Republicans lashed out at Twitter during a Senate hearing



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Along with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Dorsey was summoned to a hearing, originally to answer questions related to a law that, in fact, deprives them of responsibility for what users share on. their platforms.

With the US elections just a week away, the tech giants are accused, among other things, of spreading fake news and propaganda from anonymous actors.

When they tag or remove content, they are also exposed to charges of politically motivated censorship, including from President Donald Trump and Republicans who accuse them of being left-wing.

Democrats, for their part, are demanding that they do more to prevent the spread of misinformation and crazy conspiracy theories.

Powerful judges

“My concern is that these platforms have become powerful judges of what is true and what content users should have access to,” said Senate Commerce Committee Chairman, Republican Roger Wicker, during the video broadcast hearing. Wednesday.

According to Wicker, there are “dozens of examples of censorship of conservative content,” and he demanded responses to the criteria on which the tagging or removal of content is based.

“Your platforms give foreign dictators the opportunity to spread propaganda without restrictions, while you impose restrictions on the president of the United States,” Wicker said.

Furious cross

Republican Ted Cruz became very angry during the hearing and made several outbursts against the Twitter boss.

“Who the hell chose you, Mr. Dorsey, and gave you the authority to decide what the media can report and the American people have the right to hear?” Cried Cruz during one of the outcomes.

He referred, among other things, to Twitter’s decision to restrict access to a controversial New York Post article, in which the son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is accused of corruption. There are serious doubts about the content of the article, which, among other things, the Wall Street Journal decided not to look up.

Dorsey said it was wrong to block the link to the newspaper article and therefore the decision was reversed.

– We realize that we have to work harder to gain trust, he said.

Google criticism

Cruz also harshly criticized Google during the hearing, accusing the search engine company of “manipulating search results to influence and change election results.”

Trump also launched into Wednesday’s debate with one Twitter message where he just accused Twitter of covering up what he calls the corruption of Joe Biden.

“This is the biggest and most credible story of all in the world,” Trump said.



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