On Wednesday, National Legal and Policy Center presented a resolution at Twitter’s annual shareholder meeting that would require greater transparency and itemization by the corporation about its lobbying expenditures.
The company’s board of directors opposed our proposal, as explained on pages 45 of its proxy statement.
Speaking as sponsor of the resolution was Paul Chesser, director of NLPC’s Corporate Integrity Project. The transcript of his three-minute remarks, which you can also listen to here, follows:
I am Paul Chesser, director of the Corporate Integrity Project for National Legal and Policy Center.
Twitter claims it is transparent about its lobbying activities and expenditures by linking on its website to its federal reports.
These reports come nowhere close to what our proposal seeks, and don’t tell nearly enough about the “why” and “what” regarding Twitter’s lobbying.
We can only see minimal information that only hints at a bigger, disturbing picture that must be disclosed to shareholders.
First of all, each report is signed by Twitter’s top advocate for the censorship of conservatives, chief legal counsel Vijaya Gadde (pictured above).
How telling.
The same company official creating fog around Twitter’s lobbying activities is also the one responsible for shutting down conservative viewpoints.
And like the lack of disclosure over what they specifically seek through their lobbying, so also are Ms. Gadde and Twitter secretive about their censorship regime.
Two of Twitter’s top-listed lobbying issues are “content moderation” and “misinformation.”
It’s no surprise that Twitter wants to keep us in the dark about those activities.
After all, Ms. Gadde and Twitter themselves are the master “misinformers,” after their censorship of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story a month before the 2020 election.
Twitter tried to justify that censorship by labeling it as “content obtained through hacking that contains private information.”
That was a total lie backed up by zero evidence.
At the same time Twitter allowed stories to circulate about 50 former national security officials who called the Post story “Russian disinformation.”
Of course all sane people knew that claim was a lie then, it’s still a lie, yet the propagandists at Twitter allowed it to circulate freely – and they still do.
A normal, profitable company would be embarrassed by these revelations, but that’s not what Twitter is.
Instead, the money-losing company is doubling down on the “misinformation” schtick.
Last week Twitter announced that Yael Roth, who was also behind the Hunter Biden article clampdown, was put in charge of the company’s so-called “crisis misinformation policy.”
Other issues that Twitter lists as lobbying interests are a progressive laundry list: immigration reform, election integrity, voting access, policing reform, and diversity and inclusion.
These should fall under the purview of activist groups, not a media company expected to turn a profit.
Twitter wasted more than $1.7 million dollars in 2021 on advocacy lobbying, tripling what it spent six years earlier.
As was exposed in an undercover video last week, Twitter is all about ideology, not free speech or profit.
It’s no wonder so many Twitter employees are terrified that Elon Musk is buying the company and plans to turn their lying, progressive playground into a true free-speech platform.
Cleaning up this mess can’t come soon enough.
Read the text of NLPC’s shareholder resolution for Twitter’s annual shareholder meeting here.
Listen to the audio of Chesser’s delivered remarks in support of the resolution here.
