Four House Democrats are pressing major social media companies to "disclose the measures they have in place to prevent their services from being exploited to threaten public safety in the days, weeks, and months following" the U.S. election.
"We are living in a time of heightened political violence. Just this year, two attempts were made on the life of former President Donald Trump," Democrat Reps. Gerald Connolly of Virginia, Lori Trahan of Massachusetts, Sean Casten of Illinois, and Shontel Brown of Ohio wrote to the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, X and Snap in a letter dated Friday.
"Meanwhile, violence against elected officials has escalated, to include an assault on former Speaker Pelosi's husband in 2022. In 2023, the U.S. Capitol Police opened over 8,000 threat investigations, a sharp rise from 902 in 2016.
"This disturbing trend follows other tragic events, such as the violence perpetrated by white supremacists in Charlottesville [Virginia] in 2017. Many of the individuals involved in these attacks used social media to organize or were influenced by inflammatory content online," the letter continued.
"In addition to these events, the January 6th, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol is a tragic example of how platforms can be exploited to facilitate political violence. This attack highlighted the devastating consequences of failing to address political rhetoric that incites violence," it added.
Congress has investigated those failures, "but social media companies have been resistant to the efforts of lawmakers and outside researchers to evaluate platforms' safety measures," the letter read.
The lawmakers are asking for responses by Nov. 4.
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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