Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, is set to testify in front of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce tomorrow in Washington DC, along with Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg. Today, the House of Representatives released Dorsey’s prepared statements that he will be reading tomorrow once the testimony gets started. Dorsey states in the prepared remarks that Twitter does not “use political ideology to make any decisions”, referring to how it decides which content should be removed from its site.
Dorsey also states that “we believe strongly in being impartial, and we strive to enforce our rules impartially. In fact, from a simple business perspective and to serve the public conversation, Twitter is incentivized to keep all voices on the platform.” The testimony is going to be in regards to how Twitter is working to fight fake news and misinformation, as well as how it is working to keep foreign powers from influencing the mid-terms which are happening in November. This is why the House Committee on Energy and Commerce are bringing in officials from Google, Facebook and Twitter this week. Of course, Twitter is going to have more to answer to than the other two, especially after how it handled Alex Jones from InfoWars. While every other platform banned him almost instantly, Twitter did not, and then finally caved into a two-week suspension of his account.
Since inviting these three companies to come testify before the committee, all three have been accused of bias, especially in terms of what news is shown about the Trump Administration. While Trump has been going after Google primarily, it also affects Facebook and Twitter as well. This is because these companies have been suppressing coverage on Trump, and he has even shown proof, comparing Obama’s State of the Union speeches with his own from earlier this year. Showing that his was not even on the first page of search results, compared to Obama’s being at the top. So it’s going to be an interesting week for the three companies in Washington, DC., and it may result in more regulation for these social media companies.