House Judiciary Committee Broadens Social Media Investigation to Include Meta’s Threads

House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, has officially requested that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg provide documents regarding content moderation on Threads. This request is in response to a previous subpoena related to the committee’s investigation into tech platforms’ policies and their interaction with the Biden administration. CNBC has exclusively obtained the letter, indicating the increased scrutiny Meta’s new product could face in Washington. Threads directly competes with Twitter, a platform characterized by Elon Musk’s self-declared commitment to free speech, despite suspending users, including journalists, at times.

While Meta executives have expressed their desire for news and politics not to dominate Threads’ discussions, these topics have traditionally been at the forefront of conversations on Twitter. If Threads follows suit, it could become a target of political scrutiny and controversy.

“Threads raises significant concerns since it has been positioned as a rival to Elon Musk’s Twitter, which has faced political persecution from the Biden Administration due to Musk’s support for free speech,” wrote Jordan. He referenced a Wall Street Journal article revealing that the Federal Trade Commission had requested Twitter’s internal communications about Musk and the identification of journalists with access to the company’s records. This request was part of an investigation into Twitter’s ability to protect consumer information.

“In contrast, there are reports that Threads will enforce ‘Instagram’s community guidelines,’ which have resulted in lawful speech being moderated under government pressure,” Jordan added. He pointed to a recent lawsuit filed against the Biden administration by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, accusing the government of suppressing speech by pressuring social media platforms to address harmful posts related to the Covid-19 pandemic and elections.

A federal judge in Louisiana partially granted a preliminary injunction in the lawsuit, barring several Biden administration officials from meeting with social media companies to encourage the removal or deletion of posts. It also prohibited officials from flagging certain types of social media posts for removal or suppression. Following this ruling, the State Department canceled a regular meeting with Facebook regarding the 2024 election and hacking threats, as reported by The Washington Post. However, an appeals court later issued a temporary pause on the preliminary injunction, allowing government flagging of social media posts to resume until further consideration.

Jordan clarified that the committee’s February 15 subpoena, initially sent to Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, still applies to Threads despite its recent launch. The new letter serves as a formal notice to preserve relevant documents related to Threads’ content moderation and discussions with the Biden administration. Jordan requested Meta to provide these documents by the end of the month.

As of now, Meta has not provided a comment regarding the request.

You can read the full letter that House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan sent to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg here.