WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 28: CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg appears on a monitor as he testifies ... [+]
On Tuesday at 10am ET, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey will appear before a Senate Judiciary Hearing to once again answer questions about how they moderate content on their sites.
Both parties agree that Big Tech needs to be regulated, but while Republicans focus on anti-conservative bias in content moderation — an accusation that’s been refuted several times by researchers who study this and the companies themselves — Democrats try to hone in on platforms taking more responsibility for misinformation and disinformation that can cause harm off the screens, especially when it relates to coronavirus or election integrity.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because a mere six days before the U.S. presidential election, Zuckerberg, Dorsey and Google CEO Sundar Pichai were hauled in to testify at a different Senate Commerce Committee hearing about Section 230. Democrats at the hearing largely called it a partisan sham, an attempt by Republicans to bully the CEOs into doing the president’s bidding.
Tuesday’s hearing, troublingly called Breaking the News: Censorship, Suppression, and the 2020 Election, is the result of subpoenas authorized by Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee in October that orders the CEOs to testify about their platforms’ actions to moderate the reach of a New York Post article that made unverified claims about the President-Elect Joe Biden’s son.
"The timing of the Judiciary Committee hearing — with President Trump refusing to acknowledge his defeat in the recent election — could not be more striking,” said Paul Barrett, deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, in an email. “Trump and his GOP allies in Congress have decided that beating up the social media platforms as 'anti-conservative' plays well with their base. So, here we are again with another hearing that will likely devolve into a verbal mugging of the CEOs of Facebook and Twitter. It's a shame because there are real issues to probe concerning social media, including the platforms' failure to adequately address dis- and misinformation."
Nonetheless, the show will go on. Here’s what you need to know:
When:
Today, Tuesday, November 17 at 10 a.m. ET/7 a.m. PT.
Where:
You can watch the livestream on the committee's webpage.
Key players:
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a close ally of the president, chairs the committee. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri will likely to continue to bring the heat, and likely a raised volume of voice, in regards to Twitter’s limiting the spread of the New York Post article. Cruz said to Dorsey: “Who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear?”
On the Democratic side, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota will be there asking tough questions about moderating misinformation.
This article was updated to reflect new information that Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will no longer be in attendance.
