‘More Power Than Traditional Media’: Facebook, Twitter Policies Attacked

Republican senators on Tuesday attacked the chief executives of Facebook and Twitter for effectively censoring President Trump and allies during the U.S. election while Democrats bemoaned the spread of misinformation about the vote 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.

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 elections in Georgia, where two Republican incumbent senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, are facing run-offs against well-funded Democratic opponents.

Both companies committed to doing more. However, broader problems with their content moderation decisions, especially around violent speech, became evident when Senator 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.