The Senate Judiciary Committee panel, however, could prove to be the toughest political territory for Facebook and its Silicon Valley peers. Lawmakers there have been seething over Facebook, Google and Twitter since last fall, when the panel grilled those tech giants’ lawyers about another issue – Russian propaganda that spread on their platforms around the 2016 election.
Questions about Trump, the Russian government’s disinformation efforts and the presidential race are likely to return at the scheduled April 10 session – on top of new, uncomfortable queries about the ways that the biggest brands in the tech industry collect and protect information about their users. Some of the Judiciary Committee’s members, including Republican Sen. John Kennedy (La.) and Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), are regular critics of the tech industry’s privacy practices.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member