Twitter's Jack Dorsey, Snap's Evan Spiegel to be invited to international "fake news" hearing
An extraordinary public hearing featuring some of the world's most prominent tech leaders could also include Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey as well as the CEOs of Snap and Amazon Web Services, according to Canadian Member of Parliament Bob Zimmer.
The May 28 hearing in Ottawa is the second gathering of the International Grand Committee, a collection of lawmakers from around the world who've banded together to combine their investigations into online disinformation campaigns, election meddling and "fake news."
Zimmer, who is chair of the committee, tells CBS News in total a dozen executives have now or will soon receive invitations.
The list includes Dorsey, Twitter's executive chairman Omid Kordestani, Snap co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel, and Andrew Jassy, CEO of the cloud computing platform Amazon Web Services.
CBS News reported Friday that invites also went out to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai; Eric Schmidt, the former executive chairman of Google's parent company, Alphabet; Apple CEO Tim Cook and COO Jeff Williams, and WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton.
The list includes several of the world's wealthiest people, who control some of the most dominant companies in computing and social media.
Damian Collins, a British Member of Parliament who's on the committee, said some of the companies whose leaders are invited are at odds with each other when it comes to data privacy standards.
"It will be interesting to see, in particular with companies like Apple, they seem to be taking a very different stance with regards to data privacy, and against Facebook with regards to privacy, so it will be interesting to know a bit more about that," Collins said.
News of the next hearing has come as Collins' committee in Parliament released on Sunday a scathing final report stemming from an 18-month-long investigation in the use of Facebook to disrupt elections and sow disinformation.
The report was particularly critical of Facebook for sending lower-level executives to both the U.K. Parliament and International Grand Committee hearings instead of Zuckerberg.
For the global committee's first hearing in London on Nov. 27, Facebook sent Richard Allan, the company's vice president for public policy and a member of Britain's House of Lords, who sat next to an empty chair reserved for Zuckerberg. The lawmakers who attended the November hearing were from the U.K., Canada, Brazil, Latvia, Argentina, Ireland, Singapore, France and Belgium.
Zimmer, the Canadian Member of Parliament, said Thursday that the committee will not allow lesser regional representatives to substitute for top executives at its May hearing.
"One thing that will not be acceptable that I want to have on the record is that Canadian representatives are not going to suffice," Zimmer said. "They're not the real voice of leadership in the companies, so we're looking at getting specifically the names mentioned to come."
American lawmakers who are investigating disinformation will be invited to the May hearing, Zimmer said.
