As part of the "social media as piñata" Big Tech bashing this week, which included Hill hearings on online privacy and Instagram's impact on children, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has introduced a bill that would make social media companies liable "for bodily or mental harm their products cause to children."

The bill would remove websites' Sec. 230 immunity from civil liability, allowing parents to sue for damages from social media companies for "bodily injury or harm to mental health that is attributable, in whole or in part, to the individual’s use of a covered interactive computer service provided by the social media company."

That comes as Facebook was raked over the proverbial coals in a Senate Consumer Protection Subcommittee hearing Thursday (Sept. 30) over internal documents that suggest it knew Instagram was harmful to young people, including to their mental health and wellbeing.

Hawley referenced the company in announcing his bill.

“Facebook has long had evidence of the harmful effects their products have on children but covered it up because it would hurt their profits," he said. "These Big Tech monopolies know exactly how addictive and manipulative their products are but they’re content to rake in billions by exploiting children. Parents need to be given the tools to take back control.”

The Hawley bill and the Hill hearing--at which both Democrats and Republicans read a company representative the riot act--were both prompted in part by reports from the Wall Street Journal on internal Facebook research. Those documents were separately supplied to the subcommittee by a whistleblower who has agreed to testify at an Oct. 5 hearing in the same subcommittee, and to talk about the documents on 60 Minutes this Sunday (Oct. 3), according to the network.

Hawley also confronted a Facebook VP about the documents in a Senate Judiciary hearing last week.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) wants Facebook and Twitter to explain the White House's admission Thursday that the Biden Administration has been flagging vaccine-related misinformation on social media.

The senator fired off letters to the CEOs of both companies citing White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki's statements in the daily press conference Thursday (July 15) that the Biden Administration has been in "regular touch" with social media platforms about COVID-19-related posts and flagging the "problematic" ones.

"Facebook should provide, publicly and transparently, data on the reach of COVID-19 -- COVID vaccine misinformation. Not just engagement, but the reach of the misinformation and the audience that it's reaching," Psaki said. "That will help us ensure we're getting accurate information to people. This should be provided not just to researchers, but to the public so that the public knows and understands what is accurate and inaccurate."

Also Read: Attorneys General: Facebook, Twitter Fail to Sufficiently Combat Anti-Vaxxers

"We are in regular touch with these social media platforms, and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff," she said, adding: "We're flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation."

That sounded to Hawley like the government and Facebook teaming up for a speech police action. He and other Republicans already argue that social media is in league with Democrats to censor conservative speech. Republicans have been more inclined to criticize the vaccination effort, and are less likely to have been vaccinated themselves.

"This casual admission of collusion—between the state and corporations that have monopolized the flow of information and therefore dictate the terms of service for the public square—is shocking," Hawley wrote in a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He wrote a similar letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

Hawley said that "collusion" raises the spectre of social media becoming an arm of the federal government.

He asked Zuckerberg for a "full accounting" of the content the Biden Administration has flagged, what posts it has asked to remove, and what content Facebook has removed.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), the freshman senator who has gone after Big Tech with a vengeance, has introduced a bill that would ban Amazon and other online sales platforms from marketing their own goods along with sellers they host on their platforms.

The appropriately-named Bust Up Big Tech Act would give the Federal Trade Commission the job of monitoring compliance, and would toughen antitrust enforcement as well.

Also Read: GOP Senators Seek Hearing on FTC Handling of Google

The new bill follows Hawley's introduction last week of the Trust Busting for the Twenty-First Century Act, which seeks to break up what he calls dominant, anticompetitive firms and crack down on mergers and acquisitions by mega-corporations. That would include by banning "all mergers and acquisitions by companies with market capitalization exceeding $100 billion." That would include Apple, Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Facebook and Microsoft.

Traditionally it was Democrats looking to bust up merged companies, but Big Tech has become an equal opportunity antitrust offender in the eyes of Republicans complaining about what they see as anticonservative bias in Silicon Valley and the power of Big Tech over online speech and action.

Also Read: Hawley Bill Would Presumptively Block Biggest Tech Mergers

Specifically, the Bust Up Big Tech Act would:

"1. Ban major companies in the business of offering search engines, marketplaces, and exchanges from competing with third-party vendors by selling, advertising, or promoting their own competing goods and services on their sites.
Example: Amazon should not be able to own Amazon Marketplace and sell their own Amazon products on their marketplace against other competitors.

2. "Ban major companies in the business of offering search engines, marketplaces, and exchanges from expanding their power and creating anticompetitive conflicts of interest by providing the online hosting and internet infrastructure services for third parties.

Example: Amazon cannot continue to operate an overwhelmingly dominant retail business and simultaneously own an enormous share of the cloud computing technology upon which the internet itself is built.

3. "Empower the Federal Trade Commission to hire sufficient staff to monitor compliance.

4. "Ensure the antitrust laws are actually enforced, by authorizing state attorneys general and private citizens to bring civil actions to ensure compliance."

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), one of the longest and strongest critics of Big Tech, has called on the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold hearings on what he suggested was the Obama Federal Trade Commission's love affair with Google.

Also Read: Sen. Hawley Seeks Amazon Antitrust Investigation

The FTC has long gotten criticism for its decision not to sue Google following an investigation into whether it was using its dominance in search anticompetitively. That was in contrast to Google's treatment by the European Union.

Hawley's renewed interest in putting Google under the magnifying glass in Washington was related to a story in Politico about the FTC's failure to find antitrust issues with Google at a "critical moment' in that company's rise to search dominance.

Also Read: Democratic Rep Seeks Google Info from FTC

In 2013, the FTC closed its antitrust investigation into Google concluding there was insufficient evidence to conclude that the company "unfairly preferences its own content on the Google search results page and selectively demotes its competitors’ content from those results" and that Google's placement of its own content at or near the top of search results "could plausibly be viewed as an improvement in the overall quality of Google’s search product" attributable to algorithmic changes that could also be plausibly viewed as improvements. 

Hallmark said its political action committee, HALLPAC, supports government officials "from a wide variety of viewpoints—including Democrats, Republicans and Independents." But there are a couple whose viewpoints have proven too wide for Hallmark to get its arms around.

Also Read: Comcast Suspends Contributions

That comes in the wake of the storming of the Capitol Jan. 6 by Trump supporters while Congress was counting the electoral votes for President-elect Joe Biden and some Republicans, led by Sens Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), from Hallmark's home state, were objecting to the count and calling for a commission to study the President's claims, rejected by dozens of courts and proffered on no evidence beyond conspiracy theories, of widespread election fraud.

Also Read: USTelecom Suspends PAC Bucks to Candidates

"Hallmark believes the peaceful transition of power is part of the bedrock of our democratic system, and we abhor violence of any kind," the company said, known best for family friendly movies and mysteries and iconically heartwarming card commercials, said in a statement. "The recent actions of Senators Josh Hawley and Roger Marshall [R-Kan.] do not reflect our company’s values. As a result, HALLPAC requested Sens. Hawley and Marshall [who also challenged the Biden victory] to return all HALLPAC campaign contributions."

Also Read: AT&T Suspends Funding for GOP Election Vote Challengers

That Hallmark request is a variation on a theme, the theme being a groundswell of companies--banks, AT&T, Comcast--suspending their PAC contributions to all the republicans--there were close to 150 in the House and Senate--who supported electoral vote count objections.

Saying he had talked with a Facebook whistle-blower and armed with visual aids, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) took to a virtual hearing stage Tuesday (Nov. 17) to grill Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on allegations that Twitter, Google and Facebook coordinated their content moderation in deciding what content to suppress.

That came at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing entitled "Breaking the News: Censorship, Suppression, and the 2020 Election."

Related: Big Tech Bigwigs to Testify

Hawley said he had been contacted by a Facebook whistle-blower with direct knowledge of the company's content-moderation practices who talked about an internal platform called "tasks."

Hawley said he understood that Facebook used the platform to "coordinate projects including censorship" by discussing, including with the other platforms, which individuals or hashtags or web sites to ban.

Zuckerberg said the "tasks" system to coordinate all kinds of work across the country, though he said he did not necessarily agree with the characterization "around content moderation."

Hawley showed a screen shot of the task platform, which he said included "censorship input" form Google and Twitter.

Using it as an "aha" moment, Hawley said that as he understood it, "Facebook censorship teams communicate with their counterparts and Google and Twitter and enter those companies' suggestions onto the tasks platform so that Facebook could follow up and essentially coordinate their censorship efforts."

Related: Hawley Slams Big Tech

He asked Zuckerberg, "under oath," whether Facebook coordinated its content moderation policies or efforts in any way with Google or Twitter."

Zuckerberg said they "do coordinate and share signals" around security issues, like a terrorist attack or child exploitation imagery or a foreign government influence operation. "That is an area where companies do share signals about what they see."

But he said that was distinct from the content-moderation policies we or the other companies have." He said each company makes its own decision about how to deal with that information.

Hawley pressed him on whether Facebook coordinated content moderation policies with Google or Twitter.

Zuckerberg said no, they do not coordinate, though he conceded "some level of communications probably happens," but that is different from coordinating. Hawley shot back that he had "clear evidence" of such coordination, which he called "unacceptable but predictable."

Zuckerberg said they share signals around specific harms, but that each company deals with those signals in line with their own policies, which is different from coordinating about what the policies should be.

Hawley was followed by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) who said she, for one, could understand why Facebook would coordinate with other platforms for security reasons.

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said the committee will issue a subpoena next Tuesday to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to testify about his company's blocking New York Post stories over the past couple of days on Hunter Biden.

The stories, about connections with China and Russia, are based on e-mails allegedly from Hunter Biden's computer.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), talking during a break in the confirmation hearings Thursday (Oct. 15), said that both Twitter and Facebook had interfered in the election in favor of Joe Biden by blocking the stories about his son and that the committee planned a hearing to question Dorsey next Friday (Oct. 23).

Graham, speaking at the same break, said that stories about President Trump and Russian election meddling had never been blocked, and that an "accounting" of social media platforms was overdue because the stories' blocking by twitter "crystalizes" the problem with Big Tech, which was that "the power behind these platforms has been taken to a dangerous level.

The announcement followed letters sent Thursday by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) to Facebook and Twitter inviting them to testify before Congress on the same issue. Hawley said Thursday the subpoena should be extended to Facebook as well.

Hawley and other critics of the blocking decisions argue that those moves violate campaign finance reform law because it constitutes an in-kind contribution to the Biden campaign.

Hawley wrote letters to both Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to invite them to testify before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, which Hawley chairs.

Hawley said Twitter was "asymmetrically applying its terms of service and restricting the distribution of a New York Post article entitled “Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad,” as well as by suspending the official account of the presidential campaign of Donald Trump for
discussing this story."

He told Zuckerberg that his company had contributed to the campaign by "suppressing the distribution" of the Post story.

Hawley is one of Big Tech's biggest critics in Washington.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has called on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to reverse its decision not to accept new political advertising in the week before the November election.

Facebook announced the ad ban earlier this month.

"We're going to block new political and issue ads during the final week of the campaign," Zuckerberg said at the time. "It's important that campaigns can run get out the vote campaigns, and I generally believe the best antidote to bad speech is more speech, but in the final days of an election there may not be enough time to contest new claims. So in the week before the election, we won't accept new political or issue ads," he said. "Advertisers will be able to continue running ads they started running before the final week and adjust the targeting for those ads, but those ads will already be published transparently in our Ads Library so anyone, including fact-checkers and journalists, can scrutinize them."

But Hawley argues that the ban could suppress voter turnout and result in an overly broad blackout of ads related to social issues.

"In a culture in which virtually every issue—from knitting and yoga to sushi and young-adult fiction—has become aggressively politicized, any topic can be deemed ‘sensitive’ in the right context," he wrote Zuckerberg. "Given Facebook’s sweeping powers to shape the news and information that Americans receive, clarity on Facebook’s understanding of these terms is critical.”

Hawley wants an answer by Sept. 23 to the question of how Facebook is defining a political or issue ad and whether "news or opinion outlets will be allowed to promote stories related to the election, and whether advocacy groups like Planned Parenthood or NARAL will be permitted to advertise on Facebook during the blackout."

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), one of the biggest critics of the presence of Chinese telecom and tech in the U.S., said the government should reject oracle's proposed purchase of TikTok's U.S. operations because it still leaves the Chinese app's parent, ByteDance, in the picture.

Oracle reportedly beat out Microsoft Monday (Sept. 14) in a bidding War for a TikTok deal.

President Trump has issued an executive order banning the video social media app unless it is sold to a U.S. company, but Hawley said the Oracle proposal does not fill the bill and should be rejected by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).

Related: TikTok Suitors Urged to Protect Kids' Data

Hawley said Oracle's partnership with ByteDance "allows for continued Chinese Communist Party control of TikTok, putting American data at risk and violating President Trump’s executive order."

Related: TikTok Close to Sale

"[A]n ongoing ‘partnership’ that allows for anything other than the full emancipation of the TikTok software from potential Chinese Communist Party control is completely unacceptable, and flatly inconsistent with the President’s Executive Order of August 6," Hawley wrote Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.

"CFIUS should promptly reject any Oracle-ByteDance collaboration and send the ball back to ByteDance’s court so that the company can come up with a more acceptable solution. ByteDance can still pursue a full sale of TikTok, its code, and its algorithm to a U.S. company, so that the app can be rebuilt from the ground up to remove any trace of CCP influence."

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) will be introducing the Behavioral Advertising Decisions Are Downgrading Services (BAD ADS) Act. 

The bill would remove a large internet content providers' Sec. 230 immunity from liability for most third-party content if they use behavioral advertising or traffic in the data used to deliver such ads. It would also make companies that serve ads to those providers liable for claims against them if the providers had directed that behavioral ads not be served to their users. 

The Sec. 230 immunity would be removed for a 30-day period following each incidence of a behavioral ad.

Related: Rep. Khanna Says Big Tech Needs Well-Crafted Regulation

The bill defines the advertising that would lose a provider that key liability protection as: "[A] form of advertising 15 in which an advertisement is displayed to a user of an interactive computer service based on 1) the personal traits of the user; 2) previous location in 21 formation with respect to the user; 3) personal information from a profile about the user that is created for the purpose of selling advertisements; 4) the previous online or 2 offline behavior of the user;" and does not include "contextual advertising, such as advertising that is directed to a user based on 1) the content of the website, online service, online application, or mobile application to which the user is connected; 2) the location of the user, as of the time at which the advertising is directed to the user; 3) the search terms that the user applied to arrive at the website, service, or application to which the user is connected." 

Related: GOP Senators Introduce Sec. 230-Targeted Bill

The law would apply to any interactive computer service provider with more than 30 million users per year in the U.S. or 300 million worldwide and had more than $1.5 billion in global revenue annually, unless it has tax exempt status.  

"Big Tech’s manipulative advertising regime comes with a massive hidden price tag for consumers while providing almost no return to anyone but themselves," said Hawley, citing Google and Facebook as examples. "From privacy violations to harming children to suppression of speech, the ramifications are very real. These kinds of manipulative ads are not what Congress had in mind when passing Section 230, and now is the time to put a stop to this abuse.” 

The bill comes the day after the Trump Administration called on the FCC to define what types of content moderation should not earn Sec. 230 immunity. It is part of the President's effort to crack down on what he has said is the suppression of conservative speech online in the guise of content moderation. 

Not surprisingly, the Association of National Advertisers is opposed to the bill. "There are all sorts of reasons why consumers want to receive information in areas they are focusing on, rather than just getting undifferentiated content," said ANA group EVP, government relations, Dan Jaffe. He also said that some of the limitations as to who would be covered may raise constitutional issues.

He said clearly focus on the Sec. 230 issues is increasing in Washington, but said, hopefully, that would not mean putting on limitations on relevant advertising that consumers want. 

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has agreed that those government affairs should not include use of a popular app. 

The committee voted unanimously Wednesday (July 22) to banish TikTok from government devices, according to the bill's co-sponsor, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). 

The legislation now moves to the Senate floor. 

A House version has already been approved as an amendment to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act. 

Calling the company "a major security risk" that has "no place on government devices," Hawley teamed with fellow Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida back in March to introduce the self-evidently titled "No TikTok on Government Devices Act." 

Related: Hawley Slams No-Shows Tik Tok, Apple 

Under bipartisan pressure from Congress, the State Department, DHS and the TSA have all banned their employees from using the Chinese-backed short-form mobile video app on government devices, and even advised them to have their children uninstall it from their personal devices, Hawley pointed out last week. The bill would make it a blanket ban over all government agencies.  

Tech companies are pushing back hard on a new bill targeting online sexual abuse of children, saying weakening Sec. 230 liability protections is the wrong way to address the problem. 

The bipartisan Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies (EARN IT) Act, which was introduced in March, is being marked up in the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday (July 2). That means amended and either approved for a full Senate vote, or not.

Related: Senate to Vet Edge Provider Liability Bill 

The bill, which was introduced by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), would amend Sec. 230 to say the third-party liability immunity does not extend to child exploitation laws, meaning a Facebook or Twitter could be held liable for posts that illegally exploit children. Co-sponsors include  

The bill's co-sponsors include Judiciary ranking member Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Sen, Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), one of Big Tech's biggest Senate critics.

The bill would create a National Commission on Online Child Sexual Exploitation Prevention, charged with providing the Justice Department with "recommended best practices that providers of interactive computer services may choose to implement to prevent, reduce, and respond to the online sexual exploitation of children, including the enticement, grooming, sex trafficking, and sexual abuse of children and the proliferation of online child sexual abuse material."

Related: Senators Are Teaming on Bipartisan Sec. 230 Transparency Bill 

The heads of the Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security, and Federal Trade Commission, or their representatives would be among the 19 members of the commission, with the other 16 appointed by the Senate and House majority and minority leaders. A best practice can only be recommended if at least 14 members agree. 

Among the things it will be looking at is coming up with a rating and categorization system for types of child sexual abuse material, establishing content moderators to review such content, preparing reports about terms of service disclosures, age-rating and age-gating systems, parental control products to limit the web sites and social media platforms kids can access, and more. 

While tech association ITI said its members share the goal of removing online child sex abuse content, they say the EARN It act would "undermine cybersecurity, privacy, and free speech, while failing to meaningfully tackle exploitative content beyond current authorities." 

Related: DOJ Proposes Sec. 230 Reforms 

They said giving an "unaccountable commission" discretion to come up with best practices could mean giving law enforcement encryption back-doors by expanding the Attorney General's investigative power, creating new criminal penalties and weakening the Sec. 230 protection from civil suits over third-party content by lowering the "knowledge standard" in those suits. 

"By blocking lawsuits by individuals’ whose material is removed by the operator, Section 230 allows companies to affirmatively block and screen harmful material without fear of constant or burdensome lawsuits by the owners of that material," ITI said in a letter to Judiciary Committee leadership. "Removing Section 230’s liability protections, as the EARN IT Act would do, only undermines the legal certainty that is central to both enabling innovation and free speech on the Internet and preserving the ability for companies to take down exploitative material." 

Related: New Bill Would Attack Child Porn 

There has been ongoing tension between Big Tech and both sides of the aisle over the issue of encryption back doors, with Justice Departments under both President Barack Obama and Donald Trump saying they need a way to get into the encrypted devices of terrorists and other bad actors. The optics have also been tough for Big Tech when it pushes back on bills related to child sexual exploitation. 

ITI is not alone in saying the EARN IT Act is the wrong solution to an acknowledged problem. It is joined by Human Rights Watch, The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) joined fellow Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) Wednesday (June 17) in slamming Google for what they said is political censorship. 

That followed reports that Google threatened to "demonetize" The Federalist (not serve ads to the site) because it had not taken down certain posts in its comment section. Its publisher said it does not moderate those comments. 

Related: Sen. Cruz Hammers Google Over Comment Issue 

"Google’s decision to threaten the conservative publication The Federalist with removal from the Google Ads platform—based on, apparently, the contents of its comments section—is startling, but apparently just the latest instance of Google’s long pattern of targeting any perspectives that deviate from its preferred party line," Hawley wrote in a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

"It is profoundly disingenuous for Google to insist on applying a standard to other companies that it disclaims for itself," Hawley told Pichai. "Google and other technology companies routinely rely on the protections afforded by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to evade responsibility for any third-party content posted on the platforms they offer. Now, Google apparently declines to extend a similar protection to those companies that rely on its own services. And the hypocrisy does not stop there: if the contents of a website’s comments sections are sufficient to declare that site offensive and banish it from Google’s platform, one wonders what to make of the cesspit that is the comments section of YouTube." 

Hawley is one of the Senate's most vocal critics of Big Tech. He introduced a bill Wednesday that would effectively eliminate a website's Sec. 230 immunity from civil liability by eliminating it unless they "update their terms of service to promise to operate in good faith." They would also agree to pay attorneys fees and $5,000 to each website user if it was proved they had violated that promise, which for some Big Tech giants would amount to billions of dollars.  

A quartet of Republican senators aren't waiting for the Commerce Department to petition the FCC to get into the issue of rethinking social media's exemption from civil liability over their moderation of third party content. 

That came in a letter to FCC chair Ajit Pai from Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Josh Hawley (Mo.) (pictured above), Kelly Loeffler (Ga.) and Kevin Cramer (N.D.). 

The senators cited President Trump's Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship, which mandates that Commerce's National Telecommunications & Information Administration ask the FCC to come up with a framework for exempting censorship of political speech from that so-called Sec. 230 exemption. 

"It is time to take a fresh look at Section 230 and to interpret the vague standard of 'good faith' with specific guidelines and direction," they said, echoing Trump's order. 

"We therefore request that the FCC clearly define the framework under which technology firms, including social media companies, receive protections under Section 230," they wrote. 

Pai Tuesday (June 9) declined to comment on the FCC's role in that issue, saying he did not think it was appropriate given that the FCC is awaiting the petition for rulemaking. Once that is filed, Pai will almost certainly not comment either since he generally makes it a practice not to comment on issues that are before the commission.

Sec. 230 has been twisted by Big Tech and the courts into a sweetheart deal for companies like Facebook and Google that Congress never intended. 

President Donald Trump has declared war on the section, which provides websites immunity from civil liability for decisions to remove content from their sites or leaving it up. 

Related: Trump Issues Social Media Order

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), one of Big Tech's biggest critics, has written a white paper stating flatly that the section, in its current twisted form--"unrecognizable from the law that Congress passed"--cannot stand. 

He said that Big Tech treats Sec. 230 as though it were a standalone statute rather than part of a larger bill, the Communications Decency Act, which was expressly designed to impose liability on platforms to keep them safe for children and families. 

He pointed out that court decisions gutted the CDA, but left the immunity provision and stretched it to fit the growing social media giants. The result, he said, was that the Sec. 230 immunity was preserved while the responsibilities from which it had been a carve-out were gone. 

"Section 230, as interpreted today, gives companies immunity for their own bad acts, like purposely designing a platform to monetize illegal content, taking down content in bad faith, or encouraging illegal acts. The “Good Samaritan” statute has been expanded to protect many bad actors," he writes.

The President had signaled that some action was coming on social media. He had cited among other things Twitter's flagging and tagging of his tweets that mail-in ballots were bogus and an effort to rig the upcoming election, as well as Google's admission that it had been deleting Chinese-language phrases critical of the Chinese Communist Party (Google said it was a mistake being corrected).

Hawley had the President's back, writing Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey suggesting that if Twitter were going to editorialize on the President's tweets, it should not get Sec. 230 immunity. 

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has asked Google CEO Sundar Pichai to better explain reports it is censoring criticism of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). 

Related: Sen. Cruz Says Big Tech Needs to Prove No Bias 

The Verge reported that YouTube confirmed it had been deleting comments containing "certain" Chinese-language phrases critical of the Communist Party. Google told the paper it was a mistake the company was correcting, though the Verge pointed out red flags had been raised over the deletions months ago.  

Google's explanation did not assuage Hawley, one of Big Tech's biggest critics in Congress.  

Related: Hawley Adds Big Corps. to Big Tech Concerns 

“Despite your stated commitments to free speech, you were happy to censor if it meant obtaining more revenue; you shelved the Google.com search engine only after you were targeted with a cyberattack," he wrote in a letter dated Wednesday, May 27. "Indeed, as recently as last year, you were secretly working on a new censorship-based search engine, Project Dragonfly, development of which was paused only in the face of immense backlash internally." 

He wants answers to a number of questions, including what led to its censoring the Chinese terms for "communist bandit" and "50-cent party" and whether the company had had any conversations with the party about those terms. 

Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)  are introducing a bill, the Countering Chinese Attempts at Snooping (C-CAS) Act of 2020, that would further crack down on Chinese telecoms Huawei and ZTE and any other company that the State Department identifies as controlled by the Chinese Communist Policy. 

The bill would prevent federal employees from conducting any official business over platforms "run" by Huawei, ZTE, Tencent, and any other suspect tech. 

The bill requires the Secretary of State to create a list of Chinese tech companies that are determined to enable the Chinese Communist Party to conduct espionage. That is the list of companies whose technology government employees are prevented from using. 

It would also prevent any taxpayer dollars going to fund U.N. contracts with any suspect tech supplier. 

Related: FCC Seeks Input on Excluding Foreign Tech 

The FCC has already moved to prevent government broadband subsidy money going to Huawei, ZTE, and other suspect tech and has moved to revoke the licenses of some Chinese telecom nets linking to U.S. networks, and Congress is excluding them from government contract money. 

"The United Nations' decision to partner with Tencent, a glorified surveillance arm of the Chinese Communist Party, is stupid and dangerous," said Hawley. "Chinese technology companies like Tencent and Huawei actively conspire with the CCP to conduct international surveillance and present an ongoing threat to the United States and our allies. American taxpayer money should not fund UN contracts that benefit the Chinese Communist Party." 

“Preventing U.S. federal employees from conducting official business over platforms controlled by Chinese Communist Party-backed companies is smart policy," said Mike Rogers, chairman of 5G Action and former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. "We must look at, and fully appreciate, the threat posed by companies like Huawei, ZTE, and Tencent to America’s national and economic security. This legislation is an important step in that direction.”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is calling on Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Apple CEO Tim Cook to take personal liability for any potential privacy violations associated with their contact tracing project. 

The computer giants are trying to help stem the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic by tracking population movements. 

Related: The Latest on COVID-19 Impact on Industry

In a letter to Pichai and Cook dated Tuesday (April 21), Hawley, who has been one of Congress' biggest Big Tech critics, said he is concerned about data collected for tracing the spread of the virus being anonymous and whether they could be trusted to stop the program when the pandemic ended. He wants the CEO's to have some skin in the game, as it were. 

“If you seek to assure the public, make your stake in this project personal. Make a commitment that you and other executives will be personally liable if you stop protecting privacy, such as by granting advertising companies access to the interface once the pandemic is over,” he wrote.  

One reason for his skepticism that the companies would protect privacy, he said, was Google's admission during a March Judiciary Committee hearing that it still tracks location data even after a user has "turned it off." 

It would seem a bit of a no-brainer, but a bipartisan pair of senators wants to make sure the government investigation of Google includes search. 

Related: Delrahim Seeks Examples of Online Anticompetitive Conduct 

In a letter to Attorney General William Barr, Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who are far apart on the political spectrum, are apparently in agreement that DOJ needs reminding to insure that its antitrust investigation includes Google's search operations. 

They say that while the department is investigating Google's behavior in the online advertising market, they are concerned that it might be focusing too narrowly on online advertising, which the senators say is inextricably linked to is the billions of search results every week that give it that ad dominance. 

Related: Google Hit with $1.7B EC Fine Over Search 

"Narrowing the investigation's focus such that Google's anticompetitive practices dominate the online search market is not captured does a grave disservice to consumers," they wrote.  

The senators have both long sought an antitrust investigation into dominant tech companies in general. Given that Google's advertising operations are "downstream" of its search business, they say focusing on that could miss the "primary" source of anticompetitive conduct. 

They pointed out the EU's $2.7 billion fine of Google three years ago for manipulating search and what they said is ample evidence Google biases search results to "favor its own properties." 

Sen. Josh Hawley has announced that he plans to introduce legislation banning the TikTok app from all government devices.  

He called it a necessary step to protect the security of the country and the data security of its citizens.  

Currently the State Department, DHS and the TSA have all banned their employees from using the Chinese-backed short-form mobile video app on government devices, and even advised them to have their children uninstall it from their personal devices, Hawley said Wednesday.  

TikTok is a Chinese company that does business in the U.S.

Hawley announced the bill at a Hill hearing on China's threat to tech.

Early in the hearing, Hawley talked of China launching social media apps to the global consumer market, another issue in Hawley's wheelhouse, then singled out TikTok, which was invited to the hearing but declined to participate. 

Sen. Dick Durbin also chided Apple for not agreeing to testify, saying that Hawley should not take it personally since it was ten years ago that the company declined his invitation to come and talk about their "complicity in human rights violations in China, and sadly it has gotten worse since.

Hawley pointed out that TikTok was the most downloaded app of 2019 in the U.S., and said more teenagers are on the app than on Facebook. He said it is required by Chinese law to share user data with Beijing and admits it has sent user data to China. He called that a major security risk as it collects images and info about the messages its users send and sites that they visit and location data.  

As a father of young children, Hawley said he found that "absolutely horrifying." 

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), ranking member of the Judiciary Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee said at the hearing that focusing on China--the hearing, called by Republican chairman Hawley (R-Mo.) was entitled "Dangerous Partners: Big Tech and Beijing"--missed a larger picture. 

"The problem is bigger than Beijing and broader than any one industry," he said in his opening statement. Whitehouse said there had been an onslaught of cyber crime that came from individuals, criminal syndicates and nation states, including Russia, Iran and North Korea. 

He said the government must look at the "full array of cyber threats" and figure out what more should be done.  

Whitehouse said the country needs to strengthen the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) framework of voluntary best practices for the companies that build out and maintain critical infrastructure. He called that framework, announced in 2014, groundbreaking, but said "we still don't know if it is working." 

Whitehouse said the framework needed to be "stress-tested" and updated. He also called for the President to name a "discloser-in-chief" to declassify and share government cybersecurity info with states, the private sector and the public. "We can only defend ourselves against threats if we know they are out there," he said. 

Related: NIST Releases Privacy Framework 

He gave the Department of Homeland Security for trying to get more cyberattack information out faster.  

While Whitehouse wanted to look beyond China, Hawley began the questioning focused on  

China, saying the U.S. faced a major security threat from that country, to economic, military and cyber and personal data security.

Witness Clyde Wallace, deputy assistant director of the FBI's cyber division, echoed Hawley's concern. "While several nation-states pose a cyber threat to U.S. interests, no other country presents a broader and more comprehensive threat to our ideas, innovation, and economic security than the People’s Republic of China," Wallace said.  

Asked why the government agencies that had banned TikTok so far had done so, Wallace said TikTok was an application whose implications the average American did not understand in terms of what data could flow to a state-sponsored actor and its data warehouses. 

Witness Bryan Ware, assistant director for cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security added said that consumers trade their personal information pretty freely for  entertainment or convenience and said he wished "we were all more aware of what we were giving up when we did that." 

He agreed there was not place for TikTok, primarily an entertainment platform, on any government devices or networks. 

Whitehouse said there was a way for well-intention countries to surveil apps with malicious payloads, particularly ones that are becoming rapidly popular--like TikTok--and put warning labels on them so the public knows what the hazards are. He urged his witnesses to pursue that, which would require State buy. He said TikTok was an example of such a hazardous product that was unmarked by most people.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has released the witness list for his March 4 hearing on Chinese influence on critical infrastructure, ominously named: Dangerous Partners: "Big Tech & Beijing." 

Related: Carr, O'Rielly Raise Big Tech Red Flags at CPAC 

That is the hearing for which Apple and Chinese app company Tik Tok declined to send representatives--as they did to a November hearing on a similar topic--much to the displeasure of Hawley, who chairs the Judiciary Committee's Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee. 

As it stands, there are no tech company reps in the witness list. 

On Hawley's nice list, at least for showing up, are witnesses (panel one) Clyde Wallace, deputy assistant director of the FBI's cyber division; Bryan Warer, assistant director for cybersecurity for CISA; Adam Hickey, deputy assistant attorney general of the Department of Justice's National Security Division; and (panel two) Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory; Samm Sacks, cybersecurity policy and China digital economy fellow, New America; and Derek Scissors, resident scholar, American Enterprise Institute. 

Hawley has been one of the most vocal critics of Big Tech, including Chinese telecom technology in U.S. communications networks. 

There has been a lot of talk inside the Beltway about whether tech giants have gotten to near monopoly status by anti-competitively buying up competitors in their infancy before they can trigger red flags with antitrust regulators, then reaping the fruits of never-were competitors’ innovations.

Now the Federal Trade Commission is doing something about getting to the bottom of that concern, though it is facing a challenge from a critic of edge providers trying to recraft the FTC as a digital-focused investigative arm — but one no longer independent from the Trump cabinet.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), arguably the leading critic of tech companies in Congress, says overhauling the FTC and merging it into the Justice Department is the best approach to regulating edge providers.

He also said the government doesn't need to create a new "unaccountable bureaucracy" to oversee Big Tech, as some have suggested Congress should do. FTC chairman Joseph Simons agreed, saying that the FTC, with added resources and authority, is the right agency for the job.

“The FTC isn’t working,” Hawley said in announcing his new campaign. “It wastes time in turf wars with the DOJ, nobody is accountable for decisions, and it lacks the ‘teeth’ to get after Big Tech’s rampant abuses. Congress needs to do something about it.”

The senator would also get the FTC out of the merger review business, leaving that duty to the DOJ (see Below).

Almost everyone, including the head of the FTC, agrees that the agency could use more tools in its tech reg toolkit, including more money and staff. That’s particularly true now that it has the principal oversight of broadband privacy and access.

Bringing FTC to Justice

Hawley wants to help by putting the FTC under Justice and making it accountable to that agency, which would be a big change but would provide more market analysis and enforcement muscle.

Currently, the agency must sue companies to enforce its policies, rather than regulate compliance. Hawley says that means it lacks the "teeth" to go after what he calls tech's "rampant abuses."

Hawley's call for an overhaul came the same day the commission said it would start flexing what muscle it has.

It sent "special order" information requests to five of the biggest tech players — Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft — seeking information and documents to help it review the "terms, scope, structure, and purpose of transactions that each company consummated between Jan. 1, 2010 and Dec. 31, 2019."

The Trump administration has signaled it would take a retrospective look at some of the deals that may have passed under its antitrust radar as Big Tech got bigger, just to make sure they did not build those collective trillion-dollar market caps via anticompetitive means.

Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim, the DOJ’s antitrust chief, has said that big, even to the extent of being a natural monopoly, isn't necessarily bad. But he has conceded the market needs a fresh look.

“One of the FTC's biggest problems is that Congress has cut its funding over the decades, leaving the agency under-resourced to do its job,” Joshua Stager, senior counsel at New America's Open Technology Institute, said. “Senator Hawley's proposal does not acknowledge this reality, nor does he acknowledge that his own institution bears at least some blame for starving the agency of resources. It is difficult to take this proposal seriously when it ignores such a core problem.”

Argued Hawley: “The reality is the FTC is not putting even its current resources to effective use because the FTC is poorly designed.”

THE HAWLEY PLAN
The following is excerpted from Sen. Josh Hawley’s outline of a new FTC under the Justice Department:

Accountability
Restructure the FTC to operate within the DOJ

— The FTC would be headed by a single director (like the FBI), instead of a multi-member commission:

• The director would report to the Associate Attorney General.
• The director would be Senate-confirmed for renewable five-year terms.
• The FTC would gain new market analysis authority to direct its enforcement, assist the Antitrust Division and inform Congress.

— Transfer all authority to review mergers and acquisitions to the Antitrust Division of the DOJ:

• Create more tools for robust enforcement.
• Create authority to enforce rules requiring interoperability, data portability and data minimization.
• Create civil penalties for first-time offenses.
• Give the FTC greater research and reporting mandates.
• Give state attorneys general concurrent enforcement authority.

SOURCE: Office of Sen. Josh Hawley

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) read TikTok and Apple the riot act in absentia Tuesday (Nov. 5) after the Chinese-backed social media platform and the social media giant declined to send representatives to his hearing on Big Tech's data handling, or mishandling, and risks from their connections to China. 

Sen. Hawley began the hearing asking about all the data TikTok is collecting from American users. Hawley warned that the short-form mobile video platform and its massive data collection could be leveraged by the Chinese government against the U.S. 

He then lit into Apple for providing cloud services to China.

Hawley said he wanted to get it on the record that TikTok is collecting "a lot of data," including content, location, contacts, behavioral data on use of the platform, and information from messages and users' phone books. 

He said that was comparable to the "massive data harvesting" machines Google and Facebook. 

And while TikTok said that data is stored in the U.S. and Singapore, Hawley pointed out that TikTok's parent is ByteDance, which is based in China and subject to a 2017 Chinese national intelligence law that requires Chinese companies to cooperate with state intelligence work. 

He said that means TikTok's doors could be opened at any time to the Chinese Communist Party and Beijing could tell parent ByteDance to scoop up data on Americans and give it to Beijing. 

Hearing witness Klon Kitchen, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said that was "without a doubt true." 

Related: Sen. Whitehouse Hammers Social Media

Hawley ticked off some of the ways TikTok or another Chinese platform could abuse all that data, particularly using data to help artificial intelligence train autonomous weapons systems to identify targets--China is reportedly investing heavily in AI tech. 

Asked how the U.S. could ensure that TikTok or other Chinese tech companies weren't Trojan Horses gathering data on Americans and sending it back to the Chinese government. "I'm not sure we can," said Kitchen. He said that anyone who thinks a Chinese company, even if a portion of the company is in the U.S., can say no to the Chinese government, "that is a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the government in Beijing works." 

Apple, which was another hearing no-show, took it on the chin from both Hawley and Kitchen. 

Hawley said he was concerned about American companies--specifically Apple, which provides cloud services to China--storing both data and the tools to decrypt it in China.  

Kitchen said that while Apple was providing decryption keys for Chinese data stored there, doing so would give China a better understanding of the inner workings of Apple's iCloud accounts and could allow them to collect data "outside of that border." 

Hawley asked Kitchen whether he thought Apple and others were compromising U.S. data security by storing both data and encryption keys. He said, yes, any company complying with China cybersecurity laws was risking not only data security but national security.  

Related: Sen. Hawley Says Big Tech Is Exploiting Digital Tread Mill

Kitchen followed that with his most sobering observation/allegation, one that particularly struck Hawley, who said it summed up the problem: "China imprisons and tortures and kills religious minorities and political dissidents, and it is using compliant companies to do this at scale." 

Neither Tik Tok nor Facebook had responded to a request for comment at press time on the tenor of the hearing or the company's decision not to participate. 

But Vanessa Pappas, GM of TikTok U.S. has posted on the issue, saying: "[W]e store all U.S user data in the United States, with backup redundancy in Singapore. TikTok’s data centers are located entirely outside of China. Further, we have a dedicated technical team focused on adhering to robust cybersecurity policies, and data privacy and security practices."

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) read TikTok and Apple the riot act in absentia Tuesday (Nov. 5) after the Chinese-backed social media platform and the social media giant declined to send representatives to his hearing on Big Tech's data handling, or mishandling, and risks from their connections to China. 

Sen. Hawley began the hearing asking about all the data TikTok is collecting from American users. Hawley warned that the short-form mobile video platform and its massive data collection could be leveraged by the Chinese government against the U.S. 

He then lit into Apple for providing cloud services to China.

Hawley said he wanted to get it on the record that TikTok is collecting "a lot of data," including content, location, contacts, behavioral data on use of the platform, and information from messages and users' phone books. 

He said that was comparable to the "massive data harvesting" machines Google and Facebook. 

And while TikTok said that data is stored in the U.S. and Singapore, Hawley pointed out that TikTok's parent is ByteDance, which is based in China and subject to a 2017 Chinese national intelligence law that requires Chinese companies to cooperate with state intelligence work. 

He said that means TikTok's doors could be opened at any time to the Chinese Communist Party and Beijing could tell parent ByteDance to scoop up data on Americans and give it to Beijing. 

Hearing witness Klon Kitchen, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said that was "without a doubt true." 

Related: Sen. Whitehouse Hammers Social Media

Hawley ticked off some of the ways TikTok or another Chinese platform could abuse all that data, particularly using data to help artificial intelligence train autonomous weapons systems to identify targets--China is reportedly investing heavily in AI tech. 

Asked how the U.S. could ensure that TikTok or other Chinese tech companies weren't Trojan Horses gathering data on Americans and sending it back to the Chinese government. "I'm not sure we can," said Kitchen. He said that anyone who thinks a Chinese company, even if a portion of the company is in the U.S., can say no to the Chinese government, "that is a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the government in Beijing works." 

Apple, which was another hearing no-show, took it on the chin from both Hawley and Kitchen. 

Hawley said he was concerned about American companies--specifically Apple, which provides cloud services to China--storing both data and the tools to decrypt it in China.  

Kitchen said that while Apple was providing decryption keys for Chinese data stored there, doing so would give China a better understanding of the inner workings of Apple's iCloud accounts and could allow them to collect data "outside of that border." 

Hawley asked Kitchen whether he thought Apple and others were compromising U.S. data security by storing both data and encryption keys. He said, yes, any company complying with China cybersecurity laws was risking not only data security but national security.  

Related: Sen. Hawley Says Big Tech Is Exploiting Digital Tread Mill

Kitchen followed that with his most sobering observation/allegation, one that particularly struck Hawley, who said it summed up the problem: "China imprisons and tortures and kills religious minorities and political dissidents, and it is using compliant companies to do this at scale." 

Neither Tik Tok nor Facebook had responded to a request for comment at press time on the tenor of the hearing or the company's decision not to participate. 

But Vanessa Pappas, GM of TikTok U.S. has posted on the issue, saying: "[W]e store all U.S user data in the United States, with backup redundancy in Singapore. TikTok’s data centers are located entirely outside of China. Further, we have a dedicated technical team focused on adhering to robust cybersecurity policies, and data privacy and security practices." 

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) lit into social media in general and Facebook in particular in a hearing Tuesday (Nov. 5) on Big Tech's data practices. 

In that he was in bipartisan agreement with the Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee chair, Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), whose hearing title was revelatory: "How Corporations and Big Tech Leave Our Data Exposed to Criminals, China, and Other Bad Actors." 

Related: Apple, Tik Tok Decline Invites to Tough Talk Tech Hearing 

"Mr. chairman, I think willful blindness seems to be a theme among our platforms," he said to Hawley during the hearing. "They don't want to ask the questions because they don't want to hear the answer." 

He was responding to testimony from Kara Frederick, fellow for Technology And National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, after Whitehouse had asked her what constraints there were on a Facebook or Google, which have massive amounts of data, trying to monetize that by selling information to a company fronting for a foreign government or a government entity itself. 

Frederick said the problem was there was a transparency "deficiency," so that there was not a clear picture of what data the companies were collecting. She said that the rules of the road have yet to be set and that there needed to be a public-private partnership to draft such constraints. 

Whitehouse responded that when Facebook is doing "something as obvious as selling political advertisements and accepts payment in rubles, you'd think that somewhere in the genius's apparatus, somebody might have thought, "Hmm, I'm selling political ads in my home country and the payment is denominated in rubles, what might that mean," he said cuttingly, stroking his chin in mock contemplation as Hawley looked on with a smile of agreement.   

"But they didn't care to look, they didn't try to look, they didn't want to look. They wanted to cash the rubles and move on." 

He then said that when the "geniuses" at Facebook tried to prevent the foreign interference, they just moved it to shell corporations because they don't require those corporations to disclose "who is really behind it." Borrowing from Rocky & Bullwinkle and their Russian spy foes, Whitehouse said that if a Boris & Natasha LLC shell corporation were set up in Delaware, Facebook would "happily sell advertising time" even though it would be obvious to non-geniuses that "something is up." 

Whtiehouse said it was worth the Congress' attention to try and figure out how to create the incentives so that willful blindness is "no longer a successful business model when the security of the United States is at stake."

Hawley clearly agreed.

Tom Burt, with tech giant Microsoft, has agreed to testify at Tuesday's (Nov. 5) afternoon hearing on “How Corporations and Big Tech Leave Our Data Exposed to Criminals, China, and Other Bad Actors.” 

Not so execs from Apple and Tik Tok, who declined their invitations to testify. According to Hawley's office, though there will be empty chairs at the table for them, a photo-op tactic that has been used before in hearings where tech types failed to show up.

Related: Senate Drills Down on Potential Serial Innovation Killers 

That is according to the office of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, which said the invitations remain open. 

In addition to Burt, who is corporate VP of customer security and trust, also scheduled to weigh in from the witness table are Kara Frederick, fellow for technology and national security program, Center for a New American Security; William Carter, deputy director and fellow, Center for Strategic and International Studies; and Klon Kitchen, senior research fellow, technology, at the Heritage Foundation. 

Hawley: Big Tech is Exploiting Digital Tread Mill 

Hawley, a freshman, has made reining in Big Tech his signature issue, including teaming up with some veterans on both sides of the aisle on legislation toward that end.

Facebook was taking hits from the left and the right over the release Tuesday (Aug. 20) of the findings, to date, of a review of conservative concerns about a liberal bias in content choices on the social media site. 

The audit was conducted by a former Republican senator polling conservatives about their issues. But that didn't please one current Republican senator and harsh critic of social media. But neither did it please a group on the opposite side of the issue. 

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who is inarguably Big Tech's biggest Senate critic, is definitely concerned about potential anti-conservative bias by Big Tech, but he is no fan of the audit, which Facebook launched last year after CEO Mark Zuckerberg was grilled on the Hill over the bias issue. 

“Merely asking somebody to listen to conservatives’ concerns isn’t an ‘audit,’ it’s a smokescreen disguised as a solution," said Hawley. "Facebook should conduct an actual audit by giving a trusted third party access to its algorithm, its key documents, and its content moderation protocols. Then Facebook should release the results to the public.” Hawley spoke at a White House meeting of conservative bloggers, where he agreed that their voices were being discriminated against on social media. 

Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, agreed with Hawley that the audit missed the mark, but for different reasons. Gupta said the audit was "a make-believe solution in search of a phantom problem." 

"Rather than allowing baseless allegations of so-called anti-conservative bias to distract them, Facebook officials should focus on the civil and human rights problems and white supremacist propaganda overrunning its platform," said Gupta, adding that releasing a "face-saving" report (or in this case Facebook saving) just didn't cut it.  

The divide between Gupta and Hawley reflects the one between the two parties, where Republicans say conservative bias is a legitimate threat while Democrats call it a distraction from the issue of racist and nationalistic hate speech that they argue Republicans don't do enough to discourage, or in the case of the President, actively encourage.  

The conference has joined with over four dozen other civil rights groups to call on Big TEch to do more to reduce hate speech and other conduct that "endangers" marginalized communities.  

Such criticism notwithstanding, Facebook has signaled it will continue to "examine, and where necessary adjust, our own policies and practices in the future," conceding that "we will inevitably make some bad [content] calls, some of which may appear to strike harder at conservatives." 

A bipartisan trio of senators is seeking answers from the Federal Trade Commission about its reported $5 billion fine against Facebook over its sharing of user data with Cambridge Analytica.

“It is clear that a $5 billion fine alone is a far cry from the type of monetary figure that would alter the incentives and behavior of Facebook and its peers,” wrote the Senators in a letter to the five FTC commissioners. “The public expects the Commission to put consumers first and to take all necessary steps in your power to remedy Facebook’s privacy problems. We are highly disappointed to learn that the Commission has apparently failed to reach a strong, bipartisan agreement, sending the wrong message to tech companies.”

Firing off the letter were Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).

Related: Senators Hawley, Cruz Seek FTC Investigation Into Conservative 'Censorship'

They want answers to the following questions:

1. "What was the FTC’s process for determining the size of the monetary fine in this settlement? Please describe in detail the FTC’s method for determining the revenue Facebook was able to generate as a result of its violations of user privacy.

2. "Did the FTC interview Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and require disclosure of documents from Mr. Zuckerberg during its investigation into Facebook’s privacy practices? If not, why not?

3. "Will the FTC name Mr. Zuckerberg and any other member of Facebook management in its new settlement?

4. "Will the FTC impose new restrictions on how Facebook collects, uses, and discloses data about its users as part of this settlement? If not, why not?

5. "Will the FTC impose restrictions on Facebook’s upcoming cryptocurrency offering, Libra, as part of this settlement? If not, why not?"

6. "Will the FTC impose restrictions on Facebook's integration of messaging service offerings as part of this settlement? If not, why not?

7. "Will the FTC require Facebook to institute new rules and practices specifically designed to protect children and teens who use Facebook offerings? If not, why not?"

The FTC has not yet released the fine or accompanying settlement. 

Computer companies were quick to attack Sen. Josh Hawley's bill that would make social media networks promise not to censor political speech, and create a government apparatus for certifying that. Those companies, or at least a major trade association representing many of them, said it was the stuff of dystopian fiction and worse, even suggesting the Senator was creating a home for white nationalist propaganda.

Hawley, a freshman senator from Missouri, has been an unrelenting critic of social media, calling it an "unproductive peril," echoing the sort of rhetoric leveled by legislators at, successively, publishers of ghoulish comics, violent westerns and detective TV shows, and violent video games, though the issue has wider implications given the power of the 'net over every facet of life and work.

Hawley's latest volley came Wednesday (June 19) in the form of the Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act.

“Fans of the fictitious ‘1984’ novel would no doubt appreciate the ludicrousness of a so-called anti-censorship bill that would require companies to get government approval to censor nefarious content -- or face legal liability, said Ed Black, president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, whose members include Facebook, Google and many other edge providers."This is an unbelievable disregard for the essence of the First Amendment and attempt to overlay a lens of partisan politics over the communications of millions of Americans," he said.

While Democrats have their own issues with social media and Big Tech, they generally view the "conservative bias" allegation as a distraction from other issues like, say, use of social media for Russian election meddling or sex trafficking or hate speech.

“If Congress is serious about tech companies doing more to remove hate speech and illegal content online, putting new restrictions on the legal protection that allows them to do that would be ill-advised," he said. "CCIA has spent decades fighting internet censorship regimes around the world, alongside U.S. diplomats. It would be disappointing to see the country that has been a leader against restrictive regimes create its own government-regulated regime to oversee the political correctness of internet content.” 

“At a time when white nationalists are stealthily seeding calls in the mainstream press for ‘viewpoint neutrality’, it’s troubling that the Senator would contemplate legislation forcing online services to carry these views. American businesses shouldn’t be forced to be neutral toward racism and extremism," said Black.

What speech is harmful and should be removable is the central  issue of the debate over what role social media should have in policing its content given the power and reach of those platforms.

A just-released Pew Research poll found that respondents did not trust Big Tech to be able to decide what was offensive content and were split on whether they could identify it themselves.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) was not assuaged by Facebook's lengthy explanation of the steps it takes and is taking to address privacy issues related to Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.

Facebook (actually VP, U.S. public policy and former Republican FCC Chair Kevin Martin), was responding to Hawley's May 13 letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg questioning Facebook's new commitment to a "privacy first" future for its platforms.

Hawley said he thought Facebook's pledge masked a plan to "capture and subvert the privacy revolution that threatents your business model" by way of an "empty public relations victory."

Related: Hawley Stakes Out Big Tech

Martin answered a series of questions from the Senator, the bottom line of which were that the "new" Facebook privacy platform would be rooted in "creating spaces for private interactions, reducing permanence, encryption, safety, interoperability, and secure data storage."

Martin said that was a work in progress that would take "several years."

Hawley saw it quite differently Wednesday in publishing Martin's response, saying the company was standing firm on its "right to snoop."

Hawley, a freshman senator, has been arguably the harshest critic of Big Tech since joining Congress in Jaunary, though he is hardly alone in taking Facebook and Zuckerberg to the Capitol Hill woodshed.

“I am frankly shocked by Facebook’s response. I thought they’d swear off the creepier possibilities I raised. But instead, they doubled down,” said Hawley. “If you share a link in encrypted messenger with a friend who clicks it, Facebook reserves the right to use cookies to figure out what that link was and what you two might have been discussing in your encrypted chat. If you send a roommate your rent money in encrypted messenger, Facebook reserves the right to use the payment metadata to figure out you might live together. And they call this ‘encrypted’ private messaging."

Facebook has signaled it expects to pay up to $5 billion to settle an ongoing Federal Trade Commission investigation into its privacy practices, but Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Big Tech basher Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) have teamed up to tell FTC Chairman Joseph Simons they want more, and not money, but instead a shot heard round the tech world.

The pair wrote Simons Monday (May 6) to ask that he wrap up the investigation and to compel "sweeping changes" given what they say has been its "pattern" of misuse and abuse of personal data.

Related: OMI Seeks Hill Investigation of FTC

They said the expected settlement will be a defining moment for the FTC, and one they want defined by tough action. "The FTC must set a resounding precedent that is heard by Facebook and any other tech company that disregards the law in a rapacious quest for growth."

"This investigation has been long delayed in conclusion – raising the specter of a remedy that is too little too late," they said, adding: "The [2011] Facebook consent decree violations have been blatant and brazen, an offensive defiance that adds insult to injury."

Blumenthal telegraphed his desire for more than just money in a tweet last week after Facebook revealed in a financial statement that it would have to be ponying up $3-5 billion to settle the FTC investigation.

[embed]https://twitter.com/SenBlumenthal/status/1121183762505662464[/embed]

Hawley has come into the Senate--he is a freshman--swinging a hammer at Big Tech in general and social media in particular. 

It was a year ago last March that the FTC confirmed it was investigating Facebook over its privacy and data security practices, saying it has "substantial concerns." Those have likely only increased with subsequent revelations, including congressional concerns about its research project that incentivized teens and others to give up info (Project Atlas) and news that the company was sharing data with big tech and is planning to integrate WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger.

The FTC investigation followed the revelation that Cambridge Analytica had used Facebook user data without their knowledge to build profiles it then sold to political campaigns, including the Trump campaign. Analytica reportedly used the information with most users having not given their permission for Facebook to share it with a third party.

Related: OMI Says  Multi-BIllion Dollar Facebook Fine Is Not Enough

Facebook is under an FTC consent decree dating from its 2011 settlement of FTC allegations it deceived consumers by not keeping its privacy promises. The FTC is authorized to enforce such pledges under its Sec. 5 (unfair and deceptive practices) authority. The commission was investigating whether Facebook had violated that agreement

That consent decree required Facebook to obtain a users' permission before sharing data, so that Cambridge Analytica data dump appeared to be a violation of the agreement.

Freshman Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) continues to press Google on its reluctance to continue working with the Defense Department on a military project while working with China on artificial intelligence, which Defense Department officials argue could help the Chinese military. 

According to Hawley's office, he fired off a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai following a meeting between Google execs and President Trump--and Defense Department officials--over the issue Google's decision not to renew a contract with the Defense Department to use AI to improve military drones--some employees had argued working on the military project conflicted with Google's corporate values. 

Related: Sen. Hawley Stakes Out, Stalks, Big Tech 

When pressed by Hawley during a Hill hearing two weeks ago, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford agreed with Hawley that Google's relationship with China is problematic. 

Sen. Hawley: Big Tech's Sweetheart Deal Must End 

"I understand that today you have met with General Dunford and the President of the United States to address these concerns," Hawley wrote Pichai. "Now meet with the American people by addressing publicly the work your company does in China, the benefits it may provide to the Chinese government and military, and your reluctance to partner or aid the Armed Forces of the United States."     

Google was the edge player arguably in Washington's sites--or at least one new Senator's sites--most prominently this past week, though that is becoming a harder title to claim as Amazon and Facebook take their turns in the spotlights of bipartisan Hill disapproval.

Senator and Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was an equal opportunity critic, signaling her plan last week to break up the Biggest Tech if she becomes President, but freshman Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) was looking to stake out Big Tech attacks as his signature issue, sending out at least three e-mails to reporters to point to his tough talk.

When pressed by Hawley during a Hill hearing last week, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford agreed with Hawley that Google's relationship with China is problematic.

Related: Sen. Hawley Says Big Tech Sweetheart Deal Must End

"We watch with great concern when industry partners work in China knowing there is that indirect benefit, and frankly ‘indirect’ may be not a full characterization of the way it really is," he said. "It’s more of a direct benefit to the Chinese military."

Hawley responded: "[We have an American company that does not want to do work with our Defense Department, which is one thing, but they’re happy to help the Chinese, at least the Chinese government that is, the Chinese military at least indirectly. I think that’s just extraordinary."

The reference to not helping the U.S. was Google's decision not to work with the Defense Department on an artificial intelligence project because it could aid in the making of war, which violated its corporate ethics. 

Then there was an exchange with Google Senior Privacy Counsel Will DeVries after DeVries said Google's data collection was "complicated."

“Actually it’s not complicated," Hawley retorted. "What’s complicated is you don’t allow consumers to stop your tracking of them. You tell them that you do, you would anticipate that they do, a consumer would have a reasonable expectation based on what you’ve told them that they’re not being tracked but in fact you’re still tracking it. You’re still gathering the information and you’re still using it.”

That was in addition to Hawley's co-sponsorship last week of a bill with Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) that would boost children's online data protections and the letter he sent to the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission calling on the agency to better oversee edge giants like Google and Facebook. It has enforceable consent decrees with both related to their online practices. .

"With so much disturbing news this week about the business tactics of one of the world’s most powerful companies [Googe], you can expect to see more from Senator Hawley on this," said Hawley's office, adding: "Stay tuned."