Klobuchar Says Republicans Are Politicizing Content Moderation

(Bloomberg) -- U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar said her Republican colleagues are politicizing internet content moderation, holding a hearing with social media executives while trying to spread voting misinformaiton.

“I want to note this hearing comes six days before Election Day and I believe we’re politicizing, and the Republican majority is politicizing, what is actually not a partisan topic,” Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, said Wednesday during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing where the CEOs of Twitter Inc., Facebook Inc. and Google parent Alphabet Inc. are testifying. She thanked the companies for “the work that they’re doing to encourage voting and put out the correct information when the president and others are undermining vote-by-mail.”

Still, she said the platforms could be “corrosive” in their promotion of dangerous conspiracy theories, and pushing people toward more polarizing content as they spend more time on the sites.

“Does that bother you, what it’s done to our politics?” she asked Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. He said he disagreed with her characterization, saying that Facebook shows people the content that is most important to them.

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