Facebook, Twitter face U.S. Congress over foreign bids to tilt politics

Top executives from Facebook Inc (FB.O) and Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) will defend their companies in the U.S. Congress on Wednesday over what lawmakers see as a failure to combat continuing foreign efforts to influence U.S. politics.

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, who will testify alongside Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey, will acknowledge to the Senate Intelligence Committee that the company was too slow to respond to Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election and American society, but insist it is doing better, Reuters reports.

“We’ve removed hundreds of pages and accounts involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior - meaning they misled others about who they were and what they were doing,” Sandberg said in written testimony released on Tuesday.

Facebook, Twitter and other technology firms have been on the defensive for many months over political influence activity on their sites as well as concerns over user privacy.

Their executives have traveled to Washington several times to testify in Congress, including 10 hours of questioning of Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg over two days in April.