Thread by @BBuchman_CNS

Carlos Monje Jr., director of public policy for Twitter is testifying before the Senate this afternoon on censorship and big tech's role. In his opening remarks, he dismisses the notion that conservative voices are silenced on Twitter and explains:

"Twitter does not use political viewpoints, perspectives or party affiliation," whether it is related to automatically ranked content or who enforces platform rules, he says.

"Twitter is very popular for conservative voices," he adds. Twitter reviewed tweets by all members of the House and Senate from Feb to March of this year and after controlling for factors like follower counts, they observed:

"There is no statistical difference between a number of times a tweet is viewed between Democrats or Republican. Their performance is the same because the Twitter platform doesn’t take sides," Monje said.

"We down-rated content if a significant number of an account's followers had a history of breaking our rules. Once we identified this issue, we resolved it within 24 hours," he adds.

Developing story on this up soon for @CourthouseNews.

Story will update shortly:
courthousenews.com/social-media-e…

And if you missed my coverage from yesterday on big tech's take on the rise of white nationalism - check that out here:
courthousenews.com/tech-giants-gr…

Of note at a hearing on censorship:
- Republicans rescinded an invitation by Google to testify because the person tapped was "not senior" enough, even though he a) used to be Ted Cruz's aide and b) is the point person for the platforms policy directives online

- Cruz also pulled up a quote from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey but did so by citing it out of context and failing to include the next sentence which refuted his assertion plainly

UPDATED: While some may push for restrictions or forced equivalencies – standards mandating that platforms allow an equal number of posts on a contentious issue such as abortion – Senator Hirono warned against such a practice.
courthousenews.com/social-media-e…

And to be fair, it should also be noted, on a hearing about censorship/transparency- Twitter and Facebook can conduct all the internal reporting they want, but until those reports are made public and potentially subjected to multiple outside reviews by independent agencies...

This entire dialogue hinges on what they claim versus what their opponents or critics claim.
Obviously, there is nuance here, but when we talk about federal involvement in what amounts to the world's public forum - transparency should be demanded from all involved.