| Hi everyone, it's Sarah Frier. If late January's wild swings in GameStop Corp. stock had you constantly refreshing your phone in awe, you might want to grab your popcorn. The major players in the drama—the chief executive officer of Robinhood Markets Inc., the CEO of Reddit Inc., and a few others, including a man who goes by "Roaring Kitty" or "DeepF—gValue" online—will be testifying in front of the House Committee on Financial Services on Thursday about their culpability. Members of Congress are concerned that online anonymous rumors about stocks on Reddit, as well as the gamification of trading on Robinhood, are dangerous market volatility forces with the potential to manipulate and bankrupt everyday Americans. They're also likely to ask why Robinhood limited trading on the stock, causing it to further falter after an unprecedented rally. These questions aren't likely to be fully resolved during Thursday's proceedings. In fact, we may learn very little. If frequent appearances for Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Google executives on election misinformation have taught us anything, it's that the main purpose of these events is to give tech leaders a public grilling, without much regard for whether they answer the questions they're asked. There tends to be bipartisan agreement that tech companies—even smaller networks like Robinhood and Reddit—have grown too large to keep track of or respond to the harmful things that happen on their platforms. Most legislators believe they need to be held accountable, but typically can't agree on how to make things better. If you were to create a drinking game for congressional inquiries of tech leaders, you'd take a sip every time a legislator interrupted an answer to ask a follow-up question, every time one spent their whole turn speaking for the cameras instead of interrogating, and every time they asked a tech leader if they were personally OK with something tragic that occurred because of their platform. For the witnesses, notice every time they compliment a question without answering it, attempt to run out their time with a long lead-up to an answer, or promise to have their staff follow up with an answer later. The hearing might, at least, provide fodder for more memes about the GameStop surge, or scenes for the movies already optioned on the drama by Netflix Inc. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. What it probably won't do is provide resolution for the people who lost money, or prevent the same thing from happening again. —Sarah Frier | 
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