Rep. Billy Long: Twitter Only Emails ‘Trump-Bashing’ Tweets

Rep. Billy Long (R-MO) questioned Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey about Twitter’s emailed highlight tweets, noting how the platform almost exclusively recommends tweets from left-wing and ostensibly conservative Never-Trump news media figures, despite claiming to be tailored to the user’s interests. He offered his remarks during Wednesday’s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing regarding Twitter’s “algorithm and content monitoring practices.”

Despite supposedly being tailored to the user’s interests, Twitter’s highlight tweets email sends almost exclusively leftist and Trump-bashing tweets to Rep. Billy Long. Among others, Twitter recommended tweets from the following news media persons to Long: David Frum of the Atlantic and MSNBC, Maggie Haberman of the New York Times and CNN, Richard Painter of CNN and NBC, Sam Stein of the Daily Beast and MSNBC, Glenn Thrush of the New York Times, Nicolle Wallace of MSNBC and NBC. Long also received recommendations directing him to tweets from Obama administration alumni David Axelrod and Tommy Vietor.

Partial transcript below:

LONG: Fourteen highlights that were sent to me just in the last fourteen days. There are six highlighted tweets per email, so that’s a total of 84 recent examples that you all picked out and [sent to me], this conservative congressman from Missouri. … 12 of the 84 were from Glenn Thrush, a reporter from the New York Times; Maggie Haberman, you sent me 9 from her, White House correspondent for the New York Times and political analyst for CNN; Chris Cillizza, political commentator for CNN, David Frum, senior editor at the Atlantic and MSNBC contributor; Nicolle Wallace, current anchor of Deadline and White House chief political analyst for MSNBC and NBC News; Sam Stein, former political editor for the Huffington Post and politics editor at the Daily Beast and MSNBC contributor; Rep. Eric Swalwell, Democratic congressman from California’s 15th District; Robert Costa, national political reporter for the Washington Post and political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, Kaitlan Collins; White House correspondent for CNN; Michael Schmidt, New York Times correspondent and contributor to MSNBC and NBC; Tommy Vietor, former spokesman for President Obama; David Corn, MSNBC analyst and author of “Russian Roullette”; Kasie Hunt, NBC News correspondent and host of an MSNBC show; Richard Painter, commentator on NBC and CNN, outspoken critic of Trump; David Axelrod, commentator for CNN and former chief strategist for Obama’s campaign and senior adviser to Obama — I did not cherry-pick these — here’s a former Republican, I’m not sure what he is, now, but you did sent me one from Bill Kristol, founder and editor-at-large at the Weekly Standard and a Never Trump guy.

…

DORSEY: Thank you. Doesn’t sound like we didn’t served you well in matching your interests.

Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter.