In a hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee on Friday, the CEOs of Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Twitter and Google’s parent company, Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), faced a veritable firing squad in what has become bipartisan hatred based on partisan reasons. But while Republicans and Democrats have different gripes with the platforms, all are clearly out for blood.
Today’s hearing, theoretically, set out to focus on Section 230, a component of the Communications Decency Act that has historically served to protect online content hosts from the responsibilities that publishers take on. However, the actual questioning ended up being primarily political dunking.