Threat to rein in as F’book & Twitter execs grilled

Attorney General Jeff Sessions will look into a “growing concern” that major social-media and Internet companies have stifled certain viewpoints, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.

Sessions will huddle with state attorneys general later this month “to discuss a growing concern that these companies may be hurting competition and intentionally stifling the free exchange of ideas on their platforms,” Justice Department spokesman Devin O’Malley said.

The threat of potential federal intervention came just as Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg were testifying before Congress about their efforts to root out false news and foreign meddling in US elections.

“Let me be clear,” Sandberg told the Senate Intelligence Committee. “We are more determined than our opponents and we will keep fighting.”

But she admitted: “We were too slow to spot this and too slow to act. That is on us.”

Dorsey also acknowledged that his company had taken too long to respond to foreign intrusions and false data.

“We aren’t proud of how that free and open exchange has been weaponized and used to distract and divide people, and our nation,” he said, tweeting part of his statement.

“We found ourselves unprepared and ill-equipped for the immensity of the problems we’ve acknowledged.” He added: “Abuse, harassment, troll armies, propaganda through bots and human coordination, misinformation campaigns, and divisive filter bubbles — that’s not a healthy public square. Worse, a relatively small number of bad-faith actors were able to game Twitter to have an outsized impact.”

Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), the committee chair, was not con-