The House Oversight Committee called for “Discord, Twitch, Reddit and gaming platform Steam Steam on October 8 to testify about the platform’s involvement in online “radicalisation” and “inciting politically motivated behavior,” according to a letter sent by the House Committee to four technical CEOs.
In a statement, Rep. James Kommer, chairman of the oversight committee, noted Charlie Kirk’s murder and “other acts of politically motivated violence” as Congress “has an obligation to oversee the online platforms that extremists have used to promote political violence.”
“To prevent future radicalization and violence, CEOs of Discord, Steam, Twitch and Reddit need to appear before the oversight committee and explain what actions they will take to ensure the platform is not exploited for malicious purposes.”
TechCrunch contacted the summoned companies.
Discord told TechCrunch that he was looking forward to testifying in October.
“We are looking forward to continuing to engage policymakers on these important issues and continuing this important dialogue next month,” the spokesman said.
Meanwhile, Reddit told Reuters it was investigating the link between the platform and Kirk’s death, telling it has yet to see evidence that the suspect in Kirk’s death is an active Reddit user. The company told the outlet it “has strong policies on hateful content and content that incites, encourages, glorifies or calls for violence.”
Kirk was a prominent conservative activist and a close ally of President Trump. Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old Utah resident, was arrested for shooting Kirk last week. It appeared that Robinson had confessed to having committed a crime in a chat with Discord shortly before his arrest. The bullet used is clearly carved with memes and references to video games.
This work has been updated to add a statement from a Discord spokesman.
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