Jack, Mark, and Sundar on the hot seat right now talking about the legal responsibility (they don't currently have any!) tech has for harms on their platforms. https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2020/10/does-section-230-s-sweeping-immunity-enable-big-tech-bad-behavior

Love how Chairman Wicker is using the themes from #HerrickVGrindr that these aren't scrappy companies run out of garages and dorm rooms. And it's time for the benefit of being free from liability to end.

When we talk about the power wielded by FB & Twitter about failure to restrain the dissemination of illegally obtained material, we must think about harms not just to politicians, but also ordinary ones, like when my client's 17 yo daughter's murder was liveposted on Instagram.

Big tech is not just the arbiter of what's true and untrue. They are also the arbiter of who gets harmed, for how long, and how badly. Sction 230 protects tech from responsibility for things like serial rapists using rapists and production and sharing of child porn

Sundar says the internet is the "great equalizer." Is it though? Because it sorta seems like it just empowers the powerful. And amplifies the already loud.

You know what actually is a time tested equalizer? Our civil court system. Which you, Sundar are fighting to be outside of

Yes, I agree, Sundar, the committee should be aware of the consequences that changes to 230 may have on customers. SUch as the positive change to be able to hold you all responsible

HOLY $#%@ Mark Zuckerberg can't connect. What foolishness. I can not believe this. And you think you are qualified to control the biggest social media company in the history of the world

The wunderkid can't connect to the congressional hearing. He also can't remove stalkers, rapists, and child abusers from his platform. This is an example of his ineptitude.

Zuckerberg should be harshly judged for this. And clearly does not take this seriously enough to be prepared with his tech.

I've done a dozen of panels in the last few months and literally nobody has ever been unprepared to go live.

Why is his screen blurry at the bottom?

You say companies should not be able to hide behind Section 230 when it comes to bad actors. Yet your lawyers literally ARE hiding behind section 230 in two of my cases. So why don't you start now, Mark?

Chairman Wicker is going down the wrong path by inserting political bias of content moderation into this conversation. With or without Section 230, tech will have first amendment rights to moderate words as it sees fit.

Wicker is wrong here to hijack this important discussion to scold tech about the moderation of content that Trump disliked. This really really sucks.

It's a private company. Tw can keep tweets up you don't like. This discussion is supposed to be about the liability of tech. Not about content moderation, Wicker, dammit. These are private companies that can keep stuff up. The issue is whether they can be sued for harms.

If they were sued for pure content moderation speech decisions, they'd have the defense not of Section 230 but of the first amendment and anti-slapp.

The issue of "off-ramping extremists" from Facebook -- is about removal of violent content and users. The Second Circuit says Section 230 protects big tech from liability for platform's decision to accommodate known abusers. See #HerrickVGrindr

This hearing is supposed to be about how sweeping immunity enables bad behavior by and on big tech. Yet here we are only talking about content moderation decisions about the president's tweets. This enraging.

Section 230 is about access to justice by ordinary people. It completely disables people from holding tech accountable for things like child sexual exploitation, stalking, dating app rape, livestreamed murders. These victims have no recourse in our courts.

The conversation re content moderation of politically powerful people is an elitist conversation.Such people already have all the recourse and control over speech, whether or not Twitter tags something as misinformation. It's the ordinary people that get screwed & being ignored.

Why is Gardner asking if tech should be liable for tech's own content? All dudes say yes. That's 100% noncontroversial. Section 230 immunizes them from content provided by others (i.e. users.). It does not immunize them from their own.

Mark says 2 billion people log into FB per day
Mark says ad revenue political ads is small. He doesn't know how much. Klobuchar says "small for you. It's $2.2b." Annually?

Klobuchar makes good point -- needling Zuckerberg that while he says he supports the honest ads act, he may be lobbying against it and is doing nothing to get it passed.

Klobuchar asks Zuckerberg about how Facebook exploits the human mind's attraction to divisiveness. "I'm not talking about cousins and babies," she says