Congress subpoenas Meta, Alphabet, Twitter, and Reddit over January 6th Capitol attack

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The January 6th, 2021 attack on the US Capitol has prompted Congress to send subpoenas to various internet companies. The House of Representatives Select Committee is investigating the attack and wants to know how participants organized their efforts and spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election.

The committee requested records from dozens of companies on a voluntary basis last year, but it says the response from the aforementioned four has been inadequate so far. The Select Committee wants to know how the spread of misinformation and violent extremism contributed to the violent attack on our democracy, and what steps social media companies took to prevent their platforms from being breeding grounds for radicalizing people to violence. Bennie Thompson said in a statement that it was disappointing that after months of engagement, we still do not have the documents and information necessary to answer the basic questions.

After months of engagement, we don't have the necessary documents.

Donald Trump was suspended from office for inciting violence during the attack, but he was also suspended from his job for hosting livestreams of the attack. It claims that there is significant undisclosed information about how it developed and reviewed its moderation and demonetization rules, as well as details about how it developed policies around false election claims.

The company hasn't released details of warnings it received about extremists organizing on its platform or internal company analyses of misinformation, disinformation and malinformation relating to the election. It is supposed to give more information about the decision to suspend Trump's account. The subpoena was not comment on by the social media company.

Meta is supposed to produce documents about its decision to disband a team that dealt with election misinformation as well as critical internal and external analyses conducted by the company regarding misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation relating to the 2020 election, efforts to challenge or overturn the election, and the use of Meta.

It has been asked to review its records to see if it played a role in the attack. The committee subpoenaed us and we will continue to work on their requests, according to a statement sent to The Verge.