20 ms·

Watch live: Zuckerberg, Dorsey testify before Senate [video]

124 points by evo_9 6y ago

greesil 6y ago
I'm curious what other people think the informational value of these hearings are. It seems like it is either posturing and grandstanding, or reasonable questions to which evasive or non-answers are given. Edit: Oh no it's Lindsey Graham, so probably more grandstanding. Edit 2: Editorializing here, they're threatening to take away section 230 safe harbor protections as a punishment for "censoring" right wing content using the pretext of youth health.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  The positive argument is that a hearing forces companies to develop official positions on things they might otherwise prefer to ignore. I know there have been a few times where tech companies announced some new project they’re going to do to address issues just in advance of a hearing. I tend to agree that their primary function is public shaming, though.
  - jsrjenkins 6y ago
    I wonder if it is something to do with this information: https://twitter.com/HawleyMO/status/1328461277971288067?s=20 https://twitter.com/HawleyMO/status/1328461277971288067?s=20 Josh Hawley is a US Senator for Missouri.
    - komali2 6y ago
      Josh Hawley often promotes the meme that Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube censor conservatives and conservative politicians. I have an extremely difficult time taking people like him seriously in a world where Facebook refuses to ban Steve Bannon when he calls for Dr. Fauci to be beheaded, yet twitter does so without issue. But then again, Twitter refuses to address covid-19 misinformation, and allows politicians to generally say whatever they want, conservative or no. All while youtube does nothing about qanon conspiracy videos flooding the platform. It's just a shame that american politicians now have to be hardline partisans to the point where they will lie right into the microphone to toe the party line.
      - esja 6y ago
        Bannon didn't literally call for Fauci to be beheaded. He was using a fairly old-fashioned figure of speech to call for Fauci to be fired and for an example to be made of him. If that sort of comment warrants a ban, half the sports fans on Earth will lose their Facebook accounts.
        SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        The quote in full context (https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-bannon-banned-twitter-fauci-and-wrays-heads-on-pikes-2020-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-bannon-banned-twitter-...) was: -------- "I'd actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England, I'd put the heads on pikes, right, I'd put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you're gone — time to stop playing games. Blow it all up, put [Trump aide] Ric Grenell today as the interim head of the FBI, that'll light them up, right." Jack Maxey, the podcast's co-host, responded: "Just yesterday there was the anniversary of the hanging of two Tories in Philadelphia. These were Quaker businessmen who had cohabitated, if you will, with the British while they were occupying Philadelphia. These people were hung. This is what we used to do to traitors." To this Bannon replied: "That's how you won the revolution. No one wants to talk about it. The revolution wasn't some sort of garden party, right? It was a civil war. It was a civil war." -------- I think it's pretty fair to characterize this as "literal". It's hard to read this (or listen to it, it was originally in audio form) and not think they're legitimately mulling over the possibility of executions.
        esja 6y ago
        I listened to the podcast in question and the following one where he elaborated further. It was very clearly not intended to be taken literally. It was no different to the sorts of things you hear in pubs when people are talking about football referees.
        komali2 6y ago
        Maybe it was clear to you because you think it would be crazy to start beheading government advisors for the crime of trying to do their job. However, we've seen plenty of instances where this kind of rhetoric can enable the less stable elements of the population. Pizzagate resulting in a guy holding up a pizza shop he was convinced had child sex slaves in the basement immediately comes to mind. A plot to kidnap a governor comes to mind. Fantasizing about running over protesters, and then James Alex Fields Jr. doing just that and murdering Heather Heyer comes to mind.
- xalava 6y ago
  Having followed hearings related to Libra, sure there is a lot of posturing. However, first, some MP asks precise critical questions. Secondly, it seems that even for trained CEOs one hour of intense questioning takes a toll. I've rarely heard something new, but you can detect some of their personality, their contradictions, the important points for MP ...
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    It'd be nice to see more cooperative questioning. If no answer is given, have the next questioner ask the same question again. At some point, that's going to get under even Zuckerberg's skin.
    - Nasrudith 6y ago
      If you want cooperative questioning you need a true cooperative goal - otherwise the process is inherently adversarial no matter how much passive aggressive cloaking is applied.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - ethbr0 6y ago
        It's not passive aggressive cloaking. If a CEO can't answer a question posed by Congress, running out the clock shouldn't be a viable strategy. "Mr. Zuckerberg, I don't feel you answered my colleague's point. Let me ask again..." Why do the American people care about the next question, if the previous question wasn't answered? Which is more important, more questions or answers?
        Nasrudith 6y ago
        > "Mr. Zuckerberg, I don't feel you answered my colleague's point. Let me ask again..." That quote is exactly what I mean by passive aggressive cloaking actually. You won't get the answers you want if the questioning process is adversarial as it turns into "Don't talk to the police." or deposition style of being unhelpful as possible instead of trying to actually inform because of incentives.
- NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  Its just a struggle session in different name
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  It’s in line with useless meetings a typical company has. It’s hard to get a sense for how bullshit some people’s jobs are until you accidentally get invited to one of their meetings. I once accidentally stayed much longer than I was supposed to in a meeting between PMs/Product and I was absolutely shocked that that’s what they spend several hours a day doing.
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    If you want a laugh, go in an enterpise PM meeting, listen to their pain points, and pipe up that you could write an integration of (system X) and (system Y) (that they spend most of their day copying and pasting data between) in a weekend.
- 3np 6y ago
  Graham makes no sense... Just from the one minute I watched: "We must incentivize social media platforms to come up with standards that are transparent and opaque"
  - darrenoc 6y ago
    Oh dear, there's no way anyone can be that stupid is there?
- leftyted 6y ago
  > I'm curious what other people think the informational value of these hearings are. It seems like it is either posturing and grandstanding, or reasonable questions to which evasive or non-answers are given. I agree with you. They need to get the cameras out of congress. Everyone involved in these hearings is mining them for clips for their campaign ads and it's sickening.
  - whatshisface 6y ago
    >They need to get the cameras out of congress. Everyone involved in these hearings is mining them for clips for their campaign ads and it's sickening. It is the cameras you have to thank for finding out that they are posturing and grandstanding.
    - everdrive 6y ago
      But it also prevents them from saying things that may be politically unpopular. eg, a moderate senator standing up to the fringes in their wings.
      - Nasrudith 6y ago
        They aren't exactly getting praise for what they are doing right now - only less complaints from the brainless hysterical "do-somethingists" and savage roasting by those who have even an amateur level in knowing what the hell they are talking about. Really I would expect standing up to the fringes in their wings would be a popularity boosting move but party poltical machine alienating one as .
    - leftyted 6y ago
      Without the cameras they have no reason to posture. They posture so they can cut a clip, publish it, and say: "Look! Here's me standing up to the evil Republicans|Democrats|tech CEOs who want to steal your precious bodily fluids!" In the presence of cameras, politicians become instagram celebrities.
      - 6y ago
- Karunamon 6y ago
  >I'm curious what other people think the informational value of these hearings are. Considering that they are not even under oath, precisely zero. They can lie to the lawmakers' faces with no recourse. I very distinctly remember Jack telling congress the time before last that they "do not shadowban", and then screenshots of their admin dashboard were leaked[1] that show they explicitly did have multiple kinds of shadowbans. [1]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgxd3d/twitter-insider-access-panel-account-hacks-biden-uber-bezos https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgxd3d/twitter-insider-acces... Disregard that first sentence, apparently they are all sworn in by default. It's just that perjury is barely ever pursued.
  - koolba 6y ago
    The witnesses are under oath. Everyone that testifies before Congress is under oath and lying would constitute a federal crime. Interestingly the questioners, in this case the Senators, are not under oath and they can say whatever they’d like. Regardless of how false or nonsensical.
    - Karunamon 6y ago
      Does this happen off-camera? Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see them get sworn in.
      - edoceo 6y ago
        Yes. There is a bunch of procedure/setup stuff before the sit-down that's not on live stream. Maybe in C-SPAN archives? I've seen it before, on C-SPAN c2008
    - jsrjenkins 6y ago
      Has any witness ever been convicted? There are so many witnesses that give completely false information that is later shown to be a lie. Has there any been a case of prosecuting such lies? Without prosecution it is all just empty threats and there is no real incentive to speak the truth. At the last hearing, for instance, Jack Dorsey said that they do not shadow ban, but later pictures appeared of their administrative interface and certainly that capacity was there. An outright lie and yet he isn't even interrogated on this. Wouldn't there be arrests and trials if it truly was a federal crime?
- everdrive 6y ago
  I think most people on HN agree with you. Because these are televised, and MOST people will not watch the hearing, each senator is looking for their own sound bite which they can replay to show how tough they were. The illusion falls apart when you watch the actual hearing: the same question is asked over and over, the speakers are not given a real chance to reply, and there is no real dialogue. Of course it doesn't help that many of the questions are ill-informed in their own right.
  - cafard 6y ago
    The expression "bunk" or "bunkum" ultimately derives from Buncombe County, North Carolina, apparently. The story is that the congressman from its district gave a speech in Congress that made no sense at all. When asked, he said that he was "speaking to Buncombe."
    - edoceo 6y ago
      Neat! https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/bunkum https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/bunkum
  - Karunamon 6y ago
    I wonder what the answer for this is? On one hand, you're absolutely right, these events are opportunities for grandstanding. On the other hand, the meetings of the government should be open and transparent by default.
    - everdrive 6y ago
      It's a tough call. I think part of the problem is frankly the electorate. You won't find many on HN, but remember that this sanctimonious grandstanding is broadly popular. Senators aren't just doing it to entertain themselves.
    - bleepblorp 6y ago
      > I wonder what the answer for this is? Don't rely on politicians to do direct questioning of witnesses. Politicians have the wrong incentives, and generally lack the skills, to do anything other than grandstand in public meetings. Legal fact-finding, including the questioning of witnesses, should be done by lawyers and subject matter experts.
- mrlala 6y ago
  I bet Lindsey Graham is going to go crazy on Trump's tweets being tagged for misinformation.. that should be amusing at least.
- steve76 6y ago
  Is Twitter propped up? Is Facebook bailed out? Can any of you survive under a fed prime rate of 20% or above? Doing so would shore up pensions, and improve USA standing with Africa, Asia and South America, likely stopping a lot of wars. What's the hiring process like at your company? When the country desperately needed remote employment this past year, how many new hires did you make? Ford Motor Car and GM hired entire factory floors of workers at double the minimum wage. Can any of you pass your own hiring process or answer just one of your technical interview questions? You said your success was only due to a privileged upbringing. Isn't that by choice? You could have joined the Marines and get shot or blown up or burnt alive for everyone else, but you didn't. Now you want to burden the entire world. Why? Because you feel guilty? By the way, who said you wouldn't be shot yet?
- MuffinFlavored 6y ago
  > I'm curious what other people think the informational value of these hearings are. I want to hear from conservatives why they think most of (if not all) of big tech is "in the pockets of the Democrats". Why do all of these software engineers/IT field workers typically end up as left-leaning? Is it a matter of education/intelligence? Empathy? I feel like the split has to be at least 85% Democrat / 15% Republican in IT.
  - sGSDASG 6y ago
    west coast vs east coast, aerospace vs video vs web dev. It's a YMMV thing. I've worked with a team of all republicans.
  - eej71 6y ago
    In my personal experience my left leaning friends appear to feel very comfortable "letting it all hang out" on social media. It's very clear what their political opinions are. Those who aren't quite in sync with these view points play their cards closer to the chest. So I bet the %s you have aren't quite correct. I do think the prevailing educational system K-12 and the universities have a strong tilt to the left - generally ahead of the country. I also suspect most people simply inherit these default settings as their view points.
  - dx87 6y ago
    It's a coastal thing, plus it's not a stretch to think that big tech is in the pockets of Democrats when Facebook told the Obama campaign "we're on your side", and google had executives crying on stage after Trump won.
    - MuffinFlavored 6y ago
      > It's a coastal thing Why do New York and California vote so heavily blue?
      - sjg007 6y ago
        Because the struggle is real.
- nabla9 6y ago
  Hearings of this type can like legal depositions. The goal is to get statements into public record and pin down the answers to be used later. Ideally congress would delegate this job to top lawyers who would go list of questions very methodologically. Making these hearings public and televised has made them into a show. Congressmen make questions that are more like statements in order to please their voters and lots of value is lost.
  - dhimes 6y ago
    It didn't pin down Graham on supporting a late-term Supreme Court nominee, even though he's on the record as not supporting them.
    - nabla9 6y ago
      Graham is a senator. We are talking about people who are testifying in the Senate hearings. Those people who raise their hand and then sit face towards congressmen.
robertlagrant 6y ago
> Coverage begins momentarily In this important event, I can only focus on how whoever wrote that doesn't know what "momentarily" means.
- klodolph 6y ago
  Ah, are you British? This is North American usage. Here is the New Oxford American English dictionary’s definition, second sense: > North American at any moment; very soon: my husband will be here to pick me up momentarily. Now that you know that this is correct usage of the word, perhaps it will be less distracting the next time you see it used that way.
  - robertlagrant 6y ago
    It's worse than I thought, then.
    - klodolph 6y ago
      I sympathize. Everyone has a few words or phrases with incorrect usages stuck in their heads. For me it’s “fall through”, which feels like it should mean the opposite of what it does mean. I think that idea got stuck in my head because of the phrase “come through”, which implies success.
- maneesh 6y ago
  I love it when someone calls out someone for not knowing grammar or spelling or the definition of a word, when they themselves are wrong. https://reddit.com/r/confidentlyincorrect https://reddit.com/r/confidentlyincorrect is a treasure trove of such cases
TekMol 6y ago
What is this about? Why are they testifying?
- cshenoy 6y ago
  > Committee chair Senator Lindsey Graham called the session to address what he called "censorship and suppression of news articles" and the "handling of the 2020 election" by the platforms. Dorsey & Zuckerberg are voluntarily testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/breaking-the-news-censorship-suppression-and-the-2020-election https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/breaking-the-news-...
- jsrjenkins 6y ago
  I think it is something to do with this information: https://twitter.com/HawleyMO/status/1328461277971288067?s=20 https://twitter.com/HawleyMO/status/1328461277971288067?s=20 Josh Hawley is a US Senator for Missouri. Supposedly he will ask questions about his information.
Beggers1960 6y ago
Absolutely nothing will come of this other than a few zingy headlines and folk laughing at clueless politicians.
greesil 6y ago
So I guess the counter argument that these platforms are acting as newspapers with editors is that they didn't actually make an editorial decision by limiting virality or putting a warning message on posts and articles.
yeetman21 6y ago
Quick summary of what is going to happen: Zuckerberg: Thank you for calling me up, I really love this chance to talk. Thank you. We like to get the peoples message across. Thank you congressman Random boomer congressman: Why does my google email do the colors when I press the button but not do the colors when I press the other button? x100 for 6 hours
blhack 6y ago
Let me give a preview for anybody who can’t tune in: Democrats all say that disinformation is a threat to democracy. Republicans say that freedom of speech is essential to our democracy. Jack and Mark preface every answer with “senator thank you for this question” and don’t answer anything. They both insist that the humans making editorial decisions are somehow impartial. Republicans yell a lot. Somethings they say damn and hell, which are both now acceptable curse words. Democrats don’t yell and spend their time flattering the witnesses and saying something about election interference. Nothing happens. People continue getting more divided and hating each other more so that these two men can get unfathomably wealthy. The end. (Bonus points if Ted Cruz says something about the constitution electing presidents, not Silicon Valley tech companies.)
- komali2 6y ago
  Excuse me, constitutions don't elect presidents, presidents do. The president said so on Twitter yesterday, when he declared himself the winner of the election, after all. A message I can still read today.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  If you were to write three questions for someone on that panel, what would they be and why?
  - tensor 6y ago
    This is an interesting question! I'm not sure there is anything I need to hear from these two. That's not to say that polarization and disinformation being amplified due to social media bubbles isn't a serious problem. Rather, I don't think it's up to these two to fix it, nor even understand it. As a society we need to first understand the problem, then decide on what, if anything, we want to do to fix it. Fixes would most likely take the form of some sort of regulation. E.g. something like where in Canada, some percentage of media has to be from a Canadian source. That law is very contentious in Canada, but you could imagine a similar law for any system that does content recommendation. E.g. some percentage of the content has to be sampled from the total body of content, and not come from the recommender. Something like this might address polarization, but disinformation is a thornier problem. In any case, it needs to start first with understanding what is going wrong. Things like Mozilla's media bubble study is a good start. From that we need to form policy. There is no role for CEO opinions in all of this.
r721 6y ago
The Guardian's liveblog: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/live/2020/nov/17/facebook-twitter-hearing-mark-zuckerberg-jack-dorsey-congress-latest-election-news https://www.theguardian.com/technology/live/2020/nov/17/face...
ericls 6y ago
Mark Zuckerberg really speaks like a politician.
nailer 6y ago
The fascinating thing with Twitter is their 'corrections' to Trump's tweets say 'official sources' dispute them. Clicking on the corrections gives a pointer to AP and NBC. Technically they're incorrect. AP and NBC are by no means official sources for the results of US elections. The Electoral College is the official source for the results of US elections. In this way, Twitter itself spreads disinformation - and somewhat dangerous disinformation at that, as the media most definitely should not have any official control over the election.
- cycrutchfield 6y ago
  This doesn't even make sense. The electoral college doesn't meet until January. The AP and NBC sources collate the results of the elections from each individual state, which comes directly from the Secretary of State websites for each state. What in there is disinformation?
  - nailer 6y ago
    The electoral college meets on Dec 14.
    - cycrutchfield 6y ago
      My mistake. The votes are counted on January 6th. It's an irrelevant detail here though.
- elicash 6y ago
  Are you referring to the "Multiple sources called this election differently" disclaimer? Or the "Official sources may not have called the race when this was tweeted" one?
  - nailer 6y ago
    "Official sources called this election differently" is the exact message I'm discussing (the message then refers to the AP and NBC) 1. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Em8ByxrXMAEN_Mi?format=jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Em8ByxrXMAEN_Mi?format=jpg 2. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Em8By4-XcAIUY2D?format=jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Em8By4-XcAIUY2D?format=jpg
holler 6y ago
youtube chat is disabled so I posted it to sqwok https://sqwok.im/p/SpGrYgY-vZ0haA https://sqwok.im/p/SpGrYgY-vZ0haA
nimbius 6y ago
unrelated but has anyone discovered why Jack Dorsey looks like a seventeenth century Mennonite instead of a CEO of one of the largest social sites in the world?
- reducesuffering 6y ago
  Because his eccentricity is in part why he founded and is CEO of Twitter and Square? Several million clean cut business suits could have been running them, but they're not.
Closi 6y ago
These hearings just show how they have an impossible task. * Question 1: Why did you put labels on the president's tweets? What gives you the right to determine that? Putting a label on is completely outrageous! * Question 2: You labelled the presidents tweet as 'potentially misleading' - but this didn't go far enough, as it was fully misleading! Why are you not harsh enough on fake news?! There needs to be a separate task of trying to work out what on earth it is that the aim/goal actually is.
- vlunkr 6y ago
  Yeah I really don't envy them. They're just guys who built some websites trying to make money. I'm sure they never thought they would be at the center of national discussions about free speech, defending themselves against senators on TV, or being in the no-win situation of having the President use your platform to share obvious lies.
  - Balgair 6y ago
    > They're just guys who built some websites trying to make money Maybe before Tahrir Square that was true, but they've been at this fulcrum for ~9 years now. They know what they're doing and what their part is in the play staging today.
  - tshaddox 6y ago
    And yet, surely they could change things essentially overnight if they wanted to. I’m not sure how far “they didn’t expect this to happen” goes as a defense.
    - vlunkr 6y ago
      How would they change though? As the original comment stated, they're being asked to do contradictory things by different parties. The defense isn't that "they didn't expect this to happen," it's that there's no way for them to win. People can't agree on what they did wrong if anything.
      - 6y ago
jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
I truly think the only correct move this year would have been to turn off all social media (including the chans) until the next president is inaugurated. It's already been demonstrated that this stuff can topple countries, and I see no reason why the U.S. would be an exception. Acknowledge these platforms for what they are: information weapons. The management at these corporations cannot compete with nation-state level adversaries intent on waging an information war and that is clearly what we have been up against for at least the last two years. Someone is screwing with the U.S., and they're using social media to do it.
rainyMammoth 6y ago
The only goal of those hearings is to create "gotcha" moments that will then be used to gather votes and divide us further down the line.
cblconfederate 6y ago
These shows are basically "how to explain subreddit moderation to old men and women"
forgingahead 6y ago
What the heck is wrong with Jack Dorsey's mic/speaker setup? Is this a machine from 1995?
realce 6y ago
It's interesting to expand on what Jack says about choice in algos. What if you had the option to switch between moderation algos on the fly in the client?
- donmcronald 6y ago
  I didn't watch it, but that's a neat idea. What's the difference between a recommendation algorithm and a moderation algorithm? I guess I don't even know how they work. Do they only surface content liked, commented, or retweeted by people you follow / friend? One of the best things I saw relating to social media was on a HN comment a while ago. Reverse chronological content posted directly by your friends / people you follow should be considered part of the platform. Recommendations pushed in your face by an algorithm should be considered publishing.
  - realce 6y ago
    > What's the difference between a recommendation algorithm and a moderation algorithm? They both just seem to be versions of spam filters to me. The real power that Twitter would have is a historical dataset that could influence the weight of certain users' content in recommending/rejecting to a viewer. Algos are only as good as the data behind them, right? > Recommendations pushed in your face by an algorithm should be considered publishing. Interesting distinction!
sjg007 6y ago
Interesting to see Senator Graham ask a question on whether or not where the platforms have research on FB and Twitter being addictive.
abvdasker 6y ago
What a disgrace. Republicans and Democrats are basically arguing over the specifics of content moderation by these social media companies. Republicans think the moderation goes too far or is politically biased while Democrats argue the moderation doesn't go far enough and want dissent they call "disinformation" removed from social media. Lindsey Graham at multiple points indulged in McCarthyite questioning about the political beliefs of Twitter and Facebook employees. All the while, Section 230 is being held hostage even though it has absolutely nothing to do with the content moderation these companies currently perform. Few in elected office seem to have much regard for the 1st Amendment. At this point there's clear bipartisan support for curtailing the Section 230 protections that make these discussions possible.
spurgu 6y ago
Why were even Zuckerberg and Dorsey there? It seems like it should be a debate within the senate - they clearly cannot do anything but complain, whatever FB/Twitter does. They'd need to agree between themselves on something first, then they can talk to the social media companies (who were now just in a useless crossfire).
tboyd47 6y ago
Quote from Sen. Graham's opening address: "I don't want the government to take over the job of telling America what tweets are legitimate and what are not. I don't want the government deciding what content to take up or put down -- I think we're all in that category -- but when companies have the POWER of governments..." The word "but" obliterates everything that came before it...
dlubarov 6y ago
It seems like Sen. Feinstein got a bit mixed up -- she asked this question twice: https://youtu.be/OT3OgojnhFM?t=4221 https://youtu.be/OT3OgojnhFM?t=4221 https://youtu.be/OT3OgojnhFM?t=4340 https://youtu.be/OT3OgojnhFM?t=4340
sjg007 6y ago
Sen Hawley was definitely playing for a setup. As far as I can tell, Tasks is kind of like a giant kanban board. I know Asana is also basically the commercialized version of Tasks as well. It's kind of weird to see it used as a reference to colluding with Google and Twitter for content moderation. It's like saying, "do you use JIRA or email for colluding?" It makes no sense. He should have simply asked do you coordinate with Twitter and Google for content moderation. But now it is front page on Foxnews.com https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/hawley-presses-zuckerberg-on-whistleblower-complaint-alleging-facebook-coordination-with-twitter-google https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/hawley-presses-zucker...

124 points by evo_9 6y ago

I'm curious what other people think the informational value of these hearings are. It seems like it is either posturing and grandstanding, or reasonable questions to which evasive or non-answers are given. Edit: Oh no it's Lindsey Graham, so probably more grandstanding. Edit 2: Editorializing here, they're threatening to take away section 230 safe harbor protections as a punishment for "censoring" right wing content using the pretext of youth health.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
The positive argument is that a hearing forces companies to develop official positions on things they might otherwise prefer to ignore. I know there have been a few times where tech companies announced some new project they’re going to do to address issues just in advance of a hearing. I tend to agree that their primary function is public shaming, though.
- jsrjenkins 6y ago
  I wonder if it is something to do with this information: https://twitter.com/HawleyMO/status/1328461277971288067?s=20 https://twitter.com/HawleyMO/status/1328461277971288067?s=20 Josh Hawley is a US Senator for Missouri.
  - komali2 6y ago
    Josh Hawley often promotes the meme that Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube censor conservatives and conservative politicians. I have an extremely difficult time taking people like him seriously in a world where Facebook refuses to ban Steve Bannon when he calls for Dr. Fauci to be beheaded, yet twitter does so without issue. But then again, Twitter refuses to address covid-19 misinformation, and allows politicians to generally say whatever they want, conservative or no. All while youtube does nothing about qanon conspiracy videos flooding the platform. It's just a shame that american politicians now have to be hardline partisans to the point where they will lie right into the microphone to toe the party line.
    - esja 6y ago
      Bannon didn't literally call for Fauci to be beheaded. He was using a fairly old-fashioned figure of speech to call for Fauci to be fired and for an example to be made of him. If that sort of comment warrants a ban, half the sports fans on Earth will lose their Facebook accounts.
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        The quote in full context (https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-bannon-banned-twitter-fauci-and-wrays-heads-on-pikes-2020-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-bannon-banned-twitter-...) was: -------- "I'd actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England, I'd put the heads on pikes, right, I'd put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you're gone — time to stop playing games. Blow it all up, put [Trump aide] Ric Grenell today as the interim head of the FBI, that'll light them up, right." Jack Maxey, the podcast's co-host, responded: "Just yesterday there was the anniversary of the hanging of two Tories in Philadelphia. These were Quaker businessmen who had cohabitated, if you will, with the British while they were occupying Philadelphia. These people were hung. This is what we used to do to traitors." To this Bannon replied: "That's how you won the revolution. No one wants to talk about it. The revolution wasn't some sort of garden party, right? It was a civil war. It was a civil war." -------- I think it's pretty fair to characterize this as "literal". It's hard to read this (or listen to it, it was originally in audio form) and not think they're legitimately mulling over the possibility of executions.
        esja 6y ago
        I listened to the podcast in question and the following one where he elaborated further. It was very clearly not intended to be taken literally. It was no different to the sorts of things you hear in pubs when people are talking about football referees.
        komali2 6y ago
        Maybe it was clear to you because you think it would be crazy to start beheading government advisors for the crime of trying to do their job. However, we've seen plenty of instances where this kind of rhetoric can enable the less stable elements of the population. Pizzagate resulting in a guy holding up a pizza shop he was convinced had child sex slaves in the basement immediately comes to mind. A plot to kidnap a governor comes to mind. Fantasizing about running over protesters, and then James Alex Fields Jr. doing just that and murdering Heather Heyer comes to mind.
xalava 6y ago
Having followed hearings related to Libra, sure there is a lot of posturing. However, first, some MP asks precise critical questions. Secondly, it seems that even for trained CEOs one hour of intense questioning takes a toll. I've rarely heard something new, but you can detect some of their personality, their contradictions, the important points for MP ...
- ethbr0 6y ago
  It'd be nice to see more cooperative questioning. If no answer is given, have the next questioner ask the same question again. At some point, that's going to get under even Zuckerberg's skin.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    If you want cooperative questioning you need a true cooperative goal - otherwise the process is inherently adversarial no matter how much passive aggressive cloaking is applied.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - ethbr0 6y ago
      It's not passive aggressive cloaking. If a CEO can't answer a question posed by Congress, running out the clock shouldn't be a viable strategy. "Mr. Zuckerberg, I don't feel you answered my colleague's point. Let me ask again..." Why do the American people care about the next question, if the previous question wasn't answered? Which is more important, more questions or answers?
      - Nasrudith 6y ago
        > "Mr. Zuckerberg, I don't feel you answered my colleague's point. Let me ask again..." That quote is exactly what I mean by passive aggressive cloaking actually. You won't get the answers you want if the questioning process is adversarial as it turns into "Don't talk to the police." or deposition style of being unhelpful as possible instead of trying to actually inform because of incentives.
NikolaeVarius 6y ago
Its just a struggle session in different name
runawaybottle 6y ago
It’s in line with useless meetings a typical company has. It’s hard to get a sense for how bullshit some people’s jobs are until you accidentally get invited to one of their meetings. I once accidentally stayed much longer than I was supposed to in a meeting between PMs/Product and I was absolutely shocked that that’s what they spend several hours a day doing.
- ethbr0 6y ago
  If you want a laugh, go in an enterpise PM meeting, listen to their pain points, and pipe up that you could write an integration of (system X) and (system Y) (that they spend most of their day copying and pasting data between) in a weekend.
3np 6y ago
Graham makes no sense... Just from the one minute I watched: "We must incentivize social media platforms to come up with standards that are transparent and opaque"
- darrenoc 6y ago
  Oh dear, there's no way anyone can be that stupid is there?
leftyted 6y ago
> I'm curious what other people think the informational value of these hearings are. It seems like it is either posturing and grandstanding, or reasonable questions to which evasive or non-answers are given. I agree with you. They need to get the cameras out of congress. Everyone involved in these hearings is mining them for clips for their campaign ads and it's sickening.
- whatshisface 6y ago
  >They need to get the cameras out of congress. Everyone involved in these hearings is mining them for clips for their campaign ads and it's sickening. It is the cameras you have to thank for finding out that they are posturing and grandstanding.
  - everdrive 6y ago
    But it also prevents them from saying things that may be politically unpopular. eg, a moderate senator standing up to the fringes in their wings.
    - Nasrudith 6y ago
      They aren't exactly getting praise for what they are doing right now - only less complaints from the brainless hysterical "do-somethingists" and savage roasting by those who have even an amateur level in knowing what the hell they are talking about. Really I would expect standing up to the fringes in their wings would be a popularity boosting move but party poltical machine alienating one as .
  - leftyted 6y ago
    Without the cameras they have no reason to posture. They posture so they can cut a clip, publish it, and say: "Look! Here's me standing up to the evil Republicans|Democrats|tech CEOs who want to steal your precious bodily fluids!" In the presence of cameras, politicians become instagram celebrities.
    - 6y ago
Karunamon 6y ago
>I'm curious what other people think the informational value of these hearings are. Considering that they are not even under oath, precisely zero. They can lie to the lawmakers' faces with no recourse. I very distinctly remember Jack telling congress the time before last that they "do not shadowban", and then screenshots of their admin dashboard were leaked[1] that show they explicitly did have multiple kinds of shadowbans. [1]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgxd3d/twitter-insider-access-panel-account-hacks-biden-uber-bezos https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgxd3d/twitter-insider-acces... Disregard that first sentence, apparently they are all sworn in by default. It's just that perjury is barely ever pursued.
- koolba 6y ago
  The witnesses are under oath. Everyone that testifies before Congress is under oath and lying would constitute a federal crime. Interestingly the questioners, in this case the Senators, are not under oath and they can say whatever they’d like. Regardless of how false or nonsensical.
  - Karunamon 6y ago
    Does this happen off-camera? Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see them get sworn in.
    - edoceo 6y ago
      Yes. There is a bunch of procedure/setup stuff before the sit-down that's not on live stream. Maybe in C-SPAN archives? I've seen it before, on C-SPAN c2008
  - jsrjenkins 6y ago
    Has any witness ever been convicted? There are so many witnesses that give completely false information that is later shown to be a lie. Has there any been a case of prosecuting such lies? Without prosecution it is all just empty threats and there is no real incentive to speak the truth. At the last hearing, for instance, Jack Dorsey said that they do not shadow ban, but later pictures appeared of their administrative interface and certainly that capacity was there. An outright lie and yet he isn't even interrogated on this. Wouldn't there be arrests and trials if it truly was a federal crime?
everdrive 6y ago
I think most people on HN agree with you. Because these are televised, and MOST people will not watch the hearing, each senator is looking for their own sound bite which they can replay to show how tough they were. The illusion falls apart when you watch the actual hearing: the same question is asked over and over, the speakers are not given a real chance to reply, and there is no real dialogue. Of course it doesn't help that many of the questions are ill-informed in their own right.
- cafard 6y ago
  The expression "bunk" or "bunkum" ultimately derives from Buncombe County, North Carolina, apparently. The story is that the congressman from its district gave a speech in Congress that made no sense at all. When asked, he said that he was "speaking to Buncombe."
  - edoceo 6y ago
    Neat! https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/bunkum https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/bunkum
- Karunamon 6y ago
  I wonder what the answer for this is? On one hand, you're absolutely right, these events are opportunities for grandstanding. On the other hand, the meetings of the government should be open and transparent by default.
  - everdrive 6y ago
    It's a tough call. I think part of the problem is frankly the electorate. You won't find many on HN, but remember that this sanctimonious grandstanding is broadly popular. Senators aren't just doing it to entertain themselves.
  - bleepblorp 6y ago
    > I wonder what the answer for this is? Don't rely on politicians to do direct questioning of witnesses. Politicians have the wrong incentives, and generally lack the skills, to do anything other than grandstand in public meetings. Legal fact-finding, including the questioning of witnesses, should be done by lawyers and subject matter experts.
mrlala 6y ago
I bet Lindsey Graham is going to go crazy on Trump's tweets being tagged for misinformation.. that should be amusing at least.
steve76 6y ago
Is Twitter propped up? Is Facebook bailed out? Can any of you survive under a fed prime rate of 20% or above? Doing so would shore up pensions, and improve USA standing with Africa, Asia and South America, likely stopping a lot of wars. What's the hiring process like at your company? When the country desperately needed remote employment this past year, how many new hires did you make? Ford Motor Car and GM hired entire factory floors of workers at double the minimum wage. Can any of you pass your own hiring process or answer just one of your technical interview questions? You said your success was only due to a privileged upbringing. Isn't that by choice? You could have joined the Marines and get shot or blown up or burnt alive for everyone else, but you didn't. Now you want to burden the entire world. Why? Because you feel guilty? By the way, who said you wouldn't be shot yet?
MuffinFlavored 6y ago
> I'm curious what other people think the informational value of these hearings are. I want to hear from conservatives why they think most of (if not all) of big tech is "in the pockets of the Democrats". Why do all of these software engineers/IT field workers typically end up as left-leaning? Is it a matter of education/intelligence? Empathy? I feel like the split has to be at least 85% Democrat / 15% Republican in IT.
- sGSDASG 6y ago
  west coast vs east coast, aerospace vs video vs web dev. It's a YMMV thing. I've worked with a team of all republicans.
- eej71 6y ago
  In my personal experience my left leaning friends appear to feel very comfortable "letting it all hang out" on social media. It's very clear what their political opinions are. Those who aren't quite in sync with these view points play their cards closer to the chest. So I bet the %s you have aren't quite correct. I do think the prevailing educational system K-12 and the universities have a strong tilt to the left - generally ahead of the country. I also suspect most people simply inherit these default settings as their view points.
- dx87 6y ago
  It's a coastal thing, plus it's not a stretch to think that big tech is in the pockets of Democrats when Facebook told the Obama campaign "we're on your side", and google had executives crying on stage after Trump won.
  - MuffinFlavored 6y ago
    > It's a coastal thing Why do New York and California vote so heavily blue?
    - sjg007 6y ago
      Because the struggle is real.
nabla9 6y ago
Hearings of this type can like legal depositions. The goal is to get statements into public record and pin down the answers to be used later. Ideally congress would delegate this job to top lawyers who would go list of questions very methodologically. Making these hearings public and televised has made them into a show. Congressmen make questions that are more like statements in order to please their voters and lots of value is lost.
- dhimes 6y ago
  It didn't pin down Graham on supporting a late-term Supreme Court nominee, even though he's on the record as not supporting them.
  - nabla9 6y ago
    Graham is a senator. We are talking about people who are testifying in the Senate hearings. Those people who raise their hand and then sit face towards congressmen.

robertlagrant 6y ago

> Coverage begins momentarily In this important event, I can only focus on how whoever wrote that doesn't know what "momentarily" means.

klodolph 6y ago
Ah, are you British? This is North American usage. Here is the New Oxford American English dictionary’s definition, second sense: > North American at any moment; very soon: my husband will be here to pick me up momentarily. Now that you know that this is correct usage of the word, perhaps it will be less distracting the next time you see it used that way.
- robertlagrant 6y ago
  It's worse than I thought, then.
  - klodolph 6y ago
    I sympathize. Everyone has a few words or phrases with incorrect usages stuck in their heads. For me it’s “fall through”, which feels like it should mean the opposite of what it does mean. I think that idea got stuck in my head because of the phrase “come through”, which implies success.
maneesh 6y ago
I love it when someone calls out someone for not knowing grammar or spelling or the definition of a word, when they themselves are wrong. https://reddit.com/r/confidentlyincorrect https://reddit.com/r/confidentlyincorrect is a treasure trove of such cases

TekMol 6y ago

What is this about? Why are they testifying?

cshenoy 6y ago
> Committee chair Senator Lindsey Graham called the session to address what he called "censorship and suppression of news articles" and the "handling of the 2020 election" by the platforms. Dorsey & Zuckerberg are voluntarily testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/breaking-the-news-censorship-suppression-and-the-2020-election https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/breaking-the-news-...
jsrjenkins 6y ago
I think it is something to do with this information: https://twitter.com/HawleyMO/status/1328461277971288067?s=20 https://twitter.com/HawleyMO/status/1328461277971288067?s=20 Josh Hawley is a US Senator for Missouri. Supposedly he will ask questions about his information.

Beggers1960 6y ago

Absolutely nothing will come of this other than a few zingy headlines and folk laughing at clueless politicians.

greesil 6y ago

So I guess the counter argument that these platforms are acting as newspapers with editors is that they didn't actually make an editorial decision by limiting virality or putting a warning message on posts and articles.

yeetman21 6y ago

Quick summary of what is going to happen: Zuckerberg: Thank you for calling me up, I really love this chance to talk. Thank you. We like to get the peoples message across. Thank you congressman Random boomer congressman: Why does my google email do the colors when I press the button but not do the colors when I press the other button? x100 for 6 hours

blhack 6y ago

Let me give a preview for anybody who can’t tune in: Democrats all say that disinformation is a threat to democracy. Republicans say that freedom of speech is essential to our democracy. Jack and Mark preface every answer with “senator thank you for this question” and don’t answer anything. They both insist that the humans making editorial decisions are somehow impartial. Republicans yell a lot. Somethings they say damn and hell, which are both now acceptable curse words. Democrats don’t yell and spend their time flattering the witnesses and saying something about election interference. Nothing happens. People continue getting more divided and hating each other more so that these two men can get unfathomably wealthy. The end. (Bonus points if Ted Cruz says something about the constitution electing presidents, not Silicon Valley tech companies.)

komali2 6y ago
Excuse me, constitutions don't elect presidents, presidents do. The president said so on Twitter yesterday, when he declared himself the winner of the election, after all. A message I can still read today.
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
If you were to write three questions for someone on that panel, what would they be and why?
- tensor 6y ago
  This is an interesting question! I'm not sure there is anything I need to hear from these two. That's not to say that polarization and disinformation being amplified due to social media bubbles isn't a serious problem. Rather, I don't think it's up to these two to fix it, nor even understand it. As a society we need to first understand the problem, then decide on what, if anything, we want to do to fix it. Fixes would most likely take the form of some sort of regulation. E.g. something like where in Canada, some percentage of media has to be from a Canadian source. That law is very contentious in Canada, but you could imagine a similar law for any system that does content recommendation. E.g. some percentage of the content has to be sampled from the total body of content, and not come from the recommender. Something like this might address polarization, but disinformation is a thornier problem. In any case, it needs to start first with understanding what is going wrong. Things like Mozilla's media bubble study is a good start. From that we need to form policy. There is no role for CEO opinions in all of this.

r721 6y ago

The Guardian's liveblog: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/live/2020/nov/17/facebook-twitter-hearing-mark-zuckerberg-jack-dorsey-congress-latest-election-news https://www.theguardian.com/technology/live/2020/nov/17/face...

ericls 6y ago

Mark Zuckerberg really speaks like a politician.

nailer 6y ago

The fascinating thing with Twitter is their 'corrections' to Trump's tweets say 'official sources' dispute them. Clicking on the corrections gives a pointer to AP and NBC. Technically they're incorrect. AP and NBC are by no means official sources for the results of US elections. The Electoral College is the official source for the results of US elections. In this way, Twitter itself spreads disinformation - and somewhat dangerous disinformation at that, as the media most definitely should not have any official control over the election.

cycrutchfield 6y ago
This doesn't even make sense. The electoral college doesn't meet until January. The AP and NBC sources collate the results of the elections from each individual state, which comes directly from the Secretary of State websites for each state. What in there is disinformation?
- nailer 6y ago
  The electoral college meets on Dec 14.
  - cycrutchfield 6y ago
    My mistake. The votes are counted on January 6th. It's an irrelevant detail here though.
elicash 6y ago
Are you referring to the "Multiple sources called this election differently" disclaimer? Or the "Official sources may not have called the race when this was tweeted" one?
- nailer 6y ago
  "Official sources called this election differently" is the exact message I'm discussing (the message then refers to the AP and NBC) 1. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Em8ByxrXMAEN_Mi?format=jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Em8ByxrXMAEN_Mi?format=jpg 2. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Em8By4-XcAIUY2D?format=jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Em8By4-XcAIUY2D?format=jpg

holler 6y ago

youtube chat is disabled so I posted it to sqwok https://sqwok.im/p/SpGrYgY-vZ0haA https://sqwok.im/p/SpGrYgY-vZ0haA

nimbius 6y ago

unrelated but has anyone discovered why Jack Dorsey looks like a seventeenth century Mennonite instead of a CEO of one of the largest social sites in the world?

reducesuffering 6y ago
Because his eccentricity is in part why he founded and is CEO of Twitter and Square? Several million clean cut business suits could have been running them, but they're not.

Closi 6y ago

These hearings just show how they have an impossible task. * Question 1: Why did you put labels on the president's tweets? What gives you the right to determine that? Putting a label on is completely outrageous! * Question 2: You labelled the presidents tweet as 'potentially misleading' - but this didn't go far enough, as it was fully misleading! Why are you not harsh enough on fake news?! There needs to be a separate task of trying to work out what on earth it is that the aim/goal actually is.

vlunkr 6y ago
Yeah I really don't envy them. They're just guys who built some websites trying to make money. I'm sure they never thought they would be at the center of national discussions about free speech, defending themselves against senators on TV, or being in the no-win situation of having the President use your platform to share obvious lies.
- Balgair 6y ago
  > They're just guys who built some websites trying to make money Maybe before Tahrir Square that was true, but they've been at this fulcrum for ~9 years now. They know what they're doing and what their part is in the play staging today.
- tshaddox 6y ago
  And yet, surely they could change things essentially overnight if they wanted to. I’m not sure how far “they didn’t expect this to happen” goes as a defense.
  - vlunkr 6y ago
    How would they change though? As the original comment stated, they're being asked to do contradictory things by different parties. The defense isn't that "they didn't expect this to happen," it's that there's no way for them to win. People can't agree on what they did wrong if anything.
    - 6y ago

jacobwilliamroy 6y ago

I truly think the only correct move this year would have been to turn off all social media (including the chans) until the next president is inaugurated. It's already been demonstrated that this stuff can topple countries, and I see no reason why the U.S. would be an exception. Acknowledge these platforms for what they are: information weapons. The management at these corporations cannot compete with nation-state level adversaries intent on waging an information war and that is clearly what we have been up against for at least the last two years. Someone is screwing with the U.S., and they're using social media to do it.

rainyMammoth 6y ago

The only goal of those hearings is to create "gotcha" moments that will then be used to gather votes and divide us further down the line.

cblconfederate 6y ago

These shows are basically "how to explain subreddit moderation to old men and women"

forgingahead 6y ago

What the heck is wrong with Jack Dorsey's mic/speaker setup? Is this a machine from 1995?

realce 6y ago

It's interesting to expand on what Jack says about choice in algos. What if you had the option to switch between moderation algos on the fly in the client?

donmcronald 6y ago
I didn't watch it, but that's a neat idea. What's the difference between a recommendation algorithm and a moderation algorithm? I guess I don't even know how they work. Do they only surface content liked, commented, or retweeted by people you follow / friend? One of the best things I saw relating to social media was on a HN comment a while ago. Reverse chronological content posted directly by your friends / people you follow should be considered part of the platform. Recommendations pushed in your face by an algorithm should be considered publishing.
- realce 6y ago
  > What's the difference between a recommendation algorithm and a moderation algorithm? They both just seem to be versions of spam filters to me. The real power that Twitter would have is a historical dataset that could influence the weight of certain users' content in recommending/rejecting to a viewer. Algos are only as good as the data behind them, right? > Recommendations pushed in your face by an algorithm should be considered publishing. Interesting distinction!

sjg007 6y ago

Interesting to see Senator Graham ask a question on whether or not where the platforms have research on FB and Twitter being addictive.

abvdasker 6y ago

What a disgrace. Republicans and Democrats are basically arguing over the specifics of content moderation by these social media companies. Republicans think the moderation goes too far or is politically biased while Democrats argue the moderation doesn't go far enough and want dissent they call "disinformation" removed from social media. Lindsey Graham at multiple points indulged in McCarthyite questioning about the political beliefs of Twitter and Facebook employees. All the while, Section 230 is being held hostage even though it has absolutely nothing to do with the content moderation these companies currently perform. Few in elected office seem to have much regard for the 1st Amendment. At this point there's clear bipartisan support for curtailing the Section 230 protections that make these discussions possible.

spurgu 6y ago

Why were even Zuckerberg and Dorsey there? It seems like it should be a debate within the senate - they clearly cannot do anything but complain, whatever FB/Twitter does. They'd need to agree between themselves on something first, then they can talk to the social media companies (who were now just in a useless crossfire).

tboyd47 6y ago

Quote from Sen. Graham's opening address: "I don't want the government to take over the job of telling America what tweets are legitimate and what are not. I don't want the government deciding what content to take up or put down -- I think we're all in that category -- but when companies have the POWER of governments..." The word "but" obliterates everything that came before it...

dlubarov 6y ago

It seems like Sen. Feinstein got a bit mixed up -- she asked this question twice: https://youtu.be/OT3OgojnhFM?t=4221 https://youtu.be/OT3OgojnhFM?t=4221 https://youtu.be/OT3OgojnhFM?t=4340 https://youtu.be/OT3OgojnhFM?t=4340

sjg007 6y ago

Sen Hawley was definitely playing for a setup. As far as I can tell, Tasks is kind of like a giant kanban board. I know Asana is also basically the commercialized version of Tasks as well. It's kind of weird to see it used as a reference to colluding with Google and Twitter for content moderation. It's like saying, "do you use JIRA or email for colluding?" It makes no sense. He should have simply asked do you coordinate with Twitter and Google for content moderation. But now it is front page on Foxnews.com https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/hawley-presses-zuckerberg-on-whistleblower-complaint-alleging-facebook-coordination-with-twitter-google https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/hawley-presses-zucker...