Trash of the tech titans
Facebook, Twitter, Google accused of co-ordinated political censorship
WASHINGTON: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was grilled on Capitol Hill yesterday over a newly revealed whistleblower complaint suggesting the social media company co-ordinated with fellow web giants Twitter and Google on what content to moderate.
The New York Post reports that Republican senator Josh Hawley led the line of questioning during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the scope and strength of Facebook and Twitter and their efforts to censor content while enjoying protections from the kind of liability faced by traditional media publishers.
During the hearing, Republican senator Lindsey Graham accused both Twitter and Facebook of being the “ultimate editor” of political news during what became one of the most bitterly divided presidential campaigns in US history.
Senator Graham took aim at decisions by both platforms to limit the distribution of a New York Post article claiming to expose malfeasance involving Hunter Biden, the son of President-elect Joe Biden.
“When you have companies that have the power of governments (and) have far more power than traditional media outlets, something has to give,” the senator said.
The Post reported Senator Hawley’s comments that his office was recently contacted by a former Facebook employee who claimed a program called Tasks was used by the company “to co-ordinate projects including censorship”.
“As I understand it, Facebook censorship teams communicate with their counterparts at Twitter and Google, and then they enter those companies’ suggestions for censorship on to the Tasks platform so that Facebook can then follow up with them and effectively co-ordinate their censorship efforts,” Senator Hawley said.
Mr Zuckerberg acknowledged that it was not uncommon for workers within his company to speak with their peers at other tech outfits, but denied that there was any coordinated decision on what content should be censored.
“Senator, we do not coordinate our policies,” he said.
“I think it would be probably pretty normal for people to talk to their peers and colleagues in the industry … but that’s different from co-ordinating what our policies are.”