Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who slammed into Twitter officials for their content moderation policy, said the social media company done a disservice to all Americans by refusing to allow all perspectives on the coronavirus vaccination to be expressed.
According to the Washington Times, Mace appeared before a House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing on Wednesday to highlight Twitter’s efforts to hush information regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop computer, as well as the broader problem of Twitter removing comments at the request of federal agencies.
The session was attended by Twitter’s former chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde, former deputy general counsel James Baker, and former director of trust and safety Yoel Roth.
Todays @GOPoversight hearing puts @twitter execs in the hot seat. Twitter has basically been a subsidiary of the FBI and other government agencies who successfully censored voices they disagreed with. Just cause. pic.twitter.com/KtTMzFHf0w
— Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) February 8, 2023
Mace said, “Twitter worked overtime to suppress accurate COVID information.”
Telling the former Twitter executives at the hearing “apparently, the views of a Stanford doctor are disinformation to you people,” she protested to Twitter’s efforts to restrict content from Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford doctor who criticized the federal response to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Then Mace got personal.
“I, along with many Americans, have long-term effects from COVID. Not only was I a long hauler, but I have effects from the vaccine. It wasn’t the first shot, but it was the second shot that I now developed asthma that has never gone away since I had the second shot,” she said.
“I have tremors in my left hand, and I have the occasional heart pain that no doctor can explain. And I’ve had a battery of tests,” she said.
“I find it extremely alarming Twitter’s unfettered censorship spread into medical fields and affected millions of Americans by suppressing expert opinions from doctors and censoring those who disagreed with the CDC,” she said.
Mace, like many others, now lives with regrets – and health problems.
“I have great regrets about getting the shot because of the health issues that I now have that I don’t think are ever going to go away. And I know that I’m not the only American who has those kinds of concerns,” she said.
.@RepNancyMace: You're not a doctor, right?
Gadde: No I'm not.
Mace: What makes you think you or anyone else at Twitter have the medical expertise to censor actual, accurate CDC data?
Gadde: I'm not familiar with these particular situations.
Mace: Yeah, I'm sure you're not. pic.twitter.com/GJaoVwAoGu
— MRCTV (@mrctv) February 8, 2023