Here’s how Twitter has lobbied on free-speech issues as Trump threatens company

27 May 2020, 19:11 by Victor Reklaitis

Twitter Inc. and President Donald Trump are generating headlines this week over a dispute tied to social networks’ attempts to moderate what users post.

But it’s hardly the first time that the San Francisco-based company has tangled with Washington over free-speech issues.

Twitter TWTR, -2.82% has lobbied this year and last year on a Senate bill called the Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act, according to an analysis of disclosures by OpenSecrets.org, a website run by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

The measure, rolled out last June by Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, would lead to Federal Trade Commission audits of big social-media companies for political bias. As Hawley introduced the legislation, the senator said it states that if tech giants want to “keep their government-granted immunity” from “traditional publisher liability,” the companies “must bring transparency and accountability to their editorial processes and prove that they don’t discriminate.”

Trump praised Hawley’s bill last July, saying the senator is “doing some very important legislation, because we have to do something about what is happening.” Hawley talked up his bill on Wednesday in the wake of the president’s latest fight with social-media platforms.

“They get this special immunity from suits and from liability that’s worth billions of dollars to them every year. Why are they getting subsidized by federal taxpayers to censor conservatives?” he told Fox News on Wednesday.

Twitter and other social-media companies, on the other hand, have criticized the legislation through statements issued by their trade associations.

NetChoice, whose members include Twitter, Facebook Inc. FB, -1.47% , Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG, +0.15% GOOGL, +0.15% Google and Paypal Holdings Inc. PYPL, -0.63% , said last June that the bill “prevents social media websites from removing dangerous and hateful content, since that could make them liable for lawsuits over any user’s posting.” The trade group also said Republicans “should be very worried about Sen. Hawley giving control of the internet to the FTC, since it empowers a future Democratic administration to suppress conservative speech online.”

The Internet Association said the measure “forces platforms to make an impossible choice: either host reprehensible, but First Amendment protected speech, or lose legal protections that allow them to moderate illegal content like human trafficking and violent extremism. That shouldn’t be a tradeoff.”

Twitter has spent $350,000 this year on its Washington lobbying efforts as of March 31, according to OpenSecrets.org figures. That’s after the company spent $1.48 million last year — its biggest annual outlay on lobbying ever, but far less than the $16.7 million that Facebook Inc. FB, -1.47% shelled out in 2019.

Besides lobbying on Hawley’s Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act, Twitter has disclosed lobbying in the past year and a half on the Save the Internet Act, a Democratic measure related to net neutrality, and the EARN IT Act, a bipartisan bill targeting online child sexual exploitation. The company didn’t immediately respond on Wednesday to a request for comment.

Analysts have said that there are so many different bills aimed Big Tech that the “chaos” likely will prevent Congress from “making progress on any one issue.”

On Tuesday, Twitter marked tweets by Trump with a fact-check warning label for the first time. The president then tweeted that Twitter is “completely stifling FREE SPEECH,” and he promised “big action” against the company.

Twitter’s stock was down about 3% on Wednesday, as the broad S&P 500 index SPX, +1.29% gained 0.7%. The company’s shares have lost 12% over the past 12 months, while the S&P has advanced 7%.