Mr. Dorsey Goes to Washington
Mr. Dorsey Goes to Washington
Last week, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testified in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee in a hearing centered around content moderation and safeguarding online platforms from misuse by foreign powers. As dysfunctional as this Congress is, the hearing was a remarkably good use of tax payer dollars. Senators asked informed questions without paying much service to fringe right-wing conspiracy theories of shadow banning Conservatives.
The same couldn’t be said for the hearing that followed for Dorsey at the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Questions on partisan bias were the main focus of the House hearing, where a Representative shouting down a protestor by reviving his former auctioneering skills were just one of the more bizarre moments of the hearing.
Last week’s testimonies were just two in a series of hearings to help Congress better understand what tech platforms are doing to prevent election interference in the future, and how (if at all) they should be regulated by the Federal government. The message from folks like Dorsey, Sandberg, and Zuckerberg has been fairly consistent: we didn’t do enough in 2016, we’re doing more now, and we’d rather figure this out on our own than be told how to from you. The last point is by far the most contentious. Tech leaders have expressed a willingness to cooperate with Congress to craft oversight laws, but behind the scenes, their legal teams have lobbied strongly against them.Senate Intelligence members thankfully focused on some of the toughest issues facing tech platforms today. What constitutes acceptable speech? How can tech platforms better detect and react to falsified propaganda? Do their business models inherently incentivize unhealthy and even illegal behavior? How do tech platforms account for differences in laws and standards of free speech across all of the countries they operate in?
Most of these hard hitting questions were met with softball answers. Sandberg committed to continue making decisions that align with Facebook’s values, while Dorsey repeatedly accepted responsibility for past mistakes and often went the philosophical route when answering questions.
In the end, I’m not sure we learned a lot about what went wrong in 2016 and how we can prevent it from happening again. If the only result ends up being Twitter’s permanent ban on Alex Jones, then at least there’s that.
Here’s what else you should know…
“Justice Department warns tech companies as Facebook and Twitter defend themselves in Congress” by the Washington Post. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/09/05/justice-department-consider-allegations-censorship-facebook-twitter/?utm_term=.a1da0834a58a)
“First, Do No Harm” talk by Mariah Hay. (https://www.mindtheproduct.com/2018/09/first-do-no-harm-by-mariah-hay/)