Twitter has private meeting on Capitol Hill
WASHINGTON — Social media giant Twitter is visiting Capitol Hill Thursday as part of the House and Senate investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
Twitter’s closed-door meetings follow similar briefings from Facebook earlier this month. The House and Senate panels have invited both tech giants, along with Google, to appear at public hearings this fall. The committees are scrutinizing the spread of false news stories and propaganda on social media, to what extent Russia was involved and whether anyone in the U.S. helped target those stories.
Twitter allows users to register anonymously and has more public accounts than Facebook. Many lawmakers have expressed concerns about the proliferation of anonymous “bots” on Twitter and their potential to spread misinformation.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence panel, said Wednesday that he hopes Twitter will be forthcoming.
“They have obviously a different business model, and also they’ve never tried to prevent fake accounts, use of bots,” Warner said, comparing the company to Facebook. “They don’t deny they have allowed more anonymity. So they’ve got a different business model, we’ve got different questions for them.”
Still, Warner said, the investigation is ultimately up to how people manipulated both of those platforms.
“People deserve to know,” Warner said.
Twitter last week confirmed that officials would be meeting with the Senate panel and issued a statement pledging to improve defences on its platform.
“Twitter deeply respects the integrity of the election process, a cornerstone of all democracies, and will continue to strengthen our platform against bots and other forms of manipulation that violate our terms of service,” the company said in a statement.
Facing pressure from lawmakers and the public after that original announcement, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last week that the company will provide congressional investigators with the contents of 3,000 ads bought by a Russian agency, while also pledging to make political advertising on its platform more transparent.