Source: New York Times
WASHINGTON — For months, Facebook, Twitter and Google have grappled with criticism over the misuse of their services by foreign operatives and the disproportionate influence their platforms have over people’s thinking.
On Wednesday, when Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, and Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, will appear in Washington to testify on those issues, they plan to answer lawmakers’ questions using two main tactics: a conciliatory and apologetic approach, as well as a rundown of the growing number of efforts that the companies have taken to deal with manipulation and disinformation problems.
“We were too slow to spot this and too slow to act. That’s on us,” Ms. Sandberg said in prepared testimony that was reviewed by The New York Times. “We’re getting better at finding and combating our adversaries, from financially motivated troll farms to sophisticated military intelligence operations.”
In testimony that was posted online on Tuesday, Mr. Dorsey said, “Twitter is approaching these challenges with a simple question: How do we earn more trust from the people using our service? We know the way to earn more trust around how we make decisions on our platform is to be as transparent as possible.”
The two executives, who will be making their first appearances before Congress, are expected to face tough queries on Wednesday morning at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing about foreign manipulation of social media sites.
Mr. Dorsey will then appear alone in the afternoon at a House Energy and Commerce committee hearing about content moderation on the sites.The tech executives’ strategy of appeasing lawmakers will most likely meet resistance, as animus toward the companies has been whipped up further by President Trump, who has claimed that social media sites are deliberately suppressing some information. And with the midterm elections in November, Ms. Sandberg and Mr. Dorsey will be pushed to reveal whether the measures they have taken to prevent disinformation and manipulation are starting to work.
“This close to the election, the committee really wants the heaviest possible pressure on these companies to prevent a repeat of 2016,” said Paul Gallant, a tech policy analyst at Cowen and Co., referring to how Russia-backed operatives had used Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube to stir discord before the presidential election two years ago.
Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had also invited Larry Page, chief executive of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, to testify on Wednesday. But the company declined to send Mr. Page and instead submitted written testimony from Kent Walker, Google’s senior vice president for global affairs.
In a blog post on Tuesday, Mr. Walker tried to distinguish Google from Facebook and Twitter as less problematic and vulnerable to foreign meddling.
“While the nature of our services and the way we run our advertising operations appears to have limited the amount of state-sponsored interference on our platforms, no system is perfect — and we are committed to taking continuing action to address the issue,” Mr. Walker wrote in the post.
The appearances of Ms. Sandberg and Mr. Dorsey in…
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