Facebook, Twitter and Google face questions from US senators

The chief executives of Facebook, Twitter, and Google faced more than three and a half hours of questions from US senators on Wednesday.

At present, the companies cannot be sued over what their users post online, or the decisions they make over what to leave up and take down.

Some politicians have raised concerns this “sweeping immunity” encourages bad behaviour.

But the chief executives say they need the law to be able to moderate content.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and Google’s Sundar Pichai were summoned before the Senate after both Democrats and Republicans agreed to call them in for questioning.

‘A loophole’
Senators are worried about both censorship and the spread of misinformation.

And some industry watchers agree the legislation – known as Section 230 – needs to be revisited.

“That’s very much a publishing kind of function – and newspapers have very different responsibilities.

“So we have a bit of a loophole that I think is not working well for our society.”

As the hearing began, Mr Zuckerberg vanished, unable to connect to the committee meeting – something Republican senator Roger Wicker called a “most interesting development”.

But after a brief recess, Mr Zuckerberg told politicians he supported changes to the rule “to make sure it’s working”.

What is Section 230?

Section 230 is the main legal protection preventing social networks being sued.

It means websites themselves are not generally responsible for illegal or offensive things users post on them.

They are treated as neutral middlemen – like newspaper sellers rather than the editors that decide what goes in the paper.

Originally seen as a way to protect internet providers such as BT or Comcast, it has become the main shield for huge sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, which cannot possibly review every post from their users before publication.