Repubs Had a Chance to Grill Facebook Over Russia. Instead, They Talked About Censoring Chick-fil-A

[Miles Archer]

A day after President Donald Trump denied Russian meddling in the 2016 while standing next to Vladimir Putin, Democrats in Congress pushed a group of tech executives to explain how their companies are combatting Russian disinformation, while Republicans on the committee spent their time quizzing the tech representatives on whether their platforms are biased against conservative outlets.

For their part, the tech executives—representing Google, Facebook, and Twitter—told the House Judiciary Committee that their platforms had reversed course since the 2016 election, and improved both human and technological systems that allow them to detect the kind of misinformation that played a substantial role in Russian interference. According to Twitter senior strategist Nick Pickles, the site has experienced a 229 percent increase in reports of “suspicious activity” since implementing new technology to detect foreign actors.

But Republicans on the judiciary committee were more concerned that Facebook and other tech companies were overly biased against conservative websites. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) claimed that Google had censored search results for “Jesus, Chick-fil-A, and the Catholic religion,” without citing any source for the allegations. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) grilled the witnesses about why traffic to the conservative site the Gateway Pundit has plummeted, while his fellow party members attributed the bias to Facebook’s consultation with liberal groups such as the Southern Policy Law Center in developing its guidelines.

Monika Bickert, an executive from Facebook, said the website consulted 100 different third-parties in developing the guidelines, including a civil rights lawyer to address racial bias on the platform.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/07/republicans-had-a-chance-to-grill-facebook-over-russia-instead-they-talked-about-censoring-chick-fil-a/

[CatMor]

1. Its amazing how smarmy looking most republicans are .

seeing that photo of Lamar Smith. They always cry they are being left out while they have a TV so called news channel spewing their nonsense 24/7.

[Initech]

2. There's no difference between the parties?

We're interested in the health and well being of our country. They're interested in the health and well being of a fucking fast food chain's social media feed.

[Volaris]

3. (Unless theres something ive missed), im not sure why dems give a fuck at all...

It's a private company, they can do what they want as long as they're not violating the law. And if we want there to be laws for them to violate, first we have to write them and enforce them, and that means killing the idea of a randian-level free market dead and once and for all.

Until then, they're wasting their breath, their time, AND my tax dollars, and giving the gop a public forum to spout their bullshit (traffic is down at conservative websites PROBABLY because conservatives are a dying breed and those sites aren't making MONEY...oh but everyone should be treated fairly by the darwinaian-randian free market, and if they're not then the govt should step in...but only for those we WANT to help...The dirty liberals can all starve it's gawdz will...)

Like Congress has time for this bush-league smallball nonsense when the president is selling us out for a soccer ball and some peehookers...