The CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, and Google namely Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and Sundar Pichai will testify before the US Congress on October 28. The hearing is said to be related to the proposed amendments to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of the United States, 1996. The announcement was made a day after the Senate committee unanimously voted to approve the plan to subpoena the three CEOs before the panel. The CEOs will appear virtually.
Section 230 protects the social media platforms from the lawsuits over the user post made in their platforms. In addition to the discussion about the amendment, the hearing is to discuss consumer privacy and media consolidation. The US Justice Department revealed its proposal to remove protections for online platforms last week. It was alleged that Twitter starts to fact-check the US president Trump tweets in may and is the root cause of this amendment. Twitter responded, “Jack has voluntarily agreed to testify virtually before the Senate Commerce Committee on October 28 – less than a week before the US Presidential Elections”. They added twitter has “made its views clear on reactionary and politicized attempts to erode Section 230. The Amendments threaten the future of online speech and Internet freedoms”.
.@Jack has voluntarily agreed to testify virtually before the @SenateCommerce Committee on October 28 — less than a week before the US Presidential Election. It must be constructive & focused on what matters most to the American people: how we work together to protect elections
— Twitter Public Policy (@Policy) October 2, 2020
Alleged ‘political bias’ remains an unsubstantiated allegation that we have refuted on many occasions to Congress. It has also been widely disproven by independent research. We do not enforce our policies on the basis of political ideology. https://t.co/w8yrTI9V4u
— Twitter Public Policy (@Policy) October 2, 2020
In July, both Facebook CEO and GOOGLE CEO had testified earlier before the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel along with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Apple CEO Tim Cook.
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