Twitter’s chief executive Jack Dorsey will appear before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Sept. 5 to testify about the company’s algorithms that have repeatedly raised suspicions of judgment bias and stealth censorship.
The panel plans to grill Dorsey about “the complex processes behind the company's algorithms and content judgment calls,” and expects him to be “forthright and transparent” in his testimony, chairman Greg Walden said in a statement.
Citing the social media giant’s “incredibly powerful” ability to “change the national conversation,” the committee’s Republican head stated that Americans have a full right to raise concerns when “decisions about data and content are made using opaque processes.”
On the same day, Dorsey, along with Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, are scheduled to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee, to be once again questioned about alleged interference in the US elections, after their previous briefings failed to expose any significant ‘Russian meddling’ and were thus deemed “inadequate.”
Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle have been critical of Twitter and other tech companies, with the Democrats accusing social media platforms of not taking the ‘Russian meddling’ investigation seriously, while the Republicans are seeking to clarify whether their algorithms are biased against conservative views.
In a bid to reassure the US government, tech giants have rushed to clean their platforms of various undesirables and suspected “Russian bots” in particular, with legitimate users often falling victim to their crusade. Facebook, Google and Twitter have also cracked down on “hate speech” and “fake news,” with critics slamming it as a thinly veiled censorship of undesirable political views under the pretext of battling the Russians.
US President Donald Trump earlier on Friday personally criticized the tech companies for their alleged censorship. “Social Media Giants are silencing millions of people. Can’t do this even if it means we must continue to hear Fake News like CNN, whose ratings have suffered gravely. People have to figure out what is real, and what is not, without censorship!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
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