Facebook Inc.’s Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter Inc.’s Jack Dorsey took their seats on Capitol Hill today for a long grilling over their respective platforms.

As expected, the topics covered mostly related to how the platforms can be manipulated by “bad actors” hoping to influence American voters before and during election campaigns and also sow the seeds of division regarding public policy in the U.S. Another main issue was whether Twitter and Facebook actively demonstrated left-wing bias, despite the fact that they were used to help elect Republican President Donald Trump.

At the start of the hearing, Democrat Senator Mark Warner was quick to admonish Google LLC, saying he was “deeply disappointed” that no Google executive showed up. The cameras panned to a Google nameplate in front of an empty chair, creating a kind of ghostly dramatic effect.

The committee, Warner said, had a series of difficult questions to ask the company over matters such as Google Search “surfacing absurd conspiracies,” YouTube being used by Russian agents to disseminate pernicious content and the threat of official Gmail accounts being hacked.

“Given its size and influence, I would have thought that leadership at Google would have wanted to demonstrate how seriously it takes these challenges and actually take a leadership role in this important discussion,” said Warner.

As for election interference, Republican Senator Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the vulnerability of social media and how it can be manipulated was “absolutely chilling and a threat to our democracy.” He added that this was only going to get worse as more foreign countries would attempt to exploit American voters by promulgating divisive content on social media.

Both executives said they had faltered in the past, but were now more vigilant and more prepared to deal with bad actors molding American voters’ opinions.

“This interference was completely unacceptable. It violated the values of our company and of the country we love,” said Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer. She added that Facebook was “more determined” than the foreign transgressors.

Dorsey (pictured) was more down-to-earth in his statements, saying that the changes Twitter had made lately to address platform abuse would take some time and ironing out all the problems was not easy. It seemed that the Twitter CEO was much more willing to go into depth about the issues, while Sandberg remained mostly vague about her approach.

Warner then issued what could be said to be a chilling statement to free-speech activists, stating that the days of “Wild West in social media” were coming to an end. The government had to step in. “I’m skeptical that, ultimately, you’ll be able to truly address this challenge on your own,” he said. “Congress is going to have to take action here.”

The pair were asked about social media and the left-wing bias they have been accused of having, though without much evidence. Trump has said he would take legal action against them. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, a victim of such bias and now a martyr to some following the social media purge of his content, was sat behind the pair as they testified.

Dorsey conceded that Twitter had failed in the past regarding its impartiality. “Our algorithms were unfairly filtering 600,000 accounts, including some members of Congress from our search auto-complete and latest results,” he said. It’s fixed now, he added, saying bias in algorithms is an important topic that Twitter takes seriously.

“Algorithmic fairness,” he said, had to ensure impartiality going forward. He said at present the company found no political bias in its algorithm.

“What if a real person, a U.S. citizen, says that victims of a mass shooting were actually actors…would that violate your standards?” asked Democrat Senator Martin Heinrich. Such a case has been made by Alex Jones in the past, but he wasn’t in the room for this question.

Apparently, Jones and Republican Senator Mark Rubio almost got into a fight in the hallway at some point, with Jones hurling abuse at the senator – “little gangster thug” – and Rubio making a veiled physical threat in what might be called one of the most bizarre moments that has happened on Capitol Hill in recent history. Rubio later said he didn’t know who the “scrubby guy” was when he was approached, but he’d heard his name before.

Back to more formal business, Sandberg said Facebook had employed third-party fact-checkers to deal with conspiracies that might be harmful to victims or foster contempt for the government. “Bad speech can be countered by good speech,” she said.

Wikileaks and Julian Assange were then brought up by Republican Senator Tom Cotton, who asked why the platforms still allowed such content to appear. Both Sandberg and Dorsey replied that terms of service had not been breached.

Other topics raised were automated accounts on Twitter, which Dorsey said his company was trying to fix and was thinking about labeling “bot” accounts. We won’t spot them all, though, he admitted. Both were asked about Twitter and Facebook’s huge vault of data and how that can be exploited by someone savvy enough to get hold of it. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden said it was imperative that adversaries could not “seize these weapons and use them against us.”

Photo: CBS/YouTube