With next week’s election looming, the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google were scolded by Republicans at a US Senate hearing Wednesday for alleged anti-conservative bias in the companies’ social media platforms and received a warning of coming restrictions from Congress.
Lawmakers of both parties are assessing the companies’ tremendous power to disseminate speech and ideas, and are looking to challenge their long-enjoyed bedrock legal protections for online speech.
The Trump administration, seizing on unfounded accusations of bias against conservative views, has asked Congress to strip some of the protections that have generally shielded the tech companies from legal responsibility for what people post on their platforms.
Senator Roger Wicker cited the move this month by Facebook and Twitter to limit dissemination of an unverified political story from the conservative-leaning New York Post about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. The story, which was not confirmed by other publications, cited unverified emails from Mr Biden’s son Hunter that were reportedly disclosed by Trump allies.
Republicans led by President Donald Trump have accused the social media platforms, without evidence, of deliberately suppressing conservative, religious and anti-abortion views.
“Twitter’s conduct has by far been the most egregious,” Republican Senator Ted Cruz told Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who testfied via video along with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey speaks remotely to the US Senate. (Source: AP)
Mr Cruz cited Twitter’s limitations on the newspaper story as part of “a pattern of censorship and silencing Americans with whom Twitter disagrees.”
Democratic Senator Brian Schatz went after Republicans, saying the hearing was a “sham.”
“This is bullying,” Mr Schatz told the CEOs. “Do not let US senators bully you into carrying the water” for politicians seeking to discredit their opponents. With their questions, Mr Schatz said, the Republicans “are trying to bully the heads of private companies into making a hit job” on political leaders.
