Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey faced another round of questioning in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
A few moments stuck out to me: Sen. Da Nang Dick Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told Zuckerberg to ban Steve Bannon and Dorsey admitted it was a mistake for the platform to ban The New York Post‘s story on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Former White House Strategist Steve Bannon got in hot water on November 5th when he said he wants the heads of Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray on the White House lawn.
Blumenthal cannot understand why Facebook hasn’t censored Bannon. What Bannon said was gross, but not a crime.
From The New York Post:
“Steve Bannon in a Facebook Live video called for beheadings of Dr. Fauci and FBI Director Wray for not acting more favorably toward President Trump,” Blumenthal said. “How many times is Steve Bannon allowed to call for the murder of government officials before Facebook suspends his account?”Zuckerberg said that “the content in question did violate our policies and we took it down. Having a content violation does not automatically mean your account gets taken down.”The Facebook CEO said people who post terrorist content or child porn lose their accounts for a first offense, but that “for other things it’s multiple.” Zuckerberg reportedly told his staff last week that Bannon has not committed enough infractions to justify banishment.“Will you commit to taking down that account, Steve Bannon’s account?” Blumenthal pressed.“No, that’s not what our policies would suggest that we should do in this case,” Zuckerberg replied.
Dorsey addressed Twitter blocking The New York Post‘s story on Hunter Biden. However, he once again said the company blocked the story “pursuant to a 2018 policy against spreading hacked materials.”
Except nobody hacked anything.
Chairman Lindsey Graham blasted Dorsey:
“There are rules about what a television station can do. There are rules about what a newspaper can do,” Graham noted. “And 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?”“They decided — and maybe for a good reason, I don’t know — that the New York Post articles about Hunter Biden needed to be flagged, excluded from distribution, or made hard to find,” he continued, adding, “That to me seems like you are the ultimate editor.”Graham concluded, “The editorial decision at The New York Post to run the story was overridden by Twitter and Facebook in different fashions to prevent its dissemination. Now, if that’s not making an editorial decision, I don’t know what would be.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) asked Dorsey if he realized that by banning the story it received even more attention.
From Fox News:
“We made a quick interpretation using no other evidence that the materials in the article were obtained through hacking, and according to our policy, we blocked them from being spread,” Dorsey testified. “Upon further consideration, we admitted this action was wrong and corrected it within 24 hours.”Dorsey went on to say that Twitter told the Post how they could unlock their account by deleting their tweet with the article, and that they would be able to then tweet it again. The Post instead pushed for Twitter to reverse their decision to block them in the first place. Dorsey said at the time they did not have a process for doing this.“This incident demonstrated that we needed one and so we created one we believe is fair and appropriate,” he said.
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