The talk about excessive censorship employed by social media platforms has been loud recently. The discussion surrounding this particular issue is so heated that the Senate has decided to organize a hearing on April 10th, 2019, at 2.30pm where tech giants will describe how they approach speech policing.
Watch it live here.
Facebook’s representative is already known. The biggest social network in the world will be represented by Neil Potts, the public policy director at Facebook. Twitter and Google will announce their representatives soon.
It is expected that representatives of the social media platforms will face some serious questions. The panel will be conducted by Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas known for his criticism of speech policies implemented by Twitter and Facebook. In fact, he once said that “big tech behaves like the only acceptable views are those on the far left.”
The Republicans are not pleased with Twitter. Devin Nunes filed a lawsuit against the social media platform over excessive censorship.
Shadowbanning is something that the right is more than familiar with. Speech-policing practices employed by Twitter and Facebook were heavily discussed by different public personalities and politicians whose political views are mostly centric or right.
Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, appeared on Joe Rogan podcast twice and tried to explain their policies. However, despite his vague explanations, the public was not satisfied. During these podcasts, Mr. Dorsey confirmed that Twitter is biased towards the left and far-left opinions but mostly due to algorithms and how they evaluate content.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, also testified in front of the Senate about a year ago. He admitted that the vast majority of his employees are probably left or far-left. He also mentioned that Facebook’s speech policies were implemented hastily and without sufficient research.
It is hard to deny that Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube look more and more like public platforms rather than “publishers” who can censor content however they want.
