someonelse17

They're not held legally accountable for political views.

The copyright stuff applies to everyone already.

It's debatable if the China thing applies, in any case congressional committees need not interfere.

I'm not talking about Silicon Valley, I'm talking about all other industries in all countries, most Silicon Valley companies are banned in China, stop vilifying Silicon Valley.

I'm sure these organizations are great and are doing wonderful work but they are not government entities and Google has no obligation to respond to them, further more these are non profits, attaching themselves to a high profile subject like Google gives them more exposure and potentially more donations.

I don't see a unique human rights angel here, there are many companies doing business with China and a number of other "iffy" governments, if congress was truly alarmed by that they could sanction these companies.

This thing became about political retribution after google dropped maven.

What you want and what the law allows are different things, also just don't let any entity control how you think.

As for 'being held accountable' as publisher, I'm sure you're aware of many publishers that favor one side or one "viewpoint" in fact it's most of them, and they aren't being held accountable for that because we live in a free country.

I don't know about the prevalence of other opinions but what I'm suggesting (and there are many legal precedents to support this) is that the first amendment shields them from this nonsense as well as any antitrust allegations and complains about how some entitles think they should be featured in their results.

I'm not sure what's behind the recent prevalence to this theory but that is false.

Also we should all want section 230 protection it's what preserves free speech online and the principle on which the whole web economy is built.

The politics of private citizens are their own business and explicitly not the government's.

Furthermore even if that had any bearing on their search results whatever google presents on their own damn website is also none of the government's business.

Convening a hearing on a specific subject (silly as it as in this case) then making it an open season for all other grievances is another despicable aspect of these hearings.

"to discuss concerns that the search engine giant is biased against conservatives" ffs.

Define "getting cozy" in this context and please explain why a public hearing is in any way better than a private one or even just exchanging correspondence.

If it was truly about policy they would have accepted the lawyer, it's theatrics and grandstanding and campaigning from that dais.

I don't think it was warranted in that case either, it was an exicise in public humiliation, a bunch of people who never created anything getting off on talking down to someone much better than them.

Unless it's illegal it's none of their business.

Google offered their top lawyer for the senate hearing but they rejected him, I guessing it's because they needed CEOs in order to maximize the pleasure from their exercise in public humiliation.

The whole thing about snubbed senators getting mad and wanting revenge is beyond undemocratic it's tyrannical.

I also would like to have my cake and eat it.

Leak what? It says so in the permission screen when a user chooses to grant access.