Ted Cruz To Twitter: "Who The Hell Elected You?"

The Wall Street Journal 10/29/20

Chiefs of the largest social-media companies tangled with U.S. senators over their role in public discourse amid a contentious election that has stoked bipartisan criticism of the companies’ policies, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter Inc. CEO Jack Dorsey and Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and YouTube owner Alphabet Inc., have spent the years since the 2016 election rewriting their policies and taking a more active role in moderating online speech—in part to avoid a spotlight like the one placed on them Wednesday.

Instead, the Senate Commerce Committee hearing reflected deep discontent with social-media platforms’ power and equally deep divisions about how to address it.

Republicans are pushing to update part of a 1996 law known as Section 230 that helps shield internet platforms from liability for user-generated content, claiming it has been misused to censor conservative views.

Sen. Cory Gardner (R., Colo.) questioned Twitter’s decisions to label some posts by President Trump as misleading but not others by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei threatening Israel and denying the Holocaust. “I just don’t understand how Twitter can claim to want a world of less hate and misinformation while you simultaneously let the kind of content that the ayatollah has tweeted out to flourish,” he said.

In a series of testy exchanges with senators over the nearly four-hour hearing, which was conducted via webcast, the CEOs expressed varying degrees of openness toward changing Section 230 but denied any political bias.

 Dorsey faced perhaps the harshest questions, including about Twitter’s decision to block users from linking to recent New York Post articles concerning allegations against Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, which his campaign has denied.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Tex.) accused Twitter of acting as a “Democratic super PAC” when it decided to block tweets of the articles, including by the Post.

“Who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report?” Mr. Cruz asked.

“I hear the concerns and acknowledge them,” Mr. Dorsey said, but he denied Twitter was favoring Democratic causes.