Transcripts For CSPAN2 House Intelligence Hears From Twitter Facebook And Google 20171102

Also have tragedies in and terror california, texas, others, puerto rico where families are struggling. We have guidance and comfort on those families and wisdom to the First Responders and others trying to cope with these issu issues. In jesus name amen. Mr. Collins is a general counsel on facebook and the acting general of google. We had an open session the hearing would be addressed unclassified matters to the guests in the audience. Proceedings will not be tolerated and we ask the witnesses to stand and raise their hands. Do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony to the committee will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god . Thank you for being here today to discuss a very important topic and that is russias use of the social media platforms during the 2016 election. The committee has been investigating since the beginning of this year and as a part of that we are examining the role played in the disseminating the line content paid for by russian actors including the russian government propaganda arm after the election cycle to communicate the message is to the public they sought racial animus to the citizens of such tactics by foreign adversaries are not new or novel but the minute they employ using social media. As some of the advertisement identified anadvertisementsidene russian actors provided to the come at the end advanced the hearing represent a small sample of some of the images that appear to 2015 and 2017. 2017. The drum of selected for the political shock value but those in the hearing what we seek to discuss this afternoon. These represent some of the most viewed facebook advertisements in 2015 to 2017. There is an ad titled being patriotic and titled at june 232015 and received approximately 530,000 ad impressions and 72,000 clicks and costs 330,000 or 5700 u. S. Dollars in Todays Exchange rate. Exhibit number two is entitled created on december 102015 and received approximately 531,030,000 clicks and cost 121,000 or approximately 2,100 in Todays Exchange rate. Created october 14, 2016 and received approximately 511,040,000 clicks. This cost approximately 78,000 rubles or 1300 Todays Exchange rate. Exhibit eight is an ad 2016 and received approximately 1. 373000 million ads this cost approximately 111,000 or about 1900 Todays Exchange rate. December 12016 received 752,034,000 ad clicks and cost 58,000 or about a thousand dollars in Todays Exchange rate. I ask extent consent material offered to be entered into the record and without objection so ordered. We have the responsibility to ensure seeking to harm to society and democratic process. Its not easy in a democracy where free speech is guarded by the constitution. We must be free to pick and choose however we must not let technologtechnology provide forn enemies the press to spread this with the intent to divide us. I thank you for the efforts to address the influence on the platforms and the transparency with which you have made those changes. I hope this will help the committee and public understand the extent to which actors use the platforms to run the election and we also hope the testimony will share might on the contact of thi impact of the campaign as compared to other campaigns in the same period and how the companies distinguish between the activities and free speech. As opposed to china and russia. We also expect each moving forward to help ensure such activities do not work again on the platforms and i work didnt come up for a productive hearing and recognize you for five minutes for any opening comments that he would like to make. They revealed that he opened the counterintelligence investigation involving the russians and we knew nothing about the social media to attack Hillary Clinton and the Technology Companies themselves have identified the reach of the facet. Today we will see a sample of those acts and looks kind of the use of the media and why it took them so long to discover the abuse of the platforms and what they intend to do about it to protect the country from this influence in the future. But first its worth taking a look at where we are in the investigation between the hearing may pose the question of whether the Trump Campaign in any aspect of its aspirations in essence to help the campaign and did the campaign accept it if it did explicitly or implicitly what did they do to make good on that understanding. We now know as a result of the guilty plea by the foreignpolicy advisers that the approach to the Trump Campaign as early as april of 2016 to inform them that they were in possession of dirt onto what thy clinton in the form of thousands of souls and emails. The timing is significant because it means the campaign was informed in the involvement with the stolen emails even before the country was aware of it more of the federal agents be the last example of the associates making false statements about their interactions with the russians. We now know that the uppermost levels for most informed that they have dirt on clinton and her that it was offered to the campaign and what was described as part of the governments effort. That appears to have been accepted when he said he would with thlove the assistance and suggested that the best timing would be in the lead summer. And of late summer they begin dumping dirt on Hillary Clinton. The president and his son would later claim it was about adoptions. It isnt clear from the plea where the emails were establisheestablished a trump tn they communicated the mechanism they would use to help the campaign may not involve the drug provision of the emails to the campaign but the publication through wiki leaks. What is clear is the kremlin repeatedly told the campaign and had dirt on clinton and offered to help and at least one top official of the president s own son accepted. Apart from publishing the stolen emails they also use social media to assist the campaign whether of a coordinated peace efforts we do not know. But its true they mounted what could described as an Expenditure Campaign on his behalf. As on twitter for example promoted stories as it allegedly for legal problems and the campaign was also designed to further the broad kremlin objective shoving discord by passions on a range of divisive issues. They did so by weaving together fake accounts, pitches and teacd communities to publicize content and mobilize to sign online petitions and the rallies and protest. The first ad behind me was brought to us from our friend in st. Petersburg over 224,000. The second garnered over 135,000 facebook followers. The space would appear almost 145,000 times across Facebook Accounts and expressed an interest in donald trump stopping illegal immigration, conservatism, Confederate States of america or the Republican Party. Russia exploited vulnerabilities that exist across Online Platforms and we must identify, expose and defend ourselves against the operations as we seek to protect the expedition window protecting cyberspace from being misused by our adversaries. Thank you mr. Chairman, and i yield back. We have Opening Statements for the record. Do any of you care to make a statement to the committee . Ranking members of the committee, twitter understands the importance of the committee in the interference in the 2016 e. Election and we appreciate the opportunity to be here today. Ththe events underlining the hearing has been concerning to the company and abroad the Twitter Community we are committed to providing a service that fosters and facilitates the and open democratic debate and promotes positive change in the world. We are troubled by the reports that the power of twitter was misused by a foreign actor for the purpose of influencing the president ial election and undermining Public Safety in the process. The abuse of the platform to attempt the statesponsored manipulation is a new challenge for us and one that we are determined to meet. We intend to show the committee has three as we are about addressing the threat by explaining the work we are going to understand what happened and to ensure that it doesnt happen again. At the time of the election we observed impact on instances of automated and malicious activity. As we learned more about the scope of the problem, we resolve to strengthen the systems Going Forward. Elections continue all the time so the First Priority was to do all we could to block and remove the malicious activity from interfering with experience. We created dedicated teams to enhance the quality of information the users see and block malicious activity whenever and wherever we find it. The teams continue to work everyday to continue to make sure twitter is a safe, open, transparent and positive platform and we launched a retrospective review for the efforts that influence through automation, coordinated activity and advertising. While that is still underway we made the decision to share what we know today in the interest of transparency and out of appreciation for the urgency of this matter we recognize the findings may be supplemented as we work with the Committee Staff and others to discover more facts and to gain a greater understanding. My written testimony details the methodology and findings of the retrospective review into detail. We studied these from september first to november 15, 2016. We found they coordinated interest and determined that the number of accounts we could link in these contents were comparatively small around 1,100th of a percent of total accounts at the time we studied. One third of 1 came from russian relinked automated accounts. We did however undeserved influence is where the activity was more pronounced and linked to the Internet Research agency as a result of the review. We also determined advertising they russia today at seven small accounts was related to the election and violated the policies of tying or that have since been implemented. We have banned the advertisers and we will donate the research for civic engagement. We are enhancing our safety policy sharpening the tools for stopping malicious activity and increasing transparency to promote public understanding of all of these areas. Our work on these challenges will continue for as long as the malicious actors abuse the system and we need to devote to stay ahead of the new tactics. Twitter believe any activities in the kind of regardless is unpredictable and we would agree to do as much as we can to prevent it. We hope that in the description of the work weve undertaken demonstrates the commitment to working with youth and the Industry Partners and stakeholders to ensure the experience of 2016 never happens again. Cooperation to combat this challenge is essential. We cannot defeat this allowed. As with most threats the best approach is to combine information and ideas to increase the collective understanding. Working with the community we will continue to learn, test, share and improve th improves tt remains effective and safe. I look forward to answering your questions. Chairmanchairman, when he ans distinguished members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to appear before you today. Since july 2013, i served as the general counsel on facebook. We appreciate your hard work to investigate interference in the election. I would like to start by echoing the comments of the chairman earlier regarding the events of new york. We extend deepest condolences and to their families. Our mission is to give power to the community and bring the world closer together. We understand the people you represent have authentic experiences when they come to the platform to share and connect. We also believe we have an Important Role to play in the democratic process and responsibility to protect it on the platform. Thats why we take whats happened on facebook so seriously. The interference we saw is reprehensible that for an actors hiding behind fake accounts and use the platform and other services to try to Show Division and discord and undermined the process is directly contrary to the values and everything they stand for. Our goal is to bring people closer together. These foreign actors sought to drive people away. In our investigation which continues to this day we found they reached millions of americans over the twoyear period and they were used to promote pages of content. People shared these posts. Some are downright offensive. We know much of the content is particularly hurtful to the members of the Facebook Community that engaged in this content believing it was authentic. People should be the content on facebook is authentic and should not have to worry that they are being exploited in a society in ordethe societyin order to infln the country. In aggregate, the arabs today are to discuss a very small fraction of the content on facebook but any amount is too much. They violated the policies and we removed them. Going forward we are making significant investments in hiring more, doubling or more. To improve at a transparency and requiring documentation from political ad buyers to locate broadband content and bad actors we are working more closely to share information on how to identify and prevent threats so we can respond faster more effectively. We know bad actors are not going to stop their efforts and we know we will all have to keep learning to stay ahead of them and we also know we cannot do this alone. Thats why i want to thank you for this investigation. We look forward to the conclusions people share with the public and i look forward to your questions. Members, thank you. Im a Senior Vice President at google responsible for the policy for the safety and google. Org. I worked at the intersection of law for over 25 years including the u. S. Department of justice expanding the lines of justice. But be struck by conversation this afternoon by having my acknowledgment to victims and the families of the attack that happened on new york city. The employer we know how strong it helps us new yorkers are and we look forward to doing whatever we can. Turning to the issues before the committecommittee today, we bele have a responsibility to prevent the misuse of the platforms and we take that very seriously. Google was founded with the permission of information and mission of information and making it universally accessible. The abuse of our tools and platform is antithetical to the commission. We are deeply concerned about attempts to undermine and we are committed to working with the congress, Law Enforcement and others in the industry and the community to strengthen protections and elections to ensure the security of users and help combat misinformation. We recognize the importance of the mandate and welcome the opportunity to share information and offer solutions. Of course the Propaganda Campaign isnt new and involves many different types of publications over the years. For many years we have seen attempts to interfere with Online Platforms. We take these threats very seriously and to build industryleading systems and for these tools directly into the Consumer Products as well. Back in 2007 we launched the first version of the safe browsing tool that helps protect from other attacks. Today it is used on more than 3 billion devices worldwide. We will warn them directly through gmail. We faced motivated and resourceful attackers and continually evolve the tools to stay ahead of the changing threats. They dont just protect the physical security they also detect and prevent attempts to manipulate the systems. For example we now use fact check labels to help the users spot fake news. We updated quality guidelines and valuations to help surface more authoritative content from the web. We updated our advertising guidelines to prohibit ads that misrepresent themselves and on youtube employee a sophisticated spam to detect behavior and catch people trying to inflate view counts or number of subscribers and as they evolve we will continue to adapt to understand and prevent new attempts on the platforms. With respect to the work on the 2016 the election, we looked across the products to understand if they were using the product to disseminate information to interfere with the u. S. Elections. We did find some bits deceptive activities associated with governmentbacked account accouo the activity appears to have been limited. Of course any activity like this is more than we would like to see. We provided the committee the information into the summary results and we will continue to cooperate in the investigation. Going forward we will continue to expand the use of technology and protect the users and continue working to ensure the platforms. We are also making political advertising transparent and easier to understand and even more secure. In 2018, we will release a transparency report showing the data about who was biting the hand obehalfon the platform andw much money is being spent. We both care about on the database available for Public Research of election and content across. We are also going to make it easier to understand who bought the ad and Going Forward use of this will be able to find the name of any advertiser running an election ad on the search, youtube and play network through an icon on the ad itself. We will continue enhancing the safeguards to ensure that we permit only u. S. Nationals to buy the ad. The already tightly restrict which advertisers can serve the ad based on political leanings. We will go further. The identity of anyone who wants to run the ad or us add or use e political interestbased tools and confirming that person is permitted to run the ad. We certainly cant do this alone. We will continue to work to collect the Digital Ecosystem and even as we take our own steps remain open to working on the transparency. Moreover the commitment to addressing these issues extend beyond the services. Theres an in person reading and introduced a suite of Digital Tools designed to help the websites into political campaigns protect themselves from unauthorized access and digital attacks. We are also increasing the their support for the bipartisan depending jewel democracy project. Let me conclude by recognizing the importance of the committee. The users from advertisers and creators must be able to trust the safety and security. We share the goal of identifying bad actors who attempts to interfere and views the electoral process. We look forward to continuing cooperation both with members of the kennedy and our fellow companies to provide access to tools to help citizens express themselves while avoiding abuses that undercut. Thank you again for the opportunity to tell you about the ongoing efforts and we work on these issues and im happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you for being here. I recognize myself now for five minutes. Thank you for what youre doing and the efforts. I heard mr. Walker just said you are investing significant resources and putting weight behind the commitments made today b the numbers that we shod to nicolas the difference between the ad into the click edit under brief comments does look impressive on the face. An impression is the content that is in view for the user it doesnt necessarily mean the user stopped and viewed if you open up the tab and scroll through if anythin with anythine an impression and engagement with the ad so with these it may have been to like the content for example, so a lot of the questions is how much influence did these have been part of the metrics that you use into the evaluation and the Business Model is if you are trying to help the company develop a program we are going to show you we think it will have this kind of impact. Are there tools you can use to evaluate what impact they might or might not have had with respect to the opinions on who to vote for . We have tools to help advertisers measure their return on investment. Those are typically for the more larger advertisers to help them understand different campaigns. For those like we saw from the accounts we subsequently linked to the intranet research agency, they were intended to drive the followership of the pages of getting people to like the page, for example. And the return on investment is clear from how many people like the page. What you consider the return that it made sense or were they over expectations . I cant say what their expectations for. I think it is clear that they were able to drive a significant following. They were able to drive a relatively significant following for a relatively small amount of money. Why this activity appears so precious by the people that understand social media. They were not amateurs and i think this underscores the threat we are facing. Facing. Looking at the ad based on what happened no one wanting a pack could distinguish it from the leftwing and rightwing group would there have been a way that user could distinguish that opinion. Are you doing something walking we are taking a number of steps Going Forward. We are investing in our efforts to make sure we are better policing the authenticity of the site we never want to see that content in the first place because it is so insidious in such an effort. Its an excellent question. We believe that when people show up to their authentic selves. The problem with these ads coming and they shouldnt have run on the sites is that people were not showing up as their authentic selves and undermines the trust and authenticity that is so important to the platform. Did you think youd have tools available that would allow them assuming someone to look through the face value to see how much and tha into that sortf thing . Weve already incorporated the learnings from what weve seen to be automated tools so that our automated tools were better able to detect and read the sitethe sites of these masqg accounts. We want to give them an opportunity to make it clear whos behind the ad. There will be a very strong suit for us to require information documentation. Moscows influence campaign followed the strategy that blends Covert Intelligence operations with overt efforts by the government agencies. We now have a much better sense of how that manifests itself. From these accounts work and 80,000 individual pieces of organic content were produced such as posts to which at least 126 million americans were exposed. As 11 million death that saw dug the campaign season. The 2700 linked users connected set of 1. 5 million things at 36,000 or automated accounts were also found. It accounted for nearly 300 million views. With respect to google and youtube, roughly 1100 videos were posted for about 300,000 views and youve been able to identify over 5 billion of propaganda by today. The question i would like to ask you all, one that is specific part of what made the Media Campaign successful and a part of why the russians were sophisticated and social media is that they understood the algorithms that you use a ten to the content that is either fearbased or anger based that helps thopes to pick up an audie that goes viral to be amplified. Its not only the Foreign Occupation bumanipulation but an terms of the degree to which the algorithms are designed to attract our attention and keep our eyes focused on the platform for advertising purposes may also have the unintended consequence of widening divisions among the society too polarizing people because what ends up percolating the top of the feed tends to be things we were looking for and things that the algorithms can both capture attention to a greater degree. My question is what corporate or societal obligation on both of these issues, the manipulation of the platforms but also more broadly the fact that rhythms are designed to attract attention and may also have the unintended consequence but the real consequence of putting america against america in a way that the russians so capably manipulated. So if you could each address that question coming into the second question is do you have that Historical Data such that you would be able to analyze the Trump Campaign advertising and its campaigns organic content with the russian social media farms and analyze whether in its targeting or audience there was any sophistication in that overlap. I think you will hear throughout the conversation today that the focus while we duplicate content and have rules that talk about content when it turns violent we have the greatest success protecting the users and the platform when we look at the behavior and information that we see so we talk about things like automated malicious accounts because what we have seen in this investigation is these malicious actors need ears and eyes. They need to be able to reach an audience into the way they get the audience about the able get that audience without vehicle to growing organically is to use automated activity on the platform. And that is where we are focused and have gotten a lot better. To challenge the account for 4 million accounts every week to determine if they are real and foubefore and 50 suspicious logs every day so we are making a concerted effort to sto stop ths type of activity on the platform to give an amplification and a voice to abuse the system. Being respectful to the other members i would ask you to be brief on your responses, please. Yes, we do have an obligation to prevent foreign interference and we take that obligation seriously there are more details on the written testimony as to how we are attempting to discharge that. With regards to the algorithm question the goal is to provide the most relevant information is primarily driven by friends and family. We want you to come to facebook and see information that is important to you. Typically that is the information important to your friends and family. In the political season often times what is important to the friends and family are challenging provocative issues and so our responsibility is when you see that content is authentic. The ads that we had disclosed in any other advertiser thats been offered on the site on the campaign. Its the north star of our work on google and that goes with interference in the electoral process in the United States and around the world. I would be happy to detail the steps we have taken to safeguard users from that kind of abuse and with regards to the targeting of ads, its about four to 700 a generally not micro targeted by the week would be happy to answer any further questions for the committee. Thank you mr. Chairman and all of you for being here. The responsibility of striking a balance between removing false information and preserving freedom of speech. Can you give us some brief details how your companys plan to target and procee proceed soe while protecting the robust political discourse . Let me take back to answer the question. We are taking a number of different steps to focus on fake news and we are working to improve the algorithms to provide Additional Guidance and training to those that provide quick feedback and look at a wide variety of signals to improve the ranking and denotes the sites we feel are deceptive or misleading. We are making broader use of the fact check labels and working with parties when it comes to advertising we are taking the steps to disallow advertising on the sites that misrepresents the nature of the purpose and to add to the policies against the hate speech and violence and the like. I would group them into three buckets. Most is financially motivated and we are making efforts to disrupt those that we think will make a big dent. We are looking to stop the spread so when we have information that has been disputed, we limit and alert those that are attempting to share it and third we are engaged in a number of user education efforts to help particularly around the world to approach some of the content you see with a more discerning eye. Theres a lot on the platform to correct in one of the things is to protect the vote that we turned over and took up on the platform the number that we are counteracting is false and telling people not to believe that is between eight to ten times what we saw. There i is terrorism and exploitation we are trying to figure out how to use those to stop the amplification of false news and misinformation and we are making Great Strides but it is a definite balance. We also have work that weve done thats going to help educate the consumer about who is paying for an ad and what they are targeting it for bigger after especially around election nearing. We are also working with third parties and have a trust of experts and academics around the world who are helping us think through the things we are trying to employ to tackle these issues and how they will impact the free speech. We are working hard on this, but it is a challenge. Youve got significant Corporate Resources in this but i think a prime question certainly the committee has and the entire country has is what assurances can you give us that the foreign malicious activity in the 2,018th elections and beyond are going to be dedicated . I can assure you we are focused on it and we are improving. We see opportunities for improvement in three categories. We have to be better technically. We learned a lot from the 2,016th cycle and the political trolling behavior weve seen worldwide and weve incorporated that into the systems that are seeing results. The second area we have room to improve his Game Industry cooperation we think there is a good model for this in terms of how we have shared expertise and threat information in other areas of abuse on the platform and we are looking forward to standing back up in this area as well and we think a constructive dialogue with Law Enforcement where again we are sharing information with respect to specific actors and expertise on how they are upgrading will be mutually beneficial and put us in a stronger position as we head into next year. Since my time is expired if you could get those answers back to us on the committee, we could refer to. Thank you mr. Chairman. I would like to use my time to explore russias use of twitter, so i will direct many of my questions to you. In a few short words can you explain the difference between a dot and troll . Internally, it is an automated account, so its an account where a machine is largely responsible for the actions, setting it up, replying to things, fully automatic. We do see some competition. The troll farm is a new challenge for us. When we think of trolls, we think of a real human behind the account and often times coordinated with others or a few or many accounts. So a real human but not necessarily that we know who that individual is. Typically that is the behavior that we see. If i understand this correctly, the russians took advantage of this by creating false accounts and deploying many that were able to be thousands. Thats what we discovered. This is the key issue for me. It is essential that there is not a requirement a person disclose their identity on the platform. We are an anonymous platform. How russia used twitter is different how they used other platforms like facebook and youtube where there is the same anonymity. He needs a kremlin linked user in st. Petersburg, russia, ukraine could share content without anyone knowing who they were at the concert pretend to be an everyday user has no idea who they are. The board behind me shows over the 2,700 twitter users youve discovered so far that are connected to the kremlin Internet Research agency and looking at these names there would be no way to know that the seattle post was in fact generated by a russian entity. It would be on the platform but no, they wouldnt be able to just by looking at the username. Should political content created on the one hand buying out the rhythms or any other form of Artificial Intelligence should have been labeled as such, and if that political content is generated by a foreign person shouldnt be labeled as such . We are not only trying to label it, we try to remove it, so when we are seeing automated account engaged in the activity today in the replies and the liking of others, we are removing those from the platform is because of the information behind the scenes we can create them often times we are not just removing the one about the collective. We are challenging the 4 million accounts. Give me a percentage. Put that in context. I dont know whats twice as good beans. Theres 4 million accounts this year and 450,000 are actively blocking and taking those off the platform before they even speeten. Last point, with russia sought to have used to make a real userthereal users particule with influence share the propaganda to a wider audience. It helped legitimize and to spread the information im a big fan and user and i hope you remain committed to. How hard would it be to take down the post. Letting them know this is a russian produced propaganda ad so take that for what its wor worth. We see where people log and we are able twere able to stop they once we identify someone as a bad actor they stop their account creation because we are able to use the signals to maintain a database of the actor locations in the signals and to stop a creation so we get better every day and thats why the results are Getting Better all the time at stopping these things, but we are using the behaviors behind the scenes to stop them before they create another account so we are not playing that game. I appreciate what you said about blocking malicious activity into trying to figure out policing of using new terms that are becoming the new normal in this country but the problem i have a question i have for all of you is i dont know how successful you are being so far and to this day we see stories come out ocome out of that becon in short order i think as recently as a lot of the nfl scandal was perpetrated abroad to try to put ourselves against each other taking both sides and just throwing that out there, so it is as recent as that. I dont know if i have an opinion on this or not, that we talked on both sides of the aisle do we have a role in this body in assisting you to figure out for the fourgame entities, nofour then entities,not americe certainly i might see something oppositopposite to put somebodye other side of the aisle dont believe its true and you cant believe who is right or wrong because that might be a violation of my free speech but with regards to those trying to infiltrate and create Propaganda Division among our citizenry, does the United States congress have a role in assisting you and if we do what would that be in your opinion in alerting my constituents in okeechobee florida that this piece of news you are reading, not just the political add a news story on facebook isnt true and i know that because theres a label or a disclaimer or something that shows by the way what you are reading was produced in a foreign country. Do we have a role in that and if so, how can we make sure we are not violating peoples Constitutional Rights by getting involved in . The challenge you identified is an acute one. We dont want to put ourselves in the position of being the arbiter of truth. We dont think that is for any industry to bear and we do think it is inconsistent with the protection of personal expression that is so foundational to this country. We are taking a number of measures to ensure the authenticity and trust is present on the platform including labeling stories that have been disputed as false. Where we see the role for government in assisting in this effort is to ensure that we are all sharing information about the techniques and threat actors that we need to be alert to and monitoring on the platform and disrupting when they engage in this sort of activity that the trend and the Ranking Member service earlier. Thats where we feel like there is the opportunity to come together not just as an industry that as a country to work on the problem together. I would add any additional leave the government has to provide. Russia tried to use the platform to meddle in our elections and i think its risen to a level of a National Security issue and therefore while you are self policing your self, and thats great i do believe we have an obligation to the American People to do more than just that, my line of questioning is to facebook. I understand that there are paid political ads as well as what you call organic postings that are not paid for. An example would be one here from a Facebook Page called being patriotic, which urges those that follow it to go to a made up rally. I want to understand because my constituents, the people i talk to at my town Hall Meetings cant understand how you go about getting both your content and person who is your user. Comes to find out being patriotic is one of those forms that is russia and was paid for by rubles. Isnt that a red flag . How could that happen . How do you bet your conten ventd users . The youve identified two extremely important areas of investment for us, and opportunities for us to do better. So, just on the ad side, we are tightening the policies. All ads on facebook go through a combination of automated and manual review. We are tightening the tools to make sure that the ads that are on potentially socially divisive topics get a heightened review. I only have a short period of time so i want to know who are above batters is it content analysts and if so, who are these people, are they experts, and how dangerous are they . The reason i ask is if you look at the organic postings it also turns out to be a fake Facebook Page done by one of those Russian School forms and that is trying to incite racial animosity, so my point is with all due respect, i know that you all are good corporate citizens and continue to view your self as such, but its paramount to our National Security that we have more transparency and accountability on all of the platforms. I know im talking to facebook, but that i am probably talking o everyone. And i want to know what you see as your responsibility to make sure that you are getting the content. And we know you are walking a fine line because of free speech and that is the paramount foundation of our democracy, so are they a Diverse Group of people . Dot people that work on the review are around the globe, so we have a number of languages and regions. Like every aspect of the work force, we are committed to building a workforce as diverse as the community. The overall racial ethnicity with respect to the employees is 8 it with your relationship is 2. 3 and youre saying i should trust that the vetters will be a diverse workforce. I appreciate the feedback and we value the input from the meetings last week. It is what you should be confident of this we have the importance of diversity and are committed. I have nine seconds if what iowa to say, your efforts have to be more about finding malicious and deceptive activities that you have the responsibility overview have the responsibility to make sure we are not adding to the problem by not being as rigorous and aggressive as we can in terms of vetting of the content and in terms of making sure that we are being dynamic in doing that and i also want to say that it is ridiculous that a foreign entity can buy an ad that cant give a political contribution to be. A russian person cant give me a political contribution. That seems tthere seems to be ln that needs to be had here. Thats all im saying. As neutral Communications Vehicles for of the content is also adding the organizations that were paid to post these ads and that is where my question goes because you were not a neutral communication vehicle your dog and algorithm interactivity and insertion of an germander that used to access those. Also to influence what did you do when you received payments for these ads . Having a vote with respect to the main highway they said that is a wretched had a everybody space was against nato blindly placed on a billboard on a highway. Looking at those individual interest to make sure that they see targeted content. But once you got the pavements for the specific ads concerning twitter, what were the activities that twitter notice with respect to their attempts to influence . What did your company do . What date you do with respect to your members . For the rest of today approaching a News Organization a number of options to promote content to take a tweet of a news story that they promoted to that they want to drive to their old platform. They can target those ads based on geography seeing very general targeting for citizens that follow other media organizations and they have the targeting capabilities. They are coming to you as a customer and where that will go . And heres how to use the dashboard to understand the platform. And how we have a concern . Congressman and all of the ads we had disclosed to the committee that we are concerned with were from selfserving so that there was no Human Interaction but the ads that were served go through a manual review for those areas of improvement in terms do have that content died by fiber crow. But with that process is a selection the brokers that ochers so how did facebook take this content to determine who sees it . Those self serve as permits an advertiser to select targeting like a deranged or interest they were targeted to the u. S. Or states or by interests. Once those decisions were made bin facebook we look to track information to the users that have demonstrated by a the advertiser. Thank you chairman. Russianrussian made up groups like being patriotic and dont shoot make legitimate organizations we have established that. So after 200,000 followers it displays greeting officers and their loved ones to pit americans by personnel against americans concerned with africanamerican lives. The second to add by contrast promoted a page critical of what it describes as Police Brutality this fake page has a quarter of a million followers displayed the page over 320,000 times across Facebook Accounts for girl was a former Police Officer and member of congress i reviews these with other platforms with disappointment and anger and concern. And the abuse block. In the social media platforms. But with those 100 million americans they are not doing enough without foreign digital interference did those russian ads like those exploiting violence meet your criteria . All of them had no place on the platform because first of foremost read by the inauthentic actors and should not have been on our site or advertising on our site but beyond that many violated the policies in place at the time and should have been rejected through the customary content review and that has been identified for us as opportunities for improvement and investment to make sure we have enough people and those that did not violate the sideline guidelines we thought this is not what we want on facebook. We reviewed the policies and now we will look at those boeing for word. Going forward. But with black lives matter does that trigger any alarms to your knowledge . Not to my knowledge. How did you detect messages . Is it through an algorithm or internal controls . With fe combination of manual review so if we have a policy to apply that policy and then we train the system that individuals can make on the individual basis. Still looking at brandishing a weapon prohibited under the content pipeline and then using intelligence to make sure that ennead that is run to the system has a weapon said it is the surface for manual review or banned outright. As your businesses grew was the idea as the Wright Brothers never intended to use that as a weapon of mass destruction. In behalf of the problem with russia. And those that have written against the soviet union that have been attacked of social media in their lives were destroyed. But i want to bring up something where it has been brought to mind attention images of innocent people to be used to create a false persona like on the dating sites. But sometimes they use the persons name. So pretending to be someone else but that is not the reputation you want to. And then to bring me up to speed that was intended to be for good use turned into a tool for various behavior not always political. When we have a responsibility to redress for interference of the platforms read give that probably to prevent the platform from being a brigit abuse of any kind. Fyi have identified. So that is a concern of ours. And those that investigate with child safety and looking at behavior of the platform that is consistent to warrant investigation. Ebony thing it is leading to real world harbor crow. To make sure peoples physical safety is secure and also as i alluded to earlier we have a good track record but no one in this industry wants to see the platform used to put anybody in danger were sharing information to work with lawenforcement of how we think about foreign interference. Is this a twoway street that is getting more robust . How does that work. And that it is countering violent extremism. And the government has done the effective job to give us the right signals. So with those nations stage actors and that threat sharing information. And Going Forward and then to establish the same sort of dialogue. Is somebody creates a Facebook Page out of a shabby look of the Facebook Page and it says they live in montana but it is from asia do have ways to catch that automatically . Most of the accounts they are caught automatically. Millions of them. In genuinely financially motivated. And for those that effectively help them. To be maintained and curated. But it was very useful for us. But we do believe we need to up the game. Looking at that content. But the fake story takes the false claims of voter fraud to spread thousands of times with legitimate accounts. So are we still in the situation . But on twitter if you click on the advice the terrorist attack marked trending and says it is live it links to a story with the headline i warned about new york city for though he was too busy bashing trump. This is a realtime example of what we talk about to talk about to be weapon is. In then that some point. That is a bad user experience. And if that is self corrected that is the article the last time i checked. Usa today. A could you give me a gas . We can followup. And with that information that they have directed to clicking on a the you want to see verify accounts given to modulate Going Forward. You have a responsibility to flag something. We are in the zero bin public platform. And those that point these things out. I have responsibility. With this platform of Free Expression if you know, something is illegal at what point you just have to say to the public so a good example is the streets we turned over to this community on disputing those claims and twitter actively traded to notify the users this is fake information and to appoint people to the tools. Is that because it was illegal activity . Do you have an equal responsibility . That is illegal Voter Suppression of the rebalance what is real and face and fake and people having seen that . You have a policy of you know, something is out there is not true to say so . We have a policy on the platform that takes a lot of fat content it takes from those malicious accounts and to act as quickly as we can. I understand it but the fact is and is wildly obvious. You must feel like you have some responsibility. We can with the right balance. I will move very quickly. This makes my head explode. To go through something very quickly trying to put some of numbers the you can measure to that. On a scale of 13 ted how confident are you on this scale that you understand your platform and how pervasive that has been by foreign agents . There may be more but we will keep looking. That we are continuing to investigate among those companies. With that importance were at number 10. I hope youre right for credit know if i share your view on this committee so what kind of resources have we given that we broke live from happening in the future . If they are summer interns . What kind of resources . I worry about that next election. In with that automated accounting used in that makes it a First Priority of twitter with those designers their product teams to drop everything to solve the problem. We have meaningful improvement like behavior and a team that is called information quality dedicated solely. You have dozens of people . We have hundreds. Significant resources . Today approximately 10,000 people work on safety and security. By the end more than doubling to mcfadyen is the broader question. To show that Artificial Intelligence. Im glad i am not sitting in your c. Did we recognize fake news is in the eye of the beholder. There is some spectrum of opinion and said for example, that he ignored it because hes too busy criticizing trump. And then it is a matter of opinion and that is fake news. So how in the world do you intend without womanizing this of the political realm . There is the enormous number of opinion and if your view is political then it is its monitoring fake news. But the best example is fact checking. And i have 24 seconds you cannot answer that so i will express my fear so. You saw the play of the concerns. I yield back. Can each if you are sure the American People you can search the of platforms to every russian effort to. We are continuing to look get this. This saves is true in connection. And to generator cells. So those that have been disclosed. One was through wikileaks won was invoking donald trump in the debate so have you run the analysis. And did duplicative for. In those if you have that analysis. The answer is im not sure. With every ad that you disclose. In they did use those cutouts there were far more ads out there with those 20 million views that occurred . We did try to look across those identified errors. To be exhaustive as we could if they were promoting the same. Do believe those social media platforms have a duty Going Forward to report to the fbi. Were working with the fbi constantly. To believe that exist now . Yes. Than to receive that information. Did any of your companys return ad revenue . Did they make money on this . In some cases that would show ads there that content. Because it is featured on cable stations or satellites or hotels. So russia iran hot a campaign to undermine our ability to choose and they made money . Of cable and satellite. But to be part of an ad revenue. Google gets a small percentage the rest goes to the publisher. Is not generating any revenue from facebook will save approximately 100,000 without contributing to that Digital Democracy project. Though we did not pay and we are donating the revco will negative revenue be received to research. Five minutes. Thank you mr. Chairman. Lets start with you. I want to switch gears a little bit. Multiple news outlets having the desire to hire upwards of a thousand personnel who would have topsecret security clearances to handle Sensitive Information alongside the wake of the interference in the last election cycle. Im concerned because we have more of 17 agencies and federal government right now gathering and analyzing information and shes already worked with Companies Like yours and others here today. As a Committee Number one, we exercise oversight over the agencies to ensure they are doing their job and number two that they are doing it legally. So the reach and impact and the depth and breadth of platform has come a averag average userse somewhere in the 50 hour work week range. Why do you think facebook has the need for a thousand individuals with security clearances when we already have intelligence agencies doing that work at the federal level. Can you answer that . We are not hiring a thousand people with security clearances but we require people for two reasons. One, there is expertise that often comes with a security clearance that helps us understand threats like we are talking about today. Second and more concrete, there are more security related Law Enforcement process issues that we have to navigate and we need personnel with security clearances to allow us to engage in dialogue with the authoriti authorities. How many would you estimate you would be bringinhe would beh security clearances i dont have the number offhand. It would be the Single Digits in the teens. I will take your word for it. What measures would you take to ensure they can trust that you being the social media platform can do what you described and colleagues are on the Intelligence Committee and others who oversee that work can trust what you say and what you described. Im sorry, congressman, can you repeat the question . Have individuals in the 1,000 range as they read in the report that you are acting in sort of interacting with our visiting Intelligence Community. What steps are you taking and what does that introduction look like and how can we be certain that its being done and we are able to exercise the necessary. Thank you for the question. The primary function we are describing involves the Law Enforcement process and Statutory Authority to put safeguards in place for the potential subjects for example i would think that through the oversight of the Intelligence Community and their exercise of those authorities would come with an understanding of how the engage with companies and the companies themselves are responding to the process. I would like to give to mr. Walker if he would weigh in on that issue i dont know if you have plans hiring additional personnel with clearances to the same that we discuss both your thoughts on that and that role Going Forward . To facilitate this kind of exchange for the contracting purposes, we think that is quite valuable in terms of getting that leads to allow us to expand the investigation as appropriate. We do have a good working relationship on these issues. I dont know how many have security clearances but we are also sharing information back and forth. You can probably imagine or anticipate that its public you have individuals in your platforms working for you that have security clearances and you might then be perceived as the Intelligence Agency . I understand the concern and i can assure you, congressman from any information we provide to the Intelligence Community is pursuant to the process that we examine closely. Thank you gentlemen for your testimony today. I think all of you would agree this activity is a great threat to american democracy in our democratic process. The largest Technology Companies you have the responsibility to pool the resources and expertise like the Intelligence Community did in 2016 to produce assessments to initiate a joint investigation to uncover the full extent of the covert activity on your platforms. Each company will need to commit to an agreement across the companies and with our Law Enforcement intelligence agencies. We can push the intelligence and Law Enforcement to share their purview as well. Like with counterterrorism efforts a twoway street will be vital so that companies can benefit from the leads to inform their forensic examinations and future defensive efforts and for the companies to alert the community and Law Enforcement to statesponsored interference records so the agencies can develop a robust comprehensive understanding of the foreign intervention. Will you your company is commitd to breaking down the barriers to cooperation devoting the funding and personnel to the joint investigative initiative and produce a public report . Yes sir. Yes. Certainly, congressman. We are investing heavily in working with one another and think the public report will be the product of this committees important work. I want to echo that with the companies here as well. We welcome additional leads from the government. Thank you, gentlemen. Are you also intending to turn over any kind of direct messaging that when the among the different accounts that were subject to this activity . In addition to being able to buy ads, they can send messages to other folks or each other are you willing to turn over those messages . The private communication, so we take the privacy right and responsibility very seriously. So, with the right Legal Process we will work with Law Enforcement or others to provide whatever is necessary for the investigation. Do you see that as a legal issue in the United States, certainly you are not making the argument that a fake created account has some protection of privacy. We are providing and using this rule acrosstheboard to turn over information. Some may end up being fake and others real so we take a principled approach and under the privacy law. Around the world making sure we are responding to the right process to turn over that information. We believe we have responded to all of the requests and committed to ful full cooperatih the committee. The question is implicated separate and perhaps issues we can take a look at and do what we can. Im sure many of us would like to see that and it could be vital in understandin understans carried out. I join in that answer to create a social network accounts themselves. Been on facebook, let me ask you do you know what whether any were imported into facebook to do for targeted advertisin the m these accounts . Primarily as i mentioned earlier rudimentary it didnt involve audience building in the way that Many Political campaigns did you check if there is any importation of data targeting . Voter registration rolls across the United States but its possible somebody stole information. With the ads we provided to the county we provided al commif the targeting information and we didnt see anything like that in that information. Thank you mr. Chairman. This conversation we ar conversg today is october. We should have this conversation a year ago. My question will focus on the vetting process and timeline. But i want to start out and ask for each of the platforms starting with twitter, how many accounts are bought by the trolls but specifically what youre referring to today but generally how many millions of accounts . We do regular audits and test for that and determine less than 5 for years have been false or spam accounts how many millions of users is that . 5 of about 330 million. How many of your accounts, your Facebook Pages are inauthentic Facebook Pages . W we measured this question by accounts and disclose with our Financial Statements each quarter but couldnt assessment to provide an updated assessment in a day or so. It is a small percentage in the neighborhood of 2 . And that would be how many million accounts . We have over 2 billion users, so a loss. Mr. Walker, how many inauthentic accounts . I know that there were too referenced or handed over to the committee but how many inauthentic accounts . They had to do with advertising, so we have a continuing issue to detect and detour fraudulent advertising and recognize we are not a social network so our profile is different with this respect. Next question is the vetting process. You talked about the ad content rate due process. The first person to sign up for facebook on this committee when i was in college, and i know when you open up a facebook account it is fairly easy and its also easy to run ads. Its the automatic response to put up the ad after the fact . Walk me through the review, how many eyes are on that and what responsibility do the ad content reviewers have . The ad will be reviewed before it is done and based on its content, perhaps based on its targeting it will either go fully through the automated review. So i will give you an example, nudity is something that is relatively easy and prohibited and easy for the systems to identify and prevent it from running. There are other policies that are more nuanced, so the difference between an ad that might have it within and that might have a wedding being brandish and that is a difference in the policies, so that one would undergo manual review but in either case it occurs prior to the ad running. The decision to not allow the ad to run with it take the taket down after the fact how quickly is that decision made . That is probably a different answer before it runs an afterthefact. If we miss something on the front and often times the users will report it as violating into the drops it and again the reviewer can add any policy violations. They were turned over to this committee and this is a question for both on twitter and facebook what was the average amount of time from when the account was opened t when the decision was made to close down the account or shuts down the ad once was the average amount of time . The accounts ran from june, 2015 to august, 2017. So there was a length of time for the account in the entirety. I dont have an average. We would be happy to do the analysis and get back to you. Being able to identify and download those important going into 2018. Todays testimony is fully revealed how theyve developed and implemented the Covert Campaign to influence americans and distorts the public debate and by exploiting vulnerabilities on the social media platforms we use every single day. This is no small feat in itself without a fact. Weve seen the links to which the operatives would go to create an ecosystem of fakes perce on us. Crispy sefakes perce on us aftee election. This is no small feat. And it is not without effect. The examples my colleagues presented to illustrate how the russians skillfully exacerbated some deep divisions that frankly harm our country. They pitted american against americans and pushed extreme views including on race and immigration of religion and they did this by pounding away at again and again and again. These challenged the diversion ochallenge the diversion ofamers all equally with respect no matter their race, origin or creed and so i ask you raise your right hand if you believe that all of this activity was without the fact. Me too, it was with the fact. So, even as we continue to unravel and understand the full extent of the russian governments covert misuse of the platforms, we do not have the luxury to focus only on the past. The Intelligence Community assessment reveals moscow will apply Lessons Learned from all of its campaigns aimed at the u. S. President ial elections future influence in the u. S. And worldwide including against u. S. Allies in the process. In fact, it identifies the think tanks and ngos. In short, russian operatives never left us. They are still in the house. I would like to leave you with three exhibits posted after the election by the fake russian page stop all innovators which hundreds of thousands of followers. These were shared hundreds of thousands of times collectively all with a single purpose for deeply bigoted antimuslim views into the american bloodstream. Just as the debate raged about the ban on immigrants and muslim majority countries. On december 19, a ei posted this image and argued that all should be banned in every state across america and we must not sacrifice National Security to satisfy the demands of the minorities over 20,000 facebook users engaged with it in one way or another. January 18 just days before the inauguration, this image was posted with the text it should be obvious to every sane man sharia has no place in civilized society. More than 235,000 facebook users to share this post. Share this post. Finally on february 20 the same post on the handmade poster that generated almost 13,000 bikes. The initial propensity investigation that your companies have conducted of the exploitation of the platform is a necessary public service. Not only confirms the assessment, it shows a new light on how expensive and malicious the stove effort has been. But its also clear each of you have potentially only scratched the surface. Russian operatives worked across many Online Platforms come across pollinating and repurposing content and messages and videos in order to extend the reach to burrow more into the newsfeeds and psyches were to create and inflame their prejudices. As mr. Castro requested earlier, i would implore you to begin working jointly in discovering the full depth of how the russians weaponize your platforms. We need a total airing of everything that happened and it needs to be comprehensive and thorough and it can only be done if your companies worked together and commit to working together because frankly the stakes are high. The very health of our democracy is what is at risk here that if you do this come if you commit to working together it will be no small feat and it will be with a fact. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you all for being here. I want to pick up on a comment about the gentle and from washington to talk about great Lessons Learned. I had the honor of serving nine and a half years and part of that time i chased by russian Intelligence Officers across the world. Witthe weapons you all took from your able to use some of those Lessons Learned in france and germany. I learned new countermove. Look for some of the countermoves after you took down some of these accounts and did we see a change in protected . Some of the moves we made in response to what we learned about 2016 to focus the Automated Systems on political trolling behaviors so we talked earlier about the total number of fake accounts for the example above vast majority of those accounts or financially motivated and involved in spam and local list regions of the world. Today it is much more curated it is carefully maintained. We had to use much more subtle signals. Things like the currency used to provide and run a particular ad or evidence of multiple accounts. We believe that we are having an effect. It is too soon to tell what then our adversaries will do in response. I am quite confident they will do something. We view those as opportunities for improvements in the system and saw very positive accounts but like you said they are Getting Better so we are constantly having to look at these things. Are you getting the kind of data that would be helpful when you found out the Internet Research agency was that something provided by the u. S. Government or somethin was somed to learn on your own in order to pursue your efforts . They were from News Organizations had been a thirdparty company that we us used. Commercial companies. Would you like more help from the u. S. Government cracks to be let the record reflect the gentlemen are shaking their heads as well. Can you see these exhibits . I can see the top of them, yes. One of them is the fake account the titles say it loud black and proud. The south will rise again. I know youre not an expert in the ads but did you think people liked both of those . I think they were directed at different audiences. And theres over 137,000 light sandpaper for 388,000. What did the russians use . What was their followup and is this how they reached 126 Million People by serving the posts after building the audience on each one of these locations . That appears to be the strategy. They set up pages that were intended to appeal to different segments of the populace. They ran ads to drive the subscribers this activity is going to go down in history as the greatest campaign not because of who but because it drove a wedge and like the press didnt like your congress and like some of our Great American companies this is an attack and we all have to Work Together and i think you said that we cant do this alone because there are folks up here and thank you for showing what the russians are trying to do when it comes to this information in the United States of america. As i listened to use today, i am reminded that america, we have a problem. We basically have the greatest defeat the brightest mind here and russia was able to weaponize the platform to divide us and ad discredit democracy. I was impressed by one thing he said it is she shuts down rt. Russia today on your platform has 2. 2 million subscribers. Fox news on your platform has 740,000 subscribers. Cnn has 2. 3 million. The Intelligence Community assessment that was made public in january spoke about rt for the russian Government Agency to influence politics and fuels ful discontent in the United States. So my question to you is why have you not shuts down rt on youtube . We have spoken about this previously and we recognize there are many concerns about the perspective. At the same time, this is an issue that goes beyond the internet. We have the compliance of the policies and have not found violations of the hate speech and the like. It is a propaganda machine. The community all 17 agencies says it is an arm of one of our adversaries. I would like for you to take that back to your executives and we think continuing to have it on the platform. We agree that its important for all the sources of information and we are working on ways to provide us with the government sources of information including al jazee jazeera. Would you consider putting on that site that the Intelligence Community in the United States believes that it is an arm of the adversary and russia so people know what they are viewing . You said he tried to tak we tris down as quickly as we can. The kremlin linked tennessee gop, that twitter handle was very active as you know and it was in fact a kremlin creation. The party stated that he notified twitter that the account was a fraud in september of 2016 and again and march and august of 2017 and it wasnt taken down until august of 2017. So would you agree that you did not take that down as quickly as you could have . Absolutely come into the example alone caused us to be look at our policies and procedures, and i can say today that had we been reached out on that account today by the real tennessee gop, we would have taken it down much faster. Was sharing russian content . If they looked as if they were sharing the Campaign Content . We provided all relevant information to the committee because we do have access to a broader set of information than any Single Company will. Thank you for coming today. I had some specific questions but so at various points this afternoon to use words like authentic and accurate and misinformation and disinformation that least one of you said you are not an arbiter of the truth so i try to reconcile how you can have this information but not be an arbiter of the truth . We cannot start with you mr. Stretch if that is true then what is in this information . We think of as inaccurate spread with malicious intent by for an actor in that would not be permitted on our platform. We dont need to decide if that information is true or false we dont want foreign actors masquerading as something theyre not to speak on politically divisive issues in this country. Selfie actor is not authentic than the content is immaterial . Correct. Why would Data Analysis only be appropriate for foreign actors . Why not appropriate to there is also a discussion of voter and informations oppression i dont know how people benefit from false information. Why would that not be the second analysis period . Everybody that shows up to facebook is required to be their authentic self most is local to the country. I could be my authentic self what do you do with that . And what do they give intentionally false sentiments . We tried to provide a platform for authenticity. I assume youre all lawyers he would not have your job. So is it constitutionally protected to utter the intentionally false statement . But on facebook that it is in most cases protective however with facebook our job is not to decide if content is true or false that we do recognize false news is a challenge that we will disrupt those financial incentives which is where most of it comes from most of the fake news problem comes from a phony websites trying to drive traffic on every side on every issue and then they could limit distribution also trying to make sure that users to know when the story has been disputed by a neutral third party. Im smiling because of my last break we were wondering who those neutral Fact Checkers are in there really do appreciate your desire to want to have a neutral fact checker but do you know, who they are . And would be grateful especially with those Fact Checkers. And the authenticity is important to the accuracy of the content is less so. Those that intent to have false information. I get it you dont want to be arbiter of public opinion. But if my citizens benefit from me set telling them something that is false. I dont get a by amount of time. Just one more round. And agreed to release those facebook as its with the geographic targeting data. Do either of these either to companies have objection to releasing those that are identified coming out of russia as well . No. We have no objection. That is part of the education we like to see for our users why we are streaming todays hearing on twitter there are no objections director objections for the we have to look at the data. Such as one to make sure the a other touche companies are copacetic. Some private citizens those images could shuttle show up in we will just blurt out those faces. Ask this be made part of a record. Have a like to underscore my support for that concept as well. You are uniquely positioned to identify the inaction of the platforms for those two target one we are not in a position to do that. Could you combine forces and share with us a report for their russian social media interaction . We are sharing threat information all the time. Would you commit that sets out the length and breadth of your platforms . One of the things we are looking at but the goal is to publish if that body is set up to put that on the agenda as something to discuss. So we have information that is used touse set up with that effort. I appreciate that. Unless you want to set us within your word database and ask you do take that back and provide answers. That that which is broader than russia deal agreed the effect of the of rhythms with that unintended consequence because of the way that it works because of the way it goes by role to keep your eyes on the platform rather than show true information truth is not what rises to the top so what is the of social responsibility . And you feel the obligation of those that were influenced . And as the subject of russian sponsored advertising propaganda. And those that have been identified in the same way that credit agencies when that identity has been compromised in to be the subject of russian propaganda. Can provide a response to the answer. We ask them to take that for the record. Mr. Walker the end of your conversation you talk about 2018 with respect to allowing those searches so is that realtime . When is that tool available . Not waiting until these election is over. And then to be in the electoral process. Spee wreckage just want to give you an opportunity. There is a distinction of that irrelevant comprehensive information. So the heart and soul provide useful to provide those june users. But we do have paid difficulty when they lost again so it is difficult to know but when they do have information and we have for years about the attempted hack. In terms of us discourse with that is coming from it enables that network with that broad diversity of information we believe that is to serve information that does present to a range of views. Wooded you acknowledge social divisions . We recognize that concern we do recognize the concern now with division but to bring people together. In those to be further victim of it. We tried to provide notification and there is a hard question in bog on the web site. We are committed to working with a committee to publicize the contents. That is much more challenging. Talk about solutions that congress can better legislate to be a partner to make sure we have transparency hand accountability. So what is on television and radio to explicitly say but yet with the internet platforms they dont have to do that. So there is a bill on the senate sought that i fully support are you an agreement to having that type of disclosure . We are an agreement. But we are setting up that transparency centered to do just that. I know that there was no link back to russia is there not that obligation to notify the rally that issue before . And that that is a hoax with that advertisement in the ad is misleading. And with that issue broadly with that information on the web site last april working with the committee with all of this information released publicly to identify those that may have been exposed to that content. But you do know exactly. I am not asking about that multiplier you facts. And those people that like all those pages. But if much of that data it is old as the result and then to reduce this reliably. I say this retrospect but the senator is right up like the fact you are here and respect that to be forthcoming but respect us or like us we are the elected that lead the country and of the social media platforms should be here today it is that important. To focus on a couple of . Things. With that notion so there is the icon on the ad. Isnt that less likely somebody would do that . There are a variety of ways. On those landing pages there is different types of disclosures but the most obvious is the most effective. It comes with the tradeoff for political advertisers. When i take out the ad on tv what is the difference . Is there less on television . With internet with that notion of a transparency. The rule should be the same. So to find out how they implement that transparency. I dont care how dynamic the ad can be obviously that is why i paid for this sad perk add. But i will ask facebook do you understand of that lookalike audience to those tracking pixels and the thirdparty web sites . For those that we disclose to the committee . I am not aware of those techniques i would have to check to confirm. There is a lot of these still out there. So what are the odds . There is some likelihood. And in the light to share threatening information. But they are there now . The ads are on facebook . We are focusing significant effort that perfection will be difficult since that investigation that the problem is the unknown unknowns. Why did it take so long to find them . This is a long time after. Threat the course of the last several years cyberas benign as attacks it was only after the Intelligence Community can now with this report in this particular area. Is that why he did not look so extensively . So the efforts with the nation state actors are focused on traditional severs security threats. And to publish a white paper. If i ask each of you do you believe Russian Intelligence Services today are on your platform . There is a possibility be working to find them. This same mr. Same. Twitter decided not to run those ads on the platform is that push what we would call fake news . That is part of the assessment. What about stolen information from the dnc and the clintons . But i saw them reporting on that. So from those disclosures we have 1100 videos with that content on the tube youtube so that was returned there ad revenue sharing how much was returned as it related to ads with election interference . At 1100 ads those videos were connected with a campaign or deceptive ads. A minimal amount of advertising revenues. Do you understand the concern . So what theyre receiving that could be used to buy ads on facebook or twitter . And where they try to interfere. But there is a risk with proceeds of a of advertising. So for each of those, as a related to candidates trump the theme but the ads were pro trump and anticlinton . Generally. For those that ran prior to the lecture in election that is generally accurate. We had a very limited number worth. I also want 2. 0 to that propaganda from the russians and socialize 21st and at this point donald trump is about to be a Republican Party at the Rnc Convention and fitted it is and speaking as if he is running for president. But if this interference campaign has taught us anything is that the russians do not care they are not antidemocratic or pro republican but they are pro russian and they have to define the candidate who was also very much russian. So i hope that moves all of us to under state and so there the Intelligence Service that is the entire republican antirepublican. And with that i yield back. I have a simple question for each of you. Do you read knowledge and recognize the magnitude and nature of the efforts undertaken by the russians to interfere last year . Constitute the existential threat . And then to all of the platforms. That activity is very limited. If you take a look get the whole picture. We do not represent. Any before or after intellectual integrity. The first thing that those that follow should be corresponding to your acknowledgment that the democracy has been threatened and will be. Because they are still in the house. And use that as an opportunity to Work Together to disclose the nature of this with continuing recommendations to promote this in the future. But you need to hear the irony of this. You were all born here. So unless you want to be dancing to the autocrat of vladimir putin. I do hope your actions match what you have knowledge is the seriousness of this rut. So much to have a Critical Role Critical Role to safeguard in the hope you will. So just for the record tell us when he became aware of the platforms were exploited by the russians so torrid the years he had seen other attacks whether we focus on those services restart to do it deeper dive after the Intelligence Community report. So we have seen nation state actors that we believe are connected to russia operating on the platform for some time. So in the late summer we identified an account that appeared to to be involved with the account and subsequently communicated that to Law Enforcement. Following that we took a broader review of disinformation. We have been fighting these types of issues the i. R. A. Activity to a large scale action and coming at of the election using a the platform until the Intelligence Committee report am looking forward Going Forward. The Intelligence Community should have been in contact with the first became aware. So publicly when day credit facebook to make a significant contribution with hundreds of thousands of variations maker targeted with the demographics. To have a number of facebook employees and the Trump Campaign how many did you have . There was the team and the number very over the course of the campaign with a handful led by. I would add this is consistent to offer any large advertisers specially political campaign. With any large advertisers favor space of the be on site but that is the case of the rise as well. Do they choose which capabilities to maximize those ads . And then to revise the client on the tools that our available. And those are primarily on facebook. And we would suffer a face whenever they needed to meet their objectives. So how could we be assured you are using the power knowing that you understand your algorithms . If you encourage Voter Participation . That is an excellent question we take pride in the how to increase Voter Registration and voter turnout. So the u. S. Election lead but efforts on Voter Registration with 2 million registered across United States for the president ial election. With those techniques with that election day encouragement to vote. That is exactly what facebook is hired to do those ads. But you would provide those to one candidate versus another . And for those to be in sure that we can comply with the guidance in the area. Thanks for coming today we appreciate your testimony then of them are easy. And then we have to work to establish so then you can ferret out those bad actors those other issues we will have a dialogue to resolve them to provide appropriate oversight. We need you to be successful and technology is one of the looms economic advantages that we enjoy and in california we are proud so i hope youll take your questions and then i yield back. I take it as my own personal responsibility and what it influences and i would hope that with their own personal the responsibility but that being said in a thing or everything you can do to help me with that will not to be misled by those who attempt to do that is appreciated. But then to move forward on this issue. So they will learn in then to fix those boeing for word. Mrs. Not day one and a done fix the we all have a role to make that happen. So with that defense of the voter and not to be misled or lied to to make sure that when voters show with a pulled they are supposed to be there. Also if they dont want anyone from the public process. You have a lot of work to do and i appreciate the resources and the shareholders to put forward to make this better and better so we are adjourned. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] some read hamilton and his son landed negative event romantic. But then his playing and with that charisma and that with different situations in this fascinating. But as a subtle character from George Washington had a similar