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Version 6 Version 7
Twitter's Jack Dorsey faces more questions as Google snubs Congress – live Twitter's Jack Dorsey faces more questions as Google snubs Congress – live
(35 minutes later)
Ben Lujan: During the purge of bots, who lost more followers, Trump or Obama?
Dorsey: I don’t know.
Lujan is jocularly asking whether there is a conspiracy against Obama because he lost more bot followers than Trump.
Dorsey is just playing it straight.
Olson asks if Twitter prioritizes emergency outreach, referencing Hurricane Harvey.
Dorsey says that Twitter does prioritize emergency response, says that when 911 failed, people were able to use Twitter to ask for rescue.
Pete Olson of Texas is asking about the political bias of the Trust and Safety council.
Dorsey points out that the council is just advisory.
Peter Welch of Vermont complains about having a hearing to deal with Trump’s specious allegations of anti-conservative bias.
Welch moves on to questions of privacy, hate speech, and abuse: Bottom line, do you believe that this should be something that should be decided company by company, or should we have rules of the road that are moderated by elected officials?
Dorsey: We don’t want to compete on this. Independent of what the government things we should do, we are going to continue to do this work, and share our approach. This is not an area for us to compete.
Part of what is frustrating about this hearing is that the constant refrain from Republicans about anti-conservative bias simply muddies the water about real algorithmic bias.
And we’re back. Next up is Leonard Lance, who again wants to discuss the Meghan McCain tweet.
Lance: I think it’s the unanimous view of this committee is that 5 hours is intolerable.
We’re on a five minute recess.
One of the silly things about this hearing is that, in order to show that they are focused on “serious” issues instead of the imaginary shadowbanning problem that the Republicans are harping on, Democrats keep bringing up serious issues that aren’t actually that serious on Twitter, like data privacy, discriminatory advertising or foreign interference in elections.
Those are certainly important issues, but they are primarily issues with Facebook, which was not asked to appear at this hearing. Twitter is a comparatively tiny platform (300m users versus more than 2 billion) that holds an outsize importance in the minds of politicians and journalists. And the platform’s problems are much different – and arguably less insidious – than those of Facebook.
Gregg Harper also wants to talk about the number of Republican and the number of Democrats who were “shadowbanned”.
I wrote about the particular blindness that affects American politicians who insist on thinking that tech algorithms are biased in partisan ways here.
Sarbones says he will submit questions for Dorsey in writing while he uses his time to discuss Republican intransigence about investigating the Trump administration.Sarbones says he will submit questions for Dorsey in writing while he uses his time to discuss Republican intransigence about investigating the Trump administration.
John Sarbones of Maryland says he is worried that this hearing is the result of Republicans “working the refs”.
Cathy McMorris Rodgers is again raising the issue of the offensive tweet about Meghan McCain.
Dorsey says, as he said before, that the tweet violated standards and should have been taken down early. He also reiterates that Twitter is trying to take burden of reporting abuse off the person who receives the abuse.
Kathy Castor raises the issue of the Justice Departmeent apparently investigating bias, and suggests that Republicans are running their own “influence” campaign to spread the idea of conservative bias.
Dorsey: People do see us as a digital public square and that comes with very serious obligations.
Castor praises Dorsey for being diplomatic in his answer.
Robert Latta asks if there is political bias in verification.
Dorsey: The program is paused, but we make exceptions for government figures, brands, and public figures.
Engel: Are you aware of current foreign interference operations related to the midterms?
Dorsey: None that we haven’t already reported.
Per Sheera Frenkel of the New York Times, the woman who was shouting was alt-right activist Laura Loomer.
Lara Loomer is interrupting the House Energy and Commerce Committee meeting. She is being removed while Rep Billy Long does an absolutely perfect imitation of an auctioneer. Whole room busts out laughing.
Eliot Engel of New York asks about the recent news about an Iranian influence operation, asks whether it’s concerning that a third-party identified it first.
Someone in the audience is shouting. Someone with a microphone is pretending to do an auction, I think to drown her out...
Scalise is back on shadowbanning now. This is going to be a long afternoon of Republicans stating with no evidence that the “shadowbanning” issue was the result of bias against conservatives.
There is very little listening going on at this hearing.
Steve Scalise of Louisiana: What we’re concerned about is how Twitter has in some ways selectively adversely affected conservatives.
Scalise alleges that Twitter banned a Marsha Blackburn ad about the alleged “sale of body parts”.
Dorsey: This was a mistake and we do apologize.
Scalise wants to know if someone was held accountable. This is like a weird customer support call.