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In their first appearance before Congress since the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, the chief executives of Facebook, Googleand Twitter faced frustrated lawmakers in a hearing on the role of social media in the spread of disinformation and extremism.

Lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee spent much of the Thursday hearing attempting to push Google and Alphabets Sundar Pichai, Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg, and Twitters Jack Dorsey into answering yes or no questions around whether the platforms had any responsibility in the attack on the Capitol, whether the individual CEOs believe the COVID-19 vaccines work, and why platforms still allow harmful hashtags associating Asian people with the coronavirus.

The CEOs endeavored for a diplomatic posture by shrouding their views under the cover of nuance. Partway through her questioning, Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., likened the inability to answer the yes or no questions to the filibuster.

We dont do filibuster in the House, she said.

While what to do about disinformation is not a simple binary, the conversation between lawmakers and Big Tech continues to appear as a triangle-shaped stalemate, with Big Tech, Republicansand Democrats at each point. Dorsey dryly summed up the impasse during his opening remarks.

Some of you will say were doing too much in removing free speech rights. Some of you will say were not doing enough and then end up causing more harm, Dorsey said. Both are reasonable and worth exploring.

Despite the willingness of the CEOs to elaborate on the actions they have taken, such as setting up fact-checking programs, promoting reliable COVID-19 information, and taking down content that violates company policies, they were less forthcoming when asked about specific areas where those efforts have failed to do enough to address the problem of misinformation.

The hearing came less than a week after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released an assessment that found domestic violent extremists exploit a variety of popular social media platforms, smaller websites with targeted audiences, and encrypted chat applications to recruit new adherents, plan and rally support for in-person actions, and disseminate materials that contribute to radicalization and mobilization to violence.

Left unacknowledged is how the lobbying power of these tech companies influences the debate. The non-profit consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen published a report Wednesday showing that Facebook is now the top individual corporate lobbying spender. The same report found 94% of lawmakers with jurisdiction over large tech firms received financial contributions from political action committees or lobbyists associated with those companies.

Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee received nearly $620,000, while Republicans on the committee received more than $420,000, from big tech PACs or lobbyists, according to the report.

Importantly, the mere fact of a corporate contribution does not automatically compromise a legislator, the Public Citizen report reads. Some legislators and committees who have received Big Tech PAC and lobbyist funds have conducted the most thorough investigations and hearings on Big Tech in decades, and have introduced the boldest legislation to stifle the corporations unfettered growth to date. At the same time, there is no doubt companies direct their campaign funds in order to gain access and influence.

Vectors for lawmaker questions varied and included the recent mass shooting outside of Atlanta that killed eightpeople, six of whom were Asian American, in addition to other issues such as the COVID-19 vaccine, bullying and sex trafficking. But the primary policy issue at hand is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. A policy reviled by former President Donald Trump and some Democrats, the 26-word provision protects free speech online by providing liability protection for platforms that host or re-publish the speech of others, according to an explanation from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Zuckerberg in his prepared testimony proposed several changes to Section 230. Rather than granting platforms immunity, Section 230 should require demonstrations that platforms have systems in place for identifying and removing unlawful content, Zuckerberg said. But those platforms should still not be held liable if a particular piece of content evades detection.

According to civil society organizations such as EFF and Fight for the Future, Zuckerbergs proposal is problematic on several points.

Of courseFacebook wants to see changes to Section 230, Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, said during a livestream ahead of the hearing. Because they know it will simply serve to solidify their monopoly power and crush competition from smaller and more decentralized platforms.

Instead, Greer said, lawmakers should pass federal data privacy legislation and enforce antitrust laws, particularly those that target practices like the nontransparent manipulation of algorithms. Zuckerberg said during the hearing he believes Congress should establish national privacy legislation.

In a post on its website, EFF called Zuckerbergs proposal an explicit plea to create a legal regime that only Facebook, and perhaps a few other dominant online services, could meet. Ultimately, the proposal would lead to increased censorship while still failing to address problems with online misinformation because of the narrow definition of what content is actually illegal, according to EFF.

During the hearing, Zuckerberg clarified that he doesnt want the Section 230 reforms he is proposing to impact startups and small companies right away.

I want to be clear that the recommendations that I'm making for Section 230 I would only have applied to larger platforms, Zuckerberg told Rep. John Curtis, R-Utah. I think it's really critical that a small platform, you know the next student in a dorm room or garage needs to have a relatively low as possible regulatory burden in order to be able to innovate and then get to the scale where they can afford to put those kinds of systems in place.

Dorsey said the real issue is algorithms. He called for more algorithmic choice in his testimony. Fixing issues with algorithms and the need to give individual users more power over them would be a tough change, Dorsey said, but its the most impactful.

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Democrats and Republicans United in Big Tech Frustration - Nextgov

Republicans feel conservatives face more discrimination than Black people do in America, according to a recent poll.

In a The Economist/YouGov poll, respondents were presented with several groups and asked: "How much discrimination do the following people face in America today?"

Conservatives was one of those and overall 22 percent polled said a great deal, 27 percent a fair amount, 30 percent not much and 20 percent none at all.

Among Republican respondents, more felt conservatives faced higher levels of discrimination.

Of those, 40 percent said a great deal, 35 percent a fair amount, 17 percent not much and 9 percent none at all.

The poll posed the same question in regard to Black people.

To this, overall 39 percent said a great deal, 29 percent a fair amount, 24 percent not much and 8 percent none at all.

Among Republicans, the numbers were lowerand fell below conservatives in terms of how much discrimination they felt they faced.

Just more than 1 in 10, 14 percent, said a great deal, and 35 percent a fair amount.

Nearly 2 in 5, 39 percent, said not much and 13 percent said none at all.

Republicans also said Asian people, 14 percent a great deal and 36 percent a fair amount, and immigrants, 16 percent a great deal and 33 percent a fair amount, faced lower levels of discrimination than conservatives.

Muslim people, 14 percent a great deal and 44 percent a fair amount, and Jewish people, 16 percent a great deal and 39 percent a fair amount, were also ranked lower in terms of the amount of discrimination Republicans believe they face compared to conservatives.

The polling was conducted among 1,500 U.S. adults, from March 20 to 23.

For the full sample size, the margin of error was plus or minus 2.9 percent.

The results come with issues over racial equity, discrimination and systemic racism continuing to be a focal point in the U.S.

Protests across the nation last year sparked by the killing of George Floyd provoked widespread discussions.

The recent shootings of Asian women in Atlanta also started further conversations over hate crimes.

Discussions have also come to the fore over the issue of white supremacists in the nation.

President Joe Biden has put "advancing racial equity" as one of his priorities since coming into power, signing several executive orders on this matter.

While these issues have been raised, the subject of "cancel culture" has become a familiar talking point for many conservative voices.

In a poll in January, most Republicans said they saw cancel culture as a threat to freedom.

Conservatives have bemoaned this as suppressing their voices in the public realm.

Republican lawmakers have also rallied against this.

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Republicans Think Conservatives Face More Discrimination Than Black People: Poll - Newsweek

As Peters notes,

Those include laws that would require identification for voters and limit the availability of absentee ballots, as well as other policies that Heritage said would secure and strengthen state election systems.

The other side of this effort to restrict the vote is a full-court press against the For the People Act, which would pre-empt most Republican voter-suppression bills. It kind of feels like an all-hands-on-deck moment for the conservative movement, when the movement writ large realizes the sanctity of our elections is paramount and voter distrust is at an all-time high, Jessica Anderson of Heritage Action for America told The Associated Press.

And in a recording of an address to Republican state legislators obtained by the A.P., Senator Ted Cruz of Texas warned that a voter-protection bill would spell the end of the Republican Party as a viable national party. H.R. 1s only objective is to ensure that Democrats can never again lose another election, that they will win and maintain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate and of the state legislatures for the next century, he said.

Some of this is undoubtedly cynical, a brazen attempt to capitalize on the conspiratorial rhetoric of the former president. But some of it is sincere, a genuine belief that the Republican Party will cease to exist if it cannot secure election integrity.

Whats striking about all this is that, far from evidence of Republican decline, the 2020 election is proof of Republican resilience, even strength. Trump won more than 74 million votes last year. He made substantial gains with Hispanic voters reversing more than a decade of Republican decline and improved with Black voters too. He lost, yes, but he left his party in better-than-expected shape in both the House and the Senate.

If Republicans could break themselves of Trump and look at last November with clear eyes, they would see that their fears of demographic eclipse are overblown and that they can compete even thrive in the kinds of high-turnout elections envisioned by voting rights activists.

Indeed, the great irony of the Republican Partys drive to restrict the vote in the name of Trump is that it burdens the exact voters he brought to the polls. Under Trump, the Republican Party swapped some of the most likely voters white college-educated moderates for some of the least likely blue-collar men.

In other words, by killing measures that make voting more open to everyone, Republicans might make their fears of terminal decline a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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Opinion | What Are Republicans So Afraid Of? - The New York Times

The Daily News reported all Texans 16 and older are eligible for vaccination next week ("Virtually all Texans will be eligible for vaccines on Monday," The Daily News, March 24). The day before, the newspaper reported half of Galveston County residents aged 16 or older have received at least one COVID-19 shot ("Half of Galveston County residents have received a vaccination," The Daily News, March 23).

While that sounds like good news, one must wonder if we've reached an impasse. A recent poll from NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist found that 47 percent of people who supported former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election say they will not be vaccinated.

Even though their leader received a vaccine, albeit in private, is the Republican game plan to sabotage President Bidens vaccine effort?

Republicans have become so brainwashed from decades of right-wing pundits demonizing Democrats that they're willing to sacrifice themselves and their loved ones to make Bidens vaccination rollout fail.

This is the same group of people who politicized the wearing of masks, supported the insurrection in January and have chosen sides with Russias Putin over their own president. And to this day, they refuse health care because a Democratic president created it.

Republicans have spent a year complaining about lockdowns and losing their freedoms; now with a chance for a return to normalcy, they balk.

Johnny Trlica

Galveston

Read more:
Are Republicans trying to sabotage vaccine efforts? | Letters to the Editor | The Daily News - Galveston County Daily News

Obviously, it is the case that there were not enough conversations about replace, Brian Blase, a conservative health-policy expert who was a top domestic-policy adviser in the Trump White House, told me. Dean Rosen, a GOP leadership aide from the early 2000s who went on to become one of Washingtons most influential health-care strategists, said, There was an intellectual simplicity or an intellectual laziness that, for Republicans in health care, passed for policy development. That bit us in the ass when it came to repeal and replace.

One reason for this laziness was a simple lack of interest. For decades, Republicans had seemed interested in health-care policy only when responding to Democratic policies required it. Republicans do taxes and national security, Brendan Buck, a former GOP leadership aide, quipped in an interview. They dont do health care.

That ambivalence extended to the GOPs networks of advisers and advocates. The cadre of Republican intellectuals who worked on health policy would frequently observe that they had very little company, talking about a wonk gap with their more liberal counterparts. There are about 30 times more people on the left that do health policy than on the right, Blase said.

Another problem was a recognition that forging a GOP consensus on replacement would have been difficult because of internal divisions. Some Republicans wanted mainly to downsize the Affordable Care Act, others to undertake a radical transformation in ways they said would create more of an open, competitive market. Still others just wanted to get rid of Obamas law and didnt especially care what, if anything, took its place.

The homework that hadnt been successful was the work to coalesce around a single plan, a single set of specific legislative items that could be supported by most Republicans, Price told me. Clearly, looking at the history of this issue, this has always been difficult for us because there are so many different perspectives on what should be done and what ought to be the role of the federal government in health care.

The incentive structure in conservative politics didnt help, because it rewarded the ability to generate outrage rather than the ability to deliver changes in policy. Power had been shifting more and more to the partys most extreme and incendiary voices, whose great skill was in landing appearances on Hannity, not providing for their constituents. Never was that more apparent than in 2013, when DeMint, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and some House conservatives pushed Republicans into shutting down the government in an attempt to defund the Affordable Care Act that even many conservative Republicans understood had no chance of succeeding.

The failure to grapple with the complexities of American health care and the difficult politics of enacting any kind of change didnt really hurt Republicans until they finally got power in 2017 and, for the first time, had to back up their promises of a superior Obamacare alternative with actual policy. Their solution was to minimize public scrutiny, bypassing normal committee hearings so they could hastily write bills in the leadership offices of House Speaker Paul Ryan and, after that, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

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Why Trump and Republicans Failed to Repeal Obamacare - The Atlantic