November 17, 2020
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0:37Now Playingop U.S. senators challenged the chief executive officers of Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc., renewing accusations that the companies are failing to moderate online speech, and called for changes to legal protections that benefit the industry.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday to answer questions about content moderation and their role in political discourse. Conservatives have criticized both companies for what they say is unfair policing of right-wing content, including posts by U.S. President Donald Trump since election day that falsely claimed victory.
South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, the committee chairman, questioned the companies’ decisions to limit the spread of a recent New York Post article that could have been politically damaging to Democrat Joe Biden. “That to me seems like you’re the ultimate editor,” he said. “If that’s not making an editorial decision I don’t know what would be.”
These types of decisions, Graham added, mean that the government needs to revisit the legal shield these platforms receive under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects their treatment of user content. “Section 230 has to be changed, because we can’t get here without change,” he said.
Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, also called for Section 230 reform and criticized the companies for not doing enough to police their services. “You have built terrifying tools of persuasion and manipulation with power far exceeding the robber barons of the last Gilded Age,” he said. “You have failed your responsibility.”
The hearing comes in the wake of a contentious election, in which both companies enforced rules around misinformation. Twitter flagged Trump’s posts dozens of times in recent days for breaking rules around misinformation and undermining election results, and in some cases the company has hidden his tweets behind warning screens.
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