Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Thursday, March 25th. I'm Nyla Budu. Here's

what we're covering today, the national implications of a special election in New Mexico. Plus, what

safe when gathering for the upcoming religious holidays. But first, big tech and the beltway

is today's one big thing. Is COVID-19 the misinformation wake up call for technology? That's

what the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, and Google are expected to be asked today when they're

called to Congress to testify. Kim Hart is Axios' national chief technology correspondent.

Here to give us a preview, good morning, Kim. Hello. Kim, the pandemic seems to have been

a flashpoint for a lot of people in an outside of tech to start talking about misinformation

and the effects. Why do you think that's been the case? I think this is one of the first

real world examples of misinformation that shows that what is spun around and spread online

doesn't stay online. It really does impact real world behavior and how people treat something

as serious as the COVID-19 virus. So misinformation and disinformation, false information about

the causes of COVID-19, how it spread, how serious the disease really is, the effect of

vaccinations, how effective they are. All of these things that are spreading online, largely

on social media, really do have a big impact on public opinion and how receptive people

are to getting the vaccine, how doubtful they are about it, and whether they take the disease

seriously. Facebook comes under criticism for a lot of this. You've already gotten a peak

at CEO Mark Zuckerberg's written testimony. Does it seem like Facebook's ready for reform?

Facebook really has realized that it has no choice but to embrace some sort of change to a

specific provision of the law that shields liability for hosting posts from users that end up

being harmful or untrue. Now, tech giants are starting to embrace changes to that law because

both parties are really getting serious about threatening it. And so, for example,

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