At a Senate hearing Wednesday on government censorship of tech platforms, a Meta executive expressed regret to Republican lawmakers for failing to speak out more against the Biden administration’s requests that it remove health and election misinformation, including satire. Google, meanwhile, held firm in its stance, saying that evaluating — and often rejecting — government content requests is business as usual. Democrats questioned why Congress was relitigating years-old moderation decisions instead of the Trump administration’s recent speech crackdown — even as Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) hopes to recruit them for a new anti-jawboning bill. And Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, whom Cruz has promised to question over threats to broadcasters, was nowhere in sight.
Meta VP of public policy Neil Potts said the company takes responsibility for its own content moderation decisions, but expressed regret about not pushing back more openly against the Democratic administration’s urging. “We believe the government pressure was wrong and wish we had been more outspoken about it,” he said in written remarks. “We should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction, and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again.”
Meta recently removed a Facebook page for tracking Immigration and Customs Enforcement action following “outreach” from the Department of Justice; whether it considered itself pressured was not questioned in the hearing.
“We believe the government pressure was wrong and wish we had been more outspoken about it”
Google VP of government affairs and public policy Markham Erickson did not go so 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 Biden administration requests — it says no. “No matter how the information comes to us, we feel a responsibility and are proud of the way we handle those communications to make independent decisions,” he said.
The different strategies are significant at a time where tech companies are spending millions on lobbying and other projects that critics argue could constitute bribes to the Trump administration. Tech companies have poured money into Trump’s inauguration fund, settled lawsuits over their suspension of his accounts after the January 6th insurrection, and changed policies to be more in line with conservative wishes.
Meta in particular made a stark change to its fact-checking policies at the beginning of the year, addressing long-standing critiques 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 its decisions — including calls on posts about covid and false election claims, plus its suspension of President Donald Trump — occurred under Trump’s presidency.
Wednesday’s hearing pointed to differences in how tech companies are dealing with political pressure. But Google has also taken actions that could appease Republicans, including criticizing the Biden administration’s content moderation demands. It told the House Judiciary Committee it is “wrong and unacceptable when any government, including the Biden Administration, attempts to dictate how a company moderates content.” And it recently instituted a “second chance” policy for YouTube creators banned over election and covid misinformation, among other categories.
One of the hearing’s goals was letting Cruz, the Commerce Committee chair, preview the legislation he’s working on to provide more transparency into government officials’ communications with tech companies, and allow people who believe they’ve been wrongly censored at the government’s behest to collect damages. All four witnesses — Potts, Erickson, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) legal director Will Creeley, and Public Knowledge senior vice president Harold Feld — said they were generally supportive of Cruz’s approach, with the caveat that they haven’t seen the final text.
“While I fundamentally agree that this committee must examine the state of free speech in the US, today’s hearing once again misses the mark”
Cruz seems keen to capitalize on Democrats’ allegations of censorship against the Trump administration to gain bipartisan support for the JAWBONE Act, which he has not yet introduced. But at the hearing, Democrats largely criticized Republicans for focusing on years-old incidents that had already been litigated before the Supreme Court. They argued that actions by Trump and his administration — which have repeatedly deported legal immigrants over political speech and used its regulatory power to pressure media companies — have been far worse than anything Biden officials had done.
“While I fundamentally agree that this committee must examine the state of free speech in the US, today’s hearing once again misses the mark,” Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) said. “This is now the second hearing to focus on accusations from years ago rather than the near-constant attacks the Trump administration has leveled against free speech rights today.”
“We’ve spent a lot of time talking about the Biden administration actions but far too little talking about Donald Trump’s repeated and far more serious threats to the First Amendment,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) said, including the president’s threat to imprison Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and urging the Justice Department to “criminally prosecute” Google for allegedly surfacing primarily critical news stories about him. Markey asked Potts and Erickson if President Joe Biden or any of his officials had threatened to prosecute their CEOs. Neither was aware of such a threat.
Feld said that even Trump’s threats would normally be what he’d consider an exercise of the bully pulpit. But in Trump’s case, “we’ve seen he means it.” There’s even a notable difference between Trump’s first and second administration, he said, pointing to Trump’s first FCC chair Ajit Pai’s refusal 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 in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death.
“We might have the right hearing, but I’m not sure we have the right witnesses”
Cruz was one of a handful of Republicans who forcefully condemned Carr’s remarks over the Kimmel incident. Still, Democrats repeatedly turned their focus to the FCC chair. “​​My fundamental question still is where is Brendan Carr?” Ranking Member Maria Cantwell (D-WA) asked in her opening remarks. “We might have the right hearing, but I’m not sure we have the right witnesses. We might have the right questions, but I’m not sure we have the right administration we’re calling into question.”
Cruz said he expects Carr to testify before the committee as part of its oversight of the agency. That hearing may be the true test of whether bipartisan action against government censorship can hold.
