Thank you for coming, we hate you. Last week, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and Jack Dorsey were once again dragged before Congress to be told by a handful of career politicians “we honestly just don’t like you.” The purpose of this most recent hearing was ostensibly to understand disinformation, but really it was called to provide an opportunity for politicians to performatively batter a few popular ‘Big Tech’ bogeymen, and to grandstand. Still, despite the best efforts of Congress, we did learn a couple of important things. In the first place, many of our political representatives are quite serious about drafting what sounds like extremely unconstitutional disinformation policy. In the second, Jack Dorsey is now publicly-committed to defending the open internet from both his own company, and the government. Is this all an act? I can’t see why. Under the microscope of an increasingly-hostile state there’s no reason an entirely self-interested CEO would tell Congress he believes it should be less powerful. To me, it really does seem Dorsey is committed to building his way out of the censorship problem with tools like Bluesky, a decentralized social media protocol. If true, he would make many enemies both in government and the more authoritarian corners of the press, and we would of course be forced to stan (cautiously).

Today, a recap of the hearing. Full video here: