Twitter Shares Plummet While CEO Testifies at Senate Intelligence Hearing
During Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, Twitter’s stock fell as much as 6 percent.
Before the hearing started on Wednesday morning, CNBC reported that stocks had already dropped 1 percent.
Dorsey, who is representing Twitter, isn’t the only social media executive at the hearing. Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg, is also being questioned. Both executives are present to talk about possible election meddling and abuse on their respective social media platforms.
Google was also invited to testify, but they declined to send their CEO or parent company Alphabet’s CEO.
Google is primarily known for other advancements, but the company also has a social media platform.
Twitter and Facebook have both been the subject of negative attention from the president and conservatives, with multiple political pundits having accused the platforms of offenses ranging from outright discrimination down to “shadow banning.”
Dorsey addressed those concerns during his prepared testimony, saying, “We believe strongly in being impartial, and we strive to enforce our rules impartially. In fact, from a simple business perspective and to serve the public conversation, Twitter is incentivized to keep all voices on the platform.”
The Justice Department reported that Attorney General Jeff Sessions plans to meet with some state attorney generals in coming weeks to discuss the possibility that tech companies “may be hurting competition and intentionally stifling the free exchange of ideas on their platforms,” CNBC reported.
Wednesday’s hearing came days after President Donald Trump once again spoke out against social media platforms, saying that they are “treading on very, very troubled territory and they have to be careful,” CNBC reported.
“Google has really taken advantage of a lot of people and I think that’s a very serious thing and it’s a very serious charge,” Trump told reporters after a meeting with the president of FIFA. “They better be careful because they can’t do that to people.”
The president also accused Google’s search results of being “rigged” to show negative stories about himself and other conservative politicians and political pundits.
“Google search results for ‘Trump News’ shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media,” the president said on Twitter.
Google search results for “Trump News” shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal? 96% of….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018
“In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out.”
Trump continued, “Illegal? 96% of … results on ‘Trump News’ are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!”
….results on “Trump News” are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018
A Google spokesperson addressed this issue last Tuesday in a statement which read, in part, “When users type queries into the Google Search bar, our goal is to make sure they receive the most relevant answers in a matter of seconds.
“Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results toward any political ideology. Every year, we issue hundreds of improvements to our algorithms to ensure they surface high-quality content in response to users’ queries. We continually work to improve Google Search and we never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment.”
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