Doris Matsui of California is a Democratic representative who specifically raised the issue of anti-Asian hate speech and directly confronted Zuckerberg and Dorsey about what they were doing to address it. She also grilled the two about why it took so long for them to remove obscenely racist hashtags that directly blamed Asian Americans for the pandemic. Dorsey defended the hashtags by claiming “a lot of them contain counter speech, or posts refuting the racism that the hashtags initiated.” Zuckerberg took a similar approach to his defense by claiming that the hate speech policies at Facebook are “nuanced” so they have an obligation to protect free speech in any context. 

Congressman Tony Cárdenas of California then questioned Zuckerberg about how the company addresses the spreading of misinformation targeted at the Latinx community, citing studies that proved Facebook is more likely to let misinformation in Spanish remain up on the platform when compared to the same misinformation being posted in English. 

During the entire marathon questioning Dorsey is the only executive who somewhat took responsibility for his platform’s role in the Capitol riot. The other two CEOs refused to answer questions regarding their platform’s role. Fadi Quaran, the campaign director at Avaaz and a member of Real Facebook Oversight Board, an activism group, condemned all of the CEOs for their lack of transparency. 

“Mr Zuckerberg and the other tech CEOs couldn’t even muster a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the simple question of whether they’re responsible for how their platforms amplified disinformation that fueled the insurrection. They won’t take responsibility. There’s little hope that they’ll do what it takes to protect Americans from the toxic lies and conspiracies that pollute their platforms.”