U.S. Senator Michael Bennet on Tuesday sought information on how tech giants Meta (META.O), X, TikTok and Google (GOOGL.O) were trying to stop the spread of false and misleading content about the Israel-Hamas conflict on their platforms.
U.S. Senator Michael Bennet and other U.S senators unveil legislation that would allow the Biden administration to "ban or prohibit" foreign technology products such as the Chinese-owned video app TikTok during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 7, 2023.
The social media firms have outlined some steps they've taken in recent days in response to the conflict. The short video app TikTok said it had hired more Arabic and Hebrew-speaking content moderators. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram,it had removed or marked as disturbing more than 795,000 pieces of content in Hebrew or Arabic in the first three days since the Hamas attack. X and Google-owned YouTube both said they had also taken down harmful content.
Bennet also slammed the four companies for having laid off staff from their trust and safety teams in the past year that were in charge of monitoring for false and misleading content.in Nov. 2022 after Elon Musk acquired the company, cutting more staff last month, Bennet noted. Meta reduced 100 similar positions in January, while Google reduced by a third a team creating tools to counter online hate speech and disinformation, Bennet said.
"Your platforms are helping produce an information ecosystem in which basic facts are increasingly in dispute, while untrustworthy sources are repeatedly designated as authoritative."Things were looking up for Tractiv in January, when the data tracking software startup was on the cusp of a deal with Marvel Studios. Now, it is on the brink, with just enough cash left to make it to Thanksgiving.
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