In yet another congressional hearing on Capitol Hill this week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey spoke to a divided audience following a contentious Presidential election.
The two have appeared before congressmen numerous times over the past year and did so again via video chat before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The two both met with the Senate Commerce Committee just a few weeks ago on October 28t and were roundly criticized by both Democrats and Republicans.
The same pretty much happened this time around too, though with the added anxiety of the election has occurred.
Democratic senators told the two tech CEOs they did not do enough to check Donald Trump and his many incorrect assertions, while Republican senators said that Facebook and Twitter had actually gone too far and were censoring the President too much.
Of course, a great deal of energy was spent on topics like voter fraud, various right-wing conspiracy theories about the election and also about Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.
Another topic that came up during the hearing was the handling of Steve Bannon’s remarks about beheading Dr. Fauci and Facebook’s refusal to ban him over the comment.
Some senators also questioned how effective some of the recent labels that Facebook and Twitter have added on various posts really are overall.
Dorsey mentions that once someone is “no longer a world leader” the rules change, and this could inevitably play out with President Trump next January.
Zuckerberg also mentioned that Facebook used a third-party fact-checker with no bias to moderate the content found on their platform.
There was also continued discussion on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act with the general agreement that something will be done in the near future.
It is becoming more and more clear with each of these hearings that there will soon be some sort of new regulations on both of these companies and the Internet in general.
There also may be further anti-trust policies soon too. But for now, everyone is taking out their anger on the social media giants and for very different reasons.
