DEMANDING ANSWERS

Jan. 6 Panel Subpoenas Social Media Companies After Getting ‘Inadequate Responses’

The committee subpoenaed Meta, Twitter, Reddit and Google’s parent company.

The House select committee that’s looking into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol demanded that a slew of social media companies on Thursday fork over records linked to the spread of misinformation and efforts to overturn the 2020 election on their platforms. The committee subpoenaed Twitter, Reddit, Google’s parent company Alphabet, and Facebook, which recently rebranded as Meta. In a statement, the panel said that despite months of engagement, it had received “inadequate responses” to its requests for information about the attack. The committee’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), said the records were intended to help the committee probe “how the spread of misinformation and violent extremism contributed to the violent attack on our democracy, and what steps—if any—social media companies took to prevent their platforms from being breeding grounds for radicalizing people to violence.”