Facebook’s Sandberg and Twitter’s Dorsey defend their companies at Senate Intelligence Hearing

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee this morning to defend each of their companies in what is now the fourth hearing on social media that pertains to Russian interference in U.S. elections, propaganda, and fake accounts.

This hearing marked the first time both Sandberg and Dorsey testified before Congress, and each of them had their own unique style when it came to answering the committee’s questions. Sandberg looked toward the future of Facebook, focusing on how the company is proactively dealing with the issues of foreign influence and the spread of misinformation on its platform. Sandberg also addressed Facebook’s missteps but stressed, “we are more determined than our opponents and we will keep fighting.”

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who in his opening statement admitted to breaking out of his usually shy persona to speak on these important issues, on the other hand, was very apologetic for Twitter’s role in U.S. election meddling and fake news. “We found ourselves unprepared and ill-equipped for the immensity of the problems we’ve acknowledged. Abuse, harassment, troll armies, propaganda through bots and human coordination, disinformation campaigns and divisive filter bubbles. That’s not a healthy public square,” said Dorsey.

Sandberg and Dorsey both faced questions concerning how their respective companies were combating Russian interference and disinformation campaigns. In discussing how the problem is spreading beyond just Russia, the recent news of Iranian foreign agents running inauthentic accounts on platforms like Facebook came up. Sandberg was also faced with the issue detailed by the U.N. regarding Facebook’s role in the spread of hate speech and fake news which fueled violence and genocide against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. 

An interesting point was made by Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) regarding how even when companies like Facebook and Twitter take action and suspend malicious accounts, users who followed the accounts or consumed its content are met with a generic page simply stating an account was suspended. A user has no idea if they were duped by a foreign agent or a bot or a legitimate user who broke the platform’s rules.

“Are you willing to archive suspended accounts?” asked Senator Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), citing the importance of this data being used by third parties to analyze the spread of information and how misinformation spreads. “We are looking at things like a transparency report…around suspensions of any account,” said Twitter CEO Dorsey, noting the company would need to look into the legal implications of archiving actual specific accounts and making those accessible. 

Sandberg and Dorsey were also taken to task over the lack of user notification from Facebook and Twitter when someone is being targeted by foreign disinformation campaigns. Sandberg did point out that “if you’re an authentic account who RSVP’d to an inauthentic account,” that’s a case in which Facebook would already let you know.

“Our focus is inauthenticity,” replied Sandberg when asked if Facebook differentiates between foreign or domestic influence. When asked to approximate just how many Facebook accounts are ‘inauthentic,’ Sandberg replied between 3 and 4 percent. At Facebook’s reported 2.23 billion active users, that would mean somewhere between 66,900,000 and 89,200,000 are inauthentic.

When it came to actual accounts spreading conspiracy theories, Sandberg and Dorsey both admitted things get a little bit more dicey as outright suspension or banning isn’t an option, because each company’s terms aren’t technically being broken in those cases.

“What if a real person, a U.S. citizen, says that victims of a mass shooting were actually actors…would that violate your standards?” asked Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), referencing a specific bad actor, Alex Jones, who was actually in attendance at the hearing but outside the room at the time. “If your answer is no, how should we deal with those very real challenges?”

“I find claims like that personally unbelievably upsetting,” replied Sandberg, before explaining how Facebook deals with this issue with third party fact checkers and decreasing the reach of fake news. “Bad speech can be countered by good speech.”

Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) would also later ask about specific actors on Facebook and Twitter, Wikileaks and Julian Assange, asking why they were still provided a platform on both social media platforms. The response from Sandberg and Dorsey was that neither are breaking their respective companies’ terms of service.

“To the invisible witness, good morning to you,” Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) said to the empty Google chair. Google’s absence from this event was noted by nearly every member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Google had been invited to attend and offered up its Senior Vice President for Global Affairs and Chief Legal Officer Kent Walker as its witness, but was rejected by the committee panel. Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.) had publicly invited Google founder and CEO of its parent company Alphabet to attend.

In the end, Google’s representative, appearing next to Sandberg and Dorsey, was an empty chair.

“There’s an empty chair next to you from Google, they’re not here today. Maybe it’s because they’re arrogant,” said Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) blasting the search engine. Rubio then referenced a recent report showing how the group Campaign for Accountability was able to pose as the Russian troll farm Internet Research Agency and set up political advertising on Google’s ad network.

The issue of China and how it handles user data when it comes to the tech companies that operate there came up, to which Sandberg and Dorsey replied that neither would hand over such information. China would have certainly been an even more interesting topic had a Google representative been there following the leaked reports that showed the search company was looking to re-enter the Chinese market with a government censorship-friendly search engine app.

Senator Cotton (Ark.) later applauded Facebook and Twitter for being blocked in China. “You should wear it as a badge of honor” said Cotton before criticizing Google for those leaked reports. Cotton’s beef with Google also extended to the company having ended its controversial U.S. military partnership known as Project Maven, which used artificial intelligence to improve drone accuracy.

Both Sandberg and Dorsey focused on steps made by humans — not an algorithm or AI — to combat with the current issues we face with foreign interference and misinformation. Actually, it was a few members of the Senate Intelligence Committee who kept bringing up AI when, interestingly, they kept referencing deep fakes. Deep fakes are basically video and imagery manipulated by artificial intelligence. 

While not currently being abused at scale when it comes to disinformation campaigns, the mentions of this technology — one that even the U.S. Defense Department is already preparing to combat — made it clear that politicians are looking towards the problems headed our way in the near future. The hope is this time companies like Facebook and Twitter will be ready to take on the threat.