Arizona Governor-elect Katie Hobbs is coming under heavy criticism following the revelation that her office called to have several tweets censored in an effort to silence her political opponents ahead of the 2022 midterm election campaign.
"A federal investigation"
The representative Marjorie Taylor Greene called for an investigation into the matter and wrote: "AZ SOS (Secretary of State) and gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs used the power of the AZ SOS to collude with Twitter to unconstitutionally violate Americans' First Amendment rights for her own political gain."
"This is communism and Hobbs cannot be governor. I call for a federal investigation," she added.
The SOS of AZ and Gov candidate, Katie Hobbs, used the power of the AZ SOS to collude w/ Twitter to unconstitutionally violate 1st Amendment rights of Americans for her own political gain.
This is communism and Hobbs can not be governor.
I'm calling for a Federal investigation. https://t.co/NvYpbVDuZZ- Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) December 4, 2022
"Flagging Twitter accounts for review."
In January 2021, Hobbs' office communications director sent an email to the Center for Internet Security (CIS) noting that he was "flagging this Twitter account for review," linking to an unidentified profile. The subject of the message was: "Misinformation related to the elections."
CIS is a non-profit cybersecurity organization that, according to its website, "Makes the connected world a safer place for people, businesses and governments through our core competencies of collaboration and innovation."
The CIS "disinformation" department sent the message to a Twitter employee, requesting that they, "See this report below from the Arizona Secretary of State's Office (SOS). If you have any questions, let me know."
"Thanks, let's climb," Twitter replied. About seven hours later, a social network employee wrote back, "Thank you... both tweets have been removed from the service." Copied on this response was also an employee of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a branch of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
"The Twitter Archives."
The "censorship" demanded of the platform by Hobbs was revealed in "The Twitter Files." the company's internal documents showing pacts between government officials, campaign teams and other players with the social media giant to silence and censor its political opponents. All this, before Elon Musk acquired the company.
Last week, the also Tesla CEO noted that "the public deserves to know what really happened," behind closed doors at Twitter, concerning all the scandals and accusations of censorship in which it has been involved.
