On October 28, 2020 Jack Dorsey of Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Sundar Pichai of Google testified before the Senate's Commerce Committee. Republicans called this hearing to question the CEOs about political bias on the internet. Senator Ron Johnson asked the three CEOs if their employees lean to the left. Jack Dorsey and Sundar Pichai could not answer the question, although Pichai had said in his opening statement, “Let me be clear: We approach our work without political bias, full stop.” Mark Zuckerberg admitted that his employees do “skew” to the left. Does this bias influence what is allowed on the internet?
The three CEOs contend that they do not censor information. They do, however, "moderate content." Facebook has 35,000 content "moderators" and Google has 10,000. Jack Dorsey has no idea how many “moderators” he employs. One item “moderated” by Twitter and Facebook was an article in the New York Post about information on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Senate Wicker stated, "twitter blocked all users including the House Judiciary Committee from sharing the article." Zuckerberg claimed mention of the article was “moderated” because the FBI had warned Facebook about possible Russian hacks. The President was also censored. Senator Blackburn stated that twitter never banned Biden but banned the President 65 times. Dorsey claimed, “We haven’t censored the U.S. President.” She replied, “Oh yes you have.”
Rachel Lerman of the Washington Post reported, “President Trump has repeatedly broken the rules with tweets about the election and the pandemic. Twitter has at times labeled those posts or even shielded them from view with a gray box and prevented them from being retweeted.” Senator Mike Lee asked each CEO if they could name one prominent individual or institution from a liberal ideology that they had banned. He did not allow them to avoid the question. They could not. Sundar Pichai gave an obscure example.
Does the “moderation” of information have an effect on elections? Senator Ron Johnson was ridiculed for using a satirical example to illustrate bias in Twitter's policy. The Tweet read, "Senator Ron Johnson is my neighbor and strangled our dog, Buttons, right in front of my 4 yr old son and 3 yr old daughter. The police refuse to investigate. This is a complete lie but important to retweet and note that there are more lies to come." Senator Johnson contacted Twitter and requested the Tweet be removed. They responded, "Thanks for reaching out. We escalated this to our support team for their review and they have determined that this is not a violation of our policies." Senator Johnson may be overly sensitive about this tweet. It was humorous. But he has a legitimate complaint. It quite likely will have a small impact on his reelection. A critic might respond, "No one is that stupid." We all remember when Sarah Palin said, “I can see Russia from my house!” Snopes claims it is "the quotes most strongly associated with former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin." Palin never made the remark. It was made by Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live.
Senator Cruz asked, "Mr. Dorsey, does Twitter have the ability to influence elections?" Dorsey responded with a decisive, "No." Either Dorsey is lying, or he is incredibly dense. All means of information transmission impact the way people think, and therefore can influence elections. Former publisher of The New York Times Arthur Hays Sulzberger said, "A man's judgment cannot be better than the information on which he has based it" Of course all of this “moderation” is designed to protect us. There is a large amount of hate speech and misinformation on the internet. So many of us are just not intelligent enough to separate truth from fiction. They are compelled to help us. A problem arises with the people selected to provide this help. Former East German Stasi agent Anetta Kahane is providing guidance on immigration policy. A Google engineer mentioned by Senator Blackburn, Blake Lemoine, has written, “Some people are toxic and need to be cleared away so that our civilization can function properly.” These CEOs are soft-spoken. They give the appearance of trying to be objective, transparent, and reasonable. Yet the people they hire are working to install the Deep State. Their tranquil appearance is a technique used most effectively by Dorsey. The Washington Post was able to report, "Dorsey maintained a calm demeanor as Cruz became increasingly agitated. Senator Cruz is portrayed as the radical.
These internet companies are privately owned. They can censor whatever they want. They can also broadcast whatever they want. People should be able to deny the holocaust, claim the earth is flat and say the moon is made of cheese. It is up to the recipient to determine the validity of the claim. If a news source makes enough absurd claims it will cease to be listened to. When a company fails to satisfy its customers in a market economy it encourages competition. There has been significant growth in alternative internet sites in the last few years. This is due in large part because these companies are not serving the public.
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