Hearings were originally intended to be fact finding sessions. During an era in which 'Newspapers' were an experimental new technology, it was still a good idea to get all the lawmakers into a room and bring in witnesses to present different sides of an issue.
And that might have been the case in the 19th Century, but in the post-war administrative state, Senators do not actually hold hearings to gather information as they have teams of full time aides that do that for them with modern technologies like the internet and the telephone that have obviated the need for hearings.
In the modern world, hearings are an opportunity to give speeches in front of cameras, to ask questions that embarrass your enemies and make your allies look good. Therefore Facebook is correctly using the hearings in their modern form, by trying to make the questioners look bad by pointing out how out of touch they are.