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Senate Commerce Committee

U.S. Senate Republican asks tech firms to explain account, content removals

The outgoing Republican chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee asked the chief executives of major U.S. tech firms Apple Inc, Facebook Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Alphabet Inc and Twitter to answer detailed questions about decisions to restrict or permanently ban accounts of conservative users and other steps to restrict content or platforms. Senator Roger Wicker said “thousands of conservative users’ accounts and content” have been “restricted or permanently removed from platforms.” He also cited a series of decisions causing social media site Parler to shut down operations temporarily. “Americans deserve transparency and accountability for what appears to be politically biased censorship – silencing the voices of users and public figures alike,” Wicker wrote. Get more stories like this on Tw...

Donald Trump’s bias hawk FCC nominee one step closer to confirmation

On Wednesday, the Senate Commerce Committee voted to advance the nomination of Nathan Simington, a Republican in favor of greater government oversight of speech on the internet, to the Federal Communications Commission. Simington’s nomination now awaits a floor vote for final approval. President Donald Trump nominated Simington to be the next Republican FCC Commissioner in September. If approved, Simington would fill Republican Commissioner Mike O’Reilly’s seat, leaving the agency at 2-2 deadlock when Chairman Ajit Pai steps down on January 20th. Without a Democratic majority at the FCC, the Biden administration will likely have difficulties rolling through any major policy measures until another nominee is vetted and approved. In August, Trump abruptly withdrew O’Reilly’s renomination for...