A bit too late? Senate committee to grill Google, Facebook & Twitter CEOs on domination & legal liability days before election

While the Commerce Committee voted unanimously on Thursday to authorize subpoenas to force the executives to attend the hearing, they reportedly will not be issued formally, as the CEOs have agreed to to testify voluntarily .

The primary subject of concern at the hearing will be a key legal protection enjoyed by tech platforms Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which shields companies from liability for what users post.

Republicans have long decried what they see as concerted efforts to censor, ban and generally deplatform conservative voices on social media sites, arguing that companies are acting as publishers in their decisions to bar certain types of speech and content. Both Facebook and Twitter insist they do not target any particular viewpoint or ideology, however critics argue the companies often apply their policies against hate speech and disinformation disproportionately to those on the right.

Twitter on Friday posted a number of missives pushing back against those charges, saying attempts to erode Section 230 are reactionary and politicized, while maintaining that accusations of political bias are unsubstantiated.

The top Democrat on the GOP-chaired committee, Washington Senator Maria Cantwell, initially resisted the subpoenas, but changed her mind after Republicans introduced language stating that the three execs would testify about privacy issues and media domination in addition to Section 230.

While Republicans hope to press the executives on whether they have attempted to intervene in the 2020 race by prioritizing certain search results over others, for example, as has previously been documented at Google the date of the hearing would give less than a week to correct course should they find the companies have indeed tried to put their hand on the scale.

The October 28 hearing will come nearly three months after the CEOs of Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Google were called to testify before the House, where they addressed their companies alleged anti-competitive practices, control over online speech and their possible political interests, among other things.