Apple and other Tech Companies Have Been Summoned by the US House Judiciary Committee for Alleged Free Speech Suppression

The chairman of the United States House Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan has subpoenaed the CEOs of major companies today. The tech companies that have been summoned were asked to provide information on their content moderation policy as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The CEOs of the following tech companies received subpoenas for documents and communications. They include Apple CEO Tim Cook, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet (Google) CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Interesting enough, the committee left out one obvious name which many people expected to see. That is the CEO of Twitter, Elon Musk. Twitter happens to be one of the platforms that most users do a lot of talking and it is also one of the largest social media platforms in the world. For this reason, it is quite difficult to understand why Musk was not summoned.

Reason Why Apple and the other Companies have been Subpoenaed by US House Judiciary Committe

This subpoena of the CEOs is mainly for investigation purposes which has to do with free speech on COVID-19 issues. The U.S House Judiciary Committee Republicans plan to find out if the government connived with these tech companies to suppress free speech. For some time now, Republican lawmakers have believed that social media companies and tech companies have unfairly suppressed conservative voices.

During the announcement of the subpoenas, Jordan explained that since last year the House Judiciary Committee has made initial attempts to engage with these companies. He said attempts to engage companies such as Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Alphabet has all failed.

Apple and the other Tech Companies Have Been Given a Deadline by the US House Judiciary Committee

The U.S government has requested Apple and all the other companies on the list to provide some data. These data include documents and communications on topics that include moderation, deletion and circulation of content. The U.S House Judiciary Committee has also given the companies a deadline to provide these documents. They have up to March 23rd to provide the data.