US Congress Grills Big Tech CEOs On Misinformation, Capitol Siege

The majority of the reporter's questions were directed at that crisis at the border between US and Mexico. Joe Biden repeatedly asked about his handling of the situation at the border and Joe Biden really answered with two main arguments. One, that the situation was not necessarily much different than it has been in the past in the United States. First of all, he blamed part of the situation on the previous administration. He also said that this was something that was happening almost every year, that you saw surges, similar surges under Barack Obama, under Donald Trump, and that yes, there was a surge right now under Joe Biden, but he also insisted that the situation that was something that was a yearly situation had to be dealt with. He said specifically about what is seen as the big controversy of the Biden administration's handling of the border surge is the way that unaccompanied minors are being treated and are being held in facilities, some of them held in jail-like facilities, according to several reports. He said that that was unacceptable and that his administration was working to get those kids out to more proper facilities and faster to their families, either back in their country of origin or families in the United States. France 24's correspondent Ketavan Gorjastani reporting there from Washington. And staying in the US Capitol for a moment, the CEOs of big tech giants have faced a grilling by lawmakers in Congress. The virtual hearing was focused on the rise of misinformation on those platforms and whether the government should step in to regulate them. Monty Francis has the story. On the hot seat, the CEOs of Facebook, Google, and Twitter, confronted by members of Congress. Lawmakers not mincing words, holding the platforms responsible for spreading lies and misinformation, including false claims of election fraud that led to the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6th. That attack and the movement that motivated started and was nourished on your platforms. Some lawmakers also blasted the online platforms for giving hate groups a way to organize and recruit and for spreading misinformation about the coronavirus and the efficacy of vaccines. The tech leaders acknowledged the problem but said government regulation is not the answer. I don't think anyone wants a world where you can only say things that private companies judge to be true. If instead we woke up tomorrow and decided to ask the government to tell us what content to take down or leave up, we may end up with a service that couldn't be used to question the government. This is not the first time the tech leaders have appeared before Congress and Democrats who now control both houses are getting fed up with promises of self-regulation. They are promising legislation to make the companies liable for harmful content. The CEO of Alphabet, which runs Google and YouTube, pointed to the near impossibility of policing all content. It's a big challenge without easy answers. 500 plus hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. The tech leaders also face criticism from the other side of the aisle. Republican allies of Donald Trump accusing the online platforms of going too far when they suspended his accounts for his repeated falsehoods.