How politicians quietly influence what social media posts get removed

[mahatmakanejeeves]

How politicians quietly influence what social media posts get removed

The Supreme Court is set to decide whether government demands to remove social media posts are censorship

By Naomi Nix, Cat Zakrzewski and Ann E. Marimow
Updated March 18, 2024 at 8:49 a.m. EDT|Published March 17, 2024 at 7:00 a.m. EDT



Demonstrators stand in front of the home of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) demanding his resignation on Feb. 18, 2021, in Houston. Cruz received criticism on social media for taking a family vacation to Mexico during a deadly winter storm. (Marie D. De Jesús/AP)

In the weeks after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, activists gathered outside the Houston home of Sen. Ted Cruz to protest his refusal to certify President Biden’s election victory — as well as his decision to jet off to Cancún on vacation during a deadly local storm. ... As images of the protesters rippled across Twitter (now X), Cruz’s team called and texted people in Twitter’s D.C. office, insisting that some of their posts violated his safety and demanding that they be removed, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

“We would hear very frequently from [Cruz’s] office,” said one former employee. “They were one of the more frequent congressional offices to complain.” ... A spokesman for Cruz, Darin Miller, told The Washington Post on Sunday that “safety threats against Sen. Cruz and his family are well documented, and his office has asked them to avoid doxing his home address — as The Post does in the picture accompanying this article.”

For years, politicians such as Cruz (R-Tex.) have tapped private contacts at social media firms to influence a range of decisions, from deleting a specific post to changing policies around hate speech, voter suppression and public health misinformation, according to more than a dozen people familiar with the tech companies’ operations, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.

The practice has become so routine it even has a nickname — “jawboning” — and tech companies have responded by establishing internal systems to ensure that influential users receive prompt responses, the people said. The complex rules also help guard against such requests having undue influence, the people said.

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By Naomi Nix
Naomi Nix is a staff writer for The Washington Post, covering Meta and other social media companies. Before joining The Post in 2022, she was a reporter for Bloomberg News and the Chicago Tribune. Twitter https://twitter.com/NaomiNixWrites

By Cat Zakrzewski
Cat Zakrzewski is a national technology policy reporter, tracking global efforts to regulate the tech industry. She focuses on AI policy and the battles over free speech online. Twitter https://twitter.com/Cat_Zakrzewski

By Ann Marimow
Ann Marimow covers the Supreme Court for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 2005, and has spent a decade writing about legal affairs and the federal judiciary. She previously covered state government and politics in California, New Hampshire and Maryland. Twitter https://twitter.com/amarimow

[eppur_se_muova]

1. "Jawboning" ? As in "slain by the jawbone of an ass" ?? nt