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Independent senator David Pocock took issue with testimony from Meta’s vice president of public policy, which denied the tech giant’s algorithm was “boosted” to draw attention to anger and misinformation.
“I’m concerned that your evidence doesn’t match what we’ve heard from experts,” Pocock said at a bipartisan committee hearing on referential integrity.
“Meta is very good at telling us that you are an extraordinary citizen of the world, that you don’t actually have an algorithm that just prioritizes eyeballs, anger, and that leads to money. [Meta says] that it’s not actually about the money.
“This is very difficult to deal with when we see time and time again that your inability to address issues like bots has enabled individuals and bad actors to weaponize these bot armies and amplify misinformation to skew public perception, influence elections. This has been very well documented around the world,” he said.
Meta’s representative, Simon Milner, said the tech giant was working with election commissions around the world to ensure election integrity.
“I would really like to be in a position where I feel like I can reassure the committee that we take these issues seriously, that we have policies, technologies, people and partnerships that we can try and address, and that these are complex issues,” he said.
Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson, the committee chairman, thanked Milner for his time but chided Meta for not participating voluntarily.
“[Information integrity is] “It’s an important issue of public concern, especially on climate change, and I respectfully say that the next time the committee asks you to make these things public, we shouldn’t force you to participate,” he said.
