The committees have invited Facebook, Twitter and Google’s parent company, Alphabet, to appear, with the House panel planning to hold its hearing in October and the Senate committee in early November.
In a report earlier this year, U.S. intelligence agencies said it was their assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered an influence campaign aimed at the U.S. election in order to boost Donald Trump’s chance of winning the presidency while hurting the campaign of Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton.
Trump has expressed skepticism of the conclusion. In July, he said, “I think it could very well have been Russia, but I think it could well have been other countries, and I won’t be specific.”
The president, who has frequently criticized the media, on Wednesday used Twitter to suggest Facebook worked with television news companies and top U.S. newspapers to work against him during the election.
“Trump says Facebook is against him. Liberals say we helped Trump. Both sides are upset about ideas and content they don’t like. That’s what running a platform for all ideas looks like,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a response to Trump’s tweet.
“After the election, I made a comment that I thought the idea misinformation on Facebook changed the outcome of the election was a crazy idea,” Zuckerberg added. “Calling that crazy was dismissive and I regret it. This is too important an issue to be dismissive. But the data we have has always shown that our broader impact — from giving people a voice to enabling candidates to communicate directly to helping millions of people vote — played a far bigger role in this election.”
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