US Congress summons Google, Facebook and Twitter leaders

The US Congress is going to hear the top leaders of Facebook, Google and Twitter about the presence of fake news and disinformation on social media platforms.

Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Sundar Pichai (Google) and Jack Dorsey (Twitter) have agreed to testify before two congressional committees on March 25.

“Whether untruths about the Covid-19 vaccine or false claims of election fraud, these online platforms have allowed misinformation to spread, exacerbating national crises with real, grim public health and safety implications,” the heads of the committees stated in a statement about the hearing.

Abuse of dominant position

Zuckerberg, Pichai, and Dorsey have testified before Congress before, when a House of Representatives committee concluded that Facebook, Apple, Google, and Amazon are widely abusing their dominant position in the online services market.

Among other things, it was proposed to make it possible to prohibit the tech giants from operating in certain overlapping markets.

Election

Social media companies have been under attack for a long time because of political disinformation and manipulation, which according to experts is rampant on the platforms, especially during election time.

Facebook announced on Thursday that it will do more to curb misinformation about climate change. For example, the tech giant says it’s working with experts from various American universities to disprove “climate myths.”

Also, CEO Zuckerberg said earlier that Facebook “wants to lower” the temperature on its platform by better fending off inflammatory political messages.