Soon after Elon Musk took over Twitter, he began promoting screenshots of internal company documents that he said exposed “free speech suppression” on the social media platform during the 2020 election. Republicans were thrilled.
Republicans, aided by Musk, accuse Big Tech of colluding with Democrats

On Wednesday, Musk’s “Twitter Files” will take center stage in a Capitol Hill hearing where GOP leaders will try to advance their campaign to turn Twitter’s decision to briefly block sharing a story about the president’s son into evidence of a broad conspiracy. Conservatives have long argued that Silicon Valley favors Democrats by systematically suppressing right-wing viewpoints on social media. These allegations have evolved in nearly a half-decade of warnings, as politicians in Washington and beyond fixate on the industry’s communications with Democratic leaders, seeking to cast the opposing party as against free speech.
The Twitter Files show no evidence of such a plot. Conservative influencers and stories from conservative platforms regularly draw a massive audience on social media. But Wednesday’s hearing, which will feature former Twitter executives as witnesses, is the latest effort to advance an increasingly popular Republican argument.
As House Republicans throw their political weight behind the narrative that Democrats colluded with social media companies, they have formed a new House panel to probe perceived government abuses against conservatives, including allegations of social media bias. Meanwhile, two Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri have filed a lawsuit alleging that the Biden administration is circumventing the First Amendment to censor social media.
Taken collectively, these actions represent the next phase of a GOP strategy, which contributed to the distrust among some conservatives that seeded “the “big lie,” the baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen. The early warnings that liberal employees inside tech companies tilt the playing field in favor of Democrats have ballooned into accusations that government officials actively collude with the platforms to influence public discourse.
Paul M. Barrett, the deputy director of the New York University Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, said the increased pressure from Republicans have resulted in tech companies “bending over backward” to accommodate content from right-wing accounts for fear of political reprisal.
“The fact that … people are continuing to bang this drum that there’s anti-conservative bias is really unfortunate. It’s really confusing, and it’s just not true,” Barrett said in an interview.
Top Republican leaders have made alleged tech censorship one of their first priorities in the House, scheduling hearings and demanding reams of documents in a multipronged pressure campaign.
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), along with House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Jordan, in January introduced a bill called the Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act, which would penalize federal employees if they’re found to be asking social media companies to take down posts. The House Judiciary Committee has formed a special subcommittee focused on the “weaponization of the federal government,” designed in part to examine the interactions between the Biden administration and major tech companies.
Jordan sent letters in December to five large tech companies, demanding that they detail their “collusion with the Biden administration.”
“Big Tech is out to get conservatives, and is increasingly willing to undermine First Amendment values by complying with the Biden administration’s directives that suppress freedom of speech online,” Jordan wrote in the letters, which were sent to the executives of Facebook parent company Meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post). The accusations threaten to unravel nearly a decade of investment in people and policies intended to root out violence and falsehoods online — a powerful partisan attack on Silicon Valley, even as President Biden calls for unity to take on Big Tech.
An evolution of a years-long strategy
For more than half a decade, accusations of anti-conservative bias have plagued Silicon Valley, fueled by a high-profile mishap at Facebook in the run-up to the 2016 election. Anonymous former Facebook employees told the tech news website Gizmodo that the social media giant often passed over conservative media outlets when choosing stories to curate for its “trending” news feature.
Though stories with a conservative slant regularly outperform those from moderate or liberal-leaning outlets, tensions escalated under former president Donald Trump. As tech companies scrambled to shore up defenses against misinformation in the wake of Russian influence operations in the 2016 election, they created policy on the fly for Trump’s often false and racist tweets. Under political pressure, Facebook tilted to the right in policies, personnel and public gestures, according to a Post investigation.
Top Republicans and right-wing influencers routinely accuse the companies of secretly tampering with their follower counts or “shadowbanning” their posts, even as their online audiences have grown. For many influencers, promoting how deeply they’ve been suppressed has become a marketing tool, especially after a number of them were invited by Trump to a White House “social media summit” on censorship in 2019. The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., that year solicited preorders for his book on Twitter by calling it “the book the leftist elites don’t want you to read.”
Prodded by calls in Congress to overhaul social media laws, Trump signed an executive order that sought to change Section 230, a decades-old legal shield that prevents tech companies from being sued over the posts, photos and videos that people share on their platforms. In 2021, social media companies made the unprecedented decision to ban a sitting president from their services in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump’s ban ignited a new legislative strategy in Republican-led statehouses. Florida and Texas forged ahead with new laws aimed at prohibiting the companies from banning politicians and censoring political views. States and the tech industry have called on the Supreme Court to weigh in on the constitutionality of the laws, after federal appeals courts issued conflicting rulings. The Supreme Court recently asked the Biden administration to weigh in on whether states can bar social media companies from removing political speech.
From the early days of his deal to buy Twitter, Musk has signaled that he shares Republican concerns that tech companies are suppressing their views. Before closing the deal, he boosted criticism of Twitter executive Vijaya Gadde, who was involved in politically controversial content moderation decisions, including the decision to ban Trump. Republicans have summoned Gadde to testify at Wednesday’s hearing.
Since the deal closed, House Republicans have pressed Musk to hand over records related to Twitter’s handling of the New York Post article about Hunter Biden. In December, a group of handpicked journalists tweeted screenshots of internal company documents dubbed the Twitter Files, and GOP policymakers immediately teased congressional action.
“We’re very serious about this. We’re very concerned about this,” Comer said in a December interview on Fox News.
Back on Capitol Hill, Comer described the hearing as the beginning of a “narrow investigation” into “influence-peddling by the Biden administration.” House Republicans have mounted a sprawling effort across multiple congressional committees to scrutinize communications between tech companies and Democratic leaders, blanketing platforms and public officials with demands for documents and internal emails.
“I think Musk should be applauded because he’s been very transparent,” Comer said. “He’s putting stuff out there.”
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee say they plan to use the hearing to probe former Twitter leaders on concerns about violence and misinformation.
“Elon Musk has made it clear that he is going to be completely with the right-wing propaganda program,” Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (Md.), the committee’s top Democrat, said in an interview with The Post.
Raskin said that the controversy over whether the government alerted Twitter that the Hunter Biden story could be foreign propaganda was a nonissue, and that GOP bills seeking to ban such interactions would only serve to benefit foreign leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I think it should be completely within the power of government to alert private media entities about the existence of foreign propaganda and disinformation campaigns,” he said. “So that legislation … looks like it’s going to be very good news for Vladimir Putin.”
Meanwhile, discovery continues in the Missouri and Louisiana case. Biden administration lawyers have attempted to dismiss the case, arguing that it contains no plausible evidence of coercion. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has been skeptical of the states’ arguments, urging a lower court to consider the federal government’s argument that voluminous documents produced during discovery have so far shown no First Amendment violation.
State attorneys general leading the suit said in a recent statement that the litigation is part of a broader strategy to defend constitutional rights.
“This case is about the Biden administration’s blatant disregard for the First Amendment and its collusion with Big Tech social media companies to suppress speech it disagrees with,” Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said.
Bailey’s office has promoted emails between the White House and Facebook, in which a White House official flags posts related to coronavirus vaccinations that he finds concerning. In one message, the official says that “the top post about vaccines today is tucker Carlson saying they don’t work.” Biden has previously called on social media companies to address coronavirus misinformation.
Barrett, the NYU professor, said political leaders and government officials have been communicating with companies for years, citing Trump’s dinner as president with Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. Often, such communication is not nefarious, Barrett said, and has the routine intention of getting out information about how to vote or protect public health.
“We don’t want there to be some kind of impenetrable wall between these companies and the government,” Barrett said.
There is a need for Silicon Valley to be more transparent about its policies for interacting with governments and legal enforcers, he added, and congressional hearings could be a venue for politicians from both parties to ask “fair and substantive” questions about companies’ efforts to promote authoritative information.
But Barrett is not expecting that at Wednesday’s hearing, which he said has “all the earmarks of a purely partisan mudslinging exercise.”
Shotgun shell wedding placeholders that are up for sale are shamed on Reddit as ‘tacky’ and ‘trash’

A Facebook Marketplace listing that’s advertising shotgun shell placeholders for weddings and similar events has set tongues wagging on social media.
The screenshotted listing, which shows two red shotgun shells with a bride and groom place card, has caught the attention of the “Wedding Shaming” subreddit, a 535,400-member Reddit forum where anonymous users shame wedding themes, brides, grooms, guests and vendors.
“Nothing says classy like shotgun shells!” A Reddit user captioned their screenshotted post on Sunday, June 4, which has received more than 750 upvotes and a “tacky” label.
The Facebook Marketplace listing is advertising over 100 shotgun shell placeholders for $100.
“All cement filled for weight to ensure they wouldn’t blow over. Name cards not included in,” the listing explains.
One Reddit user commented on seeing the shotgun shell placeholder listing discussed in a Facebook group — and that the lister is based in New Zealand, so the price is in New Zealand dollars (NZD).
A Facebook Marketplace seller (not pictured) from New Zealand is listing shotgun shell placeholders for sale — which can be used in weddings and similar formal events. (iStock)
“It’s $100NZD, which is like $60USD,” the person wrote. “Not that it makes it any better. I was shocked it was an actual buy/sell group and people were commenting that they were cool.”
Several Reddit users agreed that they found the seller’s asking price to be steep, since it’s a decor project that can be done relatively cheaply.
WOMAN ON TIKTOK CALLS OUT WEDDING GUESTS WEARING WHITE TO FRIEND’S WEDDING: ‘RUDE’
Other members of the “wedding shaming” subreddit questioned the possible message a bride and groom might want to send with shotgun shell placeholder.
“Gives a new meaning depth to a shotgun wedding,” one Reddit user wrote.
“How romantic, giving your guests a bullet with their name on it. Literally,” another user wrote.
Said yet another Reddit user, “So trash. I’m sorry if this offends anyone but guns are horrendous things that ruin people’s lives every day.”
“Why do we get the ugly color?”
This same commenter added, “What’s wrong with having harmless flowers? When did a rose or peony ever commit an atrocity at a school?”
COUPLE SPEAKS OUT AFTER VIDEO GAME-THEMED WEDDING CAKE TOPPER UNEXPECTEDLY GOES VIRAL
One Reddit user wrote that the placeholders are a “waste [of] reloadable shells” — and questioned why another color wasn’t used for the wrapping of the shotgun shells, such as pink or purple.

Some wedding hosts add name placeholders to tablescapes when there’s arranged seating for guests — while others skip this entirely for open seating. (iStock)
“Why do we get the ugly color?” the user asked.
Not every Reddit user in the “wedding shaming” forum is against the Facebook Marketplace seller’s shotgun placeholders.
“Is it bad that I kind of love it now?” one user wrote. “It’s tacky as hell but it’s a great joke,” the person added.
COUPLE SHAMED OVER ‘TACKY’ CAKE, CRITICS SAY THEY’LL GET DIVORCED
“I actually like this for upcycling, and it is one less bullet in the world,” another user wrote.
“I knew someone who did shotgun shells in their wedding that was not cowboy-themed because someone who had passed in the family had actually made their own ammo with those shells and they wanted that member represented in some way,” another user shared. “Actually kind of cool in my opinion.”

Shotgun shell placeholders seem to be a common decor addition in gun-themed weddings. (iStock)
One Reddit user defended people who might find the shotgun shell placeholders appealing for their wedding.
“Oh, come on … Not all of them are bad etc. I honestly think some [people] are just having fun with it ’cause they can,” the user wrote, which earned more than 10 downvotes.
VIRAL MYTH ABOUT GUESTS WEARING RED TO WEDDINGS CARRIES SCANDALOUS MEANING, BUT IS IT TRUE?
“It all depends where [you’re] at,” the person added. “I’ve been to weddings where most had [guns] or [were] carrying,” the Reddit user continued.
“It was fun and interesting and they were very nice people.”
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Fox News Digital reached out to the Facebook Marketplace seller for comment.

Shotgun shell boutonnieres are another gun-themed decor item that grooms and groomsmen have incorporated in nontraditional weddings. (iStock)
The Facebook Marketplace listing was uploaded on Thursday, June 1, in Hastings, Hawke’s Bay, which is an inland city of New Zealand on the east coast of North Island.
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Users of the “wedding shaming” subreddit have generally frowned upon wedding themes that involve guns, including engraved bullet casings, bullet boutonnieres, hunting cake toppers, camouflage attire and wedding portraits with firearm props.
Micro-social media: What is it and which tools should you try?

About seven out of 10 Americans use social media to keep up with each other’s lives, for entertainment, and to stay on top of the news, according to the Pew Research Center. But as many people reach a decade or more of perusing mainstream social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, their attitudes toward social media are shifting.
That’s not to say people are living more of their lives offline, but that people are instead shifting their online presence from general social-networking sites to more niche ones that pander to their interests and encourage online social interaction beyond likes and reposts.
Also: US Surgeon General releases social media health advisory for American teens and tweens
Sites like Twitch, Discord, Reddit, and TikTok encourage people to interact with the content they care about and connect with others, whether they’re talking about food, gaming, movies, or TV shows.
To support this focus on their interests, people are turning to micro-social networks, which are specific to one topic and include fewer users to interact with.
LinkedIn is a mainstream micro-social network because its only purpose is to connect with people about professional topics. BeReal is another example of a micro-social network, as it encourages people to only connect with people they know personally and share updates about their lives.
Also: LinkedIn introduces AI tool to make curating your profile easier
Nextdoor, another micro-social media network, is a digital space where people share updates about local events or happenings.
So, how can you create your own micro-social networking atmosphere online? Group texts that include both iPhone and Android users can be messy and laggy, and private groups on mainstream social media sites exclude those who don’t have an account. Here’s two alternatives.
Create a WhatsApp group
In a WhatsApp group, users can add up to 256 people and control who is in the group. Users can send text messages, GIFs, photos, videos, and documents. And because WhatsApp is available in the Play Store and the App Store, the app is available for iOS and Android.
Also: WhatsApp users can now use Chat Lock to secure private or sensitive chats
WhatsApp is also ideal for any social groups that span borders, as sending messages and making calls internationally on WhatsApp uses your device’s internet connection instead of minutes.
A WhatsApp group is best suited for people who want to mimic a group text without the technical difficulties that can arise for Apple users when texting an Android device.
Create a photo album for sharing
If you’re interested in sharing photos with a group of family or friends, consider creating a shared photo album on Google Photos.
Third-party apps — rather than Apps connected to the device operating system — are better to use in groups of people that mix iPhones and Android phones. That’s because Apple makes a point that only its products, apps, and services work best within its device ecosystem. So, sharing an Apple Photo album with Android users could prove difficult.
Also: How to set up a locked folder in Google Photos on Android
Google Photos works well on iOS; users can share one album with multiple people. Each added person can upload photos, look at photos someone else has uploaded, and leave comments on each photo.
PhotoCircle is another photo-sharing app, but it has an emphasis on sharing shots from an event or occasion. For example, if you’re attending a wedding, you can share photos from the wedding with guests and participants. If you work with people around the country, a shared PhotoCircle album makes it easy to share project-related photos.
Also: 7 ways you didn’t know you can use Bing Chat and other AI chatbots
Users can leave comments on photos shared in a PhotoCircle album, all photos are backed up in PhotoCircle’s cloud, and only people with access to the album can see the shots. Shared photo albums and photo-sharing apps are best for people who prefer sharing photos to sending messages, making calls, or sharing videos.
„Erschreckend“: Mann aus Massachusetts von Facebook ausgeschlossen, nachdem er einen kryptischen Brief über den Untergang der Demokratie geteilt hatte

A Massachusetts man helped fuel one of the biggest digital dust-ups and social-media mysteries of recent years.
And after he did — Chad Jones then experienced the “terrifying” power of Big Tech titans to silence the voices of ordinary Americans.
He’s now doubling down on his efforts to speak out against tyranny in the digital town square and beyond.
“I went MIA on social media for a while for sharing some pretty innocuous things,” Jones, a venture investor working to bring alternative energy to impoverished nations around the world, told Fox News Digital in an interview.
“The idea that they’re stifling voices as part of the normal course of business is terrifying.”
Chad Jones is a venture investor from Massachusetts who is working to bring alternative energy to emerging-market nations. He was banned from Facebook after he shared a mysterious letter from a California judge that spawned a viral social-media debate. (Kerry J. Byrne/Fox News Digital)
The social-media soap opera began in 2022 when Jones, originally from California, posted on his personal Facebook page a cryptic letter allegedly written in December 2021 by an 85-year-old retired California judge, Keith M. Alber.
The letter claimed that the current endangered state of American democracy was predicted with frightening accuracy in the 1950s.
The judge’s shocking claim spawned a frenzied reaction on social media.
“The idea that they’re stifling voices as part of the normal course of business is terrifying.”
“My first year of college was 68 years ago,” Alber wrote in a brief letter to The Epoch Times in December 2021.
“One class I took was political science. A half-page of my textbook essentially outlined a few steps to overturn democracy.”
Alber’s letter enumerated those steps: “1) Divide the nation philosophically. 2) Foment racial strife. 3) Cause distrust of police authority. 4) Swarm the nation’s borders indiscriminately and unconstitutionally. 5) Engender the military strength to weaken it. 6) Overburden citizens with more unfair taxation. 7) Encourage civil rioting and discourage accountability for all crime. 8) Control all balloting. 9) Control all media.”
The judge’s letter struck home with many readers, including Jones — who felt the textbook from decades ago predicted the crisis of democracy that the nation faces today.
It also spawned heated debate online — with members of each end of the American political spectrum claiming the other side was responsible for the fascist dystopia outlined by the judge.
Many people, however, doubted the authenticity of the letter, especially with the judge’s failure to cite the name of the textbook.
Snopes.com weighed in, claiming last May that it talked to Alber and that the letter was authentic. Alber died later last year.
But, the outlet wrote, “One of the more popular postings of the article came from a Facebook account named Chad Jones. As of mid-May 2022, that post had been shared more than 11,000 times.”
Jones was unaware that his post had gone viral until Fox News Digital contacted him last week.
“The silent majority is no longer silent like they used to be.”
Meta blocked him from his Facebook account soon after he posted the letter. He couldn’t get access to the post, even as it continued to ignite thousands of responses.
“When I looked at the letter, it really struck me as a variation of Saul Alinsky’s ‘Rules for Radicals,’” said Jones when asked what prompted him to share the letter.

Immigrants from Venezuela cover up during a dust storm at a makeshift immigrant camp located between the Rio Grande and the U.S.-Mexico border fence on May 10, 2023, in El Paso, Texas. A mysterious letter written by a retired California judge in 2021 claims that the country’s open border is part of an effort to end American democracy and was predicted in a 1950s political science textbook. (John Moore/Getty Images)
“The whole basis is to tear down our system and build something new and different, something not aligned with our traditional American concepts of individual freedom and personal liberty.”
Thousands of people agreed with Jones; thousands more did not.
It appeared to be a vigorous public debate.
Yet Jones was silenced for sharing the letter that spawned the discourse and the entire post itself has disappeared since.
THE HOLY TRINITY IS A ‘SUPERNATURAL CONCEPT’ THAT LEADS TO SALVATION, VIRGINIA PASTOR SAYS
Jones reemerged on Facebook months later with an alternate account.
“It seems that silencing voices in the electronic town square falls right in line with what Alber wrote about,” said Jones.
Meta blocked Jones from his Facebook account … He couldn’t access the post – even as it continued to ignite thousands of responses.
He said the experience has only stiffened his resolve to speak out on social media and other platforms.
He feels that “millions of Americans” learned the same lesson when they were silenced for daring to challenge Anthony Fauci, the federal government and media during the COVID-19 panic.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), helped lead the country’s COVID-19 response in the Trump and Biden administrations. He stepped down in December 2022. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“The silent majority is no longer silent like they used to be,” said Jones.
“They’re no longer willing just to take their opinions silently to the voting booth. There are millions of us out there now fighting the effort to silence debate.”
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Jones uses Facebook only socially, he said. So he didn’t suffer any financial or business distress. But he lost plenty personally.
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“The one thing I do miss are the pictures, the memories, the reunion photos. I can’t get back any of it. That kind of sucks,” he said.
“It’s all a little scary because I have kids. What kind of world will they be inheriting if we don’t fight back?”
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