Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy may not have a reputation as a critic of Silicon Valley, but he came the closest of any senator to making Facebook’s top lawyer sweat during a Tuesday hearing on Capitol Hill.Sitting alongside his counterparts at Google and Twitter, Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch parried Kennedy’s questions about how Facebook handles user data, vets its 5 million monthly advertisers, and polices content on its platform.“Gentlemen, I’m very proud the three companies you’re representing here today are American companies, and I think you do enormous good,” was how Kennedy opened his questions. “But your power sometimes scares me.”“The truth of the matter is you have 5 million advertisers that change every month… you don’t have the ability to know who every one of those advertisers is,” Kennedy pressed.“Of course, the answer is no,” Stretch admitted in his reply.The Tuesday hearing is the first of a series of sessions where executives at these three companies will submit to questions about the Russian government influence campaigns on U.S. social media during the 2016 election. Aside from Kennedy’s grilling, however, tech companies got off pretty easy and dodged similarly pointed questions.You can watch the full exchange with Sen. Kennedy below:
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