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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99% of what congress does is bullshit theater. Anytime they make an actual decision they risk angering someone and that means they risk losing reelection. The answer to your question is that this is just one of many ways they pretend they do things while doing nothing.
We have a similar in the UK. A Parliamentary Select Committee can summon people to appear to give evidence with cross examination. They have tried to call people like Zuckerberg, and the response was ‘Meh! No thanks.’
They could skip it but if it’s publicly traded the annual prospectus would say “ basically we are fucked. Don’t buy our stock.”
I imagine Congress would get super pissed and over regulate it.
Practically it’s because congress has the power of subpoena. So they hold hearings to consult experts or witnesses when discussing an issue. This is meant to inform members whenever bills related to whatever the hearing is about.
So when there is debate about how to further regulate or even ban certain social media platforms the hearings are there ostensibly to get the perspective of the companies involved so they can make a case for themselves.
Though there is an element of theater about it these days but the CEOs participate because it’s easier to go an answer questions (with the help of lawyers) than try to fight a subpoena that would compel them anyway.
Also, anyone might be asked to testify and many do and it’s not that newsworthy but major CEOs are newsworthy.
Because they have hired behavioral psychologists to help them engineer a website that is so addictive full of dark patterns and manipulative interfaces such that you become addicted and spend hours clicking and scrolling. Social media is literally destroying the fabric of society.
The U.S. has freedom of speech laws that are much broader than any other nation on earth, because of this the government is not allowed to force companies to stifle speech.
Despite that restriction, many politicians want to suppress speech they don’t like. Because they aren’t able to legislate speech restrictions, they threaten to remove other protections (s230) if platforms don’t do what the politicians tell them to.
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