LIVE: Facebook, Google and Twitter CEOs Face House Grilling Over Disinformation

(Mar. 25) Watch live as Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter's Jack Dorsey and Google's Sundar Pichai testify to the House Energy and Commerce Committee on social media, disinformation and extremism on Thursday, March 25, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

The leaders of Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Google will face lawmakers skeptical of how the companies have handled misleading posts about the 2020 presidential election and Covid-19.

Congress has been questioning internet executives for years about whether they're doing enough to rid their services of lies, bigotry and illicit material. But the stakes are higher for Thursday’s hearing. It was misinformation online that helped fuel the riots at the Capitol. Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and Sundar Pichai will be cross-examined by politicians who witnessed firsthand those deadly consequences on Jan. 6.

Lawmakers can draw on fresh evidence of flaws in the current system. Watchdog group Media Matters for America released a report this week arguing Facebook is failing to rid its photo-sharing app Instagram of coronavirus misinformation, particularly anti-vaccine content from “micro-influencers” who purport to be medical professionals. Activist group Avaaz estimated earlier this month that Facebook could have stopped 10 billion views of popular pages that repeatedly shared misinformation in the months before the U.S. election. The company criticized the report's methodology.

Tech companies have been reluctant to back legislation that would force them to take more responsibility over the content users post on their sites. The companies say they are training algorithms and employees to detect misleading content, while penalizing accounts that spread falsehoods and promoting accurate information on topics such as voting and vaccines.

Congress isn’t buying it, though. Members of both parties have introduced bills that would weaken Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. This protects internet services from being liable for content posted by users and other third parties. It also, crucially, extends the legal shield when companies moderate or remove posts they deem obscene or offensive. The short snippet of law is considered the bedrock of the internet because it gave website operators and other providers the flexibility to police really bad stuff without being responsible for everything.

A quarter-century has passed since then. In that time, internet giants such as Facebook and Google have amassed hundreds of billions of dollars in cash and operate platforms that harness much of modern discourse online. They should have the resources to take more responsibility, so the thinking goes. U.S. President Joe Biden has suggested Section 230 should be revoked. Some Republicans despise Section 230, too.

Facebook recognizes this dicey political predicament. In prepared remarks ahead of Thursday's hearing, Zuckerberg said Section 230 should change. Instead of automatically being granted immunity, platforms should have to show they have adequate systems in place for identifying unlawful content and removing it. A "third party" would decide what constitutes an adequate system and it would be "proportionate to platform size," suggesting smaller companies with less money would have easier standards to meet.

Though Facebook would probably be able to comply with such a law easily, Zuckerberg is at least willing to admit that something needs to change here. Other tech executives may have to follow his lead.

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