Congress set to grill Facebook, Google and Twitter CEOs on extremist content, misinformation

SALT LAKE CITY — Less than 48 hours after Utah Gov. Spencer Cox vetoed a controversial bill aiming to impose new moderation regulations on social media platforms, a U.S. House joint committee will take up some of the same issues in a Thursday hearing that will include the CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter. While all three companies say they are continuing to ramp up efforts to fairly and appropriately apply content moderation/take down rules, the chairman of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. D-N.J., described those efforts as merely reactions to social and political pressures and, furthermore, said they are failing to effectively staunch the flow of misinformation and extremist postings. The hearing, “Disinformation Nation: Social Media’s Role in Promoting Extremism and Misinformation,” will include testimony from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. The House Energy and Commerce Committee will be joined by members of two House subcommittees for questions and discussion. In a memo released earlier this week, Pallone wrote that these U.S. tech behemoths are motivated to allow the posting, sharing and distribution of controversial content because it gets the most attention from users and,…
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