Senate hearing - live: Zuckerberg defends keeping Bannon on Facebook after saying Fauci should be beheaded
Jack Dorsey, chief executive of Twitter, and Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, are appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee to defend their companies’ approaches to moderate speech on their platforms.
They will face questions about how they handled posts relating to the election and the labelling of misinformation.
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called the hearing in late October after both Twitter and Facebook limited the exposure of a New York Post article relating to allegations against Hunter Biden, son of Democratic nominee and now president-elect Joe Biden.
In his opening remarks, Senator 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.
Watch live: Facebook and Twitter Big Tech Senate hearing
A reminder of the last time Senator Cruz and Jack Dorsey faced off, just six days before the election.
Democrat brands Ted Cruz a 'bully' after he slammed Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey for censoring NY Post report on Hunter Biden
Mr Dorsey says Twitter’s focus during the election was to address attempts to undermine civic integrity.
On the issue of regulation and how platforms like theirs should be treated, Mr Zuckerberg argues that comparing what they do to telecoms companies or newspapers is not the way to look at what is essentially a new industry.
“I think it deserves and needs its own regulatory framework to get built here," he says.
Senator Cruz asks Mr Dorsey how many times Twitter has blocked Democrat and Republican politicians and whether he will commit to answering the question in writing given its commitment to transparency.
Mr Dorsey says he would like to answer that as part of a broader push for transparency — which Senator Cruz takes as a no.
Mr Zuckerberg, when asked, says he will follow up with that information.
Senator Ted Cruz says he is disappointed with Democrat senators wanting big tech to silence more voices, which he says is against free speech.
He asked Mr Dorsey: “Is Twitter a publisher?”
Dorsey: “No, we are not. We distribute content.”
Mr Cruz disagrees and cites examples regarding a journalist having an account suspended for linking to the New York Post story.
After a brief recess the hearing continues and Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont has brought us back to the topic of Steve Bannon’s post.
Mr Zuckerberg says that over 90 per cent of content that violates policy is taken down by AI and moderators before it is widely seen or before it is reported by other users.
Senator Leahy also brought up accounts being disabled in Myanmar over threats and hate speech towards the Rohingya people.
A common accusation levelled at social media companies is that their product is addictive. Senator Lindsey Graham asked Mr Zuckerberg about his thoughts on the matter.
Question of the day: “How many times is Steve Bannon allowed to call for the murder of government officials before Facebook suspends his account?”
Some background on the controversy of Steve Bannon’s continued presence on Facebook.
Steve Bannon’s call for beheading of Fauci does not break Facebook rules, says Mark Zuckerberg
In his written testimony for the hearing, Mr Dorsey wrote: “We applied labels to add context and limit the risk of harmful election misinformation spreading without important context, because the public told us they wanted us to take these steps.”
Between 27 October and 11 November, he said, approximately 300,000 tweets were labeled for content that was disputed and potentially misleading, representing 0.2 per cent of all US election-related tweets sent during the period.
Of the labeled tweets, 456 also were covered by a warning message and were limited in how they could be shared.
About 74 per cent of the people who viewed those tweets saw them after a label or warning message was applied.
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