Senators assail tech CEOS over selective ‘censorship’

WASHINGTON • Republicans in the U. S. Senate on Tuesday attacked the chief executives of Facebook and Twitter for what they called censorship of President Donald Trump and his allies during the U. S. election while Democrats bemoaned the spread of misinformation on social media.

The CEOS, Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, defended their content moderation practices at a congressional hearing scheduled after the platforms decided to block stories from the New York Post that made claims about the son of then- Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

The move incited uproar among Republican lawmakers who have consistently accused the companies of anti-conservative bias.

In his opening remarks, Judiciary Committee chairman Lindsey Graham asked: “What I want to try to find out is if you’re not a newspaper at Twitter or Facebook, then why do you have editorial control over the New York Post?”

He said he did not think articles on Hunter Biden, refuted by the Biden campaign, needed to be flagged or excluded from distribution.

Democrats focused on the spread of misinformation by Trump, a Republican, and his supporters. They pushed the companies to limit the spread of false and misleading content ahead of January elections in Georgia, where two Republican incumbent senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, are facing run- offs against well- funded Democratic opponents — contests that will likely determine which party controls the Senate.

Zuckerberg and Dorsey admitted the companies have made some mistakes, but mostly defended their policies.

However, broader problems with their content moderation decisions, especially around violent speech, became evident when Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, asked Facebook’s Zuckerberg if he would commit to taking down the account of former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon after he suggested the beheading of two senior U.S. officials.

Zuckerberg refused. “Senator, no. That’s not what our policies would suggest that we should do in this case,” he said.

Reuters reported last week that Zuckerberg told an all-staff meeting that Bannon had not violated enough of Facebook’s policies to justify his suspension.

Blumenthal also noted that Alphabet Inc’s Google, which owns Youtube, had been given a “pass” from the hearing, saying that the company was being rewarded for its “timidity” in content moderation.

Twitter and Facebook used fact-checking labels on a string of outbursts by the president, as part of a wider strategy to limit the spread of false news.

But Twitter said its overall efforts had only led to a 29 per cent reduction in “quote Tweets,” or shares of the posts featuring a user’s own commentary, from those labelled with a fact-checking warning.

On an internal message board, a Facebook data scientist said warnings that posts included misleading or false claims had reduced their spread by just 8 per cent.

On Monday, Trump posted: “The Radical Left Democrats, working with their partner, the Fake News Media, are trying to STEAL this Election. We won’t let them.”

Facebook added a label that said: “The US has laws, procedures and established institutions to ensure the integrity of our elections.” Despite this, the post has 14,200 shares, 41,000 comments and 446,000 reactions.

Speaking to Buzzfeed News, one Facebook employee said: “I have a feeling people have quickly learned to ignore these flags at this point.”