Mr. @jack Goes To Washington

With accusations of anti-conservative bias swirling, Jack Dorsey prepares to defend Twitter before Congress

- Selina Wang

Sept. 5 was an historic day for Twitter. In the morning, CEO Jack Dorsey made his debut in Congress, testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee about Russian interference in U.S. elections. Then in the afternoon the House Energy and Commerce Committee grilled him about claims that his company is biased against conservatives. The accusation has been levied repeatedly in recent weeks by conservative commentators and lawmakers, including President Trump (on Twitter, ironically enough). These complaints were part of a wave being directed at tech companies, most recently Google, which the president tweeted on Aug. 28, without factual basis, was gaming search results to portray him negatively.

Twitter Inc. is in a more precarious position than its larger competitors, though. Dorsey’s company can’t match their user bases or cash reserves, and the modest user growth he’s fostered over the past two years could vanish if Twitter starts losing conservatives over concerns, warranted or not, about bans and “shadow bans” (in which a user’s content is invisible to everyone but themselves—a practice Twitter says it doesn’t engage in). On the other side, the service could lose liberals who won’t participate on a site they perceive to be fostering abusive speech or bending rules to accommodate conservatives.