The content of a memo detailing social media platforms’ failures to fully crack down on extremism in the lead up to the Capitol insurrection out of fear of reprisals from MAGA Republicans was left out of the final House January 6th Select Committee’s final report as the committee themselves were reluctant to get into the weeds with Big Tech, the Washington Post reports.

“The sum of this is that alt-tech, fringe, and mainstream platforms were exploited in tandem by right-wing activists to bring American democracy to the brink of ruin. These platforms enabled the mobilization of extremists on smaller sites and whipped up conservative grievance on larger, more mainstream ones,” said the 122-page memo written by committee staffers and obtained by the Post.

On one level it made perfect sense to keep the investigation’s focus on Trump and his minions. Twitter and Facebook may have failed to help prevent the attack but so did the Capitol and DC Metro Police and the Justice Department. There’s only so much responsibility you can hang on the people who saw four years of MAGA shitposting not backed up by any actual significant action against government institutions. On another level, some of these details in the report about how the pre-Musk Twitter still treated Trump and his fanboys with kid gloves internally even while cracking down publicly is shocking and the report probably should have been published separately.