Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri grilled Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over the big tech company’s alleged coordination efforts with other Silicon Valley companies like Twitter and Google to censor users and content. While Zuckerberg skirted the question, again and again, he accidentally admitted the truth.
These totalitarians are monitoring our every move without our knowledge. They know everything about us, the websites we’ve gone to, our interests, the other social media platforms we used, and they use that knowledge to silence us.
THE INTERNAL TOOL
Hawley heard about an internal tool Facebook employees use to share information with other Big Tech social media platforms.
He said the tool, known as “Tasks,” allows Facebook’s “censorship teams” to debate and review certain content such as users, links, and hashtags.
“As I understand it, Facebook censorship teams communicate with their counterparts at Twitter and Google and then enter those companies’ suggestions for censorship onto the task platform so that Facebook can then follow up with them and effectively coordinate their censorship efforts,” Hawley said.
“Mr. Zuckerberg, let me just ask you directly, under oath now, does Facebook coordinate its content moderation policies in any way with Google or Twitter?”
Zuckerberg evaded the question.
ZUCKERBERG EVADED THE QUESTION
Hawley asked Zuckerberg for a list of “every mention of Google or Twitter from the task platform to this committee.” Zuckerberg was evasive again.
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When Hawley pressed him, he said he wasn’t aware of any sensitivity and it wouldn’t be wise “for me to commit to that right now.”
Mark Zuckerberg under oath to me today: I don’t know, I can’t recall, I don’t remember, I’ll follow up later, let me get back to you
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) November 17, 2020
Hawley said the big tech CEOs use an internal tool called Centra to monitor users without their knowledge. According to Hawley, the software allows Facebook to see the pages users visit, their linked accounts, and other personal data.
Zuckerberg didn’t know anything about that either.
Watch him express his concerns with Tucker:
If we don’t take action now to rein in the #BigTech corporations, they will run this country. That means repealing #Section230 and it means updated antitrust laws for 21st century pic.twitter.com/qT4bgn4KJ2
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) November 18, 2020
After the hearing, Josh Hawley tweeted a link to Rush Limbaugh’s website, stating that Rush gets it. This is the key passage:
He [Hawley] asked specifically, “Do you have the ability to coordinate…?” He was asking about their censorship, essentially. He’s asking Zuckerberg, “Do you have the ability to coordinate with Twitter and with Instagram? Do you have the ability to coordinate?” Zuckerberg paused and said, “Senator, let me be very, very, very, very, very clear about this. We do. We do have the ability to, uh, coordinate when it comes to matters of security.”
“Like what?”
“Well, like terrorism, national security. We have the ability to coordinate.”
Well, what Zuckerberg just admitted is they have the ability to coordinate, period.
Despite his poor memory, evasions and protestations, he admitted the truth. He has the ability and you know he does it.
That is just not American.
Rush continued:
If they can coordinate with Twitter if they can join Twitter and figure out who to censor if Zuckerberg and Dorsey decide they want to censor somebody they can do it and they can coordinate it… Because if they can do this with terrorism, they could do it with anybody.
So under oath, Josh Hawley got Zuckerberg to admit that Facebook does have tools to track its users across the internet — across platforms, across accounts — all without user knowledge. Hawley says, “I asked how many times this tool has been used domestically against Americans, and Zuckerberg won’t say. A Facebook whistleblower tells me it’s called ‘Sentra,’” this cross-platform tool thing they’ve got.
Zuckerberg said he couldn’t recall the name. He’s only the company CEO. After all, there’s a lot of people that work there. At any rate, I watched this, and my mouth fell open. I was stunned that Zuckerberg admitted this. He tried to limit its impact by saying, “Oh, no, you only do this during times of national security.”
This needs to be stopped. They are way too powerful. The problem is Democrats, especially Barack Obama, who insist on more censorship against the right. They may now be in power with America’s first puppet president.
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