University of Washington professor and researcher Kate Starbird testified in June to the House Judiciary Committee that she advised and influenced Twitter’s election censorship policies, according to a transcript publicly released on Tuesday.
Starbird served on an advisory committee under the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, and has researched “misinformation” through the university. She testified that she advised multiple social media platforms on the effectiveness of policies, and influenced Twitter in 2020 by expressing backlash to the company’s policy enforcement, according to the transcript.
“I’ll have a conversation sometimes with the platforms or, like, a representative of the platform, and they’ll say: ‘You know, this is what we’re thinking. You know, what do you think?’ And I’ll say: ‘Oh, that might work. That’s probably going to backfire or whatever.’ I don’t draft [policies], but I’ve had conversations with representatives of several platforms, actually,” Starbird testified, according to the transcript.
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