Why do social media CEOs have to go through the U.S. Senate hearing?

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European here, I was always confused watching U.S. Senate hearings with social media CEOs having to explain and be almost interrogated and accused of someone’s suicide from supposedly “watching content on the platform”. Why do they need to do that and is it only U.S. thing or does it happen somewhere else?

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16 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Grandstanding for politicians

It’s pure political advertising and has nothing to do with anything more.

Politicians want to get their name and sound bites out to the public. That’s a great way to raise your profile and get reelected. You want screen time and notice. You know it better as advertising. That’s what it is. No one on any side is under any illusion it’s not just political advertising and grandstanding.

So they bring up prominent people such as ceos or whatever the flavor of the month is. Get their 5 minutes (generally each politician gets only 5 minutes or so) to try to say something on their mind that will make it into the news.

Basically that’s it. What is actually being said or issues at hand is pretty much irrelevant, these are marketing and advertising events for politicians.

Politicians need clicks just like buzzfeed does.

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