Senators Challenge Zuckerberg, Dorsey Over Partisan Speech, Legal Protections

Top 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.

Facebook and Twitter are often criticized for their respective rules around user speech. Republicans say those rules are too stringent, and infringe on users’ expectations of open debate. Many conservative lawmakers have also backed Trump’s false claims about the election result. Democrats, meanwhile, don’t believe the companies do enough to combat hate speech, election misinformation and other problematic content online.

Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas proposed that “the cure for bad speech is not censorship but it’s more speech” -- a philosophy that Zuckerberg has also shared in recent months. Cornyn asked Dorsey why that approach doesn’t apply to Twitter. Dorsey said he made a “business decision” in creating Twitter’s rules, adding that building an environment where people feel comfortable on the site was part of ensuring debate.

“What the market told us was that people would not put up with abuse, harassment and misleading information that would cause offline harm and they would leave our service because of it,” he said. “Our intention is to create clear policy, clear enforcement, that enables people to feel that they can express themselves on our service and ultimately trust it.”

Both CEOs were challenged over specific policing decisions. Dorsey was questioned about Twitter’s decision to block links to the New York Post story -- a move the company ultimately reversed. Dorsey said Twitter made a “mistake,” and the company’s policies around hacked materials have been changed.

Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the committee, asked the Twitter chief why the company was merely labeling false statements by Trump about the election, rather than removing them entirely, particularly over the risk that they might be “stirring people up to unacceptable levels.”

Dorsey said he agreed “in spirit,” but added that Twitter’s “policy is focused on misleading information around the election and the civic process to provide greater context, to provide added information so people can make decisions around what’s happening.”

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