Transcripts For CSPAN Google Facebook Twitter Executives Others Testify About Online Terror... 20240714

Wounded more in christchurch, new zealand. The motive behind the attack is not in question. The terrorists has written a mixed and the manifesto outlining his White Supremacists, white nationalists, antiimmigrant, antimuslim, and fascist bullies. Beyonds horrifying words, and it shocked the conscience. Shockingly, the terrorist was allowed to live stream on facebook where the gruesome video went undetected initially. Instead, Law Enforcement officials in new zealand had to contact the company and ask that it be removed. New zealand authorities called on all social Media Companies to remove these videos immediately, they were unable to comply. Upan moderators did not keep with the volume of videos being reposted, and their Automated Systems were unable to recognize minor changes in the video, so the video spread online, and is spread around the world. The fact that this happened merely two years after facebook, twitter, google, microsoft, and other Major Tech Companies establish the Global Internet forum to counterterrorism, giftc, is troubling, to say the least. Share best practices to combat the spread of online terrorist content. Back in july 2017, representatives of the giftc briefed the community on this new initiative. I was optimistic about its intentions and goals and acknowledged that members demonstrated the willingness to engage on this issue while others have not, but after a and white supremacist terrorists were able to exploit social media platforms of various ways, we gifct, and of the representatives of gifct briefed to this committee in march after the christchurch massacre. Since then, myself and other members of this committee has asked important questions about the organization and have yet to receive satisfactory answers. Today, i hope to get answers regarding your actual efforts to keep terrorist content of your platform. I want to know how you prevent , like the new zealand attack video, from spreading on your platform again. This committee will continue to engage social Media Companies about the challenges they face in addressing terror content on the platform. In addition to terror content, i want to hear from our panel about how they are working to keep hate speech and harmful misinformation off their platform. I want to be very clear, freerats will respect the speech rights that you find in the First Amendment, but much of the content i am referring to is either not protected speech or violates the social Media Companies own terms of service. We have seen time and time again that social media platforms are vulnerable to being exploited by that actors, including those working out of the hess of foreign governments who seek to so discordw by spreading misinformation. Bigger asonly become we approach the 2020 elections. When he to deal with the persistent problem a. Todaysdamental level, hearing is about transparency. We need to get an understanding of whether and to what is in social Media Companies are incorporating questions of national security, public safety, and integrity of our domestic institutions into their business model. I look forward to having that conversation with the witnesses to our ongoing dialogue on behalf of American People. I think the witnesses for joining us and the members further precipitation. Their participation. For that with that, i with that, i recognize mr. Rogers. This has picked over the last decades in which Foreign Terrorists and global supporters have explored the openness of Online Platforms to radicalize, mobilize, and most their violent messages are these tactics have proved successful, so much so that we are seeing domestic extremists mimic many of the same techniques to gather followers and read hateful, violent propaganda. Steadily onres grow social Media Companies to modify their terms of service to limit posts links to terrorism, violent, criminal activity, and hatefulently the papal rhetor c rhetoric of misinformation. Companies have responded to this pressure in a number of ways, including the creation of the Global Internet forum to Counter Terrorism, or gifct. Also hiring more human content moderators. Todays hearing is also an important opportunity to examine the constitutional limits placed on the government to regulate or restrict freeze the. Advocating violent acts and recruiting terrorists online is a legal, but expressing ones political views, however repugnant they maybe, is protected under the First Amendment. I was deeply concerned to hear policies regarding President Trump and conservative news media. Googles head of responsible recentlyn, jens an jen jeni, said we all got screwed over, the news media that screwed over, everybody got screwed over, so we rapidly more like, how we prevent this from happening again. Jeni wrote Elizabeth Warren wants us to break up google. That is not going to happen. Then they will be charged with preventing another trump situation. She is entitled to her opinion, this report and others like it are a stark reminder of founders have the First Amendment. The video has been removed from youtube, the platform owned by google. Be regulating speech quickly becomes the private sector. Noble intentions also often give issues. It will require enhanced cooperation by the government, industry, individuals, while protecting Constitutional Rights of all americans are i appreciate our witnesses participation today. I hope it will provide Greater Transparency and understanding of todays complex challenge, and with that, hell back, mr. Chairman. Rep. Thompson thank you. Our first witnesses mr. Monica, our third is the third is derek slater, at google, finally, we welcome ms. Midi nadine,ents and, ms. Law school at the i now recognize each witness to summarize the statement for five minutes, beginning with his s. Baker. M ms. Baker thank you, chairman thompson, rating member, and the committee. I am on it of bigger, facebooks Vice President , and i am charged with policy and counterterrorism efforts. Before i joined facebook, i prosecuted federal crimes for seven years on the department of justice. On behalf of our company, i want you for leadership, combating extremism, terrorism, and other threats to our homeland and national security. I do not select to start by saying all of us at facebook stand with the victims, their families, and everyone affected by the recent error attacks, including the horrific violence in sri lanka and new zealand. In the aftermath of these acts, it is even more important to stand together against hate and violence, and we make this a priority in everything that we do at facebook. Content, our view is simple there is no place on facebook for terrorists. To use ourt allowed services under any circumstances. We remove their accounts as soon as we find them. We also remove any content that praises or supports terrorists or their actions, and if we find evidence of imminent harm, we promptly inform authorities. There are three primary ways we are implementing this approach. First with our products, but terrorists andtop propaganda at the gates. Our people, who review policies, and third, our partnerships outside of the us stay which help ahead. For some our product. Facebook has invested significantly in technology to content,tify terrorist including through the use of Artificial Intelligence, but also using other automation and technology for instance, we can now identify violating textual posts in 19 different languages. With the help of these improvements, we have taken action on more than 25 million pieces of terrorist content since the beginning of 2018. Of the content we have removed from facebook, violating our terrorism policies, more than 99 of that is content we found ourselves using our own technical rules, before anyone has reported it to us. Second, our people. We now have more than 30,000 people who are working on safety and security across facebook, across the world, and that is three times as many people as we had dedicated to those efforts in 2017. We also have more than 300 highly trained professionals exclusively or primarily focused on combating terrorist use of our services. Our Team Includes counterterrorism experts, former prosecutors, like myself, former log oarsmen officials, and together, they speak more than 50 languages, and they are able to provide 24hour coverage. Partnerships. In addition to working with thirdparty intelligence providers to more quickly provide terrorist activity on the internet, we work with academics who are studying the latest trends, and government officials. Following the attacks in new zealand, facebook was proud to be a signatory to the christchurch called to action, was with a ninepoint plan for the industry to better combat terrorist attempts to use our services. We also partner across industry. At the chairman and Ranking Member mentioned, in 2016, we launched the Global Internet forum to Counter Terrorism with gifct. The point of that is to share information and to also Share Technology and research to better combat these threats. Through gifct, we have expanded database for companies to share what we call patches, which are basically digital fingerprints of terrorist content so that we can all remove it more quickly and help Smaller Companies do that, too. We have also trained over 110 companies from around the globe in best practices for countering terrorists use of the internetu. , andook took over gifct along with our members, we have this year worked to expand our ability including making test audio to other companies, especially Smaller Companies, and we have also improved our crisis protocol. In the wake of the horrific christchurch attacks, we communicated in real time, and we were a list of hundreds of videos of the attack, despite the fact that bad actors were actively trying to edit the video to upload it to try to circumvent our system. The adversaries are always evolving their tactics, and we have to improve the food want to stay ahead. Will never be perfect, we have made progress, and we are committed to tirelessly combating extremism on our platform. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. I look forward to answering your questions. Thank you. Kevi chairman thompson, rating member rogers, the committee, thank you for the opportunity. We keep the victims rep. Thompson turn your mic on, please. Can you pull the mic . Sorry. Is that better . Thank you. We keep the victims, their families, and affected communities and christchurch and around the world in our minds as we undertake this important work. We have made this our top measure our efforts. Conversely, hateful contact, deceptive practices detract from the health of the platform. I would like to begin by outlining three key policies. First, twitter has a zerotolerance approach. Individuals may not engage in recruitment or terroris acts. Since 2015, we have suspended more than 1. 5 million accounts for violation of our roles related to terrorism and we have seen more than 90 of the accounts suspended through drastic measures. Accountaction at the creation stage before the account has events we get. The remaining 10 is through a combination of user is an secondly, we prohibit violent extremist groups. These are defined as groups who, whether by statement on or off the platform, promote violence against civilians or use civilians,ainst whatever cause, whatever their ideology. We have taken on 184 groups globally and permanently suspended more than 200 unique accounts. Thirdly, it individual on twitter is not permitted to promote violence or directly affect or threaten people based on characteristics. Where any of these rules are broken, we will take action to remove the content and will permanently remove those who promote terrorism on twitter. As you have heard, twitter is a member of the Global Internet inum of counterterrorism, partnership with facebook, google, and microsoft, as well as providing essential support. We learned a number of lessons from the christchurch attacks. The distribution of media was howfestly different from other terrorist actions worked. After christchurch, an array of individuals online sought to continuously reupload the content created by the attacker, both by video and otherwise. The rot interecosystem presented then and still presents a challenge. Range of thirdparty services were used to share content, that have longs hosted some of the most egregious content online. Video the views of the posted by the christchurch attacker came from verified accounts on twitter, including news organizations and individuals posting the video to condemn the attack. We committed to learning and every into the have a part to play. We should also take some art from the social examples we have seen on twitter around the world, as users come together to challenge hate and challenge division. Hashtags like pray for orlando, or after the christchurch attacks, hello brother, allow for a Better Future for us all. Attack,onths since the , governments, Civil Society, and others are united to commit to a safe, secure, open, and Global Internet. We will take a wide range of actions, including to continue investing in technology, so we can respond as quickly as possible to future instance. As a uniquely open service, twitter enables the clarification and realtime. We proactively use technologies to halt the spread of content propagated through manipulative tactics. We pretty account we prohibit account manipulation, malicious information, and trade accounts. We continue to explore further actions are both policy and object products. We continue to look at what we can do to safeguard the healthy environment on twitter. We look forward to working together on these important issues. Thank you. Rep. Thompson thank you for your testimony. I now recognize mr. Slater to summarize his testimony for five minutes. Mr. Slater chairman thompson, Ranking Member rogers, distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I appreciate your leadership of radicalization online and welcome the opportunity to discuss googles work in these areas. Derek slater, and i am the global director of information that google. Google, we believe that the internet has been a force for creativity, learning, and access to information, supporting the free flow of ideas to make the world universally accessible and it useful, yet there have always been legitimate limits to free expression, and this is true both online and off, especially when it comes to terrorism, hate speech, and misinformation. We take these issues seriously and want to be a part of the solution. In my testimony today, i will focus on two areas where we are making progress to protect our users. First, on the enforcement of our policies around terrorism and hate speech, and second, combating this more broadly. On youtube, we have rigorous against and programs those that spread hate or incite violence. We have invested heavily in machines and people. Youtubes enforcement system starts at the point of uploads a video. T is sent for humans to review if they determine it violates our policies, they remove it, and this is amazing digital fingerprint, so it cannot be uploaded again appeared in the First Quarter of 2019 come over 75 of the more than 8 million videos remove were first on by a machine. Ae majority of waste before single view was received. Second, we rely on expert to work on the algorithms. For newctively looks trends on content that might violate our community. We go beyond enforcing our policy by creating programs to create counter speech. Examples of this work include our readers for change program, which supports youtube creators acting as positive role models. Alphabets jigsaw group uses targeted video to disrupt online radicalization. This brought and crosssectional work has led to tangible results. Of 2019,rst quarter you to manually reviewed over one million suspected terrorist videos and found that fewer than 10 from about 90,000, violated our terrorism policy. A comparison, we typically remove between 7 million and 9 million per quarter, a tiny fraction of youtubes total views during this time period. Not stop there. We possibly taking an input and reacting to situations. For example, youtube recently policy,its hate speech alleging that a group is a spear your in order to justify segregation, exclusion, based on qualities like age, gender, race, sexual orientation, or veteran status. Similarly, the recent tragic cause us christchurch drastic measures. We are now reexamining our crisis protocols and also signed the christchurch call to action. We are committed to working with government and experts in Civil Society and economy of to protect our services from being as ordered by that actors, chairmanshipgles in the last year and a half good on the topic of combating this information, we have a natural longterm incentives to prevent anyone from interfering with the integrity of our products. We also recognize that it is critically important to combat this information in the context of democratic elections, when our users seek accurate, trustworthy information that will help them make critical decisions. Better worked algorithms and cover policies and deploying multiple teams that identify and take actions against malicious actors. We have to be mindful that our platforms are reflect a large array of sources. There is no silver bullet, but we will continue to Work Together. In conclusion, we want to do everything we can to ensure users are not exposed to harmful content. These are difficult issues of serious interest. We take them seriously, we want to be responsible actors and do our part. Thank you for your time and i look forward to taking your questions. Right thank you for your testimony. I recognize [inaudible] to summarize her statement for five minutes. Thank you. Much, chairman thompson and Ranking Member rogers and other members of the committee. Nadine strossen, i am a press a professor at law and the past president of the civilan civil year did liberties union. I wrote a book that is pertinent to the topic called hate, why we should resist it with free speech, not censorship. I know that you referred to hate inech as problematic content addition with terror content and misinformation. All of these kinds of speech while potentially harmful present enormous dangers when we empower either government or private companies to censor and suppress the speech for this reason. The concepts of hate speech, terrorist content and misinformation are irreducibly vague and broad. Therefore, having to be enforced according to the subjective discretion of the enforcing authority. Enforcedetion has been in ways that both under suppress speech that poses a serious danger. As the chairman and Ranking Member pointed out that also, do suppress very important speech as also has been pointed out, speech that counters terrorism and other dangers. Worse, in addition to violating free speech and democracy norms, these measures are not an effective in dealing with the underlying problems and i thought that was something that was pointed out by comments of their copanelist in particular. The written testimony talked about the fact that if someone has driven off one of these platforms they will take refuge in darker corners of the web where it is much harder to engage with them to use the resources and information for Law Enforcement and counterterrorism investigations. Otheruld emphasize approaches that are consistent with free speech and democracy but have been law did at least as effective and even more so than suppression. I was very heartened that the written statements of my copanelists all emphasize these other approaches. Monicas testimony talked about how essential it was to go after the root causes of terrorism and the testimony of net pickles and derek slater, also emphasize the importance of counter speech, counter narratives, and redirection. I recognize that every single one of us in this room is completely committed to free speech and democracy just as every single one of us is committed to countering terrorism and disinformation. The reason we oppose terrorism and disinformation is because of the harm that they do. Due to democracy and liberty. Before i say anything further, i do have to stress something that everyone here knows but many members of the public do not. These social Media Companies are not bound by the First Amendment freespeech guarantee. Freespeechave a right to air any content on their platforms at all. Conversely, they have their own freespeech rights to choose what will notnd be on their platforms. It would be unconstitutional for congress to purport to tell them what they must put up in what they must take down to the extent that the takedowns would amendmentfirst unprotected speech. Chairman thompson, you did accurately note that much of the content that is targeted as terrorists is unprotected that much of it is protected under the constitution and much of it is valuable including human Rights Advocacy that has been suppressed under these overbroad and subjective standards. Mediaose in social companies to not have a constitutional obligation, given their power, it is incredibly important they be encouraged to do so. In closing, i am going to quote a statement from the written testimony of net pickles which i could not agree with moore. Not solveid he will problems by removing content alone. We should not underestimate the power of open conversation to , perspectives, and behaviors. Thank you very much. Thank all the witnesses for their testimony and i remind havemember, here she will five minutes to question the panel. I recognize myself for questions. Misinformation is some of this committees challenge as it relates to this hearing. As well as terrorist content. Instance ther doctored video of Speaker Nancy Pelosi that made her appear to be drunk, slurring her words. Stepped upd twitter the video left up the video but youtube took it down. Everybody agreed that something was wrong with it. Took a different approach. Want you to explain how you decided to the process were living leaving this video up and mr. Ook and twitter slater, i want you to explain to me why youtube decided to take it down. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Let me first say misinformation is a top concern especially as we are getting ready for the 20 elections. This is something we have to get right and we are focused on what we should be doing with increasingly sophisticated manipulated media. Let me speak to our general approach to misinformation it content whenemove it violates Community Standards. We see someone who is sharing this information. We want to make sure we are reducing the distribution and also providing Accurate Information from independent Fact Checking organizations that people can put in context with ac. Work with 45e independent Fact Checking organizations from around the world, each of which is certified by as being independent and meeting certain principles. As soon as we find something that Fact Checking organizations rate falls, we reduce distribution and put next to it related articles that anyone who shares that gets a warning that this has been rated false. Everyone who did sharon before we got the Fact Checkers reading gets a notification the content was has been rated false by a fact checker and we are putting next to it related articles from the organization. How long did it take you to follows a video . The pillows a video was uploaded on wednesday, may 22 late morning and on thursday, around 6 30 p. M. , affect Checking Organization rated it as false and we downright did and put information. That is something where we think we need to get faster. We need to make sure that we are getting this information to people as soon as we can. It is also a reason that at 6 30 p. M. It took you a day and a half. Yes it did. As monica said the process, we review this against our rules, any content that breaks our rules we will remove. Tactics to spread this so we take action on the distribution and the content. This is a policy area were looking at, not just in the case where viewers might be manipulated that where videos are fabricated and where there is a process of creating media, may be artificial. The best way to approach this is with a policy and product approach that covers come in some case removing. Get to why you left it up. If the video does not break the rules and the account does not break the rules but it is a policy area were looking at now whether this is the correct framework for dealing with this challenge. If it is false or misinformation that does not break your rules. At the present time. Thank you. We have tough Community Guidelines. What is in balance to be up on the platform and what is out and bytent when it is identified machines or users, we will identify and remove. The video violated our policies around deceptive practices and we removed it. Our committee is tasked with looking at this information and other things, we are not trying to bring you a companies. Content could be a document. About your position with that. And theifficulty inherent subjectivity of these concepts is illustrated by the fact that we have three companies that have subscribed to essentially the same general areitments and yet interpreting the details differently with respect to specific content. We see that over and over again. Ultimately, the only protection that we are going to have in this society against this information is through training and education starting at the earliest levels of a childs education in media literacy. Congress could never protect against misinformation and traditional media, right . Unless it meets strict standard of definite defamation that is punishable and fraud that is punishable. Content including the policy nancy pelosi video is constitutionally protected. A yield to the Ranking Member for his questions. Thank you. Would you like to take this opportunity, have you seen it . I have not seen the full video but i am aware of what youre talking about. Would you like to respond to the comments i offered about what was said . Could you be specific, what would you like me to respond to . When she basically said we cannot let google be broken up because the Smaller Companies will not have the same resources, we have to stop term trump from getting reelected. This was reported without our consent and these statements e taken out of content context. Lower ranksin the up to Senior Executives has the ability to manipulate our search results based on our products or Services Based on their political ideology. We designed, developed our products for everyone. We mean everyone. We do that too provide relevant ults, authority authoritative results. We have a longterm incentive to get that right and we do that in a transparent fashion. You can read more on our website. We have guidelines that are public on the web that describe how we look at ratings. Have robust systems and checks and balances in place to make show those are rigorously adhered to as we set up our systems. I recognize he was being videotaped without her knowledge. But the statements i quoted from were full, complete statements that were not edited. It is concerning when you see someone who is an executive at google and there was more than one in that video, making statements that indicate it is managements policy within google to try to manipulate information to cause one or another candidate for president of the United States or any other office to the successful or not be successful. That is what gave rise to my concern. Is it, do we have reason to be concerned that google has a pervasive nature in the company to push one Political Party over another . In the way it conducts its business . I appreciate the concern. Let me be clear again. In terms of what our policy is from the highest level on down and what our practice has been, we do not allow anyone, lower level, higher level to manipulate products in that way. I hope it is not the culture. Your platforms because you are very powerful in our country. You raised concerns in your testimony, companies cannot legally decide what content to allow, what are your recommendations to these Companies Regarding content moderation without censorship . , Ranking Member rogers. I would first of all endorse at least the transparency that both you and chairman thompson stressed in your opening remarks. In addition, other process dueted guarantees such as process, the right to appeal, and a clear statement of standards. I would also recommend standards the freespeech guarantees not only in the u. S. Constitution but of International Human rights that the u. N. Human Rights Council has recommended in a nonbinding way that powerful Companies Adopt. That would mean that content could not be suppressed unless. T posted emergency that it directly caused certain specific, serious imminent harm that cannot be prevented other than through suppression. Short of that, as you indicated, politically controversial, even repugnant speech should be protected. We may very much disagree with the message but the most as principledell way to oppose it is through more speech and i would certainly recommend as i did in my written testimony that these Companies Adopt user empowering technology makewould allow us to truly informed voluntary decisions about what we see and what we dont see and not manipulate us as has been reported many times into rabbit holes in a coat timbres, but give us the opportunity to make her own choices in chooser and communities. Thank you. I yield back. Thank you. Chair recognizes the gentlelady from texas. Chairman ande Ranking Member. Let me indicate there is, known to the public, the Fourth Estate and i might say we have a fifth estate which is all of you and others i represent the social media empire. I believe it is important that we Work Together to find the right pathway for how america will be a leader and balance their responsibilities and rights of such a giant entity and rights and privileges of the American People and the sanctity and security of the American People. Social media statistics from 2019 show there are 3. 2 billion social media users worldwide and this number is only growing. That equates to 42 of the current world population. That is enormous. I know the numbers are daunting inthe just as daunting the u. S. Let me ask a few questions and i would appreciate brevity because of the necessity to try to get as much in as possible. Worshipers, 2019, were slaughtered in the midst of their prayers in christchurch, new zealand. The gunmen livestreamed the first attack on Facebook Live. Is, canestion to you you today assure the committee that there will never be another attack of this nature that will be streamed as it is happening over Facebook Live . You mentioned 30,300. And so i hope they may contribute to their answer. I yield to you for your answer. Thank you. Appalling. As the attack of course is an unspeakable tragedy. We want to make sure we are doing everything to make sure it does not happen again and it is not livestreamed again. One of the things we have done is we have changed access to Facebook Live. So that people have a serious content policy violation are restricted from using it. Livestreamed the new zealand attack what is that likelihood of committing that will not happen in terms of the structures you have put in place . The technology we are working to develop, it is not perfect. Artificial intelligence is a key in recognizing video before it was reported. My time is short. 50 , 60 . P i can give a percentage. We are working with governments and others to improve that technology so that we can better recognize. The questionld, was raised about Artificial Intelligence. About theld respond utilization of ai and individuals as leaf really as briefly ase possible, please. One of the challenges in christchurch was we did not see the same video of loaded, we saw different civet snippets. Making changes to where people manipulate media, we can move quicker. It is Machine Learning. Mr. Slater. Thank you, congresswoman. It is a combination of Machine Learning and people to review. Speaking overall in the First Quarter of 2019, 70 5 of the million videos we removed, they were blocked by a machine and beforeority were removed single view. When it comes to violent extremism, it is even stronger. Over 90 of the videos that were uploaded and removed in the past six months or removed before a single human flag and 88 with less than 10 views. Thank you. Let me ask about deepfakes. In the 2020 election, what you will do to recognize the fact that deepfakes can be a distortion of an election that is the premise of our democracy. Can you quickly answer that question . I want to make mention of the fact that free speech does not allow incitement, fighting words, threats command otherwise. Could you answer that . Yes. The deepfakes as briefly as you can. We are working with experts outside the company and others to make sure we understand how deepfakes can be used and come up with a comprehensive policy to address them. We are focused on removing fake accounts which are disproportionately responsible for this type of content and that we are improving the speed at which we downed her misinformation with actual factual articles and reduce distribution. Producte working on a and policy solution. One of the things we have in place is if anyone presents any information misinformation about how to vote that lens to voter suppression. We are investing in working with researchers and others to build capacity and the space. We are looking at this sort of issue. Thank you. I yield back. The gentleman from north carolina, mr. Walker for five minutes. Thank you. While we were sitting here today i looked up on the internet, looked up apologies and there were more pages than i could count going through those apologies. I listened to the words of how you framed it. , one of youk about used hateful content and you used the expression hate speech and you listed several different people that were protected. I did not hear you say in that group of people you listed were those that were wanting to express their faith. In april, one of the larger apologies i think you guys have hartnessapril, kelly brought us to the attention of Abby Johnsons life story called unplanned. That has gone onto may 20 million at the box office. You listed that is propaganda. My question was, was that a machine or an individual . I am not familiar with the specific video in question. I would be happy to go back. It was a movie, one of the larger stories in april this year, a major motion picture. You are not familiar, it did not come across your radar . I am naturally with that specific video. Gracefully talked about the difference between hateful i know and hate speech, in june earlier this year, marco rubio rot to attention that languageas bending that was may be offensive to china. Later came back and apologize. How does twitter use their discretion to block information without discriminating against different individuals or groups . Firstly, our rules identify hateful conducts a wheel so we looked at behavior. And we look at that before the speech they are sharing. There are offensive views on twitter and views people disagree with strongly on twitter. Anddifference between that targeting someone else is the difference between content and conduct. A lot of rails do not have ideology. They are written enforced without ideology. It is important to recognize. One of the challenges we have is when we remove someone from twitter and they come back for different purpose, our technology will recognize that person trying to come back. We dont want people to come back that we have removed. Sometimes it does catch people who are having a different purpose. So there is a value to technology but we should recognize where we made a mistake. How does google ensure they being followed in not being driven by bias . Thank you for the question. Aboute a robust system the development and enforcement of our policies. We are constantly reviewing and analyzing the policies themselves to understand whether they are fit for purpose, whether they are drying the right lines. Extensive training to ensure we have a consistent approach. We draw the group of viewers from around the country and the world and train them deeply and are constantly reviewing. What type of training do you provide for your human content moderators regarding subjectivity and avoiding bias . Robust training to make sure we are applying consistent rules. Robust training. What does that mean, what is robust training . One reviewers are brought on board before they are allowed to review, we provide them with a set of educational materials and detailed steps. In addition, they are reviewed by managers and others to make mistakes can correct and learn from those mistakes and so on. Do you think ai will get to the point where you can rely solely on it to moderate content or do you think human moderation will always play a role . Thank you for the question. In the near future, human moderation is important. Technology is good at some things. It is good at matching known image images of terror propaganda or sexual abuse, it is not good around hate speech or belief. Do you have any idea how many times twitter apologized per month for missing content . We take action on appeals regularly. Every decision we made. Do you have a number . I can follow up. Do you have any idea google how many time times google apologies for mismanagement of conduct . You have apologized more times than kanye west to taylor swift. The chair recognizes the gentle lady from illinois. Two weeks after the christchurch terror attack facebook announced he would start using for white supremacist content. Whites after hate is based in chicago. I met with them when i was at home. Since facebooks announcement they have seen a large bump in activity that has not slowed down. Facebook and instagram have 3 billion users combined. Life after hate is a tiny organization whose federal funding was pulled by the administration. The do great work and do not have the resources to tangle handle every single neonazi on the internet. Consideredk providing funding to life after hate . Thank you. Life after hate is doing great work with us and for those who dont know, we are redirecting people who are searching for these terms to this content. We did this in some areas. With self harm support groups. We will leave the social media hearing for a brief house pro forma session. We will return shortly and now live house coverage here on cspan. The speaker pro tempore the house will be in order. The chair lays before the house a communication from the speaker. The clerk the speakers rooms, washington, d. C. , june 28, 2019. I hereby appoint the honorable donald beyer jr. To act as speaker pro tempore on this day, signed, nancy pelosi, speaker of the house of representatives. The speaker pro tempore the prayer will be offered by our universally respected chap labe chaplain, father conroy. Chaplain conroy let us pray. Gracious god, we give you thanks for giving us another day. You have blessed us with all good gifts and the thankful hearts we express our gratitude. In this moment of prayer, please grant to the members of this peoples house as they meet with their respective constituents the gifts of wisdom and discernment that in their words and actions that i will do justice, love with mercy and walk humbly with you. During this week especially, when our nation celebrates its found, bless the members and their constituents with even greater wisdom and insight as they encounter one another to learn from one another, whatever might be of importance to the future of our country and its people. May all that is done be for your greater honor and glory, amen. The speaker pro tempore pursuant to section 9a of House Resolution 445, the journal of the last days proceedings is approved. The pledge of allegiance will be led by the gentlewoman from colorado, ms. Degette. Ms. Degette i pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The speaker pro tempore pursuant to clause 4 of rule 1, the physical lowing enrolled bill was signed by speaker pro tempore scott of virginia on thursday, june 27, 2019. The clerk h. R. 3401, a bill making emergency supplemental appropriations for the fiscal year ending september 30, 2019, and for other purposes. The speaker pro tempore the chair lays before the house a communication. The clerk the honorable the speaker, house of representatives, madam. Pursuant to the permission granted in clause 2h of rule 2 of the rules of the u. S. House of representatives, the clerk received the following message from the secretary of the senate on june 28, 2019, at 9 12 a. M. That the Senate Passed senate 46. Senate 50. Senate 199. Senate 209. Senate 212. Senate 216. Senate 224. Senate 256. Senate 257. Senate 294. Senate 832. Senate 2047. The house patsed without amendment h. R. 2940. Signed, sincerely, cheryl l. Johnson. The speaker pro tempore pursuant to clause 4 of rule 1, the followed following enrolled bill was signed by speaker pro tempore beyer on june 28, 2019. The clerk h. R. 2940, a bill to extend the program of block grants to states for temporary assistance to needy families hrough september 30, 2019. The speaker pro tempore for what purpose does the gentlewoman from colorado seek recognition . Ms. Degette i ask unanimous consent to take from the speakers table the bill s. 2037 and ask for its 2047 and ask for its immediate consideration in the house. The speaker pro tempore the clerk will report the title of the bill. The clerk an act to provide for a two week extension of the Medicaid Mental Health program for two weeks and for other purposes. The speaker pro tempore is there objection . Without objection, the bill is read for a third time and pass tand the motion to reconsider is laid on the table. The chair recognizes the gentlewoman from colorado. Pursuant to section 9b of houseres. Resolution 445, the house stands russia has been proven to interfere with one of our human rights. The right to fair and free elections. Mr. Carter the president himself should condemn it. Havetelligence agencies already agreed. There is no doubt the russians did interfere in the election. The interference although not anantified will show show. Igation will he was put into office because of russias interference on his behalf. So you believe President Trump is an illegitimate president . Mr. Carter based on what i said which i cannot retract. [laughter] [applause] i also think for the right wing search that is occurring in the world, he openly loves has contempt for democratic leader leaders, his rhetoric among his harshness, his divisiveness, all this says of a ateful, not kind of, it is hateful thrust. We are going to the right as a result. Never seen a republican president in my lifetime doing anything like that. It is not about party politics. Hes got something deep in him that is detestable. [applause] is he a symptom or cause . A think he is both. [inaudible] a guy like that, person like that new the white house. Doctors tell me that they think ofy recognize symptoms psychological problems in him. You can always almost predict now, it is going to be about him, it will celebrate him. He will be bright and we are going to be wrong. No matter what is going on, that is what he does. There is some needed him to do that. I think ive just stolen the headline. [laughter] discussionwatch this with former president jimmy carter and former Vice President 8 00r mondale tonight at p. M. Eastern on cspan three and 11 00 p. M. Eastern here on cspan and online at cspan. Org. We return now to our hearing on online terror content, hate speech, and misinformation from the House Homeland Security committee. In march, two weeks after the christchurch terror attacks facebook said it would direct to whites after hate. It is based in chicago. Im at with them last month when i was at home in illinois. They told me since facebooks announcement they have seen a large bump in activity that has not slowed down. Life after hate is a tiny organization whose federal funding was pulled by this administration. They do great work and simply do not have the resources to handle every single down nazi on the internet on their own. Has facebook considered providing continuous funding to life at your after hate . Thank you. Life after hate is doing great work with us and for those who dont know, we are redirecting people who are searching for these terms to this content area we did this and some are it some other areas. With self harm support groups and we do see that sometimes they are under resourced so this is something we can come back to you on. We are committed to making sure this works. Right now, there is no long term funding commitment but you will consider it. I will follow up. Facebook has made life after hate a component of its strategy against online extremism so we would appreciate the follow up with additional information. Youtube has put forth changes in attempt to limit how easily dangerous conspiracy video spread. Youtube announced it would display information cues on the in the form of links to wikipedia next to conspiracy videos. In the 15 months later, what percentage of videos click on the link for more information . Thank you for the question. This is an important issue. We display the conceptual contextual cues and take a number of other steps. I dont have a specific percentage but would be happy to come back to you. If you could followup in writing, that would be appreciated. Wikipedia and articles can be edited by anyone on the internet. Do you work with wikipedia to ensure the articles are locked against edits . To raise up authoritative information and ensure what we are displaying is trustworthy and correct any mistakes we may make. You will have corrected the Wikipedia Pages if it isnt and correct . Before we display such things we maketo ensure that, we sure we are displaying Accurate Information. The question is about what you are linking to. Yes. If you could follow that up in writing them a that would be great. Facebook has just laid displayed links to additional reporting. To read click through that additional reporting . I dont have that percentage but i will followup in writing quickly. I would like to ask the clerk to display the screenshots my staff provided earlier on the tv screen. Last month, instagram announced vaccine hide links for disinformation. I did a search on two different accounts. These are the top results. See, the system the majority of these responses here. What steps are being taken to make sure this content is not promoted . Vaccine hoaxes and misinformation are top of mind. We have launched reason measures. One thing we are doing is when accounts are sharing this information, we are trying to do downright them and in the search results. He requires some manual review for us to make sure we are doing that right but we are Getting Better at that. Surfacinging is educational content and we are working with Health Information agencies to do that. We are working with Health Organizations now and we should up and runningnt soon and i can followup with details. Please. While this is a new initiative is important that information is shared with users at the time they search for it which is ongoing. Everyone appreciates this is difficult problems that require broad, coordinated solutions. Failing to respond seriously is dangerous. Social media health extremists find each other and help make their opinions more extreme and help them hurt our communities. My constituents and i want policies that keep us safe. Although i truly believe your policies are wellintentioned, theres a lot more that needs to be done and some of it should have been done already. Im looking forward to working with your companys and my colleagues in congress on broad solutions. Thank you and i yield back. Thank you. The chair recognizes the joe manchin new york for five minutes. Thank you. Thank you for being here today. It is obvious from this conversation this is a difficult area to maneuver in. Aboutrstand your concerns First Amendment infringement. I understand and i applaud the companys desire to find that delicate balance. Since you are not a government entity, you have more flexibility in how you do that. Stewardsto you as the of that flexibility to do the best job you can. I want to get back with a couple of questions. I am clearake sure with what youre saying. I am aware from your testimony previously that what the policies and practices are at google. People looked like they were talking about serious political bias and their attend to implement that bias. Am asking you if you personally have ever been made aware of anyone that has done that, use political bias at google to alter content or whether they, have you ever heard that . In google . If you haveto know heard that. Am not aware of any our checks and balances would prevent that. You have not heard that. Correct. Thate allegation congressman walker referenced about the abortion movie. You havent heard anything about people making contact in respect to that question mark i am not familiar with the video, no. Any sortve never heard of issue or other things . We would remove content if it violates our policies. I am aware, have you heard yourself . Not your policies, what you are personally aware of. I believe i understand and i am not aware of any situation like that. Thank you. Talk to all of you here today. , gifct. Ernet forum me details on what the goal of this forum is . The critical thing is it is about bringing together full companies who have expertise and investment on counterterrorism but recognizing the challenge is bigger. Strands, support Small Companies as we remove content, a goes across the internet, we are helping Small Companies, Fund Research so we have a network and sharing technical tools so you have heard people register reference digital fingerprints. Whether it is a fingerprint or we share the url. If we take down the account, and it is linked to a company we will tell the other company, a terrorist account is linked to something on your service, you should check it out. It is the same you do in the malware arena. Members,ompanies are is there a bunch or limited number . It was google, twitter, youtube, microsoft, and facebook. Dropbox have joined. One of the things we have is tech against terrorism. Small companies when things like how to write terms of service and how to enforce terms of service and mentoring them. We are hopeful we will have more Companies Joining and growing this. The consortium has many members. We share with 13 companies. We want to have a high standard. We want membership to be that companies who are doing the best and that is where we want to keep a high bar in bring people in. As far as the encrypted messaging platforms, i take it they are not all members, they are not all participants. Am not best lace to answer. Best placed to answer. Those main members are five companies. Includeser companies some of the encrypted messaging services. Some of this is the understanding what are the right lines to draw, how to work with law authorities. My biggest concern is the big players in this field seem to be endeavoring to do the right thing especially with respect to counterterrorism. A broader field and there does not seem to be much we can do to stop their content from spreading their filth and violence. I would love to hear any suggestions to perhaps in writing as to how we could entice some of them to be part of this effort. The encryption is a breeding ground for White Supremacists and violence of all sorts. And trying to get the companies to be more responsible. It would be great to hear from you guys so thank you. I yield back. The chair recognizes the gentlelady from michigan for five minutes. Good morning and thanks for being here. I wanted to switch gears and talk about the influence and the spread of foreignbased information, foreignbased political ads in particular. In our political process. Many of us read the Mueller Report page by page and i was the what the facebook general counsel stated. For 100,000, a Russian Associated Internet Agency got to 126 million american eyeballs. Im interested because the political ads they put forward were specifically targeted to swing states and michigan is one of those states so we saw an overabundance of these ads. They were specifically paid for by foreign entities and they were advocating for or against a candidate in our political process. I have a serious problem with that. Separate from the issues of speech and what an american does or does not have rights to say, can you speak specifically to facebooks reaction to the fact foreigny spread purchased information might does not matter it was russian, it could be chinese or iranian. What steps you have taken since 2016 to prevent the spread of foreign information . Thank you for the question. This where we were in 2016, we are in a much better place. Let me show you some of the steps we have taken. All those ads came from fake accounts. We have a policy against fake accounts and we have gotten better at enforcing it. More than aing million fake accounts a day and we have published how many fakes account fake accounts we have removed. Another thing we are doing with political ads is we are requiring unprecedented levels of transparency. If you want to run a political or political issue and in the u. S. , you have to verify your identity and show you are an american which we sent you something because we have seen fake ids uploaded from advertisers. Andent you through the mile you upload a government id. We verify you are a real american and we put a disclaimer isthe political page, it visible to everyone. What is appearing and who is paying and information about how they are being targeted and so forth. That is good to hear. I would love to see if there are reports, i would love to be directed to them. Can you talk about your specific policy on the spread of foreign political ads for or against a candidate running for office . The first thing we did was to ban russia today and all its associated entities from using any of our Advertising Products going forward. We took all of the revenue from russia today and associated entities out of partnerships and funding research. Lab in brussels to research how we could prevent this. Every tweet, not just the paid for once, every tweet that was produced by a foreign influenced operation in a public archive. These are accessible, more than a terabyte of videos and photographs in a public archive including operations from russia, iran, venezuela, and other countries. For the question. Looking backward at 2016, we found limited improper activity on our platforms. That is a product of our Threat Analysis Group and other tools to root out that sort of behavior. We continue to invest in that as well as our election transparency efforts requiring verification of advertisers for federal candidates disclosure and ands and the transparency report. What about the spread of information through bots, what kind of requirements when someone is receiving or viewing something, they have some way of knowing who produced it to my who is spreading it, whether it is a human, a machine, white and we start with facebook . Thank you. One of our policies is you have to have your real name in using an account authentically. When we are removing bot accounts, those are numbers we publish. We challenge between eight and 10 million accounts for breaking our roles on suspicious suspicious activity. 75 ,e removing accounts, eight to 10 remove fail this challenges and they are removed every week. We have strict policies about misrepresentation in ads, impersonation. Were looking for coordinated taken authentic leader and action where appropriate. Thank you. Chair recognizes the gentle and from louisiana for five minutes. Thank you. Are you ready . Get your scripted answers ready, sir. Google and youtube are developing a poor reputation in our nation. A Clear History of silencing and banning voices much conservatives or liberals is not concern me right now. We are talking about freedom of speech and access to open communications. We are here today to discuss extremist content, violent threats, terrorist recruiting tactics, and instigation of violence to get the same justification your platform uses to quell true extremism is often used to silence and restrict the voices you disagree with. Well like it. A series of fiveminute videos was discussed political issues, religion, economic topics from a conservative perspective. This had over 50 of those videos restricted. Some videos include why america must leave. The question should be directed to the mirror. Because of our stance for freedom, there are voices to be heard. Murder,ndments, do not video pulled by your people. What is wrong with the 10 commandments, what might i ask . The koreanrica fight war . A reflection on a significant part of the history of our nations, pulled. Frombe removed a video project veritas leader appears to show a senior google acknowledgment official acknowledging influence. Neither of us want that on either side of the aisle. I do not know a man or woman who we love ourot country and we will stand for freedom. Google. G against a good reason provided by youtube was the content harmed the Broader Community. What could be more harmful than a restriction of free speech and open efficient regardless of ideological stance . What do you mean by harmed the Broader Community as it is used to justify restricting content harmoint out as is limited to physical threats and incitement to violence or is it justification to restrict content that you deem needs to be restricted. Please explain how you determine what is harmed. What does that mean . Lets have your scripted answer. Thank you for the question. Weppreciate the concern and want youtube to be placed where everyone can share their voice and get a view of the world. You dont allow everyone to share their voice. I have given examples in my brief time. Thank you for recognizing my time. The right to express viewpoints online. If something offends an individual or something an individual agrees with, does that mean your companys definition of extreme . We have Community Guidelines about what is not permitted on the platform. What you arefy asking of us specifically, and i would be happy to try and answer. Mr. Slater, god bless you. Google is in a bind. Today, america is watching. Today, america is taking a step back. We are looking at the services. We are looking at the platforms we use. And we are finding to our horror that they cannot be trusted. Today, america is looking carefully at google. And a word reverberates through the minds of americans, freedom. Shall it be protected . Shall it be preserved . Shall it be persecuted and whimct to the will and of massive Tech Companies . Thank you for holding this hearing today. The chair recognizes the gentlelady from new york for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I thank our panelists for appearing before us today. I want to go into the issue of deepfakes because i have recently introduced legislation to regulate the technology. If my bill passes, it would make sure deepfake videos include a prominent, unambiguous disclosure as well as a digital watermark that cannot be removed. My question is what your company does when it discovers a fake video. That is for the entire panel. Thank you for the question, congresswoman. When it comes to deepfakes, this is a top priority especially because of the coming elections. Right now, our approach is we try to use our thirdparty organizations. If they rate something as false, they can also tell us if something has been manipulated. We can put that next to it. This is a way of letting people understand this is in fact false. We also reduce the distribution of it. We are also looking to see if theres something we should do specifically in the area of deepfakes. We want to have a conference of solution. Part of that means we need to get a conference of definition to actually have a deepfake. Those are conversations we look forward to having with you. My bill would require a digital watermark, similar to hashour companies do a of content. If there was a database of the caches, deepfake would you use that . I was at a conference a few weeks ago posted by the bbc and an n. G. O. Videos ofon verifying war crimes. This policy goes for a whole spectrum of content fro. Every partnership is one that we want to explore to make sure we have all the information. I think your framing of how in some circumstances there may be situations to remove content, in others providing context and more information, i think that is the best balance in making sure we have all the tools available to us. And that is the approach we are developing now. Time is not your friend here. We are trying to find something universal that creates transparency, respects the First Amendment, but also make sure it is something as americans whose eyes are constantly on video, that you see something you can identify right away. If you have to go through all of the sources to determine, and each platform has a different way of indicating, it almost nullifies that. I wanted to put that on your radar because i think there needs to be some universal way in which americans can detect immediately that what they are seeing is altered in some form or fashion. That is what my bill seeks to do. Days beforeussia the 2020 election released a fake video of a president ial candidate accepting a bribe or committing a crime. Companies learn of a fake video to influence our election, would you commit to removing it . How would you handle such a scenario . Have you thought about it . Give us your thoughts. Congresswoman, we do have a real name requirement on facebook and have various transparency requirements that we enforce. If it is shared by someone without a real name or violates our transparency requirements, we would remove it. Activity affiliated with an entity we have already moved removed, and we have removed millions of tweets already, we would remove any activity affiliated with that organization. Thank you for the question. This is a critical issue. We would evaluate such a video under our policies and look at any sort of foreign interference. Thank you very much. I yield back. I look forward to talking more with you about this. We need to get to the sweet spot. We are not there. The gentlelady from arizona for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Years ago, required reading i had was the book 1984. This Committee Hearing is scaring the heck out of me. I have to tell you, it really is. About ifre talking somebody googles vaccines, the answer was we are going to put above what the person is looking for what we think is best. Who are the people judging what is best, what is accurate . This is really scary stuff. And it really goes to the heart of our First Amendment rights. I dont always agree with the aclu. You are a past president of the aclu. But i agree with you wholly on this. We have to be very careful, my colleagues, on this, because what you deem as inaccurate, i do not deem as inaccurate or other people may not deem. Briefing on this issue, one of the members said i think President Trumps tweets incite terrorism. Are we now going to ban what President Trump says because somebody thinks that it insights terrorism . This is really scary stuff to i am this is really scary stuff. I am glad im part of it because we need more standing up for our rights. I have a specific question. This is to mr. Slater. Videos project veritas which i did watch last night, they alleged there are internal google documents which they put on the video. And this is what it said. Googlemple, imagine a image for ceos shows predominantly men. Even if it were a factually accurate representation of the world, it would be algorithmic unfairness. In some cases, it may be appropriate to take no action if the system currently reflects reality while in other cases it might be desirable to see how it might help society reach a more equitable state via product intervention. What does that mean, mr. Slater . Thank you for the question. Im not familiar with the specifics life. When we are designing our products, we are designing for everyone. We have a robust set of guidelines to make sure we are providing relevant, trustworthy information. We work with a set of raters around the world and around the country to make sure those guidelines are followed. Those are transparent and available for you to read on the web. All right. Well, i personally dont think that answered the question at all. Let me go to the next one. Mr. Clay higgins, a specific example. Mr. Slater, he was talking about Prager University. I just used google on Prager University. On the Prager University website, it says conservative ideas are under attack. Youtube does not want young people to hear conservative ideas. Over 10 of our entire library is under restricted mode. Why are you putting Prager University videos about liberty and those type of things on restricted mode . Thank you, congresswoman. I appreciate the question. To my knowledge, Prager University is a huge Success Story on youtube with millions of views and millions of subscribers. It remains so to the state. There is a mode users can choose to use when they might restrict videos they might see. That applies to many different videos across the board not with respect to political viewpoints. To my knowledge, it was applied to a very small percentage of those videos on Prager University. Again, that channel has been a huge Success Story with a huge audience on youtube. And mr. Pickles, regarding twitter, if President Trump has said on multiple occasions that he has accused twitter of people having a hard time, being deleted from followers. This actually happened to my husband. He followed donald trump. All of a sudden, he was gone. Can you explain what is happening . Why does that happen . Thinkof conservatives there is some conspiracy going on here. I can look into the case of your husband to make sure there was not an issue. I can say President Trump is the most followed head of state anywhere in the world. He is the most talked about politician anywhere in the world on twitter. Although he did lose some followers when recently undertook an exercise to clean accounts,ised president obama lost far more followers in the same exercise. People can be reassured the issues you are outlining not reflected in twitters approach. Mr. Chairman, i ran out of time. If we have more time, i want to hear miss strossens views. She has not had a chance to speak. I hope my colleagues asked her. Thank you. The chair recognizes the gentlelady from california for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I want to talk a little bit about your relationship with Civil Society groups that targeted communities by terrorists content, including white supremacist content. I am specifically referring to content that targets with his minorities, ethnic minorities, immigrants, lg to be cute lgbtq, and others. Engagementcribe your with these groups to develop standards for combating this content . Thank you for the question. Any time we are evolving our policies which we are doing constantly, we are reaching out to Civil Society groups not just in the u. S. But around the world. I have a group under me called stakeholder engagement. That is what they do. Ours say we are looking at hate speech policies. One of their jobs is to make sure we are talking to people across the spectrum. Different groups that might be affected by the change, different people with different opinions, all of those people are brought into the conversation. We have teams around the world speaking to Civil Society groups every day. Something we are also doing is training them. I think that is really important. Twitter is a unique public platform and public conversation. When people challenge hatred and offer a counter narrative, a positive narrative, their views can be seen all over the world. After christchurch, there was a gentleman in kenya who challenged a terrorist trying to separate christians and muslims. We talk about our policy and how they can use our platform to reach more people with their messages. Mr. Slater, i want to make sure you incorporate this. One of my concerns is the onus to report hateful content is placed on the communities targeted by the hateful content. That can make social media platforms hostile places for people in targeted communities. Can you tell us what your companies are doing to alleviate this burden . Mr. Slater, and that i would like to hear from the two of you on that. On how we enforce Community Guidelines including hate speech, we have updated hate speech policies to include people who express termination and so on. We use a combination of machines and people. Our responsibility very seriously. Our ability to detect that first, review it for it has been flagged before it has been fined, we are making Great Strides in that. We rely on flags from users and from trusted flaggers, Civil Society groups and experts, we work with them closely and the development of our policies and in flagging those sorts of videos. About the burden . This is something we said previously. There was too much burden on victims. A year ago, 20 of the abuse we removed was [indiscernible] it is now 40 . We have been able to double the amount of content we have found proactively without waiting for a victim to view it. We are committed to raising that number further. Can you provide an example where you had Community Engagement and because of that feedback, there was a policy change you made . Let me share a slightly different example which is how we write a better policy to prevent that. When we were drafting a policy on nonconsensual intimate various countries started asking if you have a policy on creek shots creep shots. Our policy from the beginning was written to capture not only the original problem but all this different issues. Let me address the second question, the burden on the victims. We have invested a lot in Artificial Intelligence. There are certain times Artificial Intelligence has helped us. With hate speech over the past few years, we have gone from zero proactive caption to now the majority of content we are removing for violating hate speech policies we are finding using Artificial Intelligence and other technologies. Huge gains. There is still a long way to go because all of those posts have to be reviewed by real people who can understand the context. In terms of where our engagement has led to concrete changes, one thing i would point to is the use of hate speech in imagery. The way we originally had our policies on hate speech, it was focused on what people were saying in text. Withs only through working Civil Society partners we were able to see how we needed to refine those policies to cover images, too. A lot of groups told us it was hard to know how we do find and where we drew the line. That was intruding factor, among many others, and why a couple of years ago, we published a very detailed version of Community Standards where people can see exactly how we define hate speech and implement it. Thank you, i yield back. The chair recognizes the gentleman from texas for five minutes. Mr. Crenshaw. Thank you mr. Chairman and thank you for the thoughtful discussion. I think there are worthy debates to be had. There are good questions about whether this content provides education. Those are hard discussions to have. I dont know that we will solve them today. The problem is the testimony does not stop there. The policies are social Media Companies are not stop there. It does not stop at the clearcut lines of terrorism and terrorist propaganda. It goes much further than that. It goes down the slippery slope of what speech is appropriate for your platform and the vague standards you employ to decide what is appropriate. This is especially concerning given the recently leaked in emails fromoogle google. Given that, Jordan Peterson and Dennis Prager are nazis. Two of these three people are very religious jews. It begs the question what kind of education people at google have if they think religious jews are nazis. Three of three of these people had relatives killed in the holocaust. Ben shapiro is jewish and you operate off the premises a nazi. It is disturbing. You believe in hate speech . How do you define the . Can you give me a quick definition of hate speech . Hate speech extends to superiority over protective groups that justify discrimination and violence based on a number of defining characteristics, whether that is race, sexual orientation, veteran status. Do you have an example of those three engaging in hate speech . We evaluate individual content based on the content rather than the speaker. Of get to the next question. Do you believe speech can be violence . Not, can you insight violence . But can speech be violence . Do you believe a speech not specifically calling for violence can incite violence and be harmful to people . I am not sure i fully understand the distinction you are drawing. Ment to violence or encouraging dangerous behavior would be against our policy. Here is the thing. When you call somebody a nazi, you can make the argument you are inciting violence. Here is how. As a country, we agree nazis are bad. We invaded an entire country to stop the nazis. There is a Common Thread in this country that they are bad and evil and should be destroyed. When you are operating off that premise, and it is a good premise to operate on, what you are implying is it is ok to use violence against them. When you label them, when one of the most powerful social Media Companies in the world, labels people as nazis, you can make the argument that is inciting violence. What you are doing is irresponsible. It does not stop there. A year ago, it was made clear your factcheck system lately targeted blatantly targeted conservative newspapers. Are you aware of the story i am talking about . I am not aware of a specific story. I am aware we sometimes get questions of this sort. I can say our factcheck labels are generally done algorithmically. For the record, the specific target conservative news media. Oftentimes, they have a factcheck that does not reference the actual article the google makes sure it is next to it to make people understand that one is questionable, even though when you read through it, it has nothing to do with it. A few days ago, one of my constituents posted photos on facebook of republican women daring to say that there are women for trump. Facebook took down that post right away with no explanation. Is there any explanation for that . Without seeing it, it is hard for me to say how it finally felt how it violates our policies. Im happy to follow up on it for you. This practice of silencing millions of people will create divisions in this country we cannot heal from. This is extremely worrisome. You have created amazing platforms. We can do Amazing Things with what these companies have created. But if we continue down this path, it will tear us apart. You do not have a constitutional obligation to enforce the First Amendment, but i say you absolutely have an obligation to enforce American Values. And the First Amendment is an underpinning of American Values we should be protecting until the day we die. Thank you. Thank you for indulging me, mr. Chairman. Take achair will prerogative and allow you to make a comment. Thank you for protecting my free speech, mr. Chairman. The main point i wanted to make his even if we have content moderation that is enforced with the noblest principles and people are striving to be fair and impartial, it is impossible. These socalled standards are irreducibly subjective. What one persons hate speech is, and an example was given by congressman higgins, is somebody elses cherished loving speech. For example, in european countries, canada, australia, and new zealand, which generally share our values, people who are preaching religious texts they deeply believe in and are preaching out of motivations of love are prosecuted and convicted for engaging in hate people. Gainst lgbtq i obviously happen to disagree with those viewpoints, but i absolutely defend their freedom to express those viewpoints. At best, these socalled readards, and i didnt every single word of facebooks readards and i did every single word of facebook standards, and the more you read them, the more complicated it is. To some otherting authority the power to make decisions that should reside in each of us as individuals as to what we choose to see and not to see. Use our weve choose to own freespeech rights to respond to. I cannot agree more about the positive potential for these platforms, but we have to maximize that positive potential through user empowerment tools, through radically increased transparency. Im not going to limit your speech. Im going to limit your time. [laughter] thank you. Congressman for five minutes. Thank you for holding this on verytical hearing important issues. I want to turn to the russian interference in 2016. Underlines report the indictment of 13 russians, three companies for conspiring to subvert our election system. 2018, we found the russians were added again. 2020, former secretary of Homeland Security nielsen, before she was resigned she resigned. She brought up the fact that the russians were at 2020 again. There are other countries trying to affect our election system. Testimony. G your is addressing the issue of the First Amendment. Does the First Amendment cover fake videos online . We talked about the pelosi fake video. Maybe you say yes. I say probably not. I will tell you why. That is a damaging video with false content. Although you may be private companies, when i hear my children tell me i saw it on this platform, the assumption is that it is factual. It took you 24 hours to take that video down. The others did not take it down. You are essentially a messenger. And when your information shows up online, this population believes you are credible and the information on there is probably credible, too. That is what is damaging to our country, our democracy. Moving forward, we have another election happening now. Continues tomation be promulgated through your social media, through your companies, we have a First Amendment issue. We are going to have an issue also of democracy and keeping it whole keeping at keeping it whole. Any thoughts . We share the focus making sure we are ready. 24 hours is not fast enough. Are we playing defense or offense . Are you being proactive so the next nancy pelosi video is something you can take down faster than 24 hours . We are being proactive. I agree there is a lot we can do to get faster. Our approach when there is misinformation is making sure people have the context to understand it. We dont want people seeing it in the abstract. We want to inform people. We have to do that quickly. We are focused on Getting Better at that. On the pellucid video pelosi video, who put it up . A regular person with a regular account. Softwaree with smart and a Good Platform was able to put together a fake video and put it up. That technique that was used was to slow down the audio. The same thing we see, he do with a lot of politicians. What were the consequences to this individual of putting up a video of somebody, defaming, hurting her reputation . Congressman, our approach to misinformation is we reduced the distribution of the content from factcheckers next to it so people could understand the content is false or has been manipulated. Mr. Pickles . One thing we talked about earlier is how to provide context to users. Are your policies changing so you will be able to take it down next time or will you let it ride . We are looking at all of our policies. Are you looking at taking it down or will you let it ride . Yes or no. Mr. Slater, what are you going to do the next time you see a video like this . With respect to the video, we took it down under our deceptive practices policy. Not to violate your freedom of speech here, do you think this false video is constitutionally protected . There is a very strict definition of false speech that is constitutionally unprotected. The Supreme Court has repeatedly said blatant outright lies are constitutionally protected unless policies sowrite outright lies do not have the devastating effect on our voters were looking at the whole issue. Thank you. Any thoughts . Wii, too, congressmen are making sure we have the right approach for the election. Note borderline content, content in violation. This is exactly why President Trump wants to change the libel laws because it is now legal to lie about politicians and government officials. Wherebe theres an area we will Work Together on some issues, huh . Mr. Chair, i yield. The chair recognizes the gentlelady from california. Very much. U thank you for being here. This has been very informative. You are really quick question. Yes or no. Gisct this collaboration, does keeping your trade secrets secret, sharing standards, working together it does not have an effect. Do you use that platform for sort of hate groups . Present, but certainly after new zealand, that highlighted we needed to broaden our approach to the different issues. So, in my briefing, dog whistling has been mentioned as a certain kind of political messaging strategy that employs coded language to send a message to certain groups that flies under the radar, and its used by white supremacist groups often. And it is rapidly evolving on social media platforms. It has the space and targeting of racism and other thiswe find abhorrent in country. How do you find the challenge of moderating dog whistle content on your platform . Happy to start and let others finish i will take 1, 2, 3. Start with me . I will take you anyway you want to. Somebody are targeting because of the membership of a protected characteristic, that is the important factor. The words come secondary. We have an entire stream of research and one of the reasons for having that Research Stream is to investigate the latest trends, what of the things we need to be learning about those kind of terms . We see whetheren it is different kinds of extremist groups, speaking for twitter, we have banned more than 180 groups from our platform for violent extremism thess the spectrum, both in u. S. And globally. So, we have a policy framework and also industry sharing. Thank you. Thank you, congresswoman. I would echo a lot of this is about giving to the groups. We do have a hate speech policy, but beyond that, the groups are engaging in bad behavior. Bad behaviorly groups, but also white supremacist groups and hate groups. Question. Ou for the we do remove hate speech on our platform and the concerns that youre talking about that of motivated more recent changes. We also recognize that things may brush up against those policies, be borderline and not quite crossed them. Reduce,e we do work to demote them in the frequency and recommendations and so on. Congresswoman if i could have 10 seconds im going to ask your question. This is a very quick question. Did you bring any staff with you today . Any employees . We did. Could you please have them stand up . Please stand up . Thank you very much. Esther pickles, you . Thank you. Thank you very much. A couple things that you mentioned, you talked about making sure that people are real and they are american when you do advertisement and you say, we will send information to you, you have to send it back and it simply proves you may be pretending to be an american. And really living here or having a domicile here, and address here does not necessarily guarantee they are legitimate. Thats a challenge, i think, that we might have your it is that understandable . Am i confusing you . If you could clarify the question. Its not a question. Its a statement. We were talking earlier about making sure that with political advertising, etc. , but theyre not foreign nationals, that they are american. Discussionhave this about the advertisement . And it was stated by somebody that you do verification to make sure the person is an american, does live in america, and isnt this false whatever coming from another nation. That does not necessarily prove that as far as im concerned. Congresswoman, just to clarify that is facebook us approach 10 . We look at government ids. Are thereon trigger words that should be protected, that need to be taken down because they inside . Its a problem. I want to give an example from a story in Bloomberg News today that talked about youtubes policy of running with the definition of unprotected hate speech. On the very first day, one of the people suppressed was an online activist in the u. K. Antisemitism, but in condemning antisemitism, he was, of course, referring to nazi expression and insignia and hence he was kicked off. So there are no trigger words . It seems to me mr. Pickles, did you do the definition of hate speech for us earlier . That was hateful conduct. Probably covers the president of the United States of america, hopefully. Thank you. I yield back. The chair recognizes the gentleman from new york. Thank you. In the immediate aftermath of incident, werch sent out a memo asking how much money we had spent on the Counter Terrorist screening and how many people were allocated to it. We had many conversations in the ensuing months, and there were three basic problem problems. One, that oversimplifies it because there is an ai component. Yesterday we did a hearing and it shows bad ai alone cannot solve it. You all agree with that. The second thing you have all said to me is this is a collective action problem. We are all in this together and we have to get ct. I have very basic questions. I would appreciate if you could immediately answer yes or no and we can get into the details. First, does the ct have any fulltime employees . [indiscernible] a fulltime employee dedicated to this . No. Ok. We have people at twitter working with but we dont have ok. I will answer the same. Is there a brick and mortar structure . If i wanted to visit, could i do so . No, we host them physically at facebook. Mr. Pickles . Meet in person, we have virtual meetings. Its about collaboration, not physical yes . Nothing physical. I assume that you have a google hangout or maybe a facebook hangout . I dont know how you would decide that. Do you have an association located in bethesda, maryland . Ive fulltime staff it has a brick and mortar structure. And you all cannot get your act together enough to dedicate enough resources to put fulltime staff under a building dealing with this problem. I think it speaks to the ways in which we are addressing this with this technocratic libertarian elitism, and all the killed. Eople are being all the while, there are things happening that are highly preventable. Ai. Are there any ai systems that any of you will have that are not available to the give ct . Congressman, yes. Depending on how our products work, they all work to friendly. Some timey worked for on this, we have been coming up with one common Tech Solution everyone could use. We now have that for video and we do give it for free to Smaller Companies. That is but one we have. I just want to know if you have any ai that you ct does not have that. Is not just a eye. This is why we share urls. Very lowtech. You dont need ai to look at that. Its a combination solution. Nothing further to add to those comments. My understanding is there were no officially occurred pocs for the give ct made public until after the christchurch shooting. I know they were there, but they were not declared, established until after the christchurch shooting too much ago. Is that the case two months ago. Is that the case . Congressman, we have a call that gets routed is it the case that there were no established pocs and this is the information you have given me already. I am asking to put it on the record. Correct . Thats not publicly listed, but certainly public pocs until after the christchurch shooting . I would draw the things in between the pocs and the companies. I think the point youre getting at in getting to the point youre not taking it seriously because theres no public building, nope come staff, no theic pocs until after christchurch shooting. How is anyone supposed to think you take this collective action seriously if you have no one working on it fulltime . This is not Something Technology alone can solve your this is a problem we are blaming the entire industry for, rightfully associations are throughout this country that do so much more than you do and it is insulting, insulting, you would not at least apologize for saying that there were no established pocs prior to the christchurch shooting. It was a joke of an association. It remains a joke of an association, and we have got to see this thing dramatically improve. Lastly, if there were terrorist content shown to be on your by a public entity, would you take it down . , why would the whistleblower euroiation reveal that facebook is establishing through its platform . Al qaeda Community Groups such as this 1 a local business, al qaeda in the arabian followers. 217 i have it right here on my phone. Consider the most active of all of al qaedas branches or franchises. Organizationlamist primarily active in yemen and saudi arabia. Why is it still up . We have every right right now to feel as though youre not taking notlick, and by taking this seriously. And by week, i do not mean congress. I mean the American People. The chair recognizes the gentlelady from florida for five minutes. Thank you so much, mr. Chairman. We have already talked about massacre at christchurch that we notifyw facebook about what was going on. If you could talk a little bit about your working relationship with Law Enforcement and share specifics, specific things you with law to work . Nforcement thank you. Once they reached out they would have reached out , any Law Enforcement live . That was happening zealand, we new also have an online portal and that is manned 24 hours a day. If theres an emergency, we are on it. Of we proactively reach out. In the time theres a terror attack or Mass Violence the world, we proactively reach out to Law Enforcement to make sure that if there are accounts we should know about or victims, any action we should be taking we are on it immediately. Moving right along. Mr. Pickles, you said we would not solve this problem by removing content alone. I know most companies do a in terms ofjob combating or fighting Child Exploitation or pornography, and i would just like to hear you talk about your efforts to combat terrorism and share some of the similarities, because we cant solve the problem by taking down content alone. If you could show the similarities in terms of your efforts in combating terrorism, along with your efforts to pornography i know you put a lot of resources into combating child pornography and rightly so, but if you could talk about the similarity between the two goals. Absolutely. In the similarities as we can look for any images that we look for before, if is detected again we can proactively stop it from being distributed and work with Law Enforcement. With lawwork enforcement around the world. We make sure that it is seamless. About for combating terrorism . In either case, if someone is theres aat content, Law Enforcement response as well which holds people to account, potentially prosecute them for criminal offenses and that working in tandem is very important. Shares an industry that information and we work with government to share Threat Intelligence analysis of trends so we can make sure we are staying ahead of bad actors. But the greatest similarity is the bad actors never stay the same. They are constantly evolving. Ok, thank you. At the beginning of this conversation the chairman asked the question about the speaker and why some of you removed it and some did not. And i was so pleased to hear the answer which was you look for deceptive practices. If its deceptive, you removed it, correct . Could you talk a little bit it seemed like such a and if you would i believe you said social media platforms, free speech right, its their ability to decide what is posted and is not posted, right . They can decide what is posted in what is not. If you could talk a little more about your process of if it was deceptive you to get down . If it was deceptive, you took it down . Happy to, congresswoman. We review the content thoroughly it is a violation and we do that on an individualized basis and we present those guidelines publicly on our website. Thank you very much, mr. Chair. I yield back. Chair recognizes the gentleman from texas, mr. Taylor, for five minutes. A quick question. Is google an American Company . Congressman, we are headquartered and california, yes. Are you loyal to the American Republic . Is that something you think about . Or are you an International Come to the question what we all products for everyone. We build products for everyone. We are proud to be founded and headquartered in this country. If you found out a terrorist organization was using google products, would you stop that, would you and that . We have a policy, congressman, of addressing content, to inhibit it, to take it down. Alnusra, a terrorist organization was using gmail to inside the organization. Would you stop that . Do you have a policy on that . If you dont have a policy, thats fine. Im just trying to where are you on this . Where appropriate, we will work with Law Enforcement to provide information about relevant threats, behavior, and so on and we will respond to valid request for information from Law Enforcement. Chest im not asking if you respond im not asking if you respond to subpoenas. Its good to know you deign to be legal. If terrace are using a google product, do you continue that or do you have a policy . Under appropriate circumstances, if we have knowledge we would terminate the user provide the information to lawenforcement . Yourill forgive me answer is a little opaque. If a terrorist organization is using a google product, do you have a policy about what to do about that . Thank you, congressman. Im attempting to articulate that policy. I would be happy to come with further information if its unclear. The gentleman yields . Sure. Listen to the answer about referring it to launch Law Enforcement. I think thats an appropriate response because if there is a suspicion that criminal activity is a for it, you would want to refer to lawenforcement and have Law Enforcement make the call on that. Just to maybe help you with that particular portion of it. Thanks, chief. Appreciate it. Just to follow up with that. , the Islamic Republic of iran, the largest state sponsor of terror in the world. You have a specific ban on that terrorist organization and their ability to use your google products . Have prohibitions on designated terrorist organization using products, uploading content, and so on. You seek to ban terrorist organizations from using google products question mark on not trying to put words in your mouth. Im trained to understand your position. We have prohibitions on that sort of organization. And im not just asking about content. The services you provide. Calendar, agmail, host of Different Services people can use. Im trying to use about the in trying to ask about the service. Im asking about the actual services. These bad actors are constantly changing their approaches, but we do everything we can to prohibit that sort of illegal behavior from those organizations. Do you have a screen set up to figure out who the users are two pierce the veil, so to speak to figure out who that is or where it may not be . Is that how you operate as an organization, that google does . Congressman. , we use a combination of Automated Systems, threat analysis to ferret out the behaviors that may be indicative in that way. I appreciate your answers. Id with that, mr. Chairman appreciate the panel being here. This is an importance topic. Important topic. Thank you. Thank you. The chair recognizes the gentlelady from nevada. Thank you. We have heard a lot about incidents, but we have not mentioned much of what happened in my district of las vegas. This is the deadliest shooting in United States history, a gunman opened fire on a music concert festival, and after that attack, there was a large volume of conspiracy theories, misinformation that popped up all across your platforms, identity ofout the the gunmen, his religious affiliation, some of the victims. Some individuals even called it a false flag. In addition, when you put up a search safety check site on facebook as to whether loved ones could check in to see who was safe and who wasnt, the raw kinds of things that popped up like links to spam websites that solicited bitcoin, claimed the shooter was associated with some antitrump army. A lot of myths where people were trying to make contact the rid i wonder if you have any specific policy or protocols. Do you have any immediate protocols in the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting like this . All three of you. Thank you, congressman. Let me just say las vegas was a horrible tragedy. We think we have improved, but i want to explain what our policies were and how we have gotten better. With the las vegas attack, we aboutd any information the shooter and we took steps to protect the accounts of the victims. Often in the aftermath, we will see people try to hack into account some we take steps to protect victims and work very closely with Law Enforcement. Since then, one area where we have gotten better is Crisis Response in the wake of a violent tragedy. So, for instance, with christchurch, you have companies at the table and others communicating realtime, sharing with each other, urls new the video of the attack, and so forth to make sure and it was literally a realtime, per the first 24 hours, operation where we were sharing in that first 24 hours on facebook alone we were able to stop 1. 2 million versions of the video from hitting our site. We have gotten a lot better technically, but this is an area where we will continue to invest. Thank you. As you just heard, i think one of the challenges we have in this space is Different Actors will change behavior to get around our rules. One of the behaviors we saw after christchurch, which was concerning, was uploading content to prove the event had not happened. The suggestion that because some bunnies like ours were removing , that was proof that the attack had not happened. We had to find out what was the to do with that. Someone who was a harassed,ho is being we would take action for the harassment in that space. And then finally, the question of how we work with organizations to spread the message going forward. Working with the victims to show the community and we began to work with those organizations, wherever they are to spread that message of positivity. Yes, thank you, congresswoman. An event of most seriousness. This was a tragic event for the country, for society. Personally, as someone who lived in both las vegas and new zealand, i hold both in my heart. We take a twofold approach to the misinformation and the conduct you were talking about. We tried to raise up the authoritative sources of information for the breaking news event to make sure the authoritative sources outpaced those who might wish to misinform. Strike, remove, denials for those spreading hate speech to reduceo seek exposure to harmful misinformation, including conspiracies and the like. Hate to see them become victims of something that has happened over the internet. Using logarithms to elevate posts from law. Nforcement so those seeking help go to those first as opposed to just information that comes in randomly . Are you working with Law Enforcement i know you were addressing the chiefs question earlier. Thank you, congresswoman. That is something we can explore with Law Enforcement. We i would appreciated if you would look into that. I think Law Enforcement would too, to our representatives from facebook, google, twitter, thank you for being here today. Thank you for appearing at a closed briefing we had earlier this year. We seek to continue to examine this complex issue of balancing First Amendment rights against making sure content on social media does not promote terroristic activity. Professor, you were not hearing during the closed briefing. I want to ask a couple of questions. Doing during your written testimony you highlighted potential dangers associated with content moderation. Even when done by private companies in accordance with their First Amendment rights. You make the case for social Media Companies to provide free speech protections to users. Countered how to adverse impact of terror content , and misinformation is a complex problem. While restricting such expressions might be a simple solution, it is neither and it is wrong. Report you provided, could you summarize that for the public . Thank you. The problem is the inherent subjectivity of the standards. No matter how much you articulate them, i think its wonderful facebook and the other companies have recently shared their standards with us. You can see it is impossible to apply them consistently to any particular content. Regional people reasonable people will disagree. The concept of hate, the concept of terror, the concept of misinformation are strongly debated. One persons fake news is another persons cherished truth. A lot of attention has been given to reports about discrimination against howervative viewpoints and these policies are implemented. I want to point out there have been a lot of complaints from progressives and civil rights activists and social justice ing their, complain speeches being progressed their speech is being suppressed. No matter who is enforcing it, a Government Authority or private company, there is going to be at best an unpredictable and arbitrary enforcement, and at worst, discriminatory enforcement. As an expert in the First Amendment, do you feel content moderation by social Media Companies has gone too far . Have at of all, they First Amendment right. That is important to stress. But given the norms power of these platforms, which as the Supreme Court said in a unanimous decision to years ago, that this is now the most Important Forum for the exchange of information and ideas, including with elected officials, those who should be accountable to we the people, so if we do not have unfettered exchange of ideas on these platforms, for all practical purposes we dont have it. And that is a threat to our democratic republic as well as it is to our individual liberty. There is a lot these platforms can do in terms of user empowerment so we can make our own choices about what to see and not see, and also information that will help us evaluate the credibility of the information being put out there. Do you have any recommendations that would help balance an individuals First Amendment rights versus trying to protect social media from terrorists being able to use it as a platform . And are there any recommendations that you would have of this body, Things Congress should consider as we debate this very difficult situation . I think the oversight you are exercising is extremely important, and i think encouraging but not requiring companies to be respectful of all of the concerns, Human Rights Concerns of fairness and transparency and the due process as well as free speech, but also concerns about potential terrorism and dangerous speech, i actually think the United States Supreme Court and International Human rights norms, which overlap, have gotten it right. They restrict suppression to enforce standards by insisting that before speech can be punished or suppressed, there has to be a specific and direct causal connection between the speech in that context which causes imminent danger. Alone never look at words in isolation, to get back to the question i was asked by the congresswoman, because you have to look at context. If in a particular context there is a threat, intentional incitement of imminent violence, support of terrorism, defamatory statements, fraudulent statements, all of that can be punished by the government and standards those should be enforced by social media. That is exactly the right way to strike a balance here. Representative i am going to have a different approach than my colleague. In 1989i was a member of the city counseling kansas city the city council in kansas city, a bige klan planned march. I thought against them and the aclu supported the right to passed an that if i ordinance, i was also vice mayor at the time, if i passed an ordinance, they would challenge it in court. Imnot mad, im not upset, a former board member of aclu, so i think free speech has to be. Racticed and in some ways i feel sorry youyou, not enough to let out without beating up on you a little bit. Im afraid for our country. Wheree entered an age people respect an alternative it is just so painful for me to watch it, and i dont think im watching it in isolation. Alternative truth, where people will Say Something that isnt true and just continue to say