Marco Rubio Hits Google: Maybe They Skipped Hearing Because ‘They’re Arrogant’

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
RUBIO: "There's an empty chair next to you from Google and they're not here today, and maybe it's because their arrogant or maybe it's because there's a report that was posted at 3:36 yesterday, this report went on that purported to be Kremlin link trolls. And were able to buy ads online and place them on sites like CNN, CBS this morning, huff post, daily beast, so I'm sure they don't want to be here to answer these questions but I thank you both for being here I was happy to read in your opening statement Ms. Sandberg, you talk about our process, our democratic process and you talked about adversaries, clearly linking our values and the values of the country. Twitter didn't go as far, you did describe yourself as a global public square, you did defer to our democracy and you did say that Twitter was based on the freedom of expression this is why this is relevant because we're here today and we have learned the hard way that social media that was largely seen as a tool for incredible good, also what makes it good can be manipulated by bad actors to cause harm and we have all learned that the hard way. And I think what you have agreed to do is to use the powers you have within your platforms to crack down on certain users who are hostile actors, who are using misinformation or disinformation or hate speech or for the purposes of sewing discord in our internal affairs, and that's a positive. But what happens when an authoritarian regime asks you do that because their version of disinformation, may the truth. It's going to define what your companies are. Are your companies really built on these core values or are they global companies like all these other companies that come around here, who see their number one obligation to make money and therefore market access irrespective the price they have to pay to do so. In 2016, "New York Times" was working on a program to restrict stories showing up in their news feed based on their geography. That was being used north to potentially to get back into China, but any authoritarian government can use that tool in Vietnam where you operate, there's a new law that will require you to hand over data to the government of users of anti-state activity, including information that may hurt their economy, for example -- Twitter, freedom of expression by selectively blocking tweets and accounts for example one of the countries you comply with is Pakistan has asked you to block sites for blasphemy. The blasphemy over a 10-year period, 50% of those cases were on nonmuslim Pakistanis, one high profile case is Asia Bebe who was involved in a personal dispute. They accused her of insulting the prophet. Not relevant to Twitter, but relative to the blasphemy laws Pakistan has asked you to block over 4,000 accounts. One of them is a journalist, one of them is an NBA player you complied with that one of them was a pro Ukrainian account in 2014. So here's why all this is relevant in -- I guess the first question for Facebook is how would these principles of our democracy, do you support them only in the United States, or are these principles that you feel obligated to support around the world?"