Senate votes to issue subpoenas to Facebook, Twitter, Google CEOs

Enlarge / The dome of the United State Capitol Building in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Phil Roeder)

The Senate Commerce Committee this morning voted unexpectedly to issue subpoenas to the heads of Facebook, Twitter, and Google to compel them to testify in a hearing-most likely before Election Day.

The committee agreed in a unanimous, bipartisan vote to require Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to appear (virtually) after none of the three executives had agreed by today to appear voluntarily.

Zuckerberg and Pichai, along with Apple CEO Tim Cook and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, testified before a House Judiciary subcommittee earlier this year. That hearing, nominally about antitrust issues, instead squeezed two completely disparate realities together into one small room, as Democratic members primarily asked about competition issues and Republican members primarily complained about the Internet's alleged (and unproven) "bias" against conservative voices.

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