Twitter, Facebook prepare for congressional testimony

Twitter’s CEO says the company is not biased against Republicans or Democrats and is working to ensure healthier debate.

In testimony released ahead of a House hearing Wednesday, Jack Dorsey says he wants to be clear about one thing: “Twitter does not use political ideology to make any decisions, whether related to ranking content on our service or how we enforce our rules.”

Some Republicans say conservatives have been censored on social media and have questioned the platform’s algorithms. Dorsey will testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday afternoon on that subject, following a morning hearing before the Senate intelligence committee on foreign interference in social media.

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At the Senate hearing, Twitter and Facebook plan to outline ways they are working to root out foreign actors who want to influence U.S. elections. Lawmakers are especially concerned about the midterm elections after Russia used social media accounts to try to influence the 2016 election.

Dorsey offers an explanation of how his San Francisco company uses “behavioral signals,” such as the way accounts interact and behave on the service. Those signals can help weed out spam and abuse.

He says such behavioral analysis “does not consider in any way” political views or ideology.

He says Twitter has suspended 3,843 accounts that may be linked to a Russian internet agency that was indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller in an elaborate plot by Russians to disrupt the 2016 presidential election.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s No. 2 executive, is also planning to detail efforts to take down material linked to the Russian agency, including the removal of 270 Facebook pages designed to reach Russian speakers around the world. Sandberg says in testimony prepared for the Senate panel that the Menlo Park company’s overall understanding of the Russian activity in 2016 is still limited “because we do not have access to the information or investigative tools” that the federal government has.

“This is an arms race, and that means we need to be ever more vigilant,” Sandberg’s testimony says.

There is expected to be an empty seat at the Senate intelligence panel’s witness table reserved for Larry Page, the CEO of Google’s parent company, Alphabet. The company declined to send Page and offered another executive instead; the committee said no.

Mary Clare Jalonick and Barbara Ortutay are Associated Press writers.