Democrats Want to Regulate Twitter to Stop ‘Racism, Bigotry’ and Russian Ads

Two members of the House of Representatives want to regulate Twitter to stop “racism and bigotry,” according to a report.

In a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) and Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) claimed that the social network was being used as “an avenue to spread racism and bigotry,” and added that “foreign actors” manipulated the platform, despite the fact that it is Facebook currently suspected of allowing Russian users to post advertisements during the 2016 presidential election, not Twitter.

“As a result of the far-reaching nature of Twitter’s technology, we have seen an effort to undermine our democracy, create or fan flames of racial divisions, and spread hate speech that can ultimately cumulate into violence,” the congressmen claimed. “We are disturbed by the ease in which foreign actors were able to manipulate your platform to advance anti-American sentiments that both exacerbates racial tension and ultimately threatens our democracy.”

“More importantly, we are disappointed by the silence from you and others in your industry on ways to counter such blatant manipulation of this medium to build racial animosity, the consequences of which are quite literally life threatening,” they continued, before warning the company that they’d take action if their demands were not met.

“If Twitter continues to prove unable or hesitant to grasp the seriousness of this threat and combat the radicalized climate that is being stimulated on your platforms, we, as members of Congress, will be left with little option but to demand for increased regulations and government oversight of this industry to address these problems,” concluded the congressmen.

Despite the congressmen’s claims that “racism and bigotry” are rampant on the platform, Twitter remains one of the most censorship-heavy social networks, numerous popular conservative and libertarian accounts have been both temporarily and permanently suspended.

Last month, two popular right-wing transgender commentators were permanently suspended from the platform, which has previously banned former Breitbart Senior Editor Milo Yiannopoulos, Breitbart London Editor Raheem Kassam, free speech social network Gab, pro-Trump commentator Pizza Party Ben, DNC hacker Guccifer 2.0, political commentator Instapundit, former Muslim and anti-female genital mutilation activist Shazia Hobbs, and pharmaceutical entrepreneur and Martin Shkreli.

Despite this, Twitter refused to intervene when two female Breitbart News contributors were sexually harassed and violently threatened by a left-wing account.