The CEOs of big tech companies Google, Facebook and Twitter have agreed to give testimony in front of Senate Commerce Committee on Oct. 28. As reported by Politico, this will be the second time this year that top tech executives testify before Congress.
The first of which was set to take place at the end of July but a number of hold-ups pushed it back somewhat. These testimonies also included those of Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos. This took some time to secure as he was initially reticent.
Many reports have expressed concerned that this newest hearing will take place less than a week before the U.S. election. However, the Senate Committee has decided to push through with this decision to hear from the CEOs.
Big Tech CEOs to give testimony in front of Congress again
Watching big tech CEOs give testimony in front of the Senate and get grilled once more is probably high on some people’s wishlists. Given it will likely be live-streamed in some way these people will probably get their wishes.
It is likely that we will learn more about how these big companies intend to operate following this hearing. This all comes after we heard in the initial hearing how the laws allowed these companies to grow to such great sizes.
This hearing will focus on the liability protections of Section 230, data privacy, and media consolidation, as reported by The Verge.
Section 230 gives internet companies immunity from lawsuits over user posts as well as broad leeway to moderate content. Naturally, this has caused controversy and a desire to make a change.
Section 230 has been legislation that politicians have wanted to change for some time now. For example, Sen. Lindsay Graham recently introduced a bill to amend it but it stalled out in the end.
Republicans and Democrats both have issues with the way social media companies are behaving. However, they appear to have different goals and desires in what they want to change.
The Republicans wish to narrow the protections that these companies currently receive. Whilst the Democrats want a complete overhaul of these liabilities over concerns these companies have not done enough to tackle misinformation and hate speech.
Facebook, Twitter and Google’s CEOs have all agreed to give testimony just one day after the committee voted to issue subpoenas to them.
This hearing has the potential to be very exciting on a number of levels. Watching these CEOs get grilled is always entertaining and expect no less this time.