A top executive at Google has released his prepared remarks for a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on the use of foreign governments spreading misinformation on social media — but he won’t be allowed to officially testify Wednesday.
The Senate panel had invited Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, Jack Dorsey, the chief executive of Twitter and Larry Page, the CEO of Alphabet, to testify Wednesday morning.
However, Alphabet declined to make Page available, instead offering Kent Walker, senior vice president and general counsel of Google.
A spokesperson for the committee confirmed to the Washington Examiner that it does not want to hear from Walker again — he already appeared in November — and will not be allowed to testify. The spokesperson said something similar last week.
In a statement on Tuesday, Walker said he will be in Washington “briefing Members of Congress on our work on this and other issues and answering any questions they have” and will also submit testimony.
“We believe that we have a responsibility to prevent the misuse of our platforms and we take that very seriously. Our efforts in this area started many years before the 2016 election. We work to detect and minimize opportunities for manipulation and abuse, constantly tackling new threats and bad actors that arise,” Walker said.
In the testimony, Walker said Google continues to remove foreign actors who had a hand in 2016 election interference.
Walker reveals that Google has “continued to investigate activity by the Internet Research Agency and other Russia-affiliated entities” and has “removed the relevant accounts.”
“We’ve also investigated activity linked to Iranian influence efforts, similarly removing the accounts we have linked to that activity,” he added.
The Internet Research Agency is a Russian company based in St. Petersburg described by the U.S. intelligence community in 2017 as a troll farm that is closely linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin that engaged in influence operations during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
A grand jury indicted IRA, as well as two other Russian entities and 13 Russian nationals for violating criminal law to interfere “with U.S. elections and political processes.”
Nearly a year ago, the Senate Intelligence Committee grilled the three social media giants for their failures during the 2016 presidential election.
Both Republicans and Democrats alike have shown bipartisan displeasure toward Silicon Valley for failing to quickly combat harmful or misleading content.
