Oklahoma legislator spars with Twitter CEO
Two Oklahoma Republicans waded into the rocky and ever-shifting waters of social media politics Wednesday as they quizzed Twitter and Facebook executives on Capitol Hill.
In hearings before the Senate Intelligence Committee and House Energy and Commerce Committee, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg faced questions about their politics, as well as their policies, and the roles both have played in the banning of controversial accounts.
“Would you consider yourself conservative, liberal, socialist? How would you consider your political views?” Rep. Markwayne Mullin, R-Westville, asked Dorsey.
“I try to focus on the issues,” Dorsey told him, “so I don’t—”
“Well, I know,” Mullin said, interrupting, “but the issues are at hand and that’s what I’m trying to ask.”
The congressman, a conservative who represents Oklahoma’s eastern third, asked if Dorsey is a registered voter.
The Twitter founder said he is a registered independent.
Some conservatives and far-right commentators have painted Twitter and its CEO as liberal ideologues intentionally silencing their voices. In July, President Donald Trump alleged Twitter is “shadow banning” prominent Republicans — limiting their visibility on the website — and vowed to “look into this discriminatory and illegal practice at once.”
Dorsey has maintained that while Twitter employees are predominantly leftleaning, the social media site does not discriminate or act on ideology when choosing which accounts to suspend and ban.
Mullin disagreed, alleging Dorsey and Twitter have been “somewhat obvious” in their political bias, even if that bias is unintentional.
Incidents cited
Mullin pointed to several incidents, including the October 2017 removal of a Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., campaign video on abortion because it was inflammatory and, in November 2017, a rogue Twitter employee’s deactivation of Trump’s account for 11 minutes. Twitter reversed course on the Blackburn video and its former employee apologized for deactivating the president’s account.
Mullin asked about a controversy involving Sarah Jeong, a liberal New York Times opinion writer, and conservative commentator Candace Owens. In a series of satirical tweets, Jeong joked that she enjoys “being cruel to old white men” and questioned whether white people are “genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun.”
Owens, who is African-American, tweeted Jeong’s comments after replacing “white” with “black” or “Jewish.” As a result, Owens was suspended from Twitter temporarily. That was proof, she said, of Twitter’s inherent bias and double standard.
“Ms. Owens’ account was suspended and flagged. The New York Times reporter account wasn’t,” Mullin told Dorsey on Wednesday, misstating Jeong’s job title. “What’s the difference?”
“So, we did make a mistake with Owens’ account,” Dorsey said, before being interrupted again by the congressman.
“But I’ve heard you say that multiple times: ‘We made a mistake, we made a mistake.’ I’ve heard you say that the whole time you’ve been up here. You’ve been very polite and pretty awesome at doing it,” Mullin said. “But the fact is, it’s bigger than a mistake. It’s the environment to which I think Twitter has.”
“I value a variety of perspectives,” Dorsey said, “and I value seeing people from all walks of life and all points of view. We do make errors along the way, both in terms of our algorithms and also the people who are following guidelines to review content.”
Senator’s concerns
On the Senate side of the Capitol, Lankford was more concerned with malicious social media users, such as Russian bots blamed for ramping up political and social tension in the United States in recent years.
He asked if information from an account determined to be a “foreign actor or hostile actor” is archived to prevent the same person from creating a similar account.
“Yes, we do maintain that information and we have a ban evasion policy, so if someone is trying to evade a ban or suspension, no matter what the time frame, we can take action on those accounts as well,” Dorsey told Lankford, an Oklahoma City Republican.
“If we have any suspicion,” Sandberg said, “that this would be engaged in foreign or domestic inauthentic activity, or we have law enforcement interaction on it, we would keep that information.”
Lankford told both executives he appreciated their work on so-called “deep fakes,” computergenerated videos which appear strikingly real.
Lankford said he has confidence both Twitter and Facebook will aggressively target deep fakes.
“We are just telling you, we are counting on it,” Lankford said, “because Americans typically can trust what they see and suddenly in video they can no longer trust what they see because the opportunity to be able to create video that is entirely different than anything in reality has now actually come.”