Facebook, Twitter and Google face Congress over free speech

Who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear? [MUSIC] Should Twitter limit the spread of new stories? Should Facebook stop the spread of hate groups? In the age of misinformation, how do you define free speech online? These are the big questions facing Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai as they fronted up to a Senate hearing on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The law is designed to protect companies like Twitter, Facebook and Google from being held liable for material shared on their platforms. Republicans, including President Donald Trump want section 230 scrapped. They say that Internet platforms are using the law to unfairly stifle conservative speech. However, Democrats on the other hand say that tech companies aren't going far enough when it comes to limiting things like hate speech, misinformation, and election interference. During the Senate hearing, Republicans went particularly hard on Twitter. Looking to add some of your censoring. Mr Dorsey, you all have censored Joe Biden zero times. You have censored Donald Trump 65 times. Would you say that the political ideology of the employees your company is, let's say 50-50 conservative versus liberal progressive? Or do you think it's closer to 90% liberal, 10% conservative? We'll start with Mr. Dorsey? As you mentioned, I don't know the makeup of our employees cuz it's not something we ask or focus on. Just what do you think of top you had based on your chat rooms and kind of people you talk to? Not something I look for or- Yeah, great. Republican singled out a recent New York post story on Joe Biden, Son Hunter Biden. Now the tech companies say they limited the spread of this story because it contained hacked material, but Republicans called that censorship. A New York Post was [UNKNOWN] by Alexander Hamilton and your position is that you can sit in Silicon Valley and demand of the media. But that can tell them what stories they can publish. You could tell the American people what report they can hear. Is that right? Meanwhile, Democrats repeatedly accused their rivals of playing politics for holding the hearing less than a week before the US elections. What we're seeing today is an attempt to bully the CEOs of private companies into carrying out a hit job on a presidential candidate. This is baloney folks, get off the political garbage and let's let the conference hearing do it's job. Democrats said the tech companies weren't doing enough to moderate their platforms. That if the president goes on Facebook and encourages violence after election results are announced, that you will make sure your companies algorithms don't spread that content and you will immediately remove those messages. Senator, yes, incitement of violence is against our policy, and there are not exceptions to that, including for politicians. Now the CEOs all said that, they don't take sides in politics, but they agreed that they need to do more to make sure their moderation and appeals processes are more transparent. I opened this hearing with calls for more transparency. We realize we need to earn trust more. We realize that more accountability is needed to show our intentions and to show the outcomes. Thank you sir. So I hear the concerns and acknowledge them, but we wanna fix it with more transparent fixture. By the way, this isn't the last we've heard of Big Tech versus Congress. Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg will be zooming back into Washington within a month for another Senate hearing on this very issue. All right guys, this is a fascinating story, and it could have big implications for how you use the Internet. We'll make sure we stay across all of these hearings and keep you posted on c/net. [BLANK_AUDIO]