House Republicans subpoena Google for alleged censorship (19459000)
Google has once again been targeted by Republicans in Congress for alleged censorship.Bloomberg writes. The House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, and Google’s parent company Alphabet for evidence regarding communication between the tech firm and the Biden Administration.
The subpoena specifically requests documents pertaining to communications between Alphabet, the executive branch and any discussions Alphabet may have had internally or externally about those communications. The subpoena states that the Committee hopes to turn the discovery of the Biden administration’s requests to Meta for COVID-19 misinformation removal into a case against “new statutory limits on the executive branch’s ability to work with Big Tech to restrict the circulation of content and deplatform users,” .
These concerns are not new. Pichai, along with other tech CEOs, have appeared before Congress in the past to explain issues like content moderation and censorship. The past has been a chance for Congress members to get soundbites, but Trump’s aggressive, retaliatory approach might give these demands more weight. Google’s efforts to help pay for Trump’s inaugural or to show up for photos did not get it protection, assuming that it does not manage to escape the ongoing antitrust lawsuit against it. Congress may be paying attention to tech companies, but it doesn’t seem to be concerned about the possibility that the current administration would want to censor speech. President Trump has expressed an interest in using the Take It Down Act (19459056), a bill that holds websites responsible for hosting and failing to remove Non-Consensual Intimate Imagery. Activists have warned of the potential dangers of this law, but it passed the Senate. The House is now expected to take up the bill.
