- Facebook and Twitter CEOs Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on their handling of election disinformation.
- President Donald Trump and his Republican allies have accused the social media companies of anti-conservative bias in their labelling of misinformation.
- Many prominent Republican Senators have backed Trump’s baseless claims of widespread election fraud and voting irregularities, including committee chair Lindsey Graham.
- Both parties, for different reasons, have supported stripping away some of the protections tech companies have from legal responsibility for what users post on their platforms.
Welcome to our live coverage of today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. This is Joseph Stepansky.
Senator asks if humans review all political ads on Facebook
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar asked Zuckerberg if every political ad on the site is reviewed by a human.
“Our policy is that we want to verify the authenticity of anyone who’s doing political or social issue advertising,” Zuckerberg said. “And I think it’s worth noting that our people reviewers are not in all cases always more accurate than the technical system.”
When pushed, Zuckerberg added: “I don’t know”.
Twitter’s Dorsey says social media ‘can be addictive’
Dorsey, when questioned again by Senator Graham if Facebook can be addictive, responded: “I do think like anything else, these tools can be addictive and we should be aware of that…”
“And make sure that we are making our customers aware of that,” he said.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testifies remotely before the Senate Judiciary Committee.Zuckerberg acknowledges employee base is ‘to the left’ of overall community
Republican Senator Ben Sasse asked if there was “systemic bias” inside of the companies “in the execution of content moderation policies, given that your employee base is so unrepresentative of America in general.”
Facebook’s Zuckerberg responded: “I do think it’s undisputed that our employee base, at least the full time folks, politically would be somewhat or maybe more than just a little somewhat to the left of where our overall community is.”
He added: “So I do think that that means that we need to be careful and intentional internally to make sure that bias doesn’t seep into decisions that we make.”
However, he noted that the 35,000 doing content review for the company “are typically” not from the left-leaning Silicon Valley tech hub.
Senator Durbin asks why Kenosha militia page not taken down by Facebook
Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat, asked Zuckerberg why a page for the Kenosha Guard Militia, which “advocated violence in the aftermath of the shooting of Jacob Blake”, a black man killed by police in the Wisconsin city.
Durbin noted that the page called armed individuals to come to Kenosha amid the ongoing social justice unrest, which lead to the fatal shooting of two protesters by 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse.
Zuckerbeg said the page, which had been flagged hundreds of times, had not been banned because a new policy on militia group pages in the lead up to the election had not been fully rolled out.
Senator Cruz accuses Twitter of using policies in a ‘in a partisan and selective’ way
Texas Senator Ted Cruz accused Twitter of using its labeling policy “in a partisan and selective” way, particularly when it comes to tweets alleging widespread election fraud.
Cruz said he would post onto Twitter the indictment of a Texas woman who, according to local media, has been charged with 134 counts of election fraud, to see how Twitter responds.
Senator Ted Cruz attends a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Facebook and Twitter’s content moderation practices [Hannah McKay/Reuters]Facebook, Twitter heads say they are supporting election misinformation post-mortems
Vermont Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy asked Zuckerberg and Dorsey if their companies had conducted election misinformation post-mortems.
Has either company conducted a “post-mortem review of election information, at how this information reads?”
Facebook’s Zuckerberg responded: “We are commissioning and working with independent academics to enable them to do the studies themselves and to publish what they find without any intervention or permission required from Facebook”.
Twitter’s Dorsey said: “Thank you and we and we are doing the same, including opening up our API’s (application programming interface) to researchers to make sure that others are able to see what we may not see ourselves.”
Republican senator accuses Facebook and Twitter of anti-conservative bias
Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee directly accused both Twitter and Facebook of “taking a very distinctively partisan approach, and not a neutral one, to election-related content moderation”.
“For example, just days before the election, Twitter suspended the account of Mark Morgan. Mark Morgan is the commissioner of the US Customs and Border Protection office.
They suspended commissioner Morgan’s Twitter account specifically for a tweet celebrating the success of the US southern border wall. Apparently commissioner Morgan’s tweet, his comments about the border wall, violated Twitter platform rules governing what it calls hateful conduct.”
Dorsey responded, “we evaluated his tweet again and we found we were wrong. That was a mistake and that was due to the fact that we had heightened awareness around government accounts during this time. So, there was a mistake, we reverted it.”
Lee countered that although “mistakes happen… mistakes happen a whole lot more almost entirely on one side of the political aisle rather than the other. … and the consistent theme happens to be republicans, conservatives and pro-life activists.”
Senator Mike Lee takes a photo of a display before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Facebook and Twitter’s actions around the election [Bill Clark/The Associated Press]
Senator raises concerns about Trump messages inciting violence
California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein asked Zuckerberg about what his concerns are “about the spread of misinformation” in Trump’s post-election posts “that they may incite violence”.
“After President Trump falsely claimed that the election was being stolen, a group called ‘Stop the Steal’ was started on Facebook,” Feinstein said adding, “You shut the group down but substantial damage already had been done. Trump supporters, some of them armed with assault weapons, held ‘Stop the Steal’ rallies outside election offices.”
“What are your concerns about the spread of misinformation, no matter how innocent it is, or is not innocent, like Trump’s claims about the election, that they may incite violence?” she asked.
Zuckerberg responded, “Senator, I’m very worried about this, especially any misinformation or content that could incite violence and during such a volatile period like this, one of our top priorities is making sure that people don’t use our platform to organize any violence or civil unrest.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies remotely during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Facebook and Twitter’s actions around the closely contested election [Bill Clark/The Associated Press]Dorsey admits ‘mistake’ in handling Hunter Biden report
Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn asked Dorsey about Twitter temporarily blocking mentions last month of an unverified report from the New York Post about Joe Biden’s son Hunter.
“When Twitter decided to take down the story, the New York Post story on Hunter Biden’s laptop, did you do that under your terms of service or did you do it under some other claim of authority?” Cornyn asked.
“We did it under ‘terms of service’, which, as you know, everyone agrees to when they sign up for Twitter. This was a policy around distribution of hacked materials,” Dorsey responded. “We did not want Twitter to be a distribution point for hacked materials.”
“You do realize that by taking down that story, you probably gave it more prominence and visibility than had you left it alone?” Cornyn then asked.
“We realize it and we recognize it as a mistake that we made, both in terms of the intention of the policy and also the enforcement action of not allowing people to share it publicly or privately, which is why we corrected it within 24 hours,” Dorsey said.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testifies remotely during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Facebook and Twitter’s actions around the closely contested election [Bill Clark/The Associated Press]Blumenthal asks if same misinformation policies will be used in Georgia run-off
Connecticut Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said he was “concerned that both of your companies are, in fact, backsliding or retrenching, that you are failing to take action against dangerous disinformation” in the upcoming dual Georgia run-offs, which will decide control of the Senate.
“Will you commit to the same kind of robust content modification playbook in this coming election, including fact checking, labeling, reducing the spread of misinformation, and other steps, even for politicians in the runoff elections ahead?” Blumenthal asked. Both CEOs said yes.
Blumenthal added: “During the past election there was rampant disinformation on social media in spanish-speaking sites, repeating QAnon conspiracies and false claims of election rigging. in my view you need to do better. will you commit to taking steps to improve content modification for Spanish-speaking communities before the Georgia runoff?”
Both CEOs said they would.
Graham asks if Facebook can be addictive
Senator Graham, during the first questioning of the hearing, ask Facebook’s Zuckerberg if his product can be addictive.
“Mr Zuckerberg, do you believe your product can be addictive?” Graham said.
The CEO responded: “We certainly don’t design the product in that way … I don’t think the research has been conclusive, but it is an area that we care about and study. We certainly do not want our products to be addictive.”
Democratic, Republican senators lay out different visions of hearing
Republican committee chairman Graham opened Tuesday’s hearing suggesting that Facebook and Twitter displayed bias in their labeling of posts and Tweets, claiming the same standards are not enforced for other international leaders.
Graham particularly noted Twitter and Facebook’s decisions to suppress a controversial New York Post article on Hunter Biden, the provenance of which has been questioned. “That to me seems like you’re the ultimate editor,” Graham said. “The editorial decision at the New York Post to run the story was overwritten by Twitter and Facebook in different fashions.”
In contrast, Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said the steps taken by Twitter and Facebook to combat minsinformation and hate speech as only been “baby steps”.
While he said there were important issues to discuss in regard to those topics, Blumenthal added he was concerned Tuesday’s hearing would be a “political sideshow” for Republicans to “bully” the tech CEOs.
Senator Lindsey Graham takes his seat before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Facebook and Twitter’s actions around the closely contested election [Bill Clark/The Associated Press]
Election expected to be focus of hearing
The Republican majority on the judiciary panel threatened Zuckerberg and Dorsey with subpoenas last month if they did not agree to voluntarily testify for Tuesday’s hearing.
Republicans on the Senate Commerce Committee lambasted the two CEOs and Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, at a hearing last month for what they said was a pattern of silencing conservative viewpoints while giving free rein to political actors from countries like China and Iran.
There is no evidence that the social media giants are biased against conservative news, posts or other material, or that they favour one side of political debate over another, researchers have found. But criticism of the companies’ policies, and their handling of disinformation tied to the election, has come from Democrats as well as Republicans.
For Republicans, that criticism has focused on a series of posts and tweets from President Donald Trump that the social media sites have labelled as false or misleading, including false claims of victory in the election or unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud. Democrats have focused their criticism mainly on hate speech, misinformation and other content that can incite violence, keep people from voting or spread falsehoods about the coronavirus.
