Tech hearing: Bezos, Zuckerberg, Cook and Pichai grilled by congress as Facebook CEO defends Twitter over Trump Jr ban

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Mark Zuckerberg defends Twitter's decision to suspend Donald Trump Jr account

The four biggest Silicon Valley tech CEOs were grilled by Congress for more than five hours as both Democrats and Republicans accused them of using their monopolies to crush market competitors and censor ideological opponents.

Google's Sundai Pichai, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Apple's Time Cook and Amazon's Jeff Bezos faced both pointed accusations and at times confused questioning from Representatives wading into thickets of privacy policies, advertising platforms and data algorithms.

Zuckerberg at one point found himself in the unlikely position of defending Twitter's decision to suspend Donald Trump's Jr's account after his company was confused for that of Jack Dorsey, who was not in attendance.

Bezos, meanwhile, was unable to deny an assertion that Amazon uses third-party seller data to advantage itself, a potential antitrust concern for the e-commerce company, but committed to sharing results of its internal investigation.

Cook defended Apple for removing competitors from the App Store even as customers were directed to Apple's own products as a replacement.

Pichai faced some of the toughest questions over Google's advertising practices, with the company accused of using "privacy" as a shield to withhold user data from competitors that it used itself to claim an advantage.

While Representatives across both political spectrums shared in their level of concerns at the size of the tech companies, Democrats tended to focus on anticompetitive conduct while Republicans leaned toward political censorship.

Zuckerberg was accused of lying to Congress after claiming he wasn't aware of anyone being fired for their political beliefs, while Pichai dodged questions about a 2016 video showing anti-Trump bias among senior leadership.

All of the CEO's, however, agreed that the emergence of cancel culture was a threat to democracy as the nuance destruction machine of social media empowered mobs in the "digital Thunderdome".

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[29 July 2020 23:20 · Justin Vallejo]

Zuckerberg stands by company principles when questioned by Primila Jayapal if they don't care about a boycott by 1100 advertisers.

"Of course we care, but we're also not going to set our content policies because of advertisers I think that would be the wrong thing for us to do," he said.

[29 July 2020 23:22 · Justin Vallejo]

Pichai corrects his answer on whether the Chinese government has stolen any technology, says a cyberattack stole Google code in 2009.

"I recall in 2009 that we had a well-publicized cyber-attack originating there which did exfiltrate some code from there," Pichai said.

[29 July 2020 23:36 · Justin Vallejo]

We're in the home stretch now. David Cicilline is delivering remarks. 

"These companies that exist today have monopoly power. Some need to be broken up. All need to be properly regulated and held accountable," he said. 

"Their control of the marketplace allows them to do whatever it takes to crush independent business and expand their own power. This must end."

[29 July 2020 23:38 · Justin Vallejo]

And that's all folks. The meeting is adjourned.

The CEOs will have five days to submit additional materials before the committee submits its report and recommendations.