The hearing — announced in February — was largely in response to the Capitol riots earlier this year, as well as the misinformation campaign surrounding the coronavirus pandemic. Reports have surfaced that the majority of the rioters had planned the attack in advance on a variety of platforms that have consistently struggled with this kind of nefarious behavior. Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and Sundar Pichai had a lot to say during the hearing — titled “Disinformation Nation: Social Media’s Role in Promoting Extremism and Misinformation” — so we’ve collected some of their most poignant points below. This hearing, as senators made clear, was the jumping off point to rewrite some of that legislature in hopes of keeping these companies in check. And, surprisingly, Mark Zuckerberg actually had some concrete ideas on how to do so. Once these suggestions were made by Facebook’s CEO, the subcommittee had to find out what the other two CEOs had to say about it and whether or not they agreed with what he had to say. While Pichai wasn’t entirely on board, they did concede that transparency and accountability are hard to argue with. Dorsey, on the other hand, did add a stipulation to his tepid agreement. The self-regulatory system in place for these companies has admittedly gotten out of hand, and updates to Section 230 — particularly in regards to transparency and accountability — are certainly warranted. Now we’ll just have to see if these are merely words to get out of a hearing or a true commitment to actually change. However, while they didn’t take any responsibility for their platforms’ roles in the Capitol riots, the CEOs were quick to elaborate on the many ways in which they did their part in tamping down the violence, as well as the misinformation that caused it. As for why the CEOs were so hesitant to take responsibility for what their platforms have done to political discourse in this country, Zuckerberg was happy to throw the entire system under the bus rather than admit that Facebook has some problems of its own. Sure, he’s not wrong. But it was painfully obvious throughout the proceedings that Zuckerberg, Dorsey, and Pichai were adamantly unwilling to admit that these platforms could be doing a lot more as far as quelling the political storm that continues to rage on a daily basis. As is to be expected in a Congressional hearing with tech CEOs, explaining the finer points of how social media works and why some hateful, confusing language falls through the cracks became a regular part of the process. When asked why Twitter hadn’t explicitly banned the use of offensive hashtags like #ChinaFlu, Dorsey explained that it simple isn’t that easy. With a complicated issue like the pandemic, it’s understandable that social media platform haven’t been able to effectively mitigate all the risk. Still, it would be nice to see some accountability when it comes to why these problems have persisted at this level for such a long time.