Former Twitter boss Jack Dorsey once testified under oath in 2018 that his company never shadowbanned or censored conservative users.
The claims have blown up amid a series of disclosures by the company — now under new management by billionaire and free-speech advocate Elon Musk, who bought it in October — showing a systemic effort to silence prominent conservative voices on the platform.
Dorsey appeared before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on September 2018 to discuss “Transparency and Accountability” at the company. While there he came in for a grilling from GOP lawmakers.
“I want to read a few quotes about Twitter’s practices and I just want you to tell me if they’re true or not,” Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Penn.) said. “Social media is being rigged to censor conservatives. Is that true of Twitter?”
“No,” Dorsey responded.
“Are you censoring people?” Doyle followed.
“No,” Dorsey answered again.
“Twitter’s shadow-banning prominent Republicans… is that true?” Doyle followed.
“No,” Dorsey said a third time.
In another exchange with Rep. Steve Scalise, (R-La.), Dorsey told the Congressman that any shadow-banning of GOP lawmakers by the company’s algorithm “was not written with that intention.”
Dorsey’s claims were echoed for years by company executives like Vijaya Gadde, one of his closest lieutenants.
But in recent days Musk and journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss have released bombshell reports proving extensive political censorship at Twitter, based on a vast trove of internal documents.
The initial batch of communications revealed that Democrat insiders collaborated with Twitter to suppress The Post’s coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
Video of the former CEO dismissing shadow-banning went viral on Twitter this weekend. Some critics even said the testimony could leave Dorsey open to perjury charges.
“On its face, Dorsey has vulnerability after the latest release. Dorsey was repeatedly asked about censoring and shadow banning, which has now been confirmed in these files,” George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley told The Post.
“The greatest defense for Dorsey may be found in the Justice Department itself. Any prosecution of Twitter executives could prove a hard sell for Attorney General Merrick Garland, whose department has been repeatedly accused of pronounced political bias.”