(CNN) Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Gary Peters has written Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, asking for information about their policies and practices to monitor and remove extremist violent content. This is the first major public document request from the committee investigating the January 6 insurrection after it released its bipartisan review in early June into the security breakdowns leading to the Capitol riot. In his letters, the Michigan Democrat asked each company to provide its "policies on monitoring and removing extremist and conspiracy content that advocates violence, its actions to address the increase in use of its platforms to promote acts of domestic terrorism and violent extremism, and its use of targeted advertising to reach individuals and groups that engage in these activities." Peters directed the companies hand over information about content that promoted, recruited, or advocated for events leading to the insurrection that was removed prior to the attack. In his letters, Peter also requested more detailed information about innerworkings of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube feeds, asking for "guidelines and parameters for recommending content, including without limitation a description of how their algorithms identify and decide how to recommend content."

Source: CNN September 20, 2021 17:03 UTC