Jack Dorsey is the latest Silicon Valley exec headed to Washington, D.C., with the House Energy and Commerce Committee announcing on Friday the Twitter chief will testify on the company’s content and moderation policies.
Dorsey will speak to Congress on Sept. 4.
“Twitter is an incredibly powerful platform that can change the national conversation in the time it takes a tweet to go viral,” Committee Chairman Greg Walden said in a statement. “When decisions about data and content are made using opaque processes, the American people are right to raise concerns.”
Twitter has been under fire from many on the left of late, after declining to ban digital conspiracy theorist Alex Jones earlier this month. Twitter’s decision set it apart from several tech giants, including Facebook, Apple, and Spotify, which banned Jones for violating “bullying” and “hate speech” guidelines. At the same time, conservatives have accused Twitter of shadow banning prominent right-wing voices — a claim the company has adamantly pushed back against.
Walden added the committee expects Dorsey to be “forthright and transparent regarding the complex processes behind the company’s algorithms and content judgment calls.”
Dorsey’s testimony will come after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared before Congress last spring to address the social network’s massive data leak. Zuckerberg’s testimony was occasionally derailed by congressmen failing to understand the basic’s of Facebook’s business — something that could rear its head once again when Dorsey comes to town.
