Twitter Shares Plummet as CEO Gives Testimony to Senate

Shares of social media site Twitter were falling as much as 6% as the company’s CEO Jack Dorsey gave his testimony to the Senate.

Dorsey was testifying alongside Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, to the Senate Intelligence Committee on election meddling in the 2016 U.S. election as well as abuse on their platforms.

Google had been also invited to testify but the company declined to send its CEO or its parent company’s (Alphabet) CEO.

President Donald Trump has accused all three companies of political bias in recent months and has said that the social media platforms are “treading on very, very troubled territory and they have to be careful.”

Twitter in particular has been accused of shadow banning, a term that means the practice of de-emphasizing certain accounts in search results. Twitter has denied that claim.

“We believe strongly in being impartial, and we strive to enforce our rules impartially,” Dorsey testified. “In fact, from a simple business perspective and to serve the public conversation, Twitter is incentivized to keep all voices on the platform.”

According to the CEO, data analysis by Twitter has found that a single tweet by a Republican member of Congress is viewed just as many times as a single tweet by a Democratic member of Congress.

Other tech stocks were also dragging in the red as the testimony went on.

Disclaimer: We have no position in Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) nor Facebook, Inc. Common Stock (NASDAQ: FB) and have not been compensated for this article.