Apple and the US face problems again. This time it is about a subpoena that they have sent to Apple to share a series of information. The “big tech” of the US are forced to render accounts, but there is a great absence in this list of companies. Here we tell you what this process is about, and what type of information they must present.
Apple and other companies have to share information
He Committee of the United States House of Representatives He has been the one who has started this whole process. This body is in charge of supervising the administration of justice in other institutions such as federal entities, administrative agencies and federal courts. It is a permanent committee, within the US House of Representatives. The latter, together with the Senate, make up the country’s legislative power.
Who currently chairs this body is the Republican politician Jim Jordan. And as reported by MacRumors, he has sent subpoenas to the CEOs of Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft. The reason for these citations is that these five companies should share information about their content moderation policies.
this jumps in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and now the body wants to carry out an investigation to determine if these companies came, or not, to “suppress freedom of expression.” “Republican lawmakers have suggested that social media and tech companies have long engaged in an anti-conservative stance, thus suppressing conservative voices,” MacRumors explains. In addition, the portal adds that “Jordan said that the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives has tried to engage with Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Alphabet since last year, but has not been successful.”
From the great pandemic to the great absence
However, despite the fact that these companies are the most important in the country (and worldwide, if we speak in terms of technology corporations), MacRumors highlights that there is a lack among these companies called upon to share information: Twitter. Although Elon Musk has been the new CEO for a short time, Twitter is one of the most powerful social networks in the world and yet it is not on the list of these cited companies. “Apple and the other companies will have to provide documents and communications with the United States government on issues including content moderation, removal, and reduction of circulation by March 23,” adds MacRumors.
This subpoena from Apple, however, it is not related to other recent scandals internally, such as the alleged abusive treatment that some company workers would have received. Rather, it is an accountability required by the institutions, to which they must respond for their respective actions in terms of content that has been disseminated, at different levels, through their public spheres. We are facing a new litigation in which these five companies are in the same bag, and they must declare and detail their actions to the millimeter, if they do not want to be involved in more delicate judicial processes.
