Facebook and Twitter executives are testifying in attempt to assure lawmakers they will protect midterm elections from foreign interference

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Executives from Facebook and Twitter testified before Congress on Wednesday in their latest attempt to assure lawmakers that they are capable of protecting November’s midterm elections from foreign interference – but the loudest message may have come from Google, which was represented by an empty chair.

“The era of the wild west in social media is coming to an end,” warned Senator Mark Warner, the vice-chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, in his opening remarks on Wednesday morning. “Where we go from here now is an open question.”

Warner, a Democrat, said the tech companies were not doing enough to stop the flow of foreign influence and threatened congressional action.

Social media stocks fell after his remarks, with Twitter down 5.7% and Facebook around 1.8% lower. Shares of Alphabet Inc, the parent of Google, sank 2.7%.

The hearing was the fourth in a series examining how social media platforms have evolved from fun time-wasters into what the committee chair, Republican senator Richard Burr, called “a threat to our democracy”.

“Unfortunately, what I described as a ‘national security vulnerability,’ and ‘unacceptable risk’, back in November remains unaddressed,” Burr said.

“Clearly this problem is not going away; I’m not even sure it’s trending in the right direction,” Burr said of the threat to US elections from foreign influence operations on social media platforms.

Some Republicans, including Donald Trump, have recently also charged social media companies with bias against him and other conservative voices.

Following the morning hearing, the US Justice Department issued a statement saying it had met with state attorneys general to discuss concerns that social media platforms were "intentionally stifling the free exchange of ideas."

"The attorney general has convened a meeting with a number of state attorneys general this month to discuss a growing concern that these companies may be hurting competition and intentionally stifling the free exchange of ideas on their platforms," spokesman Devin O'Malley said in a statement.

Though the morning hearing centred on foreign interference, Jack Dorsey, chief executive of Twitter, was also expected to appear before an afternoon hearing in the House of Representatives looking at the allegations of bias.

“What happened in the 2016 election cycle was unacceptable,” said Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, in prepared remarks in the morning. “We were too slow to spot this and too slow to act. That’s on us … We are learning from what happened, and we are improving.”

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Sandberg said Facebook had “removed hundreds of pages and accounts involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior – meaning they misled others about who they were and what they were doing”.

Dorsey also acknowledged his company’s past failures. “Abuse, harassment, troll armies, propaganda through bots and human coordination, misinformation campaigns, and divisive filter bubbles – that‘s not a healthy public square,” he said in opening remarks. “We acknowledge the real-world negative consequences of what happened, and we take full responsibility to fix it.”

Dorsey insisted Twitter's monitoring has tightened, including notifying law enforcement last month of accounts that appeared to be located in Iran.

Google, which declined to send its CEO, Sundar Pichai, or co-founder and Alphabet CEO, Larry Page, was notably absent, an empty chair and nameplate providing a constant visual reminder of the snub. The company sought to send its senior vice-president for global affairs, Kent Walker, but was rebuffed.

“I’m deeply disappointed that Google – one of the most influential digital platforms in the world – chose not to send its own top corporate leadership to engage this committee,” said Warner. “Given its size and influence, I would have thought the leadership at Google would want to demonstrate how seriously it takes these challenges and to actually take a leadership role in this important public discussion.”

Google did publish “testimony” online, where Walker wrote that the company is “committed to working with Congress on these issues”.

The morning hearing before the Senate intelligence committee is the latest in a series of efforts by lawmakers to rebalance the scales of power between Washington DC and Silicon Valley. Lawyers for Facebook, Google and Twitter were grilled by senators over the course of two days last October, after the extent of the Russian social media influence operation was revealed. And Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, ran the gauntlet of the House and Senate in April, following the revelations of the Cambridge Analytica data harvesting operation.

At the time, several senators expressed dismay that the companies had dispatched legal counsels rather than chief executives.

Warner said social media companies were doing better at combating disinformation, but their efforts were insufficient.

“I'm skeptical that, ultimately, you'll be able to truly address this challenge on your own. Congress is going to have to take action here,” Warner said.

Before the hearing, Donald Trump, without offering evidence, accused the companies themselves of interfering in the upcoming US midterm elections, telling the Daily Caller that social media firms are “super liberal.”

Trump told the conservative outlet in an interview conducted on Tuesday that “I think they already have” interfered in the 6 November election. The report gave no other details.

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones held a press conference outside the Senate hearing room as the testimony began to criticize the social media companies for banning him and his website Infowars from their platforms.

Executives from the companies, which have repeatedly denied political bias, have traveled to Washington several times to testify in Congress, including 10 hours of questioning of Facebook’s Zuckerberg over two days in April.

The Senate intelligence committee has been looking into Russian efforts to influence US public opinion throughout Trump's presidency, after US intelligence agencies concluded that Kremlin-backed entities sought to boost his chances of winning the White House in 2016.

Moscow denies involvement, and Trump – backed by some of his fellow Republicans in Congress – has repeatedly dismissed investigations of the issue as a partisan witch-hunt or hoax.

Reuters contributed to this report