Tech CEOS to defend key law at hearing
• The chief executives of Twitter Inc., Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc. will tell U. S. lawmakers at a hearing on Wednesday that a federal law protecting internet companies is crucial to free expression on the internet, according to written testimonies from the companies seen by Reuters.
Section 230, a provision of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, shields technology companies from liability for user- generated content and allows them to remove lawful but objectionable posts. It has come under heavy criticism from President Donald Trump and both Democratic and Republican lawmakers who have been concerned about Big Tech’s content- moderation decisions.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey will tell the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday that eroding the foundation of Section 230 “could collapse how we communicate on the Internet, leaving only a small number of giant and well- funded technology companies.”
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg warned that tech companies were likely to censor more to avoid legal risks if Section 230 is repealed. “Without Section 230, platforms could potentially be held liable for everything people say,” he said.
Zuckerberg said without the law, tech firms could face liability for even basic moderation, such as removing hate speech and harassment.
Alphabet- owned Google’s Sundar Pichai said the firm approached its work without political bias and was able to offer the information it does because of legal frameworks such as Section 230.
In addition to discussions on reforming the law, the hearing will bring up issues about consumer privacy and media consolidation.
On Tuesday, Sen. Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the senate commerce panel, released a report on how big tech platforms have decimated the local news industry, including newspapers and broadcasters.
Cantwell said in the report that “local news has been hijacked by a few large news aggregation platforms, most notably Google and Facebook, which have become the dominant players in online advertising.”
The report added the “trillion-dollar companies scrape local news content and data for their own sites and leverage their market dominance to force local news to accept little to nothing for their intellectual property.”
Google scrapes the web to get headlines and story snippets, while Facebook features content posted by publishers or users and “receives billions in profits from the news content created by others,” the report said.
Cantwell told Reuters that “beyond just making sure that they (local news outlets) live to fight another day” Congress must address “unfair competition.”