Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, told the Senate Tuesday that the social media giant cannot fully curb the spread of misinformation and hate speech.
“These kinds of integrity problems are not ones that there’s a silver bullet where you could ever fully solve them,” Zuckerberg said. “We will always be working to help minimize the prevalence of harm in the same way that a city will never eliminate all crime.”
Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO, made a second virtual visit to Capitol Hill in recent months to face questions about decisions both companies made in the runup and the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., questioned Dorsey and Zuckerberg at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about the role of Twitter and Facebook in the 2020 election. Leahy zeroed in on Zuckerberg, raising concerns about how the social media platform polices posts that incite violence or call for the targeting of specific cultural or ethnic groups.
Leahy and the Democrats chided the two CEOs for failing to stop disinformation and hate speech. Senators pointed to Steve Bannon, a former strategist for President Donald Trump, who used his Facebook account to call for the beheading of Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“I recognize the challenging position that our social media companies are in,” Leahy said. “You’re on the front line of both domestic and foreign disinformation campaigns, and you have to balance American ideals like freedom of speech, you have to limit hate speech, limit dangerous disinformation. That’s a significant challenge.”
“I have to think you can and must do better,” the senator added.
Both Dorsey and Zuckerberg were taken to task by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and his Republican colleagues for limiting the dissemination of a New York Post article about Hunter Biden, the son of President-elect Joe Biden. The GOP senators also criticized the labeling of election-related posts that violate misinformation policies set by the two social media platforms.
In his opening statement, Graham said Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, statute that protects companies from liability for what people post on their accounts, must be amended, and that he was uncomfortable with social media companies having editorial control the New York Post’s Hunter Biden expose.
Twitter had initially restricted shares of the story before reversing the decision.
“That to me seems like you are the ultimate editor,” Graham said.
Dorsey later said the decision to obstruct access to the article on Twitter was “incorrect.”
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who has worked with Leahy on issues of individual privacy and government surveillance of U.S. citizens, took Dorsey to task for suspending the account of Mark Morgan, Trump’s head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, after he tweeted about the U.S.-Mexico border wall.
Dorsey said this too was a “mistake” and that the company should not have locked Morgan out of his account. Lee said many of the mistakes made by social media companies seem to target Republicans.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, also took aim at Dorsey claiming that he and Twitter had influenced the result of the 2020 presidential election.
“We realize we need to earn trust more,” Dorsey said.