Social Media Powerhouses To Testify

Twitter and Facebook testified in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee this week to discuss their perceived issues in dealing with the possible foreign meddling and spreading of misinformation during the 2016 election, ensuring the future of security from these kinds of attacks on social media platforms. Both corporations have acknowledged their failures in combating the efforts made by foreign entities to influence the presidential election and US politics.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg stated that the company was too slow to respond to Russian interfering during the election, and have taken steps towards ways of removing inauthentic and false information. Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey stated that very little had been done in order to communicate to users which accounts had been faulted and deleted for being of foreign origin with malicious intent towards US politics.

In addition, Google, who was asked to come before the committee as well, refused for reasons unclear to send a higher executive and instead chose to provide the board with their top legal council, whom the senate rejected to speak with. The committee kept an empty chair with a Google name sign in order to shame the company for not coming to testify.