Following a vote to proceed with subpoenas, the Senate Judiciary Committee has come to an arrangement for the chief executives of two prominent social media companies to appear and give testimony on a voluntary basis in November. This hearing represents the second significant appearance before Congress this month for leaders in the technology sector.

Jack Dorsey, representing Twitter, and Mark Zuckerberg, representing Facebook, will be present to respond to inquiries at the hearing scheduled for November 17 – a date that falls two weeks after the date of the election. The committee, under the leadership of Chairman Lindsey Graham, a Senator from South Carolina, intends to focus the discussion on “the platforms’ handling of content and limitations placed on articles published by the New York Post.”

A recent statement released by the committee indicates that legislators also intend to utilize the hearing as a detailed review of the performance of both Twitter and Facebook during and following the election period – a topic that is expected to garner significant attention from lawmakers across the political spectrum.

Members of the Republican party are keen to question the technology executives regarding their platforms’ response to a contested story originating from the New York Post, which claimed to report on illegally obtained information belonging to Hunter Biden, the son of presidential candidate Joe Biden. They consider this situation as supporting evidence for their existing assertions of a political leaning against conservative viewpoints in the platforms’ content policies.

Although the Republican members of the Senate committee initiated the effort to secure testimony from Zuckerberg and Dorsey, the Democratic members, who abstained from the vote regarding the subpoenas, are also anticipated to raise their own concerns relating to the moderation of content.