The US Senate Homeland Security Committee grilled executives from Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter over privacy and moderation failures on their respective platforms in recent years, saying that they “keep avoiding sharing really very important information with us”.
TikTok chief operating officer Vanessa Pappas, Twitter general manager of consumer and revenue Jay Sullivan, Meta chief product officer Chris Cox and YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan testified before the panel on Wednesday.
“I'll be honest, I am frustrated that all of you (who) have a prominent seat at the table when these business decisions are made were not more prepared to speak to specifics about your product development process, even when you are specifically asked if you would bring specific numbers to us today,” said the committee’s chairperson, Senator Gary Peters.
According to TechCrunch, the hearing explored the platforms’ impact on national security and also grilled them on issues including domestic extremism, misinformation, child sexual abuse material, and China.
Senator Alex Padilla questioned Meta's Cox about its safety efforts regarding content in languages other than English.
“In your testimony you state that you have over 40 000 people working on trust and safety issues. How many of those people focus on non-English language content and how many of them focus on non-US users?” Padilla asked.
Cox did not provide an answer.
Twitter’s Sullivan also declined to specifically deny accusations that the company “wilfully misrepresented” information given to the US Federal Trade Commission. Twitter is engaged in a legal battle with Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
“I can tell you, Twitter disputes the allegations,” Sullivan said.
TikTok also refused to agree that the company sent user data to China, including employees of TikTok developer ByteDance.
Senator Josh Hawley also asked Pappas about the company's ties with the Chinese government.
IANS