Facebook and Twitter executives are defending their companies in two congressional hearings, arguing they are aggressively trying to root out foreign actors who want to do the United States harm just weeks before the midterm elections.
Google declined to send a top executive, so the company’s absence is marked by a glass of water and empty chair in the hearing room. Both Senate Intelligence Committee Richard Burr, R-North Carolina, and Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Virginia, lambasted Google for failing to sent a top representative.
Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey will face angry Republicans who claim his platform is biased against conservatives. In prepared testimony released ahead of a House hearing Wednesday afternoon, Dorsey says his company does not use political ideology to make decisions, and aims to make as many voices heard as possible.
“What is under attack is the idea that business as usual is good enough,” Burr said in his opening statement. “The information that your platform disseminates changes minds.”
Sandberg, in her opening statement, said Russian interference, “violated the values of our company, and of the country we love,” and emphasized that Facebook is increasing its staffing to identify malicious actors.
“These are expensive investments, but that will not stop us because we know they are critical, she said.
Dorsey tweeted out his entire statement in a thread of tweets, and read it before the committee.
“We’re extremely proud of helping to increase the accessibility and velocity of a simple, free and open exchange,” Dorsey said. “We believe people will learn faster by being exposed to a wide range of opinions and ideas, and it helps to make our nation, and the world, feel a little bit smaller. We aren’t proud of how that free and open exchange has been weaponized and used to distract and divide people, and our nation. We found ourselves unprepared and ill-equipped for the immensity of the problems we’ve acknowledged.”
Congress has sharply criticized the social media companies over the last year as it has become clear that they were at the forefront of Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections and beyond. That scrutiny has led to additional criticism over the companies’ respect for user privacy and whether conservatives are being censored — frustrations that are particularly heightened ahead of the midterms.
The afternoon hearing in the House Energy and Commerce Committee will feature only Dorsey in a hearing focused on bias and the platform’s algorithms. Some Republicans, including President Trump, have pushed the idea ahead of the elections that Twitter is “shadow banning” some in the GOP because of the ways search results have appeared. Twitter denies that is happening.
In prepared remarks for Wednesday’s hearing, Facebook’s No. 2 executive, Sheryl Sandberg, details many ways the company is addressing the problem but reiterates that the company was slow to spot it. Thirteen Russians were indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller earlier this year on charges of an elaborate plot to disrupt the 2016 U.S. presidential election by creating fake accounts that pushed divisive issues on social media.
In her testimony, Sandberg details ongoing efforts to take down material linked to the Russian agency, including the removal this year of 270 Facebook pages. Still, Sandberg says the company’s overall understanding of the Russian activity in 2016 is limited “because we do not have access to the information or investigative tools” that the U.S. government has.
“This is an arms race, and that means we need to be ever more vigilant,” Sandberg says. Sandberg’s mea culpa, however, appears to mirror that of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose appearance before Capitol Hill in April was widely panned by lawmakers as a glorified apology tour.
“We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake, and it was my mistake, and I’m sorry,” Zuckerberg told lawmakers.
Dorsey meanwhile says Twitter has continued to identify accounts that may be linked to the same Russian internet agency in Mueller’s indictment. He says Twitter has so far suspended 3,843 accounts the company believes are linked to the agency, and has seen recent activity.
On bias, the Twitter CEO is aggressive in defending his company, saying in the prepared House testimony that he wants to be clear about one thing: “Twitter does not use political ideology to make any decisions, whether related to ranking content on our service or how we enforce our rules.”
To address the concerns, Dorsey offers an explanation of how Twitter uses “behavioral signals,” such as the way accounts interact and behave on the service. Those signals can help weed out spam and abuse.
He says such behavioral analysis “does not consider in any way” political views or ideology.
Sanderberg and Dorsey’s appearance is set to take place at 9:30 a.m. ET before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Dorsey will later appear before the House at 1:30 p.m.
