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A day after grilling three former top executives for Twitter, U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert introduced a bill Thursday temporarily barring the FBI from paying social media platforms and to audit all federal money paid to tech companies.
The Silt Republican is calling her bill the Elon Act, which isn’t named after Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter who has released internal company files in relation to Hunter Biden’s laptop and allegations that the FBI paid Twitter to block a New York Post news story about President Joe Biden’s son.
The bill’s official name is Exposing Lewd Outlays for social Networking companies.
The issue was the focus of a House Oversight Committee hearing Wednesday that featured three former Twitter top executives, including James Baker, a former Twitter deputy counsel fired by Musk in December. Baker, a Republican, once worked as general counsel for the FBI.
Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert has received mixed reactions after suggesting it is a "huge coincidence" that Twitter went down after a number of former executives were grilled by Republicans during a House committee hearing.
Twitter users across the world saw the platform glitch on Wednesday, with the social media site wrongly telling people they were over the "daily limit for sending tweets" when they tried to post.
The platform has since returned to normal, with Twitter owner Elon Musk stating "multiple internal & external issues simultaneously" were the cause of the problems.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) had a temper tantrum in Congress during a hearing about Twitter yesterday, where she accused a gay former Twitter employee of “shadow-banning” her account over “a freaking joke.”
“Did either of you approve a shadow-banning of my account, @LaurenBoebert?” Boebert asked former Twitter employees Yoel Roth and Vijaya Gadde at a House Oversight Committee hearing yesterday.
Now who the hell do you think that you are? Election interference? Yeah, I would say that that was taking place because of you four sitting here.”
“This is fundamental to our nation’s governance and you all attacked that very foundation,” she said, referring to how visible her tweets allegedly were on the app’s search function.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk attacked Roth, posting a brief section of Roth’s thesis that mentioned Grindr and wrote, “Looks like Yoel is arguing in favor of children being able to access adult Internet services.” In December 2022, Musk also released internal Twitter records showing how the company initially suppressed the Post‘s Hunter Biden article.
Roth, who is gay and Jewish, told the congressional hearing that he faced “a wave of homophobic and antisemitic attacks” following Musk’s release of the records.
In this June 23, 2021 file photo Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., speaks at a news conference at the Capitol in Washington. A federal judge has ruled the Boebert does not have to unblock former Colorado state Rep. Bri Buentello, a Democrat, from her personal Twitter account.
District Court Judge Daniel Domenico said last week that Boebart didn't violate Beuntello's free speech rights because Buentello was blocked from Boebert's personal Twitter account, not a government account.
