Digital Content

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) says he hopes Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's testimony on Capitol Hill provides insights into his company's algorithms and content monitoring practices as the social media giant battles allegations that its operations are influenced by politics. Rep McCarthy, who has been one of the most vocal critics of Silicon Valley companies over alleged anti-conservative bias, said that he expects Dorsey's testimony before the House Commerce Committee to be the first of several for members of the tech community. "This won't be the last hearing.

Elected officials will have a chance to question those who run Silicon Valley tech giants. This public scrutiny comes at an important time, as Americans across the political spectrum debate the ever-increasing role of these massive companies in our economy and civic society. Here are a few things I hope to learn from these hearings:

After Silicon Valley internet giants mostly barred Alex Jones from their services in Aug, traffic to his Infowars website and app soared on the blaze of publicity — and the notorious conspiracy theorist declared victory. “The more I’m persecuted, the stronger I get,” Jones said on his live internet broadcast three days later. “It backfired.” Yet a review of Infowars’s traffic several weeks after the bans shows that the tech companies drastically reduced Jones’s reach by cutting off his primary distribution channels: YouTube and Facebook.

On Twitter, David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, sometimes tweets more than 30 times a day to nearly 50,000 followers, recently calling for the “chasing down” of specific black Americans and claiming the LGBTQ community is in need of “intensive psychiatric treatment.” On Facebook, James Allsup, a right-wing advocate, posted a photo comparing migrant children at the border to Jewish people behind a fence during the Holocaust with the caption, “They present it like it’s a bad thing #BuildTheWall.” On Gab, a censorship-free alternative to Twitter, former 2018 candidate for US S

Sen Orrin Hatch (R-UT) sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joseph Simons, expressing concerns about the competitive effects of Google’s conduct in search and digital advertising. This letter cites a number of antitrust complaints and reports, and urges the Chairman to consider potential anti-competitive developments since the last investigation in 2013. “I write to urge the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to reconsider the competitive effects of Google’s conduct in search and digital advertising.

As President Donald Trump goes to war against Silicon Valley technology firms over what he believes is a left-wing bias against conservatives, a right-wing group has launched a lawsuit targeting this region’s tech giants and accusing them of a conspiracy.

Google does feature work by traditional media organizations more than insurgent conservative outlets. Of course, Google’s ability to divine “quality” as distinct from “popularity” is limited. Search-ranking technology relies on the implicit votes of readers, with all the human biases that come bundled with them. Google, for its part, categorically rejected the claim that it tinkered with search results for political reasons. “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.

Former White House Chief Strategist Steven Bannon recently discussed President Donald Trump's rhetoric toward Big Tech. 

President Donald Trump shared a video that showed Google advertising former President Barack Obama's State of the Union speeches but not his, escalating his battle with the tech giant over what he claims is bias against conservatives. President Trump shared the video with the caption "#StopTheBias." “For years, Google promoted President Obama’s State of the Union on its homepage. When President Trump took office, Google stopped," the video reads, followed by a 25-second montage showing Google's home page the night of each State of the Union speech dating back to 2012

An apparent Iranian influence operation targeting internet users worldwide is significantly bigger than previously identified, encompassing a sprawling network of anonymous websites and social media accounts in 11 different languages. Facebook and other companies recently said that multiple social media accounts and websites were part of an Iranian project to covertly influence public opinion in other countries. A Reuters analysis has identified 10 more sites and dozens of social media accounts across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.