Transcripts For CSPAN2 Google Facebook Twitter Testify Before Senate Intelligence 20171102

And then it welcome our witnesses in the Senior Vice President of council at google the media has been fixated on the platforms from spreading misinformation during the 2016 election. This was an opportunity for each of you to tell your respective stories of necessary correct the record. My sense is not all aspects of those stories have been told accurately but i will go for the record of this committee now is having the 17th open hearing and the 12th of which we will be discussing russias activities. Im hopeful we can provide an informed an incredible credible assessment how you use your platforms during last years elections. I am also hopeful you will share what your companies are doing to make it harder for foreign actors future platforms automated accounts to falsify stories here in the United States. The National Security shows the unacceptable risk to have a responsibility to reduce that vulnerability. While on the topic of responsibility and will push back on some narratives sprung up around this subject a lot of folks including those in the media reduce the entire conversation to one promise of four actors of a colbert operation to help the United States president ion here to tell you does not simplify that easily. It is shortsighted and dangerous to focus on one piece of information to think that tells whole story. We have heard a series of russian linked spate facebook adds during the leave up to the president ial election and some of those targeted specific bid groups but it was a pivotal state to influence the election outcome. What you have not heard is almost five times more ads were targeted in the state of maryland and wisconsin. 262 as compared to wisconsins 55. Maryland was not up for grabs the Democratic Candidates carried by 26 percent. But for those 35 out of 55 targeted at wisconsin those rand prior to the wisconsin primary before the identified the republican candidate and not one of those mentioned and donald trump. Would the key legislative pennsylvania had fewer advertisements in washington d. C. Were 87 percent of the electorate voted Hillary Clinton. For the three most heavily targeted states in america were determined by the merger won by Hillary Clinton more of these geographically targeted ads ran in 2015 and 2016 before trump was identified as a candidate. So that revolves more than 100,000 worth of ads on the hot bush and hot button issues. So to add some detail with the meetings failed to put the 100,000 into a frame of reference the toll had spent was 190,079 all the 54 spent before the primary before the emergence of a republican candidate. In the state of michigan was a hundred 23, pa. 300. So to believe that narrative to except these factors to assess which is critical to the election then invested all of 300 to execute their plan 300. What and five times as much money spent on advertising in california with a state that has not voted republican in president ial. [null] since 1988 even with the benefit of members what can be calculated and measured it is incredibly complex we cannot get the amount of money spent and ads purchased and the divisive content that they directed people in the number of tweets and manipulated search results above the intends of the operation will we cannot do is calculate the impact that foreign meddling in social media had on this election nor can we assume that it must be the explanation for the outcome that many did not expect. I understand the urge to make the storys simple to make complex sort manageable and interpret things in ways that conform to your conclusions but pointing to a state to say no ads ran there after the election does not prove intent or motive it just shows that no ads ran after the election. The subject is complicated there is whole new vocabulary that comes with this. Impressions are different but there is one thing i am certain and it is this given the complexity of what we have seen if anyone tells you they have this all figured out they are kidding themselves. We cannot afford to kick ourselves what happened last year and continues to happen today. That is why we depend on insight and information 60 percent of the population with a foreign power using that platform is as much a Public Policy issue than National Security concern crafting the elegant policy solution it is reflected not not overly burdensome so just recently on the basis of a sophisticated analysis the original estimate of 10 million americans exposed to russian content on facebook was increased at 126 million that tells me your companys are just beginning to come to grips with the scale and death of the problem. That is encouraging but no this, we do better when you do a better writer do to keep that in mind and work with us proactiveproactive ly to find the right solution to a complete challenge i will take a moment to stress this hearing wedded is and is not about. This is not about real litigating the 2016 president ial election. It is not about to move won or lost the National Security and Corporate Responsibility and the derivative than multifaceted manipulation of the American People by agents of of of style foreign power. Again, agents of ross style foreign power use our own social media platforms to conduct the Information Operation intended to divide our society with issues like race and immigration and Second Amendment rights. But to tears apart the use social media platforms that americans invented in connection with the First Amendment freedoms that define the open and democratic society. It is a shock to see the use that network with communications mediums and so essential to our lives today to interfere with a core of our democracy, what is more troubling is the likelihood that these platforms are still used to spread lies and promote conflict in drive americans apart per your three companies have developed platforms the tremendous reach and influence. That has been unable to for what the information you collect on your users and their activities now the americans need to know how to use the information and what youre doing to protect them your actions need to catch up to your responsibilities. Level lot to get to i will stop period thanks to the Witnesses Today and it turned to the vicechairman for any comments. Let me also express thoughts about the tragedy yesterday in new york but you are right, in the age of social media we cannot afford to waste that much time to get the point across. So straight to the bottom line, russian operatives are attempting to infiltrate and manipulate americas social media to hijack the National Conversation and to make americans angry. Setting us against ourselves with the most basic to undermine our democracy during the 2016 president ial campaign and they are still doing it now. And now one of us is doing enough to stop it and that is why we do it today so in many ways the threat to is not new russians are conducting Information Warfare but what is new is the advent of social media tools with the power to magnify propaganda on a scale unimaginable so todays tools seed purpose filled so it works like this this Information Agent set up thousands of fake accounts and groups across a wide array of platforms and these fake accounts populate content on facebook and instagram, twitter, u2, and many other platforms. Each of these accounts literally spent months to develop networks of real people to follow and like their content like the paid ads or the automated bots no idea never caught up in the webs in these are pushing misinformation with state led propaganda and fake news. In the goal is simple to get this so called news into the news feed of many receptive americans and to push those americans into the direction of the kremlin somebody deeply respects that industry here in the industry for more than 20 years negative still learning the nature of the threat and even i struggle with the difference between fake accounts and how they generate like san tweets and shares and all of these actions are defined by the ecosystem but what is clear however is the play book offers a tremendous bang for the buck. To what the chinese data and trolls and fake accounts and bots to drive traffic and targeted the audience to force propaganda into the mainstream to be catholic with the online discourse. If you look back at the results pretty good retirement investment so where to go from here . To use the Platform Companies of United States government and the American People to deal with this new in devolving threat social media with those tools he should have developed to transform from shopping from a tertiaries to close Small Businesses but with russias actions are further exposing the ecosystem you have created and there is no doubt the Successful Campaign will be replicated from the nation states that wish to do harm around the world this is not unique american phenomenon. They need to commit more resources to identify those that actors to prevent them from abusing the social media ecosystem. Thanks in part each has uncovered some of the evidence of the ways the russians exploited the platform during the 2016 election. Much of the attention has been focused on those paid ads that dave targeted americans however it is the tip of a large iceberg in the real story is the amount of misinformation and divisive content pushed for free on the russian backed accounts that were spread to tens of millions of americans 120 russian back pages built a network of 3. 3 Million People so these now suspended pages 80,000 post reached an estimated 126 million real people more than onethird of the population this is the astonishing reach of just one group in st. Petersburg and i doubt the Internet Research agency represents the only russian trolls out there. Facebook has more work to do to see how deep this goes including the reach we just found in the last 48 hours of the aisle at Instagram Post of 80,000 from the trolls and 120,000 pieces of content on instagram and we dont even have that data to much the content reached. Anonymity provided by twitter in the speed by which it shares news makes it ideal to spread disinformation and according to one study, a junk news outperformed real news in the battleground states leading up to election day. Another study found fox generated one out of five every political messages posted on twitter over the entire president ial campaign. Twitter seems to be vastly underestimating the number of fake accounts or bots pushing misinformation. Those who testified before the committee have estimated 15 percent of active twitter accounts were potentially 45 million that were fake or automated despite how to reach those researchers that uncovered only a small piece of that activity over the last few days the numbers have gone 200 accounts over 2700 so there is more to be done. So to continue to have problems with fake news or propaganda we cannot necessarily a tribute to those russian efforts with those unsubstantiated rumors that was elevated on end Google Search on the recent Mass Shootings and las vegas. Meanwhile youtube is the platform now there has been 1100 videos associated with russian imaging and much more of your content will be spread to other platforms that we need to do more the United States government is incapable to meet the 21st century challenge but i believe this effort sufferers in part because of lack of leadership at the top for good the president remains unwilling to a knowledge of threat to russia opposes to our democracy. Angelou delegitimize american in journalism to address the very real threat posed by russian propaganda. I believe Congress Must do more and we need to recognize it was not built to address these threats. What i believe the most legislative approach was to help with this would review it is a National Security bill intended to protect elections from the influence he all want to avoid so most importantly the American People and we need to take a more discerning approach to what were sharing into were connecting with online and recognize the other end of the facebook for twitter argument may not be a real person at all because the fact is that has already proved the cost effectiveness and successively can be assured that other adversaries, including foreign intelligence operatives and terrorist organizations potentially have read the play book and are already taking action why we must act. I hope youll detail will be sought in the last election and tell us what steps he will undertake to get ready for the next we welcome your presentation and encourage your commitment. Day solis where to tell the truth and the whole truth so help you god . Please be seated. Chairman, vicechairman and distinguished members of the committee thank you for in this opportunity to appear before you today. Since july 2013 i have served as a general counsel of facebook. We appreciate the committees hard work to investigate russian interference in the 2016 election so our mission is to create technology to give people the power to bring the world closer together we are proud that each of you use facebook to connect to their constituents and ammunition and the people you represent expect of the antic experiences and they come to our platform to share and connect we also believe we have an Important Role to play in the democratic process and the responsibility to protect that on our platform. That is why we take that seriously on facebook. It is reprehensible because foreign actors hiding behind fake accounts have libyas the platform to have division and discord to undermine the election process directly contrary to move our values and everything we stand for the goal is to bring people closer together in these foreign actors drive that for word. In our investigation which continues to this day has found they used fake account accounts on facebook and instagram to reach millions of americans over a twoyear period and those pages is that hosted more content than they shared the post. Many of these are downright offensive we know much of this is hurtful to members of the Facebook Community believing it was authentic people should not have to worry that theyre in a cynical effort pray on our society to inflame this course. So in an aggregate what we have discussed today is a very small fraction of the content but any amount is too much because all of those while the policies and we removed them. So Going Forward were making significant vestments and hiring and doubling the security engineering efforts to put in place content restrictions with the tools to improve ad transparency in requiring documentation to build Artificial Intelligence with bad actors. And working more closely with industries with shared information to identify the threats so we can all respond faster and more effectively. And expanding efforts to work closely with lawenforcement. We know bad actors will not stop their efforts in the all have to keep learning and improving to stay ahead of them her also we cannot do this alone. Thanks for this investigation with afford to the conclusions you will share with the American Public and ill forward to your questions. Chairman, vicechairman and members of the committee, twitter understand importance of the inquiry so we appreciate the opportunity to be here today. And that is chiefly concerning to the broader community. To have a service that fosters and facilitates democratic debate the most positive change in the world. So the power of twitter was misused by a foreign director for the purpose to influence the president ial election to undermine those in the democratic process. So with that statesponsored is a new challenge for us and were determined to meet we intend to show the committee how serious your about addressing the new threat by understanding what happened understanding it does not happen again her correct the time of the 2016 election we have been instances of malicious activity so be resolved to strengthen the systems Going Forward and they continue all the time so the First Priority is to do all we could to block malicious activity. We have dedicated teams to enhance the quality of information the user c and block whenever or wherever we find it. They continue to work every day to make sure twitter remain safe and open and transparent platform. Also launching a retrospective revue to influence the 2016 election through coordinated activity in the advertising. We have made the decisions to review in the interest of transparency. We decide to recognize as they are supplemented and to discover more facts to gain a greater understanding. Bayreuth and testimony details that methodology of the retrospective revue be steady tweets through november 15th 2016 during that time weve found automated and coordinated activity. Those of data bank to russia about one onehundredth of a percent of the total twitter count. Onethird of 1 came from the winked automated accounts but in those instances it was more pronounced. So with that Internet Research agency as a result. We have determined that advertising the seven small accounts that was violating the policy is in effect at the time or have been implemented. They banned all users has advertisers him looked for the research of civic the engagement. We are making meaningful improvements based on our findings and last week we made changes to advertising policies to protect our platforms and enhancing sharpening tools for stopping militias activity with public understanding of all of these areas. To abuse the system with new tactics. We have heard concerns about russias actors to disrupt the 2016 election. So twitter believes any activity regardless of magnitude is unacceptable and we agree to be better than to prevent it. And then from other stakeholders that the extent to up of what happened in 2016 never happens again. We cannot see it is evolving share a threat as of most Technology Based threats to increase the collective knowledge. To improve there remains effective and safe and afford to answering your questions. The floor is yours. [inaudible] to members of the committee i a in a Senior Vice President and general counsel at google. I worked at the intersection of technology, security and offer my 25 years starting my career at the department of justice focused on technology. Let me start my conversation to acknowledge the victims and as a new york employer will afford to doing anything that we can to help. Google believes we have a responsibility to prevent the misuse of the platforms and it was founded with a mesh with the mission with the abuse of the tools in the platforms and to be deeply concerned of the democratic election and that ngo committee with the security of users to combat information. To recognize the importance and we appreciate the opportunity to share information and share solutions. And with those publications of the years we have seen attempts to take these threats very seriously and we put those tools lead in 2007 launched the first version of the safe browsing tools to protect users at against attacks. Today safe browsing issues and 3 billion devices worldwide. And they warn about that. A journalist door Business Leader or politician and to have attackers to stay ahead of the ever changing threats to protect our physical lan network security. And don google news we use fact check to spot fake news and Google Search we have updated quality guidelines to have that authority did candidate content with those sites that misrepresent themselves and to employ a sophisticated breach system so with those numbers of subscribers and to adapt to prevent new temps perdu respect to the work on the 2016 election to understand those governmentbacked entities but we did find some deceptive backed accounts it was relatively unlimited. And to provide that relevant old information and we will continue to cooperate with the investigation. And to expand use of Cutting Edge Technology to protect users and working with governments to ensure the platforms. Also to make it more transparent and easier for users to understand. And then 2018 those who are buying the election ads and how the money is spent. We will pare that with a database available for Public Research and also make it easier who bought those election ads they can find the name of any advertiser on search your youtube due to an icon to continually increase their tightly restrict based on political imaging and then we go forward. For a body that once to win the election and and confirming they are permitted to run the ad. We cannot do this alone will do this and even as we take our own steps to were kim legislation, moreover the commitment extends beyond our services with those briefings to introduce us we dove Digital Tools and with those other digital attacks. And from that digital democracy. So let me conclude from the users and advertisers must be able to justin security and safety to identify those bad actors to use the electoral process both the members of this committee to provide access to tools that undercut the integrity of elections. Thanks for the opportunity to tell you about our ongoing efforts we work with congress and happy to answer questions you may have. Bed chair will recognize himself and talking about one specific ad that will not count against the seven minutes in the vice chair will do the same setting the stage we will talk about today. As an example to highlight one specific case of real world of occasions involving did different facebook groups associate with the Internet Research Russian Agency and a first board is called off part of texas with 2002000 followers promoted texas causes and included post to characterize as antiimmigration or antimuslim. The tagline in the top mufti and quarter, texas homeland of guns, a barbecue and your heart. But returning to the second group called the united muslims of america but this account claims to be pro islam but the tagline is in the bottom right corner i am a muslim and a pod. To poker at noon to stop the is colonization of texas. But that same group placed that effort on facebook to promote the event with a thousand people turning to the second group united muslims of america with 320,000 the account claims to push those pro islamic seems in the united the muslims of america of treated any event on facebook on may 21st and to slate save Islamic College the same time and same place and targeting people in houston, texas area to support the Islamic Center within 2700 people viewed the head. So on may 21st captured the events as they unfolded with the heart of texas group with a counter protest the the pictures that you see from the Islamic Center in houston in texas but russia trolls were encouraging poolsides to battle to create divisions among real americans and erotically it promoted this event but we did nazi one of them. Because it is hard to attend the event when you are in st. Petersburg were shut establishing these groups to pay for the ads, causing this destructive event cost russia about 200. There is a comment yesterday your company says it brings people together but in this case there were brought together for a conflict and facebook enabled the event to happen so i would say it has failed their hope. From a cater suburb to create these events in your in United States and with those russian activities and to save us to better to protect the people and after your users. My time can start now have one simple question yes or no. The federal Election Campaign act says any Foreign National is for vented from spending funds within the government or state or local elections. Doesnt this private your publication of this content . The publication of the content . Does the f. T. C. Law applies to facebook . Yes. Prohibits foreign dollars . It prohibits them from using any medium including facebook to influence. Also applies to twitter as well. Yes, sir,. The problems of social media for those who spend so much time outside the country it seems a likely target for intelligence agencies were deployments and other sensitive inside to monitor the of platforms that they are targeted in any way . Senator, yes, that sort of Security Work falls into traditional cyberSecurity Work we have long been focused on that has been tracking foreign actors so with that site of the of area for us on the defensive side. We have been focused on that type of threat for years and also education on the other side to help lawenforcement and military personnel understand how to use twitter and the benefit. We have been looking at seven years whether these individual uses are of any concern. In a blob publisher president xi from the chief Security Officer said the Company Discovered political ads through 470 fake accounts and pages operated out of russia and facebook shutdown these accounts. But had they not violated would they have been shut down . Senator, many would have because many of them violated other policies related to the type of content permitted on the platform that the key is referring to the content that surfaced earlier, it pains me personally to see that our platform was abused in this way. People in this country care deeply about issues of public concern that is one of the strings of the country that people are willing to speak freely as a foreign actor to use our platform to exploit that opening this is deeply painful lesson for us who like to learn Going Forward. Does it trouble you to the committee to look at the authentic nature of the users . We are certainly troubled by the evidence of the abuse of our platform during 2016 we are grateful for the committees investigation in the intention you are bringing to the issue. We believe it is a larger issue but not only for us to do better but Work Together to address the threat appropriately. What characteristics indicated counter pages like the operated out of russia . There are a number of characteristics that can signal potential location the most obvious typically is the most reliable is the Location Information transmitted via their browser with the access facebook also the most easily manipulated. Some it will suggest location of the because the way but so follow sir in plain sight and the and to use that platform that is shrouded. As Vice President at twitter that it was expanding resources that with those automated accounts or bots what is the process to identify the bots . The neck we have data behind what you see on twitter that looks at the activity. There are hundreds of millions of accounts that relate to other accounts. The activity looks normal to us if it is automated thousands of times per hour or logs then thousands of times per day looks suspicious the technology is looking for the anomaly from normal accounts from automated accounts the bad actors are Getting Better to make themselves look more real. What percentage of accounts on twitter are bots . Lead to a monthly audit that and have determined less than 5 of the years. What happens to accounts that are suspended but then once there permanently banned from the platform then we link those accounts that may pop up so the more reinvestigate to build a web of information of the signals the better we get to link those accounts to stop them before they get to the platform. My time is expired please submit in writing for a the record the twitter of assessment by this independent assessments of bots consistently is higher than the 5 that you stated today. We have had testimony from a representative in nato who faked bots on twitter a vast number of Research Studies even if you assume 10 but this is another example of how people are emerging in. It has been targeted towards questions it is the genius facebook cad if you like that page then here is what happens, you get a a series of bible quotes or other items appearing in october 2016 late october early november now suddenly this site in addition to your bible quotes get these other post, not paid ads but posts from this organization this message the bottom line would go to the 217,000 followers we had no many times it was like to share with other individuals. We have those tools how to lure people in and then to what they think it is for muslim or jesus and then they are manipulated by a foreign actors and foreign agents for costar my time. I hear your words but i have more than a little frustration that many of us on this committee have been raising this issue since the beginning of this year. And our claims frankly were blown off by the leadership of your companys and dismiss that there is no possibility nothing to see. It bothers me really committed to what they did not work with us but until be continually wenatchee july or august and candidly your presentations were less than expected in shows in my mind a lack of resources and a lack of commitment and a lack of genuine effort. Your companys know more about americans in many ways more than the National Government and the idea you had no idea this was happening strains your credibility. Yes or no answer not a filibuster. Will you continue to work with this committee to provide Additional Information and documents as steep as we continue to explore this challenge and threat on a bipartisan basis . Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. Next i welcome the ngo from our girlfriends that facebook identified accounts of 3,000 ads and most of the work has been derivative of that initial data dump. Do you believe in your companys have identified the full scope of rushes active measures on the platform . Our Investigation Continues so i would have to say no. No. Were still working on it. We do have a comprehensive investigation but these are ongoing issues and we continue to investigate. Starting with a facebook hearing identifying 470 accounts with wonderful farm in st. Petersburg. Plenty of press reflect reports of other forms of other activities that are russian controlled in Central Europe and Eastern Europe as he became more aware of this problem to aggressively promote you took down 30,000 accounts for the French Elections not all of those are russian related but have you question to those russian related accounts if they were active in the American Election . Senator those 30,000 accounts that we took down. Those related to russian accounts europe did share bragged about how proactive they were in the French Election process did you check those accounts to see if any of those attractive . The system that ran to take down those accounts is active worldwide. Please answer the question. Those accounts you took down in france russian related have you looked for the American Election . I apologize i am trying. The answer is yes or no. I have been signaling this to you for some time we wanted to make sure you review those accounts and the 470 counts you said these were all accounts except for one so do you even run those to see if those were paid. Yes or no. We had a. Yes we are looking and have looked at every indication in the 2016 election in the Investigation Continues. Any of a bat evidence. Everybody is looking to see they can find anything. Will have to get back to use period this has been scheduled for months angela answers are disappointing. So 80,000 use views we have discovered 120,000 russian based post on instagram have you done a similar analysis on those . 80,000 reaching 126 million have you done that analysis analysis . Yes. Komen americans . On instagram it is not as complained that what we do have indicates the beginning of october of 2016 the Instagram Post reached an additional 60 Million People in addition to the 126 million we identified. So now roughly 150 million not knowing how many times they were shared. Of prior to october 16 where the data is less reliable dealing with the incremental 4 million so all told although less than 150 million, correct. This is not something that happened during 2016. But there was a fake Tennessee Republican but the irony was it had 154,000 followers. But those are based on your numbers. And some people have said you should be able to spot and the Communications Director reach tweeting the account so they were asking you repeated the. It has done better sense we have defined our policies. We have looked on this subject of dissemination but the same way of the tolls and bots and groups are abusing the politics. Thank you for coming by now it is probably obvious to committee spent lots of time on this both as it relates to the election and these kind of things not related to the political process but weve spent a lot of time and have been able to reach some conclusions on this. I come from states a lot smaller like idaho and they try to promote a meeting with two conflicting sides and no one showed up and there was no success. Just like texas it had absolutely nothing to do with the 2016 president ial election. It was a cultural type that they were attempting to promote. The chairman talked about the news reports that alleged the russians to use social media to protect a candidate and change the result of the election, but this whole thing goes deeper than that and one of the things we discovered and you are probably aware of. They were going for and against candidates and im going to get back t to that and just a secon. But the other thing i think weve come to the conclusion on very early is the u. S. Isnt the only one that suffered from th this. Austria, germany and others suffered from the exact same thing and that is attempted interference with the domestic affairs. They do a study on this in the effect in europe because they were much more overt in europe again they were here and probably because in the European Countries there is a fair amount of russians an russian sympathyy can mobilize people not so much here in the United States. I want to come at this from a little different perspective. 2016 the election got a lot of the politicians riled up because it went after the political process but my conclusion is i think most people would agree with me this is deeper. Theres a lot of things that the russians were trying to do and not just inject themselves in the process. It seems to me if you look at this step back and say what is going on here, what is the motivation, i always look at something from the objective standpoint and what are they trying to accomplish because we dont think the same way they think about promoting the country so the conclusion ive reached long before your technology existed and that is trying to sow discord. My question to each of you is have you tried to analyze what the russians were trying to accomplish here not only in the 2016 elections that these others with the discord or your personal views on that. It is difficult to describe the motive. Weve tried to provide you with as much information as we can and we hope that with your visibility to the other sources you will be able to help the American People have a better assessment of what the motive is and we think it will help do better to protect this activity in the future. Weve seen the advertisement from russia to today the type of content in the automated account content is merely focus on divisiveness. You agree with me that this is much broader than that in that divisiveness or discord with you all agree with that . The activity that we saw continued after. That seems reasonable. I appreciate that and my view of this is more than simply the 2016 the election. What about the other countries obviously operating out of the United States can do u. S. By for the campaign . We are not how we are looking at others around the world to make sure we will try to confine people to their own. I think that is going to be a big challenge for you. Senator feinstein. I sat in on the judiciary hearing yesterday and was able to ask some questions. I want to make a personal comment. I know senator harris is to represent the community from california, but i must say i dont think you get it. I think the fact that you defend your company and what we are talking about is a cataclysmic change. What we are talking about is the beginning of cyber warfare. We are talking about a major foreign power with the sophistication and ability to involve themselves in a president ial election. This is a very big deal. With profound disappointment. You have a huge problem on your hand is in the unite in the unis going to be the first to bring to the attention and others are going to follow im sure because yoyou bear the responsibility ad created the platforms and now they are being misused and you have to be the ones to do something about it, or we will. Its different from yesterday and they are very potent facts. Let me go back to a couple of questions i asked yesterday. Yesterday you testified that her only begin to move the Voter Suppression posts that told people they could vote by texting or these were illegal waiting for the users to alert twitter if sufficient. What is twitter doing to rectify the Voter Suppression we are constantly improving not only on the automated accounts trying to amplify, but also on putting people and technology on the content and the behavior and try to make our workflows more efficient at using Artificial Intelligence to prioritize the. The. We tend to focus on behavior. We are not trying to take the same solution to this problem. I asked your colleague yesterday why google didnt revoke the preferred status after the Intelligence Community determined and publicly stated to interfere in the election. He told me that they only lost the preferred status because of a drop in viewership, not because it was part of the kremlins propaganda machine. This response was deeply troubling and frankly didnt answer my question so here it is again. Why didnt google take any action regarding the Intelligence Community assessment that came out in january of 2017 . Weve taken this very seriously. Cyber espionage is one weve been working on a publicly and privately and working on our own to identify some of these threats. This is one manifestation but not the only one. We recognize the concerns expressed and its slanted coverage. This is a question that goes beyond the internet and its channel is on Major Television stations and its advertising appears in newspapers, magazines, airports and its run in hotels. We carefully reviewed the content to see that it complies with policies that we have against hate speech etc. We continue to look. Beyond that we think the key is transparency for a wide variety of perspectives they should know what they are getting so we already provide information about the governmentfunded nature and we are looking at ways to expand tha back to potentially other platforms. As you might guess, im really not satisfied with that. Thats been the trend of the testimony all along. I think we are in a different day now. We are in the beginning of what could be cyber war and you all as a policy matter have to really take a look at that and what role you play. I think my time is almost up. Let me try one more. A british report recently concluded the social media platforms such as facebook, twitter and youtube failed to remove extremist material posted by touchy harvests and neonazi groups even when that material was reported and the source for this is the british parliaments select committee. Last night we saw a horrific attack on innocent people in new york by an individual who may have been we know one person 75,000 hits, a major radicalized are in the United States on the internet. Im working on legislation to require companies to report a known terrorist activities on the platforms of Law Enforcement and to provide Law Enforcement with civil injunction authority. Thank you all for being here. A whistleblower of the Chinese Government facebook and for us as published personally identifiable information of individuals in that violated the truth of servicsubsurface and id that. So, i want to be clear was there any pressure from the Chinese Government to block his account . We reviewed a report and analyze data through regular channels and procedures. Blocking wasnt of its entirety that of a specific post about isolated. So you didnt come under pressure from the Chinese Government or its representatives or people working to block their account or whatever it is to block. I want to be sure that i am precise and clear we did receive a report from the Chinese Government about the account and be analyzed that asked me what anas we would anyother and tooky based on the policies. The speculation that is being done for the purpose of getting into the chinese market. Is that accurate and has facebook developed these from appearing in peoples newsfeeds in specific geographic areas. We deploy what he called the gop locking up content will not be visible in that country but remains. It is illegal in this country do you have the capability to block them from criticizing the government and thereby gaining entry. To ensure that it applies to the law we take a very nuanced approach for the content and we believe the mission is to enable people to share and connect and we believe that political expression is a core of what we provide. In the vast majority of cases where we are on notice of locally illegal content tha it s nothing to do with political expression. Seems like blasphemy in parts of the world that prohibit blasphemy. We could do a whole hearing on that topic. In terms of service is therefore an influence campaign a violation of the Companies Represented here today . Seeking to interfere does that violate the terms of service . And are [inaudible] generally, we dont have the statesponsored as one of the rules but the other types like inflammatory ad content would take down most of these. Id read that you can buy from 45 to 100. If you can prove someone put together a bot army would be a violatiothatbe a violation of tf service . We have the terms of service. To put together a bunch of fake ad to put them together. Together. It violates the terms in the policies in a number of ways and we do not permit the means for accessing. What about if someone goes on and post a Social Security number is that a violation of the terms of service . For facebook it is, yes. What if someone goes online and posts classified information or potentially disrupts the ability for the plot and the lives of people is posting that online or in one of your platforms a violation of the terms of service . It happens sometimes. We work all the time on matters like that. It is also illegal to steal classified information in the terms of service that you can have reallife implications on individuals who could be compromised. We have any evidence that the uploaded the Voter Registration data and used it to target specific voters by name that it was uploaded and used to customize advertising messaging we havent seen evidence of that. The scope of this is not limited and some of the companies we identified being patriotic united muslims of america, heart of texas, all were used to attack my campaign during the primary. On the third of july and on the eighth of august the one i chose to run, one of them attacked again so my point being. They continued on the general political climate. Enthusiastically undermining our democracy, america must defend the values that made us great. Its the political ads, sock puppets to actual news stories and from rallies to protest and marches all presented under false pretense while the Supreme Court has ruled that congress may place the limits on strictly political advertising the others are beyond the reach of government and government regulation in a free society to fight back against its espionage, americans have to rely on the marketplace of ideas and institutions that support it. Today you represent those institutions. It is selfevident in relation to the power your platforms have in the last election because the same federal law that allowed your companies to grow and thrive it gives you a absolute protection against those that abuse the platform to damage the democracy. To identify the behavior of the attacks including fake news stories and identify the source of money purchasing your ads. Ads. Im of the view they are a small part of a bigger problem. You need to stop paying lip service to shutting down bad actors using these accounts. Youve got the power, and congress has given you the Legal Protection to actually act and deal with this. Foreign interference in the election, yes or no. We could have done more but i think we are doing more today. Do you all have coming and we will start with you, the technical ability and resources to respond to the information campaigns, yes and no. It is an important underpinning for all of this and we are doing more to combat this. I would add that i do believe that we need information sharing with the government to enable us to do this effectively. Gentlemen, specifically now to describe the changes not just for the ads that the sock puppet we would like to walk out of here knowing that changes you are going to support Going Forward. The transparency report we talked about in the archive of content, icons that make information on the site available to the responses and enhanced verification techniqu techniques. We are proving the algorithms in the signals we use on the fact check labels to improve users ability to evaluate fake news and the ad policy to improve and toughen the rules against the sites that best represent. Our ceo asked the product and design teams that make up a large majority of the company to tackle a safety abuse and misinformation on the platform. And to drop everything they were doing to figure this out. Reformed and information quality team focused of looking at behavior in the content and seeing how we could stop bad actors from using this to amplify their message, we Just Announced new transparency rules around not jus of not just polis but all advertisements to educate american citizens in the worldwide users and we also need to collaborate with committees like this to make sure we are putting i know very few specifics from that answer. Let me try for things. People are working on the safety of the teams but the 2018 there will be more than 20,000. Second, we announced last week it had transparency steps drawing on the ideas of the act senator warner talked about the year that will bring greater visibility to advertising generally and to the particular advertising. We are tightening the policies to limit divisiveness and limit violence in the use of the tools and forth, we are standing up the organization to enable better industry sharing of the threat information and also to help us work better with Law Enforcement to share the expertise to address this threat. Is it not clear that you all understand the degree of this sophisticated and manipulative intelligence they posted youtube videos and some of the content wasnt big, it wawas intended tr an audience and told people that they were already receptive to give you could execute the espionage for example gathering liberals and discouraging them. I would like you to confirm this technique was used. We provided all the information we can about the content that weve identified on the system to make the sort of assessment that you are describing. It requires the committees work to look at what is necessary to effectuate. We have specific cases that was used. I would like in writing in a week what you are doing about that. Thank you mr. Chairman. It is very clear that the activities on the social media platforms go far beyond the paid political ads that appeared last year. The primary purpose is to exploit into aggregate Public Confidence in our Democratic Institutions and of those efforts havent stopped. We passed this out by describing the governor of maine. There are two negative posts related to the governor. On one Facebook Page that appeared in the august of 2016. Theres a video comment made by the governor from that same month into the post in part says the following. They called up white people to call blacks and after that they said we can see what kind of people served in the american government. White racist supremacy, thats for sure. The only way to avoid mass killings of black people is to fire lepage and all of those that have the same racist beliefs from american government. There was a second post on the same website about ten days later. Later. Let me read part of that. It must be replaced from the positions in the government. America doesnt need racist politicians. Black people are tired of white supremacy. Then this year in august of 2017. It was called to being patriotic. In this case, the post defended the comments that the government made time of the confederate monument. The post with its own incendiary sense when the governor isnt saved from the left haters liberals are now acting like terrorists and they try to intimidate everyone who disagrees with them. They are against these cowards. Now let me point out some thing. Our governor was not up for reelection last year. He is term limited and cannot run for reelection as governor and yet these comments were ma made. And they are just three among the 80,000 revealed the russian playbook for the discord and division with inflammatory rhetoric. And the russians continue to push this kind of divisive frederick to this very day. So, my question to you is what are you as American Companies doing and unpaid content posted by the russians that is clearly designed to specifically polarize and anchor the American People. We value the trust that users place in the services and when they show up to connect with friends and family to discuss issues, they need to know the discourse they see is authentic. What is so painful about this type of content is it exploits truly and passionately held views and then inflames them to create more discord and more distrust. To prevent this, we are investing much more heavily and authenticity. We believe that one of the cornerstones of facebook is that these users are known by their real names and so that creates a level of authenticity in the discourse that users can trust when they come to the platform. It is so exploitative the openness of the societies of the investment we are making and the commitment we are making is to ensure the authenticit authentis more effectively policed and monitored to prevent exactly this behavior. Its where we sethats where wet protections from the users of the amplifications i attempted use of automated accounts. They dont have a followership, so they are trained to use activittrying to useactivity ono amplify their voices. And theyve been successful in doubling our effectiveness during that year over year. The accounts every single week because they are not actually human. This just happened in august of this year. This isnt something old. We continue to try to stay ahead of their activity and we are also looking at things like coordinated activity where we are coming together like the ira and putting up the price of contents like this. We are also concerned about this deceptive into place o the placf content from the services remove these Going Forward and already we have a number of things changes to the algorithms and training and quality, labeling fake news working with partners etc. I want to start with you. Last month President Trump called this a hoax. I hope you had the chance to review them. Are they in fact a hoax backs all the information that weve provided they had gone on facebook. I know you are a lawyer and it is hard. In the interest of clearing this up into giving the American People some transparency so they can see the nature of what typically gets used for the populist, why not simply release those ads to the public and released the content srelease te can understand how this works . We believe this committee is the best place to determine what information to release. We stand ready to assist in that effort and agree the more people can see the type of content that ran in the divisions that were sought to be exploited, the better. We have a disagreement on whether or not to release this and i would urge all of you to consider that kind of activity as well. I want to move on to the magazine that revealed it had hundreds including 90 at the key west desk alone and instead of 2. 3 million in 2016 in the u. S. Politics actually contacted and offered thousands of dollars for protest. Your platform is global, they are not just u. S. Platforms come and theres substantial opensource reporting right now suggesting that a similar activities may be occurring for the example in the region in spain. What are each of you doing right now to make sure they are being used in similarly divisive ways across the globe to discord in the western democracies, and in particular are you familiar with what youre doing . We are focused on preventing this form of abuse globally so when we say we have an obligation to protect the platform from being used for abuse, that is a global obligations we are focused on election is as they appear including the catalonian election as well as the others on the calendar Going Forward. They comply with local law is mr. Walker suggested earlier and we are focused on making sure any actors that are seeking to undermine democracy anywhere are removed from the platform. If you had to take productive action against those in that debate who are not as they reported to be . The key progress that we have made. We are moving the User Accounts from the services. Given the discussion weve had of automated twitter accounts into the range is obviously very wide, but we know that is a problem. You made the assertion i want to come back to make sure that its accurate. Do you require an agreement that profiles the link or some other way to make sure those who back for other unique identifiers . When you require some information sign up but not to verify the identity. We have services on the platform. Why on earth not . We see them being used by political dissidents and journalists in difficult countries who used the ability y to not have to identify themselves by name to speak the truth to power. Said the reason is that social discipline and people in third world countries were aware there is a hostile government regime. You are not reliant on the automated accounts to generate revenue acts to be testing that we do not rely on this automation we are talking about here if i were running a Political Campaign on print or on the radio or even throug were even e mail, i would have to have a page for guy disclaimer. Is there any policy reason that online social media ads given how effective and influential theyve become shouldnt meet the same level of transparency we agree with the transparency efforts and there will be even more information at the transparency for all so you can see not just the ad youve seen and why its been targeted fowith all of the authors on the front will also see who is paying for the ad ad and how muh they spent and you are able to see what the targeting is so its better educating. The same is true for facebook. We are working on political and transparency for visibility in the campaign ad by third parties and also enabling the can seems to be obligations in the communication. Thank you mr. Chairman. In response, there was a lot of information that you could get based on a policy if you pursue it like all the others how much work t you get by going to anotr spot to show that isnt all on the ad . It is clear when you are looking at the ad, who paid for it and how to find more information out. We are working through the Technical Details but we will be able to get back in front. Are you trying to do anything similar to that . And the ipod and the user can click on so that it is available to them. The other Disclosure Requirements that others have to have on the media as you are considering this. The same is true from facebook. I think that ive will start on this when you are talking about russians, argue referring to the russian government or citizens or people that mentioned the ira in their retirement accountheretirement e Republican Army so how do you know and what are you looking for when you talk about russians have much respect . We are looking for signals. Its whether they have the carrier, are they coming in from the russian ip and have they ever involved walked in with some technical challenges it sometimes goes cold that the data centers where information is being processed. The russians paid for these ads and fees are paid for because youve now gone back and checked groups like the Research Agency in you now know that is a russian group. On the other side, we didnt link them to the accounts of whats needed is found by an advertisers based on the signals i talked about and making information largely it was russia today that removed the platform. Everybody here has been involved in one way or another in the advertising and had a sad death you pretty much got what you paid for. Thertheres 100,000. How much of that did they pay before the election . The impressions ran a 46 before the remainder after the election. If its trying to impact instead of only 46 before election day, i would be pretty upset about it. How muc much did the clinton and trump campaigns spend on facebook . 81 million before the election. Im not a greek mathematician but 46,000, 81 million, wouldnt that be like 1001 of . They seem like they got this money worth after the election and we are still talking about 51 thousandths of 1 of the facebook money spent. Those were the clinton and trump campaigns combined. Probably more attention here they invaded. Ferguson misery and baltimore were a couple of targets in these campaigns. Where do you principally target viewers in the st. Louis area for ferguson or maryland or baltimore. Its important to distinguish between the tools. Approximately 25 of the ads to be identified and turned over to the committee were geographically targeted to a beach and smaller than the United States most of them were targeted by state basis. They turned out not to be close at all is that right . Who decides what Voter Suppression and what is not. What free speech is acceptable or not and the government has never been very good at this in the unbelievable obligation it sounds like the companies are all being asked to assume and that will be an ongoing discussion of whether that is possible or not. What is acceptable to talk about and what is not and what discourages voters and what does not. I think the general process pros these days would discourage voters from participating so maybe that would be none of it could be discussed but people see how that goes. Youve done a good job this morning. I must say im disappointed that you are here and not your ceos. We are talking about the policies of the companies. And its fine to send general counsel but i think if you could take a message back if we go through this exercise again, we would appreciate seeing the top people that are making the decision. I want to begin by two quotes and i generally dont read quotes but these are so apt the first one says theres nothing more to be desired in every andy optical should be opposed. Chiefly from the desire of the foreign powers to gain and in proper ascent in the council. Thats Alexander Hamilton in the 68 federalist. He saw this coming. The other is a more recent quote from vladimir a. Former officer and he said a new type of war has emerged in which it has given up its decisive place in the achievement of the military and political objectives. That is exactly what we are talking about tonight. I appreciate the chair and vice chair giving us the context of what we are doing. They are visual demonstrations and i think we have very vivid if the warfare is the division of the society. And its not only us. It is talking about the independent vote for him great britain. It is a worldwide strategy that applied here in 2016. There is one other piece i would like to add to what the chair and vice chair did and that is that its still happening. It follows them on a daily basis and i just picked that day in september. These are 600 russian websites that are using what they did on these particular days. The interesting thing clearly russia has some interest but we have the nfl and then we have to boycott the nfl and then stand for the anthem. They were on both sides of the nfl dispute in order to exacerbate the divisions. One witness of the Committee Said the strategy is to take a crack at the society and turn it into a chasm and that is exactly what we have seen in 2016. My point here is that hasnt stopped and it wont stop, so we have to figure out what to do about it. And it seems there are three possibilities one of which you can make a significant contribution. The others are frankly up to us. The first is a technical defense, the kind of thing youve already been talking about today. Checking identities, identifying the source of this information. We as a society have to understand when we are bein beingpond. All they wanted to do was talk about russia meddling with their elections and i said how do you defend your self . You cant undo the internet or turn off the tv. All of our people now get it. This is what the russians are doing. And when we see one of these postings, its just the russian again. We have to develop that level of sophistication so that we know when we are being misled. The mentality is the same one we alall applied at checkout counts at the supermarket and we see a tabloid that says a movie star has a two headed baby and w me y that its just a tabloid. We need that same sensibility to this kind of fake news and purposeful distortion. The third thing we have to determine is that this country has to have some kind of cyber warfare deterrent capacity. Right now there is no price to be paid for meddling in our democracy. And our adversaries have to understand if they are going to take up a Campaign Like this, there will be a price to be paid if there will be results if they do x. We are going t to dubai to them. All the russians did last year is basically it do a free pass. And i think thats a pretty difficult problem. Now let me ask a difficult problem. Can you put a dateline on a posting that said where it comes from, just like the news story says moscow, september 23. Is there some way to identify the source of information as it comes across the newsfeed . We do permit the users to identify the geographic location of the post. To be more sensitive to this. 70 said they should know what theyre getting when we get information we see the name of the author and the date line the year ended new information distribution world and we need to think about how to apply some principles to help us assess the of affirmation and i hope that you will continue to develop policies just as the newspaper business did 100 years ago to help your customers analyze the validity of the data. So we are just taking what comes as it comes to have a quotation, a wall that says the great problem with the quotations on the internet is determine if they are authentic, abraham lincoln. [laughter] thank you for being here there are a lot of questions youre asking lots of questions and this is a battle to protect freespeech to have Good American dialogue foreign actors want to breed abuse freespeech so lets walk this through and we do have a problem with that so we are grateful that you are here to walk through this to figure on how we can next month negative talk about these extremely complicated issues so you have mentioned from your testimony that 131,000 tweets posted during this time i assume september through november that you were tracking only 9 percent of those rare actually election related the others were also a social engagement that is lost in the conversation only 9 percent preelection related so for all of your platforms 40 seeing that you track now where those social issues discussed right now . I understand you can go back the last six months if you want to but give us the idea that they are engaged with either boycott or take many the nea. Give me examples of topics. One example following the election was the effort by the accounts we have identified to inflame those post elections demonstrations. So for multiple examples some of those that try to organize the event that work election protests even sending out messages the rtc was created by a russian group, yes or no . We have seen that activity. What other issues . Police shootings and racial issues. Immigration has remained a topic. This is part of the reason that we want these ads to get out in the publics face we want you to say this is the content foreign actors are putting out there that is divisive so we think there is the great benefit to say when you are aware of things please note this is the issue and this is what it looks like they consider this is where i have seen before they had no idea that it was russian related that would be helpful but when were you aware of russian activities on your platform during the election . During or before . That those entities within the russian government or policy related were involved in the platform . Before or after the election . We were aware of the state actors separate through the Internet Research agency these sectors were engaged in more traditional cyberthreat activity focusing on account compromise as well as direct attention to stolen information posted on other sites. How far back . We have seen activity as early as 2015. Twitter also saw activities on the platform to take down accounts in 2015 we are aware of the Intelligence Community reports to become aware of the activity of this year through the retrospective work that has the uncovered of baffle extent of that issue. Cooking and cybera spinoff as issues only after that issuance with that time period. One of the things were trying to address with those posts is very helpful to the American People to get that statistical information would be helpful those statistics are the number of accounts that are related to this not giving us the brat than the death so for instance it is helpful to know that 1 percent of what is russian related statistically is that 1 they created and launched it but then to the advance that that would be helpful to us as well. You have that data to see if they started in the middle than broadcasting so give us the percentage of users that share that does not help us. Knowing when in the process is what helps us for you have done a lot of work on terrorism and islamic extremism and isis and child pornography and trafficking and Illegal Drugs were asking for help in this area as well. I hope we do not have to engage legislatively or with a light touch you have to actively engage in this but i do hope we can continue to protect the platform of freespeech to speak their free their opinion. The russian state News Organization called the kremlins personal information outlet about the United States is the central Information Warfare of the classified Intelligence Report based on the 2016 election to closely supervise the coverage to convey that russias strategic messaging. Spending data on the Distribution Center in new york organizations allow them to purchase space for advertising in your accounts . We have bad russia today for advertising on the twitter platform. Effective one . One week ago. We have reviewed that challenge extensively in newspapers and magazines were focused to make sure there is enhanced transparency and a matter the sources. It says to the use of google and twitter and facebook and youtube as the main distributor of their content. You have been the main potoo to get the propaganda out. But those channels are included with those choices. To a you have this on your personal computers . No sir. I do not believe so. Im not aware but we will follow up. Do you have any doubts about russias involvement of the 2016 election do you have any thoughts on that or any dark doubts about that . We have no doubts that there was attempted efforts something Going Forward had an effect on the outcome is not something were in a position to judge. And then to be identified as the main distributor of fake news . Are you concerned about that . Talk about the threats in the United States of america of this Business Model . We are deeply concerned this is an issue which talk about we looked at the entire Insurance Products of a Mission Quality to protect a the resources. And google is to provide accurate and comprehensive information that we have tens of thousands of the engineers to address the problem of breaking news so we take this very seriously. And with the bipartisan members they should be regulated to oversee. You have any idea . Will you fight back . Three support that the American People are getting the facts so any particular legislation. You are boyers a reserve your watching closely do you agree with that exemption to treat all political advertising the same to require identification of sponsors. Very supportive of that direction. You are still on speaking to that legislation. We do have some finetuning touche talk about this very much alliance with that information. According to the Oxford University with the veterans on the twitter or facebook these are injected into veterans groups one fake Facebook Page was highlighted in the stars and stripes article from the 18th called the nonsense of america that attracted a following following a network of 200,000 but the real Organization Called the imposter page in another example of how veterans are targeted with disinformation and to be reported on october 18th baseman reportedly took down the site for which data Real Property of their real Service Organization and to see them be targeted. Senator we are intensely watching. Because of the military. Were very focused to make sure it remains an authentic experience. You will see many reports of an authentic behavior even before it is reported to us but i will certainly check into this. This is not a democrat or republican issue this is the security of our nation you are the largest to streeters of news and no doubt that has to be authentic and true you cannot allow what is going on against United States of america were doing everything we can to support military and veterans and what your doing by allowing this to come across is misleading and damaging threatening the security and safety and sovereignty of our nation. I agree they needed the answer for this. Discussing twitters history with the Intelligence Community. And talk about the subsidiary and working with the Intelligence Community. But at the same time that is refusing to work for a the cia and it was the of propaganda arms for profit. Russia was beginning its covert influence campaign have assured company justify the behavior to fellow citizens . You to work frequently with lawenforcement all the time. They are publicly available with the purchase of surveillance. In the First Response of the 911 call is made the region not allow surveillance. Said twitter cut off from the data mining last year. Our policy is consistent to all organizations and i believe that has been enforcing that policy. As we approach russia today into so advertising services. Approached as a regular radio organization. But coming out earlier this year the work that we have done and that is why we have banned them for advertising today. With the use of the data mining according to which director brendan was responding intended justin to the optics though austria journal report also said the customers include that is that an accurate report . It all have the information but on those products that is the third party we have a relationship. I believe mr. Dorsey wanted to make sure the policy was applied consistency consisting arouse surveillance. What about the Russian Intelligence Services . Your applied the same intelligence to the adversaries intelligence . We have to apply policies consistently. That reminds me of the cold war of 12 cannot distinguish between the cia and kgb because they question old leader lady in front of the bus is a push iraq out of the way because they both push old ladies as opposed as adversarial countries and russia and china. Would twitter entertain the possibility to use data mining . With the First Response technology we do not allow anyone for the purposes of user privacy to use our technology. Moving on to another pod style said the services i cannot think of anyone other than the fiveyear putin who would influence more a reflection bin wikileaks. But with that intelligence authorization act that youre a hot style powers but to my knowledge is still operates uninhibited is that accurate . We will apply those consistently without bias may take action. Is said by is decide over the adversaries . Were trying to be unbiased around the world and we care deeply that issues we are talking about today as it applies to be cute wikileaks we will and continue. You are on bias towards wikileaks but take down videos of marshall like blackburn running for the United States senate. Per video was never removed from the trip twitter platform she ran that tweet and video as an advertisement have different standards for advertisements and that content because of research to users did not ask to follow her we want to make sure that is a positive experience so are our policies and in that case we had users reporting it was inflammatory it was taken down we make these tough calls all the time and also not to convey that message. So if you are the general counsel i have to say most american citizens would expect them to put the interest of our country of the of our adversaries like russia and china or non state actors like wikileaks and julie and a staunch. As many as have expressed you have the Amazing Things to make our lives better in many ways i also support the channels to have created for free speech or those that were persecuted around the world with this type of attitude is not a acceptable to the large majority of americans and it will be part of that would be imprudent to regulation time has expired. California is home to the most Successful Television Technology Companies and we also know that takes great responsibility your companys have a great deal of response to the American Public so with the modern postmaster and the yellow pages than their radio broadcaster and television station and the Emergency Alert system so your decision fundamentally funds Public Discourse the nations enemies the future platform in a way that has been designed to create or disseminate hateful rhetoric with disrupting your democracy. I would like to start with the sec form that has been filled out by each of the companies and your response there is a section here which request what are those risks related injuries if we fail to read the recent sigillate generate all revenue from advertising this could seriously harm our advertising revenue that could be affected including legislative and regulatory development. Seven lead to talk specifically of the of russian ads that run under platform. There are legitimate ads that appeared alongside so as it relates tune those advertisements on facebook are on twitter for youtube hall you address that and in particular how much money did you make off legitimate ads that ran alongside the rushes and propaganda . That is the advertisement on youtube. The total advertising is 4,700. American in advertising or legitimate advertising how much money did you make from legitimate advertising alongside the propaganda from russia . It is a minimum amount we have to follow up. What about twitter . Have you not looked into that . If youre asking how much revenue . How much advertising revenue did you receive from legitimate advertisers in connection. We have not done that analysis. This data is true for facebook we have not done that analysis. It seems the but figure out from that russian propaganda so do please followup with us on that and also it is critically important this committee has access to all the information it needs to understand the propaganda in the 2016 elections so will you commit to the records from the minimum standards could extend that beyond the 11 months they require through the completion of our investigation we commit to keeping those records. We will keep all relevant records. And with twitter. And for all three of you please name the Senior Executive who is responsible for catching countering statesponsored information . Indicated he did not have one. Is a challenging question we have people across different teams the chief Security Officer another person is the head of the safety team. You have not designated individuals part of your executive team. I will take responsibility for that. There is to people filling that role at twitter the so with our Twitter Product has taken responsibility for information quality that is directly related. Ben would like you each to appreciate this is a very specific issue with its own pathology with resources because we are talking about the state sponsors activity that is sent individuals so as it relates to the statesponsored information i requesting your name whoever is responsible and should go forward to designate in your operation specifically for those operations to understand as we know now governments will but the incredible amount of resources to manipulating the of public and insights with inappropriate images and things of that nature. We have a chief Security Officer focused on this threat but i will take responsibility for the overall response to this threat. County employs are dedicated to addressing state sponsored operations specifically . It is a harder question because there are so many questions stated that we have 10,000 people on facebook but the number of people that this is there fulltime job have to come back to you. You can create Automated Systems inactivated during a moscow business hours. You can put those into a machine that creates the algorithm to figure out if propaganda is push through have you done then as it relates to the manipulation of the elections. Technology is agnostic that is the algorithm to catch those bad actors and connect accounts. We want to have that connected the of over twitter. We have been tackling that problem for years and the challenges if we get better now shows we are committed every single day. My time is right now so perhaps we could have . Answers. Numbers should be aware there is a series of votes starting about seven minutes ago, two votes with two members left so we will wrap up some real ask unanimous consent be all members allows seven days to submit questions without objection so ordered. We are a free and open society but the opponents have the opposite view. With the press and individual quality of expression that we celebrate the you were at the intersection of this problem which is why you are here today so to restate the chairmans comments it for every complex problem there is a clear and simple and wrong answers we need to be very careful how we deal with this. But the public needs to understand so you are more than just a publisher. With the income from data mining and anyone else including their own government. And with their privacy to a target ads many on the panel had used this from the Political Campaign who gets to voters who may be receptive. I would like to know how judge you distinguish between somebody like senator feinstein alluded to as social media as a means to recruit that is unsuspecting new yorkers yesterday killing a to injuring 11 with a Foreign Government to pursue this this information and active measures that add confusion and polarization . How do you distinguish those people on your platforms and how you treat sex traffickers target the young black girls and selling them for sex . I would say none of those are expectable those are against abusive platforms with the sex trafficking in Human Trafficking with the added layer trying to push those points of view without identifying itself. We also have the same policy to have the best success looking at the behavior and the signals that we see with the activity of those accounts what they are doing with each other to stop these factors. This is on the terrorism side. Seventyfive of those so because the focus on behavior and not the content we dont have to wait we take it down proactively. With the abuse of the platform you describe a child safety in elections the of first we have known for a long time with history and government with a track record of working well together to make sure we take appropriate steps to address the abuses but we have made progress. And something as an industry. But those first two forms without optimism Going Forward. With the terms of service has that changed since the 2016 actions of russia . Guess we have changed our policies with that content is available on youtube. Terms have to do with advertising simultaneously using those behind the scenes. The same is true with facebook. Why should your companys the treated any different from a legal accountability standpoint . Using that content platform the rules of section 230 provide a platform to users for free speech and expression and does not require the virus to remove content that would violate sarah writes. And to prevent things in to see how they tackle this problem with the urgency and seriousness to allow Free Expression and debate. From of legal standpoint. Were not producing the content with a lot of great journalist dan News Organizations offering the service to allow that interchange of information sharing. Sarah that is just a platform for other people to express their views. So let me just ask each of you to work with us on the stock in the boeing six traffickers act dealing with the Communications Decency act for those that were victims of sexual abuse for those who facilitated sex trafficking to justice there is a way to come up with something to maintain the freedom of the internet so we could reach the acceptable outcome. From all those panelists when you discover the presentation on your platform do you feel an obligation to notify those people to access that . Shouldnt you do that . We feel that obligation to stop the activity and to fail and how to an amount to capture any related activity. To share this information with the industry and to that issue of the attention of this committee to be supportive to make it publicly available. Pivoted say much more difficult and complex to general they should address that. And as a result reporting to us it will not translate to the thousands. For those that sob of message. Bets so it was deliberately false. En to give the First Amendment. Im sorry repeat the question. Under the First Amendment to notify those that was deliberately misled by a Foreign Government. Not just us but lawenforcement. That technical challenges associated with that undertaking is substantial with that data work with the estimate of people who may be exposed to this to rely on this so transparency is important and we are supportive to make as much of this available to the public. With that proposition we have a Team Dedicated to how the present confirmation on the platform so if you see the tweets you also see the replies to it with other information that is accurate and that we will take that idea back to explore how we could implement. We hear differently positioned because they are not wanted when they access content it is difficult to know who sees what but we will take that into consideration. And technically identify so am i right to assume to shut them down . But primarily with bots on google. But youtube is is your subsidiary. But those hits were generated by Electronic Devices so in that program so that 2 percent over the audience. So as a result of unwittingly used. N then do drive up to appear to be more popular than they are. In. So we have alatas this a sophisticated tools with that background. If you find that reduced that our no longer trending . But you do have to deal with the bots networks . Similarly be removed as many automated accounts the we could find some are trying to get more sophisticated but we will remove them that day are not to gaming the trend and remove their contents from search from the time lines once were able to investigate. We prohibits automated account creation and looking for evidence with those accounts created with bots with any of those behaviors that have been identified. This is say daunting effort did you have to go on the counter offense because the way restructure the system we have a limited Government Role so i would like your followup officially but to be proactive with these activities the finding bots or thinking about notifying clearly bad information. I cannot give you a percentage but they are committed to do getting this right to and as i stated earlier were doubling the People Better focused of these efforts of the coming years. Can you give us that in writing . Yes. Rededicate a lot of services we will followup with your staff. Similar. Mr. Chairman and went to a knowledge the question if you own a medical facility if he were exposed to have to tell people they were exposed. I do think it is interesting question of the obligation that you might have. There has been some progress made but i still find them very disturbing from twitter and facebook the consensus is italy originated with one farm in st. Petersburg the most of what you provided us is from a derivative of those reports there is hoping he would come today to say that with all vigor we have identified others so i think we have a lot more work to do. We have come to the close. If for some reason you need antitrust waivers to collaborate with each other lettuce no what us know because it will be a minimal effort to minimize the damage and the impact of what russia is doing and with others will do next year. I believe all three of your companies have a new perspective with varying degrees of the changes but the challenges the impact of the failure is significantly different than in the 2016 elections. I need you to know that a front to the acknowledged that the law applies to you but it hasnt been lost on me from the applicable law. So i have been reminded a portion on facebook by foreign actors some clearly it falls within alliance of what it was therefore federal campaign law requires disclosure i have to put that in their paid for by the and i applaud you on that so you might have told me before because they had a hung jury or maybe the excuse with the exception to the disclosure there is no exception to the disclosure used to influence u. S. Elections it is a National Security issue with a direct attempt to infiltrate democracy and if it isnt as stated in the law then it should be the responsibility to take that headon so in the future i hope that everybody adheres if you are the media outlet but if for some reason did you ever questioned i hope no platform is conditional to verify with that money comes from so the one thing i did not here today is the effort to certify who pays for these . I do not want the government to stipulate what political content should look like. You are the front line before anything else has to kick kids. Audited isnt finding its way to influence elections i wish i could leave the ldp have to worry about our elections but the truth is misspent an enormous amount of time the hefty you understand them in a way that is best for the future for re kids and grandchildren. To experience things i have never experienced. But i recognize the fact so with that intellect that is our future. Dont let the nation states determine their future. Have a different line of defense. This hearing is adjourned. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]. Hamilton was young and dashing and hints of than some but he had he was playing. With those different situations. It then that respect. But they were reserved and enigmatic quality