Fb, Twitter, Google in front of the Senate

People Involved

Fb general attorney, incredible ethos raising apology
twitter didnt sound as good, nor did google sound as good as fb. fb voice itself was strong and bullish.
without seeing his face i assumed the general council for fb was younger than he is
mr. whitehouse: “i gather that you companies have gone beyond the idea that your companies provide a platform and anything beyond that, which comes across that platform is not your affair?”

fb: “senator our commitment to addressing this problem is unwavering. we take this very seriously and are comitted to investing as necesary to prevent this from happening again.”

fb, responding to a question, and as a general theme in the first 1 hour 7 minutes and 51 seconds of this hearing, is talking a lot about values. What is values-based rhetoric?
one senator wanted to pin the pelt of fb council to the wall, not accepting his talk about commitments
fb, twitter, google, all purport that their ads can be self regulated, i.e. not subject to oversight
Mr. Cruz narrates about the liberal bias of google, facebook, and twitter. Then asks, “so do you believe your platform is a neutral public forum.” “how do you respond to accusations you’re putting your thumb on the political scale?”

fb: “we train our people to protect against biases”
tw: ~our goal and one of the fundamental principles of the company is fairness..~ [not sure i got that right]

A senator brings up the example of Donald Trump Jr. re-tweeting a proven fake article put out by the Russian Internet Research Institute, even the President
A Senator shows an image of Aziz Ansari holding a “vote online” poster. The lawyer from twitter admitted it was voter suppression.
A senator asks “Do you know who helped the Internet Research Agency in doing this targeting?”

fb: “we’re not able to see behind the accounts, all we are able to see is the activity that is on our platform” “so it could have been a political campaign that provided this information about targeting”
fb: “As I said, All we can see is the activity on our platform. All we esentially get is the targeting information, which we’ve provided to the committee.”
^ he doesn’t say “yes its possible.” He is arguing on fact. And re-asserting the fact.

Franken “how could you not connect that american political ads paid for in russian rubles were coming from russia?”

Franken is entertaining, yet not persuasive - he’s too simple
fb: “we should have had a broader lens”
Franken: “you have all the knowledge of the world”
fb: “Senator we should have been alert to this. In hindsight its one we missed.”
Franken (exasperated): “will you pledge not to accept politcal ads with yuan.”

fb has 150 people. twitter: “large team, 100s of people. we’re at a different scale than fb and google, obviously” Google has “1000s of pepole working on these issues”
mr. whitehouse makes an argument of relevance, citing a VICE news report where an advertiser spent very little money to get tremendous reach on facebook. “does that mean it is not particularly relevant that a small dollar amount was spent on political ads with respect to the potential damage it can have”

fb: “we’re trying to find facts. we leave it to your investigation to learn more.” END analysis at 2:19:45