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?
In: Other
They are not compelled to unless they have been formally subpoenaed. Sometimes not even then.
The CEOs are compelled to testify in Congress. They could lawyer up and try to fight that… but good luck winning that argument against the US Government. Also, if these CEOs don’t testify, then Congress may vote against them and set laws or regulations that ruin the SM company in some way.
The US isn’t the only group doing this. The EU had some serious hearings and some serious penalties levied against bad actors. The EU seems to go way further than US Congress on these things.
Similar to courts, either house of Congress can issue a subpoena to compel people to testify before them. While Congress could issue a subpoena to a non-US resident, almost always, all the person would need to do is not come to the US for it to be pointless. They also cannot really compel foreign diplomats, due to diplomatic immunity.
Generally, such hearings are when Congress is considering laws to regulate business. This makes it in the business’s interest to testify before Congress in order to argue against the regulations, or for specific forms of regulation that the business thinks is in its interest. Due to this, its often merely a formality to issue a subpoena. Actually enforcing a Congressional subpoena is even rarer than the issuing of one.
The specific meetings being held are more to try and placate the public over any real chance of regulation. Given the current state of the US Congress, it is highly improbable they will manage to pass a law regulating social media.
A quick search shows the [UK Parliament](https://erskinemay.parliament.uk/section/6122/power-to-send-for-papers-or-persons) has similar powers, though such power is apparently fairly rarely used – as with the US, the witnesses generally willingly testify.
I have not found evidence of similar powers for other European countries, but chances are good they do exist, even if only extremely rarely used.
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.
It’s kind of a warning.
Keep in mind Senators and other congressmen are elected. People have to vote for them to stay in power. That means if things happen that make people upset, they write letters and bother those congressmen. That makes the congressmen kind of concerned about the things that they’re hearing about the most.
So if a handful of Senators from several different states all hear at the same time that there is extensive harassment on a social network and there have been people driven to suicide, they get kind of scared it’s becoming an issue. They can make laws to regulate what’s happening on social networks.
But they don’t want to do that for a couple of reasons. The first is that kind of thing is unpopular because regulating social networks seems like regulating free speech to a lot of people. The second is because social networks make a lot of money thus spend a lot of money on political campaigns. While the congressmen are worried about what voters think, they’re also very worried about upsetting companies that spend a lot of money in politics.
So they’ll call in the CEO to testify. If the CEO is really stupid they’ll answer the questions in a way that makes it very clear there are major issues and laws need to be made. More often the CEO does at least a mediocre job answering their questions.
To some extent it is theater, but it sends a message to the CEO. It reminds that person the government has the power to regulate their business. If it gets out of hand enough, no matter how much they donate to politics voters are going to want a person who will regulate their business and that will happen. The message they are sending is:
“You need to figure out a way to stop this from happening while still making money. If you do not, we’re going to make laws to stop this from happening and when we do we won’t care if you can still make money.”
Another outcome of this process is the CEO might start talking with the congressmen and propose his own laws for them to pass. Obviously the CEO will propose laws where he can still make money. But the congressmen also like that if the laws pass, they can tell the people who complained that they “did something”.
The hearings are also a win for the congressmen, because “we held a hearing” counts as “doing something” to a lot of people.
I’m not sure this is unique to the US, in my memory the EU has had many hearings with Facebook and several other social media CEOs. I feel like EU regulators probably have Elon Musk’s number memorized by now and know they only have to wait 10 or 15 minutes for him to break a new law.
Honestly, I think it’s just grandstanding, because never have I ever seen a single politician confront these CEOs with even a shred of technical understanding. If the goal was to actually hold CEOs accountable for what happens on their platforms, then at least one of these politicians would do the absolute minimum and research their points, even a 5 minute googling, before they take the stage.
Politicians get by on charisma, but their actual grasp of how anything more complicated than a toaster works is surprisingly poor. It seems to me they want to say their piece, show the public they are doing something, assist their chances at re-election, but not actually do anything that’d require either learning anything, doing anything, or commonly both.
It’s a theater play to give the impression that the Senate is in charge and can do something to hold social media companies accountable for all the scams, mass voter manipulations, child predation and other shitty things going on large platforms.
In practice social media companies ~~buy~~ donate tons of money to politicians, and politicians can’t really regulate it because a lot of people would take it as an attack on free speech and a very clear 1st Amendment case, so they don’t really risk anything.
The reasons this is done is many, some petty, some important. First off you do not want to fight the government. In the end, the government has a lot of power they can wield against you if they choose. So if you are thinking about the CEO’s themselves, it is in their interest to show up. To refuse would not be taken kindly by Congress. Now Congress is not going to put them in jail if they don’t, but when regulations are proposed and they work against your company, not showing up will most definitely be remembered. In a sense it is petty. Congress is powerful and a bunch of huge ego’s, so tweak them at your own peril. That said while petty, they also have enormous power. You do not want people with that much power have any more negative feelings about you than they already do. So the CEO’s show up, show respect, play along, maybe try to get their view point across that might help them in the long run.
As others have mentioned, they represent the people who elected them, poorly often, but this remains true. If public pressure becomes great enough, they will act, if anything out of self preservation, but at the same time if the people demand action that is what they are supposed to do. And again, they have enormous power at their disposal to do so in many different ways. CEO’s know this too. Showing up might help mitigate, or at least create a message, that they are aware of the issues and are addressing it. Likely in hope of decreasing said pressure from the public.
Did I mention how powerful Congress and the U.S. government is? The U.S. government is like an 800 pound gorilla. If it resolves to do something they can mess you up. The truth is these CEO’s, while quite rich, are no match for the U.S. government. Their power is tiny by comparison. They know this. And when the U.S. government goes on a rampage for whatever reason they just don’t stop. That kind of power has a lot of inertia, once wielded, it will push hard and long to get what it wants. And with rare exceptions the government will get what it wants. And if your business is destroyed in the process? Too bad. You knew who had the power to do that all along. So the CEO’s show up.
Truth is that kind of power, at least domestically, is rarely wielded to the level it can be. The last time was 2008 when Obama basically forced GM to accept conditions that technically were illegal. Why did GM agree then? Well see above. The U.S. government was wielding its power and you are not going to win that fight. But as I said it is rarely wielded like that a lot. And companies will want to make sure that they don’t find themselves a target in some crisis where this happens. So they listen to Congress’s complaints, and at least superficially will do something in response to address those concerns. They keep at least some of Congress happy by doing so, reduce the target on their back, and otherwise keeps the government from using those powers it could.
It is a total asymmetry of power. The U.S. government has it. Nobody else is even close. You don’t mess around in a situation like that if you are a smart, responsible CEO.
Theater.
It gets more frequent near elections. CEOs are “called on the carpet” so that the Senate looks like they’re doing something about whatever the issue is (it’s almost certain they’re being paid not to), and the CEOs get some palliative press time that bumps up their stock prices and annual bonus.
“After all is said and done, more is said than done.”
People are giving you terrible answers. The EU Commission and EU Parliament can both invite *and compel* CEOs and other public figures to testify, *and they regularly do so*. As a governmental body, the EU government moves very slowly because it requires so much consensus-building, *and* because everything must be translated into multiple languages. The EU will often accept written testimony when it’s doing investigatory hearings — but the EU Parliament in particular loves it some high-stakes CEOs making asses of themselves, or CEOs refusing to show up and justifying further investigations thereby. Here’s [Musk](https://www.barrons.com/news/eu-parliament-invites-musk-to-testify-01671488108) invited, here’s [Zuckerberg](https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/zuckerberg-testimony-european-parliament/index.html) testifying, here’s the [CEO of Pfizer](https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/pfizer-ceo-albert-bourla-pulls-out-scheduled-european-parliament-committee-testimony) refusing to testify and the EU deciding [NOT to pull Pfizer’s access](https://www.euractiv.com/section/health-consumers/news/pfizer-retains-access-to-eu-parliament-despite-vaccine-purchase-controversy/) to the EU Parliament, which is actually a pretty huge sanction, because it means the company can’t participate in any lobbying or rulemaking or information-seeking about their sector. (Like, if I’m Pfizer, I want to be able to talk to the EU’s regulators about what I need from them to get my Covid vaccine on the market ASAP.)
Current US Senate hearings are extremely performative, and that has to do with television and hyperpolarization. But both houses of Congress in the US have essentially always had the power to subpoena anyone (order them to attend a legal proceeding) under US jurisdiction. (There’s a line of case law developing this, as well as various statutory support, but it’s basically existed since the US existed, which is the key point.) This power is used for a variety of purposes, but in particular for 1) investigating issues of national importance, that Congress may want to write legislation about or that may be ongoing problems; 2) investigating governmental (especially executive branch) function and behavior and whether they’re doing their jobs right; and 3) investigating potential criminal behavior, or preparing for impeachment when that is Congress’s purview. You can fight a Congressional subpoena in court, as you can fight any subpoena. You can also choose to ignore it, and hope you won’t be held in contempt.
The Congressional subpoenas and hearings that draw the most interest tend to be those that relate to issues of national interest, because that gets press coverage. In the 20th Century, there were major Congressional hearings with widely-publicized testimony included one on betting in college sports, a couple involving investigations of doping in baseball, and (of course) Nixon and Watergate. But there have been hundreds of others, that just aren’t as interesting. Congress regularly compels less-public figures to come provide testimony on issues of public interest, or allegations of public wrongdoing. (Lots of bank subpoenas from Congress over the last 15 years or so, many not super-interesting to the press because they get pretty technical.)
All UK-descended common-law systems have the power to compel anyone in their jurisdiction to testify before the legislature. Most European systems have this power as well, although often somewhat more circumscribed by evidence-gathering procedures in Civil Law courts. But one of the key points is “jurisdiction” — if you’re Mark Zuckerberg, you probably don’t want to be throw in jail for contempt of Congress, but if France threatens you, you can just … not go to France (so they can’t arrest you), and dare them to shut down your company for not appearing.
Generally all of these hearings are under oath, so you either have to tell the truth and put it on the public record … or lie and put it on the public record, and invite criminal prosecution for perjury. (And encourage further discovery into your documents and e-mails.)
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