With help from Cristiano Lima, Leah Nylen and Mark Scott
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— Tech’s new milestone: A second Senate panel in less than a month will vote today on authorizing subpoenas for Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, ratcheting Republicans’ feud with Silicon Valley over allegations of bias to new heights.
— Debate pre-game: Allegations about the Bidens published last week in the New York Post are expected to be a top talker for President Donald Trump at the final debate tonight — leaving Twitter and Facebook, which took GOP heat for their handling of the report, vulnerable to his attacks.
— Name to know: Obama appointee Amit Mehta is the judge who’s been chosen to preside over the DOJ-Google antitrust fight, and he’s no stranger to (successful) competition cases.
IT’S THURSDAY; WELCOME TO MORNING TECH! I’m your host, Alexandra Levine.
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TODAY: ANOTHER SUBPOENA VOTE ON TECH CEOS’ TESTIMONY — The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote today on forcing Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify about allegations of anti-conservative bias — even as the two sides continue negotiations over whether the executives will appear voluntarily. If approved, it would mark the second time in less than a month that a Republican-led panel has authorized subpoenas to haul in some of Silicon Valley’s most recognizable names, a step that this Congress had not yet taken until recently.
— A vote of confidence: Earlier this week the Judiciary Committee tabled plans to vote amid disagreement among Republican members about the timing and scope of the subpoena. The status of the vote remained up in the air until late Wednesday, when a committee spokesperson confirmed the panel would move ahead today. The decision could mean committee leaders have secured the backing needed to proceed. (Note: Judiciary Democrats are planning to boycott the meeting for unrelated reasons.)
— What to watch for: Top Judiciary Republicans want to grill the CEOs on Twitter and Facebook’s handling of the disputed New York Post report on Joe and Hunter Biden — and they want to do it before Election Day. But can the committee schedule the blockbuster hearing in time?
A PREVIEW OF THE TECH CHIEFS’ HILL LASHING — Senate Commerce Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) — whose committee is holding a separate session with the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and Google on Wednesday — told Fox News in an interview that he’s particularly “outraged” by Twitter’s handling of the Post report. But that’s only one part of the bias issue.
— Wicker said all three CEOs can look forward to explaining what he called “example after example after example of anti-conservative, anti-Republican bias.” The committee offered a glimpse of what’s to come in a trailer-style video teasing the hearing Wednesday, which rattles off instances of alleged tech “CENSORSHIP” as an ominous-sounding piano riff plays. Wicker is also demanding that the Twitter and Facebook chiefs disclose “any interactions” they have had with the Biden and Trump campaigns.
THE FINAL DEBATE: ANOTHER HIT FOR TECH? — Election integrity barely got a look at the first presidential debate, but given the political bombs that have gone off since then, the topic — and perhaps social media’s role there — is likely to be a top talker tonight at the candidates’ final face-off. “I am not just running against Biden, I am running against the Corrupt Media, the Big Tech Giants, and the Washington Swamp,” President Trump tweeted late Wednesday.
— Context: One week ago, the New York Post dropped a disputed story alleging ties between Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s business dealings with Ukraine — and social media companies quickly got tangled in the aftermath. The Biden camp framed the allegations as “Russian disinformation,” while Trump allies — outraged at Facebook and Twitter for limiting the article’s spread — accused the platforms of interfering with the election and attempting to tip the scales in Biden’s favor. Trump fully intends to make the Biden-Ukraine controversy a major focus of tonight’s debate.
— Meanwhile, activists’ plea to Facebook whistleblowers: Facebook employees are being targeted with ads urging them to come forward about potential election-related wrongdoing at the company. The progressive advocacy group Free Press launched an advertising blitz on Google and LinkedIn directing workers to information on how to share confidential tips with the New York attorney general’s office (which has been a leader in a state antitrust probe into the social network). Internal dissent at Facebook has in recent months become increasingly public.
DOJ-GOOGLE GETS ITS JUDGE — Judge Amit Mehta, a 48-year-old Obama appointee, will oversee the DOJ’s lawsuit against Google. Mehta was a partner at the law firm Zuckerman Spaeder and a D.C. public defender before he joined the bench in 2014. And he’s no stranger to antitrust cases; Mehta oversaw the FTC’s successful 2015 challenge of the proposed merger of food distributors Sysco and U.S. Foods. Richard Parker, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher who represented Sysco in that trial, described Mehta as a “thoughtful, fair, excellent trial judge.” Mehta was never involved in an antitrust case before Sysco-U.S. Foods, but it didn’t show, said Alexis Gillman, who helped try the FTC’s case. “He grasped the case, the law and the economics very quickly,” said Gilman, now a partner at Crowell & Moring. “He’s a very great draw to oversee a big case that is complicated.”
‘MAKE ANTITRUST COOL AGAIN’ — Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who served as a top DOJ antitrust official under President Barack Obama, thinks the recent House Judiciary report on antitrust and tech has strong recommendations for an antitrust overhaul, he told Leah in an interview airing today that was hosted by Competition Policy International. One major question facing legislators (and by extension, the antitrust authorities taking on Google): How much can be resolved by antitrust enforcement versus regulation?
— Compare and contrast: In the Microsoft case, Weiser noted, the problems were resolved by antitrust enforcement with a court overseeing the Windows-maker’s conduct for several years. By contrast, the AT&T case had some antitrust (in the form of a suit and negotiated break-up supervised by the court) but was more regulatory in nature because of FCC oversight.
— Connecting the dots: Weiser has separately been leading the Democratic state attorneys general investigation into how Google uses its power over search to advance its business. (They’re “weeks away” from wrapping that probe, Weiser told Leah.) More on that, and what a Biden win could mean for Google’s antitrust battles, here.
— Related, and worth a read: “Europe failed to tame Google. Can the U.S. do any better?”
BROADBAND LAND: O’RIELLY’S SWAN SONG COMING NEXT WEEK — FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly declared Wednesday on Twitter that the speech he’ll be making virtually at next week’s CTIA 5G summit will be his “last speech at @FCC, covering various aspects of spectrum policy.” While it’s long been known that the GOP commissioner will have to step down by year’s end, his exact departure date remains unclear. What is now apparent: he’ll be dialing down the volume in the final days of his term.
TIKTOK’S NEW HATE SPEECH CLAMPDOWN ONLY GOES SO FAR — After banning the conspiracy theory QAnon, the Chinese-owned social media app said Wednesday that it had gone further — removing hate speech linked to white nationalism and the so-called far-right identitarian movement. But all has not gone according to plan (at least not yet). Data from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that tracks online extremism, and shared with Morning Tech shows that such content is still getting through TikTok’s net.
— How? By using hashtags that are similar, but not identical, to those favored by QAnon. Videos with the hashtag #Pizzag (short for PizzaGate, a central tenet to the conspiracy theory) have been viewed almost 360,000 times, according to ISD’s work. Another workaround tactic is piggybacking on popular, generic hashtags like #politics that make it difficult for the company to remove QAnon-laced content.
Rikin Thakker, former vice president of telecom infrastructure and spectrum at the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council, was named chief technology officer for the Wireless Infrastructure Association; Brent Weil, former vice president of workforce development at Argentum, was also named the trade group’s vice president of workforce development, and Jason Nelson, former executive director of Smart Cities Council, its vice president of partnerships and development. … The National Association of Counties has assembled a Broadband Task Force, a group of roughly three dozen county government officials who will examine broadband gaps across the U.S., particularly in underserved areas.
Well that was fast: Quibi, which launched in April, is shutting down, WSJ reports.
Name to know: Alloy, a political data vendor that tried to land a contract with the Democratic National Committee. A new report from Protocol details how the firm — launched as a nonprofit backed by tens of millions from LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and former U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park — has largely flopped.
ICYMI: Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) chastised Facebook over a new report from Muslim Advocates that labels the social network “the World’s Engine for Anti-Muslim Violence” — “driven by the anti-Muslim views of high-level staff, its support of authoritarian regimes, and its use by hate groups around the world,” the civil rights group said.
From the horse’s mouth: The FCC’s top lawyer is defending his agency’s authority to examine Section 230, John reports. (Democratic lawmakers and government officials, and industry, have argued that tech’s legal liability shield is none of the FCC’s business.)
Podcast OTD: The latest episode of Gigi Sohn’s “G&T: Tech on the Rocks ” podcast features a conversation with election security and privacy expert Matt Blaze on safeguarding 2020 election infrastructure and mitigating vulnerabilities. Listen on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Buyer, beware: The FTC is out with data showing a spike in scams originating on social media. More here.
Tips, comments, suggestions? Send them along via email to our team: Bob King ([email protected], @bkingdc), Heidi Vogt ([email protected], @HeidiVogt), Nancy Scola ([email protected], @nancyscola), Steven Overly ([email protected], @stevenoverly), John Hendel ([email protected], @JohnHendel), Cristiano Lima ([email protected], @viaCristiano), Alexandra S. Levine ([email protected], @Ali_Lev), and Leah Nylen ([email protected], @leah_nylen).
TTYL.
