Facebook, Google, Twitter CEOs clash with Congress in pre-election showdown

Senate Democrats and Republicans grilled the chief executives of Facebook, Google and Twitter on Wednesday at a highly partisan, wide-ranging review of their content-moderation practices less than a week before Election Day.

Lawmakers on the Senate Commerce Committee are convening the gathering chiefly to discuss a controversial, decades-old law known as Section 230 that spares social media sites from being held liable for the way they police their platforms.

But the hearing is a public trial of sorts for Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, who appeared virtually and faced tough questions about the way they have handled hate speech, extremist content and election disinformation, including the most controversial online comments from President Trump.

Here are the moments to watch for:

Republicans on the panel, led by Chairman Roger Wicker (Miss.), pressed the tech giants over allegations that they systematically censor conservatives online — a charge for which lawmakers historically have provided little evidence and one that the tech giants deny.

Many GOP lawmakers have criticized the tech giants for the way they handled an article this month published by the New York Post about Joe Biden’s son Hunter. Facebook and Twitter limited the spread of the article — with Twitter initially blocking links outright before relenting — out of concern about the origins of the information.

Democratic lawmakers are expected to question the three tech executives about their efforts to stop the spread of viral disinformation. They see the censorship allegations as an attempt to cow Silicon Valley at a time when tech giants have taken a more active role in taking down harmful content, including tweets and other posts from Trump.