Tech chiefs to testify on social media regulation

Hi! Welcome to the Insider Advertising daily for October 5. Lucia Moses here, filling in for Lauren Johnson.

Today's news: Tech chiefs to testify, why Pepsi isn't following Coke into hard seltzer, and Triller user numbers disputed.

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The CEOs of Facebook, Google, and Twitter will all testify before Congress, days before the election, over legal protections for internet companies

• The heads of Facebook, Google, and Twitter have all agreed to testify before Congress about social media regulation on October 28, just days before the presidential election.
• Lawmakers plan to question them about concerns over Section 230, which shields social media companies from being held liable for the content of users' posts and gives them authority to develop their own content moderation rules.
• Its advocates have called the law "the most important law protecting internet speech," but it's increasingly come under fire from both sides of the political aisle — for very different reasons.

Read the full story here.

PepsiCo's CEO explains why it's shying away from hard seltzer even as Coca-Cola moves into booze

Pepsi and Coke have been taking different paths when it comes to selling beverages to pandemic-weary consumers.

PepsiCo is focused "100%" on its strategy in energy drinks, CEO Ramon Laguarta said on the company's earnings call Thursday in response to a question about whether it would follow Coca-Cola into hard seltzer.

He indicated energy drinks offer more long-term potential while hard seltzer could be shorter-lived.

Read the full story here.

Insiders say TikTok rival Triller reported monthly active users that were 5 times higher than what some internal metrics showed

• The short-form-video app Triller, a TikTok rival, touted massive user growth last year that some former employees said they believed was inflated, Dan Whateley reported.
• Six former employees said the publicly reported monthly active user number was more than five times what they were seeing on some internal metrics.
• Triller CEO Mike Lu said the former employees were "disseminating inaccurate information" and that it can validate "each and every one" of its reported users.

Read the full story here.

More stories we're reading:

• Starbucks has begun rolling out glow-in-the-dark cups for Halloween— and people are already reselling them online (Business Insider)
• A high-profile engineer left Amazon after filing sexual harassment claims to HR in 2018. Now she's speaking out about what she calls a 'toxic' work culture for women. (Business Insider)
• 'Ready to spend': Publishers are angling for election-wary advertisers' Facebook budgets (Digiday)
• How Discord went from gaming and alt-right hub to a sneaker cook group hotbed, where resellers charge fees to share their secrets for cracking the $2 billion resale market (Business Insider)
• A part-time YouTube creator breaks down how she makes over $1,000 a month making videos about thrift shopping (Business Insider)