isn’t censorship at all. And, in the screenshot Jordan references, it is quite clear that the user has the option of still following that account. The evidence the lawmaker provides is Threads asking users if they really want to follow an account known for spreading misinformation or that belongs to someone who has violated the company’s community standard in the past. In addition, the “censorship” that he is referencing isn’t censorship at all. Therefore, Jordan is sending this letter to the wrong place. What Jordan is complaining about is that Threads, the newly launched social media app that is challenging Twitter, is already “censoring” content.Ĭiting Meta’s track record of acquiescing to government demands to remove certain information from its websites, Jordan writes that his committee “is concerned about potential First Amendment violations that have occurred or will occur on the Threads platform.”Īs the chairman of the Judiciary Committee should know, the First Amendment applies to government censorship and does not prohibit individuals, companies, and organizations from restricting speech. However, that is essentially what Jordan is doing by trying to bully Zuckerberg.Īnd, based on his letter, he does it, at least in part, to help Elon Musk, the right-wing owner of Twitter. In addition, many of them operate as near monopolies, and there is very limited government oversight.ĭoes that mean that the solution to these problems is that the government should decide which content can be displayed and which cannot? It is very clear that these websites and apps have had a detrimental impact on society, and Zuckerberg’s Facebook is one of the main culprits. Social media platforms do incredible harm by not only spreading misinformation but, in many cases, steering users toward such content to keep them “engaged” longer. In Jordan’s defense, these are thorny issues. On Monday, he sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg regarding the company’s new “Threads” social media app… and he did all of those things. If Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) really feels strongly that the government should not be involved in how social media companies run their businesses or what content they should or shouldn’t display on their platforms, he has a funny way of showing it.
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