The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Captiol riot on Thursday issued subpoenas to four different tech giants, arguing the companies have thus far provided an "inadequate response" to the committee's requests for information, The Washington Post reports.
Twitter, Reddit, and the parent companies of both Facebook and Google (known as Meta and Alphabet, respectively) all received subpoenas.
"Two key questions for the Select Committee are how the spread of misinformation and violent extremism contributed to the violent attack on our democracy," said committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) in a statement, "and what steps — if any — social media companies took to prevent their platforms from being breeding grounds to radicalizing people to violence."
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Despite months of requests, "we still not have the documents and information necessary to answer those basic questions," Thompson said.
In a letter sent this week to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Thompson said the company failed to provide requested information on the dissolution of Facebook's election-focused civic integrity team, while a similar letter criticized Alphabet for not forking over solicited Jan. 6-related YouTube data, the Post reports.
In another subpoena-accompanying correspondence, Thompson also repreimanded Twitter for failing "to disclose critical information," — such as "documents relating to warnings it received regarding the use of the platform to plan or incite violence on Jan. 6" — and, separately, called attention to Reddit's "r/The_Donald," which "hosted significant discussion and planning related to the January 6th attack," per the commitee. The subreddit moved to a separate site in 2020, according to the Post.
