Lawmakers grilled Dorsey and the CEOs of Facebook and
Google's parent Alphabet for almost five hours. Tensions were high as they
asked them to answer "yes or no" to questions ranging from whether their
platforms bore any responsibility for the January 6 riot to whether they
understood the difference between the two words.
During the hearing, Dorsey tweeted "?" with a poll asking Twitter users to vote "yes" or "no."
Democratic Representative Kathleen Rice asked: "Mr. Dorsey, what is winning, yes or no, on your Twitter account poll?"?
— jack (@jack) March 25, 2021
Dorsey told her that "yes" was winning, to which
she replied: "Your multi-tasking skills are quite impressive."
Facebook Inc CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet CEO Sundar
Pichai were also witnesses at the joint hearing by two subcommittees of the
House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Lawmakers from both parties tried throughout the hearing to
pin down the tech CEOs with questions needing only "yes" or
"no" answers, interrupting them when they tried to give longer ones.
Lawmakers quizzed the executives over concerns from COVID-19 misinformation,
harassment, hate speech and extremism.
As the hearing took place, Dorsey also liked tweets
criticising aspects of the session, including asking why members of Congress
were mispronouncing Pichai's name, and replied to a tweet confirming that he
was barefoot during the call. His poll on Thursday afternoon had more than
71,000 votes. '- Reuters
