Thread by @MMineiro_CNS

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey are set to testify virtually at the top of the hour to the Senate Judiciary Committee about online misinformation and the 2020 election. Follow for live updates. @CourthouseNews

Sen Chuck Grassley, 87, who sits on the committee (also serves as Senate president pro tempore) announced just this morning that he tested positive for COVID-19 and will be working remotely from home.

Chairman Lindsey Graham will appear in person today, but has given other senators the option to question the tech CEOs remotely or in person.

Today's hearing will start with opening statements followed by rounds of questioning, 7 mins per senator.

Sen Richard Blumenthal, who has often participated in SJC hearings in person in recent months, is calling in by videoconference from his office.

May be because of Grassley's positive covid test, likely Blumenthal will share why he's remote.

Graham opens up saying the Senate is looking at whether Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, giving social media sites wide legal immunity, needs to be modified or changed.

Graham: “You can sue the person who gave the tweet, but you can’t sue Twitter, who gave that person access to the world."

Graham saying Twitter and Facebook by taking down articles and flagging posts as "disputed" -- including those about election fraud -- gives them the final editorial call.

Graham says the social media platforms need "help" from the government.

Graham: "I don't want the government to take over the job of telling America what tweets are legitimate and what are not. I don't want the government deciding what content to take up and put down."

"Change is gonna come," Graham says about Section 230.

Blumenthal up now says Trump is posting new threats and conspiracy theories everyday on election fraud that contradict his own lawyers.

Blumenthal: “[Trump] uses this megaphone potentially to block a peaceful transition of power."

Blumenthal says there was election censorship on both sides during the campaign, citing Biden ads taken down in Michigan and ACLU ads taken down in Colorado.

DORSEY up now says that during the election Twitter focused on addressing misleading information that undermines confidence in the election and causes voter intimidation, suppression or confusion.

DORSEY says Twitter labeled 300K tweets from Oct 27-Nov 11, equivalent to 0.2% of all US election related tweets.

ZUCKERBERG said he's proud of FB's performance in the 2020 election, estimates the company helped 4.5M Americans register to vote, adds he and his wife donated $400M to help election officials set up for safe voting during the pandemic.

ZUCKERBERG says FB partnered with Reuters, AP, USA Today and other reputable factchecking websites to provide reliable election information.

ZUCKERBERG asked why Steve Bannon's FB account was not shut down after he called for Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Wray to be beheaded and their heads put on pikes outside the White House, said that account removals on first strikes...

happen for content like child exploitation and terrorism but that Bannon's post didn't meet FB's policies for taking the account down.

Twitter did remove Bannon's account.

DORSEY, asked about the NY Post article on Hunter Biden, said Twitter did not want to be a distribution point for hacked materials, but admitted taking down the article was a mistake that the platform corrected within 24 hours.

Asked by FEINSTEIN if Twitter's labels were strong enough to counter misinformation in Trump's tweets claiming election fraud and premature victory, DORSEY said: “We want to provide context here. That is our goal.”

Both ZUCKERBERG and DORSEY admitting mistakes were made in some cases of election content monitoring.

Sen Mike Lee's response is that censoring of conservative content is more prevalent because the platforms' employees lean politically left.

LEE: “Those mistakes sure happen a whole lot more on one side of the political spectrum than the other."

CRUZ: "Your policies are applied in a partisan and selective manner."

Sen Ted Cruz drilling DORSEY on the NY Post Hunter Biden article asks why the platform didn't block NY Times story on Trump’s tax returns.

DORSEY: “In the NY Times case we interpreted it as reporting about the hacked materials, not the distribution of them."

ZUCKERBERG says hate speech is "an issue of the highest severity" and that FB is very focused on it.

DORSEY reminds senators a lot of content moderating decisions are made by algorithms, not humans, adding "that is the conversation that we should be focused on."

Note that in the flurry before this morning's hearing I read Grassley's statement too quickly.

But he has now confirmed he has covid:

https://twitter.com/GrassleyPress/status/1328832839153037312?s=20