WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 29th October, 2020) Twitter's labeling of tweets, including those by President Donald Trump, helps alert its users to do their own fact-checking and be better informed, Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey said on Wednesday.
"The goal of our labeling is to provide more context to connect the dots so that people can have more information so they can make decisions for themselves," Dorsey said, testifying before a Senate panel called to hear testimonies from him, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pitchai.
The Senate hearing was held to discuss Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and transparency and accountability among big technology companies for their content moderation practices, and their resulting impact on advertising, journalism and consumer privacy.
Twitter began placing a "public interest notice" on select Trump tweets since May, after the president apparently ran afoul of the platform's rules, invoking criticism from Trump and supporters of his Republican party.
At Wednesday's hearing, Republican senators accused Dorsey of unfair content moderation after Twitter also blocked earlier this month sharing of a New York Post story that exposed what it alleged as corruption by Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden and his family.
Biden is leading Trump in both nation- and state-wide polls for the November 3 election.
"Mr. Dorsey who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear?" Ted Cruz, a Republican senator, demanded to know.
Dorsey defended Twitter for labeling the Trump tweets and also blocking the Post story, which he said appeared linked to a Russian conspiracy to attack the Bidens, as Federal investigators said.
"We created these policies recently and we are enforcing them," he said, adding that Twitter realized it had to "earn trust" from more of its users.
