Senate Judiciary Committee Authorizes Subpoenas for Twitter and Facebook CEOs -- 2nd Update
October 22 2020 - 11:35AM
Dow Jones News
By Siobhan Hughes and Sarah E. Needleman
The Senate Judiciary Committee authorized its chairman to issue
subpoenas to the chief executives of Facebook Inc. and Twitter
Inc., after the companies limited sharing of New York Post articles
regarding the son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
The Republican-led panel voted 12-0 to authorize Chairman
Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) to issue subpoenas to Facebook's Mark
Zuckerberg and Twitter's Jack Dorsey.
The vote will "hopefully give us some leverage to secure their
testimony, " Mr. Graham said.
Congress typically negotiates with companies to secure voluntary
testimony at hearings, opting for subpoenas only if executives
resist. No date has been set for a Judiciary Committee hearing.
Facebook and Twitter declined to comment.
Democrats sat out the meeting, as they boycotted a separate
committee vote to advance Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett
to the full Senate.
Twitter last week blocked users from posting links to the New
York Post articles, initially citing a potential violation of its
rules regarding hacked materials. The company later said the
articles also violated its policies on displaying private
information like email addresses and phone numbers without a
person's permission. Mr. Dorsey said at the time that the company's
failure to give context around its actions was "unacceptable."
Twitter's move came after Facebook also limited the distribution
of the articles on its platform, saying it was awaiting guidance
from its third-party fact-checking partners. Facebook slowed the
spread of the Post articles pending a decision by those partners, a
spokesman said last week.
Messrs. Zuckerberg and Dorsey, along with Alphabet Inc. Chief
Executive Sundar Pichai, are already set to testify on Oct. 28
before the Senate Commerce Committee about their policies for
moderating content on their internet platforms.
That hearing will center on Section 230 of the Communications
Decency Act, which shields social-media platforms from liability
for user content.
Write to Siobhan Hughes at siobhan.hughes@wsj.com and Sarah E.
Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 22, 2020 11:20 ET (15:20 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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