Meta repents again to Republicans in hearing over moderation, while Google stands its ground

At a Senate hearing Wednesday on government censorship of tech platforms, a Meta executive expressed regret to Republican lawmakers for not speaking out more against the Biden administration’s demands to remove misinformation about health and elections, including satire. Google, meanwhile, maintained its position, saying that evaluating — and often rejecting — government content requests was business as usual. Democrats have questioned why Congress is second-guessing years-old moderation decisions instead of the Trump administration’s recent crackdown on speech — even as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) hopes to recruit them for a new anti-jaw bill. And Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, whom Cruz promised to question about threats against broadcasters, was nowhere to be seen.

Neil Potts, Meta’s vice president of public policy, said the company takes responsibility for its own content moderation decisions, but regretted not pushing back more openly against pressure from the Democratic administration. “We believe the government pressure was misguided and we wish we had been more candid about it,” he said in written remarks. “We must not compromise our content standards because of pressure from any administration one way or the other, and we are prepared to respond if something like this happens again.”

Meta recently removed a Facebook page tracking Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions following “outreach” from the Department of Justice; Whether she saw herself as being pressured was not called into question during the hearing.

Markham Erickson, Google’s vice president of government affairs and public policy, didn’t go as far as Meta. Google regularly hears from governments around the world about content they think it should remove, he said, and sometimes — including in response to some requests from the Biden administration — it says no. “Regardless of how information comes to us, we feel responsible and proud of how we process these communications to make independent decisions,” he said.

The different strategies are important at a time when tech companies are spending millions on lobbying and other projects that critics say could constitute bribes to the Trump administration. Tech companies have invested money in Trump’s inauguration fund, settled lawsuits over the suspension of his accounts after the Jan. 6 insurrection and changed their policies to be more in line with conservatives’ wishes.

Meta in particular made a sweeping change to its fact-checking policy earlier this year, responding to long-standing criticism from the right. CEO Mark Zuckerberg also said he regretted not speaking out against the Biden administration last year, telling the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee that Biden pushed him to “censor” content. In fact, a number of his decisions – including calls for Covid posts and false election claims, as well as the suspension of President Donald Trump – took place during Trump’s presidency.

Wednesday’s hearing highlighted differences in how tech companies handle political pressure. But Google has also taken steps that could appease Republicans, including criticizing the Biden administration’s content moderation requirements. He told the House Judiciary Committee that it was “wrong and unacceptable for any government, including the Biden administration, to attempt to dictate how a company moderates content.” And it recently instituted a “second chance” policy for YouTube creators banned due to elections and Covid misinformation, among other categories.

One purpose of the hearing was to allow Cruz, chairman of the Commerce Committee, to preview legislation he is working on to ensure more transparency in government officials’ communications with technology companies and allow people who believe they were wrongly censored at the government’s request to collect damages. All four witnesses — Potts, Erickson, Will Creeley, legal director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), and Harold Feld, senior vice president of Public Knowledge — said they generally supported Cruz’s approach, with the caveat that they had not seen the final text.

Cruz appears to want to capitalize on Democrats’ allegations of censorship against the Trump administration to gain bipartisan support for the JAWBONE Act, which he has yet to introduce. But during the hearing, Democrats largely criticized Republicans for focusing on years-old incidents that had already been argued before the Supreme Court. They argued that the actions of Trump and his administration — which have repeatedly deported legal immigrants over political speech and used their regulatory power to pressure media companies — have been far worse than anything Biden officials have done.

“While I fundamentally agree that this committee must examine the state of free speech in the United States, today’s hearing once again misses the point,” said Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV). “This is now the second hearing that focuses on accusations from years ago rather than the near-constant attacks the Trump administration launches against free speech today. »

“We’ve spent a lot of time talking about the Biden administration’s actions, but far too little talking about Donald Trump’s repeated and much more serious threats to the First Amendment,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), including the president’s threat to jail Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and urged the Justice Department to “criminally prosecute” Google for allegedly reporting primarily critical information about him. Markey asked Potts and Erickson if President Joe Biden or any of his officials had threatened to sue their CEOs. Neither were aware of such a threat.

Feld said even Trump’s threats would normally be what he would consider a bully pulpit exercise. But in Trump’s case, “we saw that he really meant it.” There’s even a notable difference between the first and second Trump administrations, he said, pointing to the refusal of Trump’s first FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, to revoke NBC’s broadcast license after the president’s criticism of its coverage, compared to Carr’s threats against station owners following comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue following Charlie Kirk’s death.

Cruz was one of the few Republicans who forcefully condemned Carr’s remarks about the Kimmel incident. Yet Democrats have repeatedly turned to the FCC chairman. “My basic question is always: where is Brendan Carr? asked Ranking Member Maria Cantwell (D-WA) in her opening remarks. “We may have the right audience, but I’m not sure we have the right witnesses. We may have the right questions, but I’m not sure we have the right administration that we’re questioning.”

Cruz said he expects Carr to testify before the committee as part of his oversight of the agency. This hearing could be the real test of whether bipartisan action against government censorship can hold.