The role of social networks in US elections continues to be scrutinized by the US Senate. After Mark Zuckerberg, now Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, and Sheryl Sandberg, number two at Facebook, were heard on September 5th regarding the foreign interference on these social networks in the perspective of the US elections.
“We are not proud,” said Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO. “We were not prepared and equipped for the immensity of the problems we discovered,” he added.
“We hope you can help us better understand how Twitter decides when to suspend or ban a user from the service, and what you do to ensure that such decisions are made without undue bias,” said Greg Walden, the President of the Commission, at the opening ceremony.
According to Jack Dorsey, Twitter failed to fight “abuse, harassment, troll armies, and bots propaganda.”
“We have been too slow to act,” also said Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook.
Facebook and Twitter reassured the US Senate that the measures against fake news and false accounts are still in place
In short, thousands of fake accounts leading hostile campaigns against Hillary Clinton had suddenly been shut down on Twitter and Facebook. That raised questions about Russia’s role in this matter, while, on the other side, Russia categorically denies this accusation.
Additionally, the US President Donald Trump blames Twitter and Facebook for ejecting conservative media from the social network, media that would be favorable to him.
“We do not take into account political views or party affiliation in the application of our policies and procedures,” said Jack Dorsey. “Impartiality is our guiding principle,” he added.
The renowned conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who was recently banned on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, came before the US Senate to express his dissatisfaction on this matter.
This hearing comes in the view of the mid-term elections scheduled for next November, while Facebook and Twitter wanted to reassure us that thousands of foreign accounts broadcasting fake news were reportedly deleted from these platforms.
