It was announced by the House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) that Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, will testify before the committee on the afternoon of September 5, 2018, which falls on Wednesday, after concerns raised by American Twitter users about Twitter’s content monitoring.
Chairman Walden stated that, “This committee intends to ask tough questions about how Twitter monitors and polices content, and we look forward to Mr. Dorsey being forthright and transparent regarding the complex processes behind the company’s algorithms and content judgement calls,” as Twitter is one of the most incredibly powerful social platforms that can “change the national conversation in the time it takes a tweet to go viral.” He does not approve the use of “opaque processes” while making decisions about data and content.
This year has also seen some Republican lawmakers grilling Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about his company’s “bias against conservatives.” President of the United States, Donald Trump, has additionally aggravated the Twitter bias situation with his comment on August 24 about Social Media Grants “silencing millions of people”. Trump added that Social Media Grants “can’t do this even if it means we must continue to hear Fake News like CNN, whose ratings have suffered gravely. People have to figure out what is real, and what is not, without censorship!”
The House committee threatening to subpoena Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in case he refused agreeing to give testimony by the end of the day, has drawn in criticisms that point at stifled conservative viewpoints. It is also known from a source that the House committee had offered Dorsey an alternative of appearing at hearing on a day during the week of September 24.
Dorsey is also scheduled to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on September 5 about Russian election interference.
Twitter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the CEO’s testimony.
