Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s social media manager approached the North Carolina representative in March with a problem: His tweet mentioning the surge at the border wasn’t posting. Cawthorn says he checked everything: His WiFi appeared to be functional, and he tried using cellular data to make sure. He saw no apparent issues with his account. He couldn’t understand why his tweet wouldn’t send.
“We tried to post it several different ways, and it would never allow us,” Cawthorn told the Washington Examiner.
The intended tweet, which Cawthorn said involved a graphic praising Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and criticizing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, instead produced an error message.
TEAM CAWTHORN SLAMS ‘EMBITTERED LIBERAL ACTIVISTS’ WHO CREATED SUPER PAC OPPOSING CONGRESSMAN
“What happened is we tried to post it. My Twitter team tried to post it. They then contacted me [saying], ‘Hey, Madison, this isn’t going through, and I don’t understand why.’ It’s like, ‘Oh, that’s weird,'” he continued.
Cawthorn said a bare-bones test tweet was posted successfully, and Communications Director Micah Bock noted that a version of the tweet that did not include Pelosi’s Twitter handle directly also went through smoothly. Suddenly, Cawthorn got an idea.
“And then I said, ‘Wait a minute, guys. Let’s repost exactly what we were gonna post. Let’s document this. I think this is gonna be great,'” he recalled.
Cawthorn recreated the episode on camera.
“In my official capacity, I’m here on my official Twitter, sanctioned by the government that allows me to have it, verified by Twitter and everything,” Cawthorn noted before attempting to send the tweet praising Abbott, which appears to generate a message reading, “Something went wrong.”
After what Cawthorn said was the third attempt, he deleted the message and typed the word “testing,” which was sent successfully.
“Wow! No problem sending that,” Cawthorn said.
Big-Tech is actively censoring my GOVERNMENT account as we speak.
They will not allow me to praise @GovAbbott for his leadership in addressing the immigration crisis on our southern border.
This is madness! https://t.co/mf2xZpDybc pic.twitter.com/J3AIoUEqvw
— Rep. Madison Cawthorn (@RepCawthorn) March 8, 2021
Cawthorn and Bock said they reported the problem to Twitter.
“I think [we received] just the generic message saying, ‘Oh, thank you for your input. We’ll look into this,'” Cawthorn recalled.
Representatives for Twitter did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
Cawthorn’s office said he also experienced censorship a few months earlier, this time from YouTube. The freshman congressman alleged the platform deleted his video explaining his objections to the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory on Jan. 6.
“We know that that video did not sit well with people in the Big Tech industry,” Bock said, noting that the video was restricted on Twitter, where users can no longer retweet, like, or comment on it.
Screenshots of the email exchanges between YouTube and Cawthorn’s office reviewed by the Washington Examiner show that YouTube emailed a representative for Cawthorn to notify him of the video’s removal. Cawthorn’s office then told YouTube it was “taking willful action to prevent [Cawthorn] from speaking through YouTube to his constituents,” prompting the Big Tech platform to respond that the lawmaker’s assertion that there were “massive late night mail-in ballot drops in key swing states, the corrupted election technology, illegal counting practices, dead voters, and mathematically impossible vote irregularities” in the 2020 election violated YouTube’s policy prohibiting content that “advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of any past U.S. presidential election.”
Though former President Donald Trump and his allies filed several legal challenges alleging widespread voter fraud, the vast majority of them were tossed by federal courts. And while the claims persist, federal, state, and local election officials have insisted the 2020 contest was secure.
Representatives for YouTube did not answer the Washington Examiner’s request for comment on the video’s removal.
Other members of Congress seem to have been restricted accidentally. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, was locked out of her Twitter account twice without apparent cause.
“Twitter’s answer for it was, ‘It was an accident. It was one of our algorithms that accidentally got triggered, and we don’t know why she was suspended for 12 hours,'” she told the Washington Examiner. “I don’t believe them. I think that’s a lie because both times they happened simultaneously when things were going on.”
Greene, who tweeted an Easter message prior to the second suspension, said she challenged the lockouts but didn’t receive an adequate response from Twitter.
Twitter confirmed in a statement that the temporary suspension was made “in error.”
“We use a combination of technology and human review to enforce the Twitter Rules across the service. In this case, our automated systems took enforcement action on the account referenced in error. This action has been reversed, and access to the account has been reinstated,” Twitter told the Washington Examiner.
Other members of Congress say the reach of tech censorship extends beyond public officials.
“One of the things that is so frightening is that it’s hard. The standards are so opaque,” Sen. Josh Hawley told the Washington Examiner. “You know, I mean, take Live Action, for instance, the pro-life group that Facebook has banned on a couple of occasions and reinstated them. Well, [since] this has happened, they’ve never been able to get an explanation from Facebook as to why exactly they were banned or de-platformed or censored.”
Hawley said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO, “admitted” to him, “Yeah, oops. They made a mistake on Live Action. They shouldn’t have done it.”
Facebook said it has received criticism from both the Left and the Right.
“While many Republicans think we should take one course, many Democrats think we should do the exact opposite. We’ve faced criticism from Republicans for being biased against conservatives and Democrats for not taking more steps to restrict the exact same content,” a spokesperson for Facebook said in an email to the Washington Examiner. “We have rules in place to protect free expression and we will continue to apply them impartially.”
Cawthorn argued that these incidents are consequential because they restrict access to information.
“[Censorship] doesn’t allow us to be able to talk about controversial issues. It doesn’t allow us to be able to challenge the status quo to actually make changes in our country that are going to be beneficial for all Americans,” he said, citing free speech protections as instrumental in allowing criticism of segregation and the Vietnam War to lead to meaningful reform.
A bipartisan group in the House has made an attempt at reform, with Rep. David Cicilline, a Democrat, joining Cawthorn, along with Republican Reps. Ken Buck and Matt Gaetz, among others, to co-sponsor an antitrust package of five bills aimed at breaking up Big Tech companies.
The legislative bundle was largely heralded for its efforts to diminish the corporations’ power, with one glaring flaw, according to Rep. Jim Jordan — it fails to address the question of censorship.
“Democrats: Don’t really want to break up #BigTech — Refuse to address tech’s censorship of conservatives. — Want to give President Biden more power to ‘fix’ the problem,” the Ohio Republican tweeted after the legislation was announced.
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Despite claims that their content is unduly moderated, GOP members of Congress continue to use social media to offer unfiltered views of their lives. A controversial political figure stripped of her committee assignments due to some of her previous comments, Greene said her personal editorial process reflects her raw thoughts.
“I just put it out there. … I’m a pretty open person, so you’re going to hear and see from me what I’m thinking,” she said. “And probably the mistake I make a lot is I don’t really ask [my communications director] or my team what they think before I do … and then they’re like, ‘Did you really say that?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I said it because I meant it.'”
Mica Soellner contributed to this report.
