Social media giants Twitter, Facebook, and Google will once again face Congress tomorrow on Thursday in a hearing titled "Disinformation Nation: Social Media's Role in Promoting Extremism and Misinformation". The three CEO's, Google's Sundar Pichai; Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg; and Twitter's Jack Dorsey, will share prepared remarks on what their sites are doing to fact-check information and lessen the spread of extremism and misinformation.
The hearing comes as a direct result of the misinformation spread during the presidential race over ballot counting, as well as misinformation spread about the Coronavirus vaccine. One popular conspiracy theory spread on the socials, especially on Facebook and Twitter, was the theory that 5G caused the pandemic. Another states that the vaccine has a chip in it that will allow governments to control their residents. The hearing will also investigate the role social media sites played on the insurrection at the Capitol in January.
The sites claim that they have put regulations into place on their users to prevent the spread of misinformation. Zuckerberg, in a prepared statement, claimed that in the past months the site has erased the accounts of more than 1.3 billion users. The CEOs also have said that their sites employ fact checkers, and content with misinformation on it may be shown closer to the bottom of people's feeds.
Congress members are considering changing a law called Section 30, which shields platforms from liability for content posted by users.
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