Youre watching cspan2. Your unftered view of government. Created by americans Cable Television companies emma is a public service, and brought to you today by your television provider. Acebook market zuckerberg and twitter Ceo Jack Dorsey testified about the president ial election helped erica manng misinformation online. From this in a jewish inhe judiciary committee. This is four hours. Good morning everybody. I think weave senator blumenthal remotely, is that correct. And is it okay if we moveha forward. Absolutely and thank you very much. I will make a brief Opening Statement and this is about censorshipuppression in the 2020 election. Sort of a deep dive when i facebook. Witter and about the platforms and the decisions they make and how they make them. Can we do better. Do we need to do better. So the first thing that i want to talk about here is health risket associated with social media. A 2018 Research Center survey of nearly 75013 17 yearolds found that 45 percent online almost consttly and 97 percent use social media a form such as youtube, facebook andn instagram or snapchat. So while were having the searing, the product of these two companies offer, people like they use. So the bottom line is, they probably bn more successfuln their wildest dreams. In her having to make decisions that offend people. And on the left and the right. Over trying to do is look a section 230, and is even needs to b modified or changed. Because section 230 basically allows social media platforms like twitter and facebk to pass on information without legal liability. The newspaper does sometng, you dont like, and you think of slender d end of a way, you consume them. This progr does something that you thank you so out of line, even as aolitician with a high bar, you can see them. These companies have Liability Protection when it comes to the content that theyca are these Co Protection when it users engage in. You can save the person who gave the tweet free to be cannot sue twitter the gate the person access t the world. In terms of what the said. Ive got to find a way to make sure twitter andacebook make a decision about what is reliable and what is not, but to keep up with and what today down. And that there is transparency in the syste and i think section 230 haso be changed because we cannot get there from here without change. But in 2019, study of more than 6500, 12 to 15 yearolds, found that those who spent more than three hours a day using social media, might be at high risk for mental healt problems. In another study, 12000, 12 to 13 yearold use social media mo than three times a day, dedicatedorce little bit, predicted for Mental Health in teens. Highlevel social media use and depression and anxiety and the average millennial checks or phones 157 times daily. I dont know where we fall, social media isesigned to sustain users attention with a mix of good user interface design and psychology creating an addictive next for users. Its called the slot machine effe. The technique which utilizes a poll to refresh and scrolling mechanisms on newsfeedsimilar to a slot machine rated the lighta button, the feature the provides social elevation thugh positive feedback loop, a measuring and comparing the number like the users content obtains. And social intertions, imploring game applicationf engaging users and keep tm coming back. Pray simple, strakes is the one causing the most concern. In using elongating lives to display the number of days since the users havemo interacted wit. They try to keep us engaged. The mowing gate, the me advertising benefit that the company is that a Good Business practice. Maybe so, does it create a health hard. Over time, something to look at. Now the other aspect of this debate, is are these companies the newspapers of the tv stations, do they have the power of media organizations that have rules and regulations and Current Media platforms do not. There are rules about that one television station can do. There are res voided newspaper can do. What i want to try to find out is if youre not a newspaper, or twitter or facebook, then why do u have etorial control over the near post. They decided maybe for a good reason i dont know, that the near post articles about hundred biden, needed to be flagged. Andxcluded from distribution made hardtofind. That to me seems like the ultimate editor. The editorial decision the New York Post to run thetory was overridden by twitter, and facebook in different fashions. Prevent this dissemination. Now thats n making an editorial decision. I dont know what would be. It is onehing when we do it in a private lives. Nikki haley made a post about her ncerns about male in balloting. It was flagged as something they claimed ds not been legitimid. I read it to you. Next question to ask is why is it a crime to have things start out by the holy ghost. Why should anybody who writes about this while insulting the prophet, thats a lot of. Thats ayatollah. Hes appointing raising doubts about the holocaust, should be a crime. And he is openly oered the destruction of israel, his regime has inim his suite was basically allowed tolourish. It is with nikki haley says. Despite with the media tells us, Election Fraud does happen. The policies like balloting harvesting, and male in the balance to see if we dont request them, makes it easier rated pennies to stop. This cla about Election Fraud is disputed. Lesser opinion. She believes like i do, the male in balloting is ripe forraud if you cant verify the signature. And if you do send mail ballots out to the world that are not requested, hey dont he verification system that can be trusted, you have in fact that the harvesting imbalance for nefarious purposes. The question for us as a country, at wha point does the decisions by these organizations across a line. And at what point they have to assume responsibility in section 230. Enter people about to testify. I consider your product to have change the world, mostly for the good. Were able to interact among ourselves. Rebel to talk to each other and share life experiences. We are able to in real time communicate to our neighbors and her friends those who oppose us what we thank for technology that just makes it instantaneous and can literally like have the world. Section 230 was developed to allow these technologies to flourish. Early on, if you could sue twitter or facebook for content on facebook posting or a tweet, they were liable by what somebody else said or what they felt or did, the company probably wouldve never been in existence. The companies are trying to help us deal with child pornography. Mr. That to be able to maintain Liability Protections when it comes to exploitation of media size, social media sites, sexual predators produce any passed bill that you can only maintain that Liability Protection if in fact, you use best Business Practices. Thats why think that we need to be going. My hope is that we change section 232 incentivize social media platforms to come up with standards that are transparent and opaque. That will allow us to make judgments about their judgments. The Fact Checkers, be known and that thehe Community Standards process them. What are their biases. And give some direction to these companies because they have almost an impossible task. There literally trying to engage in telling us what is reliable and what is not based on cable news commentary or tweets from politicians or average citizens. Nobody in a free society is ever had the responsibility before it and the question is, how do you control the responsibility. I dont want the government to take over the job of telling america was tweets are legitimate and what are not. I do want the government deciding with contents to go. And put down. They were all in that category. But when you have companies that have the power of governments, a far more power than traditional media,a, the outlets, something has to give. Im hoping in his hearing today, the invite of a signed agreement. The section 230 needs to be changed in the my bias would be to allow the industry itself to develop best Business Practices and to protect the site against terrorism and Child Exploitation and other concerns. That we look at the Business Practices that these companies do a health prism some of the practices need to be modified because it can become addictive. I thought tobacco was a good thing for a long time to the point that we sent to our soldiers in combat. The more we realized about the nature of tobacco, the more we changed her mind about telling the public about the product. So whether or not we do that with social media platforms, they can be addictive if used too often, i dont know if we need to go there but i do know that section 230 it if it existed today, has got to give. Theres republican and democratic concerns about the power that is being used by social Media Outlets to tell us what we can see we cannot. What is true and what is not. To the extent the section 230 in my view hasas to be rewritten. So thats the purpose of this hearing. This find a way forward and bring about change. When it comes to social media platforms and section 230, change willh come. And with that, senator blumenthal. Hank you very much. Mr. Chairman and thank you for having the. I look fward to cooperating with you knowing this hearing but also now coming because youre absolutelyn right, chaid must ce. To the social media andhe fact is that we need today, and unprecedented and precarious moment in American History. And it takes t very foundations of our democracy usina powerful megaphone, social media. The psident hasem uses megaphone spread vicious information and attempt to barter the will of voters. Everyday he posts new threats in nspiracy theories about male in ballots and voting machines, lies theyra contradict his own Election Security official and his lawyers. Uses thisti microphone potentially to block a peaceful transition of power. Now mr. Zuckerberg and mr. Darcy, you have terrifyin tools of persuasion and minute elation with power far exceeding the last and profited usually by strip mining data about our privateives and promoting hate speech and Voter Suppression. Evident mets civic and moral responsibility to ensure these instrunts of influence do not irrerably harm our count. Recognize the steps literally baby steps, and been taken so far, the desuctive and misinformation, is sti on both your platform and anothers. In fact google has been given a task from todays hearing. Is been rewarded on this committee for its information do you been lesson you have done to livep to its responsibility. There is no action youve taken in fact, are simply to check the truth of what appears on platform. Often it is Voter Suppression and incendiary malicious and misinformation and is trying to slow this insidious spread. At is not csorship. That is moral and civic responsibility. Now i believe and hope chairma believes the series of hearings on big th is long overdue on trust issues and private concerns and section 230. I breakup of the tech giants because they misuse the bness and power. Breaking off for example, instagm rigorous privacy protections because consumers should have control over their own data. Entity section 230 reform. Meaningful reform. Including even possible repeal in large part because their immunity and victims of they deserve their day in court. This hearings not the serious that we need. It may become aolitical sideshow, public tethering. [inaudible]. Cant seem to want to ignore the foreign disInformation Campaigns. Intend to interfere in our democracy and calls for quarter of fbi director ray and dr. Anthony fauci. What wer have seen fighting words. An eight speech. But certaly, deserves no Free Expression protection. E fact is that the purpose of todays hearing seems as much to slowly f or browbeat you, so to take even more responsible acts by the section 230. Censorship is really misnome friends hearing. What you have done i to label and to fact check and to avoid it amplifying misinformation. And to in effect, impose those labels to alert people had what theyre consuming may misinform them. In fiscal t down answer biden in mhigan and the aclu colorado farms about voting in short. There was action that affecd both sides. Section 230 reform, for 16 years so i have fought for prayed for my time asor attorney general, what i took on the registered offenders, and the senat i have led the only successful revision so far to secti 230. To stop enabling traffickers. And chairman grandma night hav authored the only bill to reform section 230no actually moved out of the committee. We passes unanimously. Change will come. Ere is no question. Change is on the way. I intend to be aggressive with this reform. To the section 2. But i have n nor should we be on this committee interesteed in being 2 a member of the speech police. There arere t real harms here. In some ways, this hearing is a betrayal of those real harms in the real victims. Those harms have been caused by big tech because you have failed yo responsibility as have others in thissndustry. I want to see real reform that will enable these abuses to be reforms. Because your platform has embraced an weapon eyes child predators, silent white premacist and human traffickers. No her heart wrenching stories from victims. You [applause] rights protections for muslim americans. Organized by the whites, by privat online groups you have said that consumers in competitions making that kind of antitrust actions very important. The American Public deserves and demands rea reform and accountability. National Consumer Privacy antitrust principles that curb sectiony reformo the 230 and stop shuttg the courthouse doors to the victims. I look forward to an opportunity for real change and i think you can meethis moment by putting yourower and your money on the right se of history. Thank you m mr. Chairman. Thank you a lot packed in there. Senatorc blumenthal has been great to work with. I will continue to work wit you if we control of the any. I would encourage mr. Grassley to have the hearings with mr. Blumenthal referenced this is an ongoing conversation to get it right to the extent that we can get it right. And mr. Darcy with twitter you with us. Thank you the floor is yours jack dorsey. Jack thank you for the opportunity to speak about your concerns around censorship and suppression of the specific news article. And generally what we saw on the 2020 u. S. Elections, competition. Ill call you today because of the new enforcement decision that we made guess that near post. Based on policy we created in 2018 to prevent twitter for brain gives spread materials. This resulted in us blockin people from sharing the near article publicly or privately. Any quick interpretation using no other evidence but the material in thewe article rentig to the hking. And according to our policy, we block them from being spread. Upon further consideration we admittedhe section was wrong prayed and corcted it within 24 hours. We inford the New York Post of our air and policy update and how to electur their account by deleting the original filing tweet. Which freed them to tweak the exact same content and use the article again. They chose not to. Instead of insisting that we reversed our enforcement action. We do not have a practice run retroactively overturning the enforcements. But this demonstrated that we needed one fighting so we created one wiggly despair and aropriate. And help us illustrate the rationale behind our actions. Demonstrates our ability to take feedback andender mistakes and a make changes in all transparently to the public. We acknowledge those concerns around our help we moderate the content and specifically of section 230. Three weeks ago we propose three solutions to address the concerns. And they all focus on services and moderate or remove content. Could be expanded to section 230, new legislative, or commitment to industrywide sf regulation those practices. Requiring moderation process and practices to be public, too, straightforward process to repeal the decisions and three, best efforts around algorithmic choices. For suggestion to address the concerns we all have Going Forward. Theyre all achievable in short order. Ce as critical as we consider these solutions, we optimized for new startups and independent developers. Inse doing so ensures a level Playing Field that increases the probability of competing ideas to help solve problems during court. We mustnt entrench the Largest Companies any further. And finally before i close, all share some reflections on what weor saw during the u. S. President ial election. We fused on addressing attempts t undermine civic integrity. Providing informative content and product changes to encourage your conversations. We have civic integrity policy to address misleading or disputed information that underlies competency in the election and causes rhetoric or voter intimidation or suppression oronfusion about how to vote. Or misrepresents affiliation or electionn outcomes. More than a year ago, the public ask us to offer additional content to help make potentially mislding information for parents. This exactly that, to find the labels to over 300,000 tweets from our octob 27th to november 11th. Which represented about 2. 2 percent of all u. S. Election related tweets. Massive cnge change our product works and rj help increase content and encourage more thoughtful consideraon before the suites are share while continuing to assess the product changes to inform our longterm roadmap. Thank you forin the te i look forward to a productive discussion focus on solutions. Thank you. Mr. Zuckerberg. Mark thankou chairman graham, raing member blumenthal and members of the committee. Last months hearing is about the re and platforms and suorting democracy, keeping people safe and upholding fundamental valuesy Free Expression. People of deeply held beliefs about issues can reach very fferent conclude conclusion about the rht balance. We try to do what is best for a community in the world brain acknowledging that very diffult tradeoffs credibly and some of these tradeoffs and decisions will be betr made to democratic process i look forward to discussing that today. But first, i want to update you are efforts during the eleion. And facebook, we took our responsibility to protect the integrity of the selection very seriously. 2016, he ban to face new kinds of threats and after years o reparations, we are ready to defend against them. The belt sophisticated systems to protect ainst election interference that combined into intelgence and human review and partnerships with thentelligence and Law Enforcement another type of forms. Taken on moret than 100 of networks about actors. Please establish an networking independent fact cheers, the covers more than 60 languages. We make political advertising more transparent on facebook than anywhere else. Including tv, radio and email. We introduce newolicies to combat Voter Suppression and misinformation. And so the pandemic created new challenges. How to handle misinformion about covid19 and voting by mail, how to prepare people for the reality result would take time. And how to handle its own prematurely declared victory or refuse to accept results. Since september we have dinner policies again to reflect the realitiesoting in 2020 make sure tt we were taking precautions given the circumstances. We work with the local Election Officials remove false claims public conditions that might lead to putir her suppression. We partner with the National Election polls to provide reliable information about results. We attached billing information on both sides from the candidatesn both sides additional content to try to legitimize and we locked on a political act sprinted to prevent misleading clas. We sengthen our enforcement against militias and conspiracy networks. To prevent them from using our platformsrganize civil unrest. And altogether, i believe this was a large selection integrity effort by any private company in recent times. This is what pple expect of us. Im glad that from what we have seen so far, are citizens performed well. Election interferenc remains an ongointhreat that will never be resolved. Integrity work is really only half the store. We have an president Civic Engagement program to encrage people to take part in our democracy. We ran the largest Voter Information Campaign in history. Hundred 40 Million People visited our voting information ceer. T inclung more than 3m on election day alone we estimate the week of more than 4. 5 million evil register to ve. Nd states hundred thousand full workers this was done in a transparent and noartisan way as part of our ongoing commitment to support the civic process. Wa but on top of these efforts by facebook, my wife priscilla and i personally donated 400 million toupport Election Officials around the country anp making sur the infrastructure they needed to enable everyone to vote safely during this pandemic. Last testimony, said the people who judges during this election. I believe the full stories not only how we handle bad behior the platform, but also how we encourage Civic Engagement more broadly. I am proud of the work week of the disorder democracy i look forward to discussing this. I also welcome the oppornity to discuss internet regulations. I believe we are well overdue t update the rules to the internet on content elections, privacy and data por ability. Y,ose are important questionsd here 40 including who should be responsibleor what people say online pretraining system door, i believe there needs to be a transparent proce of people feel they canorust. And so this will b difficult especially since our country is so divided. But i believe its only way to address these issues for the longterm. The challenges that we face deeper than anyonelatform. About how we want to balance basic social eities that we all care about lik Free Expression, Public Safety and privacy. This is whyiaui believe we will benefit from clear guidance froc elected officials and lookis forward to discussing this today. Thank you both targeted will have one round at and seven minutes. But as always, ill try to be a little bit liberal with time because its very important topic. So lets just get rightbe into t. Mr. Darcy, you can go first and then mr. Zuckerberg. Any persons are blumenthals opening treatment in mind, what did you get from it. Jack i think that you pointed out the work facing something impossible. Were required to help the public conversation but that same time ensuring that as any people as possible can participate. In order to do so we need to anmake policies that people feel safe and free to express themselves. To minimize threats of abuse and misleading information of organize campaigns to artificially simplifng for influence during our coersation. And that policy creation, that enforcement, is challenging. But also, it is more or less taken to the public this what i think that we have a gap. Transparency around our policies. We do not have transparency around how we operate content moderati, the rationale behind it, the reasoning. As weook forward, we have more and more of our decisions in our operations, moving to algorithms which have a difficult time explaining why theake decisions and bringing transparencies around those decisions. And that is why we belve that we should have more choic in how these algorithm are applied to our content. Whether we use them at all. Asf the week and turn them on or off. And clarity around the outcomes and how they afft us. Did you hear mr. Zuckerberg. Mark senator heard there are issues from content moderation. Involves other areas. And frankly, im optimistic from the statement that we may be able to move forward nobly update some of the rules for the internet to run theseen areas. Ive been encouraging hoping that we would dot this for a couple of years. And from yourn openg statement, sounds like the may be no enough Common Ground abuse that Real Progress can be made here. So for my point of view, the question for us is when it comes time to flag content as being reliable or not reliable, doing and what you believe the government should do that. Is that a solution. Where the government says regulatory thing that talks about what should be up and what should be down. I dontelieve so. I think it would be very challenging. The agreement that mr. Zuckerberg. Mark senator, for certain types of illegal content it may be appropriate for there to be clear rules around that. But i would are outside of the clear arms including things like Child Exploitation, in areas like that,of terrorism. I would agree with your sentiments that that is not something the government should be signing on a piece of content. So if we tak a government out of the picre listed noncriminal areas, shehe will leave it up to the industry to best Business Practices. Markin terms of how to moderate content. I think we need to have the lines where the problem that we are trying to solve. There are any solutions to solving those problems. But i think we also have to focus our efforts on what is weighted the greatest impact. We believe the greatest impact is would be found in how we deal with algorithms that we use those algorithms. Because they are responsible for joining us what we see or will we dont see. In the need to be any to be more choice in their use. You agree to that mr. Zuckerberg. Mark senator, i think that there is a role for regulation and process. Even if not to sign on a piece of content by the piece of content basis. One of the areas ive advocated for is relation around transparency rated that goes beyond just about what the policies are and what t process is. But ao goes towards the results. Theres an example of this eve quarter,r, they relea the Community Standard and enforcement report, basically a trespasser tha big spencer breaks down categories of poteially harmful content that we track ranging from terrorism child exfiltration content. And violenc to pornographys. Yes, if i may, i dt mean to interrupt but sce those Community Standards. How are said by the company. Mark we have a policy team that consults with a number of different stakeholders and outside groups make surehe marketing feedback frombroad group. Is at publicly known. Mark senator, i believe so. In our content policy has testified publicly multiple times. Okay. So when it comes to Fact Checking, and you give us a list of the people that you use to fact check. Mark senator,ct yes. We work with a number of independent organizations that are accredited by the poynter institute. And they include reuters, the associated press, jean to the United States, usa today, fact check. Org, science feedback. But the fact checker. Lead stories in the dispatch ars in the United States. I thankou so important for the public to know who says these Community Standards. How they are set and who does the Fact Checking in who you rely upon to do that. Tnk i would go a long way to people having a better understanding of the decisions you mak mr. Zuckerberg, do believe your product. [inaudible]. We certainly do not design the product and the way we design it to be a useful and meaninul. That is not my question bring my question is seems to be ample growing medical evidence that social media sites have an addictive nature to them. Do you agree with that. Mark center, i dont think research has been conclusive. That is an area that we do care about. We certainly do not want their product to be looking for a long people use them because theyre meaningful. And we take steps to make sure this is the case. Afor example, we do not give the team is running the newsfeed a call around how much time people spend on our products. Which goes counter to a lot of the means misinformationa out there run how we operate. My goal is to help people connect rated and find contact and interactions that will be meaningful to them on our service. Thats what we deliver the longterm. People find the service useful and then they will use a more. I dont think that company should be optimizing to just encourage ople to spend as much tight as possible on them. When i was about it. Have you seen the movie social dilemma. Mark center unfamiliar with it have you seen mr. Dorsey. Jack know i have not. I would encourage bothr. Of u to see it. Heres what i think were goi to do in the committee over time. My hope is to ask the question more dectly, the social media sitess addictive. Do they have a Public Health component that needs to be addressed. Forears without tobacco was a great thi without tobacco was not such a great thing. Medical science around these websites becoming very concerning to me. Jiggly hung children. That you can manipulate how any times you watch. You can set these in the media sites upo the people will constantly interac so the both of you, appreciate having before the committee. Got a long way to go. I dont think the government needs to regulate what we think or what we say. But weve got to upper came here a land with this line of questions. Do both of you support change to the reform a stion 230. The one i do. Jack yes. Thank you ritaenator blumenthal. Thank y mr. Chairman. The main bring this down to very practical terms. When the middle of another election. Selections to determine in fact, which Party Controls the United States senate. I am concerned that both of you companies are in fact exciting or retrenching. And that you are going to take action against dangerous disinformation. Exactly the same kind of Voter Suppression tactics that existed in the last election and that you are in fact reducing content notification. They are fighting words and hate speech in the last election put inflamed violence and the whole workers were in hiding and discourage people coming to the polls. We have to expect the same kinds of tactics in fact, they are already usable im going to ask mr. Chairman the these be entered into the record. Ifheres nobjection. Dinner aimed at litimizing the election in january. My question to you is we commit to the same kind of robust content modification playbook in this coming election including factu checkin labeling, reducing this rhetori and disinformation. And other steps even for politicians in the runoff elections. Mark senator, our policy is to have similarpproach in the upcoming grgia special election so we took during the tgeneral election. Mr. Dorsey. Jack yesterday. And we intend to learn all of our information and bring all that running forward. During theast election, there was disinformation on social media in Spanish Speaking areas. And to aon conspiracy and false claims of ections rigging. In my view, you need to do better. We commit to taking steps to improve contentg. Modification r spanishspeaking communities before the georgiaia runoff. Mark center, this is something we are already working on and worked on the head of the general election. We have multiple Fact Checkers to focus on his study of spanish language. We made surehat we translated our voteroc Information Center into spanish. Which we show to the top of facebook and is run that the users can see the products and spanish in the u. S. As a couple of the steps that we have taken were certainly committed to focusing on this. Jack guess well and partnership with the lead next groups. I would like to know and perhaps you can submit to me, within one week, what additional steps to undertake because the georgia runoff is undway. And as i have indicated, i have seen in backsliding it is deeply troubling that is enabledhe spread of this disformation. On the of cerin algorithms for example. That promote or amplify disinformation is very troubling. And i think i want to know within a a week, what additional sts you are taking to enhance e efforts t stop this kind of amplifation spread. Then he asked about facebook Community Standards. The language that take Serious Violence on november 5th, an Facebook Live videoalled for beheading of dr. Anthony fauci and director day, and for these remarks. You removed the video created mr. Zuckerberg good on thursday, you told the employees that they have not violated enough policy that he should be banned on facebook. My question to you as any times the seabed allow to talk aut murder of government offials before facebook takes down his account. Mark senator, as we say, the content in question did violated policies going to be down. Having the content violation does not automatically think that youre counting down t numbers right varies evening on the amount of type of information people are posting child expectation programs, the first time to do, we will together account. Further things, it is multiple. I would be happy to follow up afterwards. We try not to. [inaudible]. Sarahid not hear that. Up will you commit to taking down that account. Mark senator, no, that is not winter policy is suggest that we should do. In this case. According to the internal records that are on record now, by facebook has removed asked chuck and forgiven infraction for conservative patient was funded by donald trump jr, eric trump and gateway based on a fear of accusations of things. As facebook have had conservative pages that violated its policies based on concern of political bs and allegations it. T mark for senator, noas we are nt in t aspirated i think that thos reports mischaracterize the actions that we take. I dont kno any instance where we havee overturned a fact check specifically certainly not like that would be taken for the reasons that youre saying. We do sometimes is if it applies in judgment on whether the peat i offender policy use would render to harsh of a penalty. But that is different from overturning a specific act check. Some of the reasons she said. All very conceed that in fact, the facebook seems to have record of making accommodations andn giving to conservative pressure. The president has tried to use executive order in section 232 bully or browbeat and exert pressure on you and others in the iustry. Theyre in effect working in the winning. Let me ask you about anti trust issues. In 2013 facebook, they are the virtual private records network. Th claim didal to protect users privacy impactccess to private information about isser provided facebook wit unparalleled ability to track potential competion freedom want o know whether facebook use data whent decided to purchase whatsapp inet 2014. Mark senator, i believe t data was one of the sources that the team looked at. But i donthink it wouldve taken using them to understand what that was a great product. And i dont think i w derminative in my decision to pursue that. Will in fact, has an address rert says that the data be used to determine whether whatsapp was filling Facebook Messages in my time has almostxpired but let me just say finally, that any class action by the federal trade commission is long overdue. I believe that the sites, action is necessary including very likely breaking upacebook if there is a remedy, all options to be on the table. Including instagram and whsapp, and stric conditions on how facebook uses consumer data and cpetesst with rivals because the abuse of competition must stand. Mr. Chairman, i ask the civilize in front right script, his speech on facebook and youtube. And also a letter from coalition of chirens protection advocates on the internet act and child sexual abuse material additional platforms be entered into the record. Being hereoth for today. Without objection. Thank you mr. Chairman. Im glad to hear both of our Witnesses Today say that section 230, that they are open to reform read because i think it is fair to say the internet is outgrown section 230. Molly made some modifications when it comes to terrorism and when it comes to Child Exploitation, i think theres more to do. I think the question is going to be how this regulation is going to come to pass. I know there are some including on this committee who suggest that maybe we ought to create a private right of action so that individuals can sue over claims of violated rights on your platforms. I think it is one form of regulation is called the regulation by litigation is certainly not my first choice and is not optimal. And i dont think is something we ought to be embracing in the first instance but i do think it is critical that each of you and your counterparts work with us to try to come up with something that will address the concerns. In the basic concern i have is it is hard to know exactly how to classify your business model. We have a provision in the bill of rights protecting freedom of the press. But yet here, but we would never that the government regulates pthe press rights and is not right, essentially, we are allowing private companies which are now de facto, public forms to regulate that speech. No more comfortable delegating those decisions to you the name delegating to you my vote in the last or Upcoming Elections read and a famous solution prevent speech is not less speech, is more speech. And it seems to me like the practices that you are engaging in, to tag and remove and otherwise censor the speech in your platforms, violates that principle. I would like to know why that should not be a better approach by allowing more speech rather than censoring with this perceived as bad speech. And then, as i think ive discussed to you mr. Zuckerberg, they were all sort of struggling to come up with with the appropriate analogy is here to your business model. We know is a newspapers have become less profitable and any of them have gone out of business, theres been consolidation and news media. There is a proliferation of cable tv shows people able to get information through a variety of sources but there is no water cronkite of the big tv networks with a trusted anchor person who people have confidence in who they will she with them straight and so i know it is a very difficult thing to manage. But i would just encourage both of you not to wait for the lawsuits. We saw what happened to microsoft. The bill gates of that was one of his biggest mistakes was failing to engage with some of the antitrust concerns when it came to microsoft. And he learned that the hard way. I think theres a better way to the American People and that simply work on this together. Mr. Zuckerberg, i believe that facebook publishes on a quarterly basis a report of his actions in this area. Is that correct. Mark senator, that is correct. Can you describe that for us and what motivated you to take that transparency. Mark us yes. Center, i believe that in order for people to trust that were doing a good job, he had to be able to see the results. We have toe break down by contet on a kind of category by category bases across all the different categories of warm weather is tara scott took content, expectation or violence or pornography or intellectual property violations. How much of the myelin contest is on our platforms. And how effective our systems are removing it. And we hold ourselvesnt accountable towards is getting is either percent of this harmful content down and addressing it before real people after experience and reported to to us ourselves. In categories where we did quite well for example inviting his terrorist content is our ai system and counterterrorism teams are ablel, to remove 98 or 99 percent of that harmful content before it even has reported rated in other categories is more challenging and we are making more progress. But i think part of the Regulatory Framework here, would be good if every company had to issue a transparency report outlining what theyre saying on the platforms. Dn that story for probably more prominence and visibility than it ever would have gotten had you left it alone. We realize that and recognize the mistake we made both in terms of the intention of the policyin and the enforcement action of not allowing people to share it publicly or privately which is why we corrected it within 24 hours. Why isnt Justice Brandeis is formulation, why shouldnt thatn apply to the internet platforms like yours in other words, the cure for bad speech is more speech. Why wouldnt that principle apply on twitter . I think it does apply. All of our policies are focused on encouraging more speech. What we saw and what the market told us his people would not put up with abuse and harassment and misleading information that would cause harm and they would leave our service because of it soso our intention is to createa clear policy, clear enforcement and enable peopleo feel that theyr canxpress themselves on our service and trust it. So it was a business decision. Senator feinstein. Thank you very much mr. Chaian. Mr. Dorsey in the recent hearings before the Senate Commerce committee, you said, i think that twitter has a policy against misinformation related to civic integrity. President trump and his allies have put out hundreds of false claims about the 2020 election. President trumPresident Trump fd victory and alleged widespread voter fraud so heres the question does misinformation about the results of an election and voter fraud related to civic integrity, why or why not . Yes it does and when it hasnt been called yet or multiple sources have called it differently. I didnt understand did you say youve been able to we have labeled them to a different result called by multiple sources. And at what point was that done . Throughout the period octobe. So when it initially came in, how long was it before you, quote, updated it . We didnt updated. We put a label on it pointing to the broad conversation. Our goal is to connect people with more information around whats happening with the election and that occurred anywhere from five minutes to 30 minutes but as quickly as we can. Is 30 minutes the maximum time . I dont know. Wewe can get you that informati. Would you, i am interested in this. Does misinformation about the results of an election relate to civic integrity, why or why not . Yes it does and we also label those to indicate what is happening and we connect those two larger cversations. Providing more conxt and more information. Now a specific question, and im not sure actually with t answer to this should be. But on november 7th, President Trump tweeted, and i quote, i won this election by a lot, and quote. He lost but the warning label twitter has applied to the tweet says, and i quote, official sources may not have called the race when this was tweeted. Is that harmful when it still visible and not accurate . Its not just the surface level label. It point to a collection of news articles information and conversations and gives an expansion on what is happening with your election. I gues i guess you see my concerns are that these tweets arouse people and it seems to me that the entity that runs this operation ought to have an understanding that when there is a major situation they can play a unique role either in reassuring or stirring people up to unacceptable levels. Can you comment on that . I agree the policy is focused on information and the civic process to provide greater context, to provide added information so people can make decisions around whats happening. Its the runup to the election, election day and the phase we are right now. We are focused on providing more information and more context. Let me give you a specific. On november 7th, predent trump tweeted i won this election by a lot. At isnt true. President trump lost. The warning lel twitter has applied says, and i quote, ofcial sources may not have called the race when ts was tweeted. Now heres the question. Does that do enough to prevent the tweet harms when its still visible and is not accurate . I i believe its important tt we show a broad context and that is the intention of the label. It isnt just text. Itit is a link to the conversatn across the spectrum. Give me an example of what would have to happen before the situation would warrant a strongerer response. During the week after where we did put in interstitial through to see the content and the limited spread for any of e integrity policy including emature calls tthe Election Results. Let me giveem you one more. On november 12, President Trump tweeted a Conspiracy Theory the 2. 7 million votes for him were deleted. The warning label that has applied says this claim about Election Fraud is disputed. Hes the question, and i think it is a tough issue. Do youelieve this label ds enough to prevent hm when its still visible and a highly emotional situationt but it has ino factual basis . But it has a link to more information and more context that informs the situation of whatsn happening so i do beliee they will be giving more context. But they have to move to solicit that. Its not contained as an addendum to the original. It is an addendum and you will go to an expansion of the information. Can i ask a question . Yes you may. At the recent hearing befor the Senate Commerce committee, you said facebook has, a, quote, policy in pla that prevents any candidate from trying to delegitimize the result. But steal the vote garnered more than 300,000 interactions on your platform in the hours after mr. Trump falsely declared victory, so here is the question. Do you believe facebook did enough torevent the efforts to delegitimize thehe result . If so, why have you reached that conclusion . Senator, i believe that we have taken some very siificant steps in this area not just adding additional context and making it so that when people search differently we have the information but welso took the unprecedented step of putting the voter informion center ofrm the top for every on everyone ad then reliable information including partning with organizations to sho Accurate Information about the result so all taken together, i think that we went quite far helping kids distribute to the reliable information about what was going on during this. After President Trump claimed the election was being stolen, a group called stop the steel was started on facebook and grew by more than 300,000 users in less than a day making it one of the Fastest Growing groups inng facebook history. You shut the group down what substantial damage already had been done. Oktrump supporters, some of them armed with assault weapons held rallies outside of election offices. In the philadelphia, two armed supporters who traveled from virginia. Re what are your concerns about the spread of misinformation no matter how innocent it is like the claims about the election they made inside violence . One of the Top Priorities is making sure people do not use our platform to organize violence or civil unrest and that was the basis under which we took that group because there was a number of members who were posting potentially violent or encouraging violent comments that violated our policies. We also have brought policies in place around the misinformation broadly like violence or imminent harm and thats why weve created this program where we work with more than 80 partners around the world to help do Fact Checking because people in the community told us they dont want to see information but they also dont want us to decide what is true and false, so weve taken the step of building a program that i believe is more sophisticated so im very focused on these issues. I am happy to hear that because im really struck by that people armed with assault weapons as a product could rally outside of an office and i think it is a serious issue that needs to be considerednd there needs to be once you signal that and pele respond to it it has to be in some way debated or in some way point out or restructured on the internet itself. Can you respond to that . We are almost double the time. We will have a vote, and i apologize. Senator lee. Thank you mr. Chairman. First i would my id like to note how c they turned out inciting violence. I would also like tooint out the only violence that i am awareti of has occurred in connection with the response to the pro trump peaceful rally attenders, so i dont quite understand that. Maybee will have the chance to dwell on that but i want to talk about federal law andhat it requires. Section five of the federal ta trade commission a prohibits businesses from engaging in unfair or deceptive trade practices. Mpliance with this particula requires that there be some consistency between what a Company Represents and what they actually are. You cant sell one thing a provide another under the guise of providi Something Different than what is being sold. Both twitter and facebook represent and have represented for years to their users the customers that they take a neutral approach to the content moderation. However as we have heard today there are instances in which your platforms are ting a distinctivelpartisan approach and not a neutral one to the election rated content moderation. For example, days before the election, twitter suspended the account those in the u. S. Customs and border protectn office suspendedommissioner morgans twitter account specifically f a tweet celebrating the success of the s. Southern border wall. Apparently, the commissioner morgansngweet, the comment violated t platform from commissioner morgan as follows at the cbp and the army corpsf engineers continue to build a newall every day. Every mile helps us sto numbers, sexual predators and drugsrom enteringg the country. Is a fact. Canou tell me in one sentenc what exactly is hateful about the commissioners tweet that i just read . We evaluated it and wei and d that we were wro we had kind of an awareness around the government accounts during this time. So if there was a mistake, we reverted it. I appreciate that and we will get back to more of that in a minute. I understand that mistakes happen but what we are going to see today is mistakes have been a whole lot more. Its initially been taken down as factual. There is nothing remote fully hateful about it but it was taken down. N to ban the two advertisements from facebook for, quote, partly false information. Both of these were factual in nature and revealed the views on the latetermm abortion. Joe biden stated in requiring care for a child born alive during a botched of abortion. A statement retracting the assessment as erroneous. It took facebook almost two more weeks until october 209th when the voting already started in many jurisdictions to lift the ban on these legitimate ads that the fact checker had already declared a few weeks earlier were erroneously taken down. So, why on earth did it take facebook two weeks to correct is error . I am not familiar with the details re enabling thator ando its possible this was just a mistake or delay or unfortunately when we handle millions or billions of pieces of content a day while we strive to do as well as possible and be as precise as possible, we will make some mistakes. I appreciate your acknowledgment. Those mistakes do happen a whole lot more on one side of the political spectrum than the other. This is understandable. We are humans but its also mighttandable why this occur. Maybe some of it has to do with your employees. 92. 8 who donated two candidates give to democrats. At twitter its even more than that as if it could get more stark but 99. 3 of employees that donated to federal candidates gave to democrats so these mistakes, they may be mistakes but they are mistakes that rhyme. They may not repeat themselves, but they do ryan and the consistent theme happens to be republicans, conservatives and prolife activists. Now,an i would like to ask bothf you is there a list of every user or every content creator who has been deep lot formed or had their content altered or some other adverse action taken . Is there a list that identifies for which that has happened . Lets hear from you just yes or no. Does such a list exist . Senator, i amro not are of anything like thatt existing. Mr. Dorsey, how about you. Im not exactly sure what you are asng but we simply do you have a list of users or content creatorshat had verse reactions because of the content of their posts . When we take an action it is recorded somewhere but im not sure what i am hearing from both of you is while there may not be an actual list and i would like you both to check to see if such a list does exist even if there isnt you have within your database records of an occasion where this has occurred so i would like to ask both of you if such a list exists please send it to me. I would like to see it. If such does not exist you certainlyst do have the data necessary to generate them and i would request you generate such a list and provided to me. Thank you very much mr. Chairman. The chairman of the committee stepped out momentarily. Ive been directed to recess the hearing momentarily so that we can vote and then we will pick up in a few minutes. I would like to as long as i have the gavel momentarily im going to ask one more question before i vote and then we will recess after this question. Can i ask when we areoming back because ive been waiting tosk questions for an hour. Wec will be coming back after senator graham returns. He lef a moment ago and will back. In september, tagged an ad run by michigan and criticized joe biden and senator garyeters. It was tagged because it was, quotes. On quote, missing conte. The next day it was shut down entirely by facebook. Facebook relied on a supposed fact check from palletta fact which is a nice way for you to avoid taki accountability for the problem except the fact check in queion literally said the ad, quote, makes predictions we cannot fact check. Apparently ts had to do with a lack of context so when did this become a new standard fc political s . All political ads, ads in general but certainly all political ads lacks context. Senator sasse finished a resounding victory inebraska. I haven seen his tv ads but im sure they are brilliant. Thish guy is made forelevision. With or without the beard. And im sure his ads didnt say grt senator, but not that great ofth a hockey player. Theres always context that is left out in any advertisement so what does that mean and he you applied this label to any democratic ads, a single one you can identify . Senator, i am not familiar with that specific standard, but as a kind of background on that Fact Checking program, these are the businesses we have heard resoundingly from the community that people do not want to see misinformation and believe that mt is a problem. People also believe that they do not want facebook to be the arbiter of truth in deciding everything thatp is true and false. For what its worth, i strongly agree with that and i do not think it is the right thing for us to give that role. Weve tried to create a program accredited and we give the latitudes to determine whether other content on our service is accurate and if not, we apply or prevent them from being run as ads. I could follo followup in morel afterwards. I would appreciate th very much if you would be willing to dohat. Its not only inconsistent with logicd and the standards that apply. Its also inconsistent with what facebook itself does. To give you some context we are talking about missing context. I recently posted something about the election on facebook and my pos was almost immediaty tagged with the following. Officials say voter fraud which is historically rare hasnt affected the outcome in this election. They confirmed that the mailin voting was conducted in accordance with state voting rules. It sounds a lot more like the state run media announcing the party line rather than a neutral company as it purports to be running an open onle forum. Its kind of editorializing and insinuates anyone concerned about voter fraud must be crazy. It also states it as if it were an irrefutable objective fact. These concerns are out of the mainstream in palo alto. I hope this kind of manipulation was not ientional, but it is getting harder and harder to speak the promise it could be anhing but intentional and if it was intentionalith the promises that youv he is made r own users no more than ten or 15 minutes until chair man graham returns andnd we stand in reces. [inaudible] it is my thick head of hair. I recognize the position the platform supposed the news and on the front line of those both domestic and foreign and you have to balance the ideals like freedom of speech and hate speech and misinformation. People came here to demonstrate last week in washington saying they were there because they had found out china dumped millions of votes for joe biden. It was on the internet but now here the platforms have taken some positive steps. Sometimes there is very dangerous misinformation. Theyve gotten it from the platform and i have to think you can and must do better. There are securities. I think even our democracy have the basic truth that depend upon you doing a better job. President obama described it as the science and clear evidence and truth decay. Its hard to imagine how it could exist and your platforms can bring people together. They could offer driving people apart. EoPresident Trumpresident trumpd emerged as the misleading election information began to without evidence of routine. Some of the states cheated and fixed the results and even claims millions of trump votes wered deleted. Hes doing that with his own department of Homeland Security saying that it was the most secure in American History and there is no evidence they can compromise. It may make them feel better about the fact they lost badly, but we shouldnt have to put up with it so i have a question for both of you. Is facebook or twitter conducted an indepth postmortem review of election misinformation spread under the platform and not just what you label them but how far the misinformation reads. Have you done that kind of a postmortem . Senator, we will do that analysis and also we are commissioning and working with independento academics to enable them to publish what they find without any intervention or permission required from facebook. We are doing the same including opening up to make sure that others are able to see what we may not see for ourselves. Will that be made available to us because other people say that results of that. Th the Academic Research is going to eublic and the academicare going to be able to publish this themselves without even having to get facebooks approl over what they publish. Thank you. Mr. Dorsey. Okwe will make the reports ad findings public as well. I look fward to reading them. Im one member of the senate thatill actually read them. Thank you. You ok at some of the things as i know senator blumenthal and others have raised this question about steve bannon putting on a bidding. Think of what it did it called for the murder, the beheading of doctor fau and the director of the fbi, christopher ray. Think what that doe the fbi director travels with serity all the time. Doctor fauci and his family are private citins and they are calling for the beheading. And it w seen by i think 200,000 people on facebook. If you are going to have somebody threatening to murde somebody, what do you do about that . How do you catch that in a hurry because i was a prosecuto and i prosecuted murdersnd we didnt have to face thi kind of threat at that time. What do you doith hundreds of thousash of people that have a threat to cold murder somebody. Senator, that content violated our policies and we took it down. And as has been the subject of other questions, if someone has multiple offenses like that, we would remove their wle account. If they do it multiple times, say go out and murder somebody, cut off their head, we are going to face a real problem. Facebook will take down our posting. My goodness, what a deterrent. Senator, what we try to do is identify content that viotes tothe policy before anyone in te community has to see it or report it to us. For some categies like terrorism which ive cited before, about 98 or 99 of the content that we ta down our human systems. Its not paid speech. Its up to 94 of the content we take down our the ai systems and content found before peopleave to report it. What we try to drive on the me effectives basically finding more and more of that content before it is seen broadly across the system. Let me ask you about that because the discussions before, i am deeply concerned about facebook role in spreading hate speech in hping fuel a genocide against muslim people. And i mean, horrible. Ive seen the pictures. Ive seen. Yove made some progress on this as you and i talked about it, but my understanding is that facebook shuts down specific accountshat violate the content related poly, but then the user can just create a new account. For examplen october 8th, facebook took down 38 authent accounts and createdontrolled by thcontrol bye members of ther military in rt to promote content. And i compliment you fo complemg that. But the military turned around and created new accounts to prote the same content. So, it is in some ways youve got a whack a mole problem here. Is there a way that we can, o that you can stopp not just at the account level, but the user level. I use that as an example because people are being murdered in a systematic genocide. Please answer senatord leahys question and then we willic need to move on. Go ahead. Im sorry to take longer than the previous question or took all his time plus we are two and a half minut lets just wrap it up but go ead and answer the question. Senator, you are correctly pointing out that we did disable certain generals in the Myanmar Military as dangerous figures and they are not allowed to sign up for new accounts, but as you point out, these kind of integrity problems are not ones that theres a Silver Bullet where you could ever fully solve them. We will always be working to help minimize the prevalence of harm in the way that a city will never eliminate crime. You can try to reduce it and have it be as little as possible. Thats what we try to do through a combination of building the systems to identify harmful content up front and hiring thousands of people, tens of thousands of people to do content reviews and partnering with organizations, whether it is in the intelligence community, Law Enforcement, Election Officials or myanmar local Civil Societies to help us find things wee should be aware of and high ale about. I will have some questions for the record for both of the witnesses. Thank you senator leahy. I appreciate that. Senator cruise. Cruz. Thank you mr. Chairman. Facebook and twitternd google have massive power. They have i an a monopoly on Public Discourse in the online arena. I will say it is dismaying listening to the questions from our democratic colleagues because consistently the message from the Senate Democrats is for facebook and twitter and google to censor more, to abuse their power more, to silence voices that Senate Democrats disagree with more. That is very dangerous if we want d to maintain a free and fr democracy. If we want to maintain free speech. There was a time when democrats embraced and defended the principles of free speech. There was a time when democrats embraced the free press and yet there is an absolute silence from democrats speaking up for the press outlet censored by big tech. There is an absolute silence for those speaking out for the citizens silenced and instead there is a demand used even more power to silence the dissent and that is a totalitarian instinct that i think is very dangerous. At the same time that big tech exercises massive power it also enjoys massive corporate welfare throughr, the effective section 230, special immunity from liability that nobody else gets. Congress is Given Big Tech in effect a subsidy while they become some of the wealthiest corporations on the face of the planet. Mr. Dorsey, i want to focus primarily on twitter and sq initially is twitter a publisher . Is twitter a publisher, no we are not. We distribute information. So, what is a publisher . And entity that is publishing under editorial guidelines and decisions. Well your answer happens to be contrary to the federal statute particular section 230 that defines information content provider is any person or entity that is responsible in whole or in part for the creation or development of information provided through the internet or any other interactive computer service. Let me ask you was twitter being a publisher when it censored a post . Rk no. We have very clear policies on the conduct we enable on the platform. And if there is a violation, we takeke enforcement action and People Choose to commit to those policies and to those terms of service. A. Except your policies are applied in the partisan and selective manner and you claim that it was hacked material yet you didnt block the distribution of the New York Times story that alleged to talk about President Trumps tax returns even though a federal statute makes it a crime to distribute someones tax returns without their consent. You didnt block that discussion, did you . Our policy was focused on the distribution of the actual hacked materials. Did you block the tax return material . In the New York Times cas we interpreted it as returning about the material. Did you block Edward Snowden when he illegally released material . I do not have the answer to that. The answer is no. You have used this in a selective manner. Let me ask you were you paying a publisher when you forced politico and other journalistic outlets to take down their messages on a topic that you had deemed impermissible . No. We were enforcing our policy and service. October 15th, the reportert politico tweeted the following to the New York Post story after it dropped yesterday morning i reached out tohe Biden Campaign to see if they had an answer. I wish i had given the story a closer read. Twitter suspende me. I cant a reporter reporting on a story asking the other side for comment a twitter says yo account has been locked for violating twitter rules. What did the political reporter do, immediately p after that my goal wasnt to sprd disinformation. Well, that is a little worrisome just in and of itself. My goal was to rai questions about the story. I was attacking the New York Post. You dont understand. I was attacking them as i did and subsuent tweets and see how the Biden Campaign wasoing to respond. They laterw did respond and then not long after, sherman comes back with my account is clearly no longer suspended. Deleted the tweet. When twitt is editi and censoring and silencing the New York Post paper with the fourth highest circulation in t country and polico, one of the leading newspapers in the country, is twitr behaving as a publisher when it is deciding what story the reporters are alloweto write and publish and what stories they are not . No, and that account is not suspended. To follow the hacked material policy, we realized that there was an error in that polic hold on. I ambl literally looking at the tweet from twitter tt says your account has been locked. You are telling me that this is not accurate . It can be unlocked when you delete i understand you have the chamber a power. Your answer is always once we silence you we can choose to allow you to speak about you are engaged in publishing decisions. Let me shift to a different topic. Does voter fraud exist . I dont know for certain. Are you an expert on voter fraud . No im not. Why then is twitter right now putting purported warnings on virtually any statement about voter fraud . We are simply linking to the broad conversations of people have more information. Know you are not. You put up a page that says voter fraud of any kind is rare in the United States. That isnt of linking to the broad conversation. Thats taking a disputed policy position and you are a publisher when you are doing that. You are entitled to but you dont get to pretend you are not a publisher and get a special benefit under section 230 as a result. At link is pointing to a broader conversation with tweets from publishers and people all around the country. With the following statement violating the policies, quote, absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud. I imagine weould label it soeople could have more context. How about this quote. Third Party Organization candidat and political activist voter fraud is particularly possible when a third Party Organization candidates and Political Party activists are involved and, quote, handling absentee ballots. Would you flag that is potentially misleading . I dont know the specifics of how we might enforce that. But i imagine a lot of these would have a label. You are right you would label themem because youve taken the political positn right now thatoter fraud doesnt exist i would note both o those come from the Carter Baker Commission on federal election reform. That his democratic president jimmy carter and former secretary of state james baker and twitters position is essentially voter fraudoes not exist. You aware that just two weeks ago in the state of texas woman was charged with 134 counts of Election Fraud. Areou aware of that . Im unaware of that. If i tweeted that with a link to the indictment would you put a warning that says the Democratic Party position right now is voter fraud doesnt exist . I dt think its useful to do hypotheticals, but i do not believe so. You dont believe so. Wew are going to test that because im going ttweet to that and see whatou put on it. Yesterday y and i spent a nsiderable amount of time on the phone and youo said that you wanted to increase transparey. So, i wanto ask you. Ive asked twitter and facebook multiple times. How many times have you blocked republican candidates for office, there tweets or their pos in 2016 and 2018 and 2020 . How many times have you blocked Democratic Candidates for office, how many times he you blocked republican officeholders, how many times ha youed bcked democratic officeholders . Twitter has reptedly refusedpu to answer that question with specific hard data and cataloging the examples. In the interest of transparency, which you said you want to embrace, will you commit in the hearing ght nowo answer those questions in writing . [inaudible] im sry. I didnt hear you. That is exactly what we are pushing for as we think about building upon 230. Is that a yes that you will answer those in writing . Transparencyot just with outcomes but a process as well. Is that a yes but you will answer in writing . We will certainly look into it. And answer them and not give a double speak about why you are not going to give a specific. Will you commit to the committee that youill answer those questions . We are going to work to answer broad transparency. Y that is ath no. How about you, will you commit facebook will answer tse specific questions cataloging the number of insnces in which democrats and 16, 18 and 20 have been silence versus the number of instances republicans have been silenced on facebook . Senator, i am not sure if we have that data available. But i will followu follow up wr your team. Im going to take that as a yes and im going to take twitter we will see if it is a yes or transparency and we do not intend to provide it. We senator. Thank you mr. Chairman. We live in aangerous world. Issues of national security, the first pandemic Public Health crisis in modern times in america. And we are being challenged presidency we decided none of those topics were important and what was important is to determine whether or not social media was discriminating against republicans. Its an interesting question and there are more important and timely questions. We have a recount underway in georgia and allegations made by the officials and where they are faced with death threats. We are trying to determine whether or not. Im trying to struggle with this issue because i want to point to the context and maybe i cant. This is unique. We know what the constitution says we know it is that over the years. Sullivan and others publications. We certainly didnt suggest not to use the telephone line for nefarious illegal activities. Somehow implicating that the Telephone Company and by its nature. Then came radio and tv and we had to come up with new rules. Now we have this new mechanism of communicating the information to determine what to do with it. Section 230 is an attempt to do that and im sure everybody finds fault with it. On the historical aspects of this particularfa debate. One of the points in the discussion that i find interesting people ask if the regulatory model should be more like the news industry but from my perspective, these platforms are a new industry and should have a regulatory model distinct from either of those two. I think it isnt the case that we are like a telco but clearly some content whether it is terrorism or Child Exploitation people expect us to moderate and address. We are also clearly not like the news publisher and that is we do not create the content and we do not choose upfront what we publish. We give people a voice to be able to publish things. I do think that we have d responsibilities and it may make sense for there to be liability for some of the content that is on the platform. But i dont think that the analogies to these other industries that have been created previously will ever be a right way to look at this. I think it deserves to be its own Regulatory Framework to get built here. Will the other witnesses care to respond . From the historical perspective, 230 has created so much goodness and innovation and you know, if we have those protections when we started twitter 14 years ago, we could not start and thats what we are most concerned with is makg sure thate continue and enable new companies to contribute to the internet, to contribute to the conversations. And we d have to be very careful and thoughtful about the changes to 230 because going one direction might max out new competitors. Going in t another might createa demand for and in possible amount of resources to hdle. Going at it in another way might encourage even more blocking of voices and whats being raised here which is censorship. I think we can make sure that we are earning Peoples Trust by encouraging more transparey around content moderation in the press of it. W w need much more appeal and the biggest point to focus on Going Forward is algorithms and how they are managing and creating these experiences. Let me get into the specifics. October 10th, the Detroit Free Press reported 13 men charged thursday in a conspiracy to kidnap the governor and used hecebook and secure messaging apps. They used it as a recruitment tool november, 2019 according to the detective sergeant Michigan State police. Once reported they communicated by the message platform. According to the news reports, facebook alerted the fbi about the kidnappers online activities several months before the arrest, thank goodness. However, in august a Facebook Page for the guard militia that advocated violence and aftermath of the shooting of jacob blake was reportedly flagged over 455 times to facebook. However, the page was deemed left up more than 4,000 people responded to that event and hundredsee of our militia membes showed up can you explain the reason why the militiaage wasnt takenn down . What happened was absolutely terrible. What happened here is we rolled out a strengthened policy around the pages in general whereas before that we would have allowed a group that wasnt planning were organizing directly and in the lead up to the election, we strengthened the policy to disallow more of those groups because we were on high alert and were treating the situation as volatile. We just that policy into place and for a number of reasons it hasnt been fully rolled out and all of the constant reviewers hadnt been fully trained on that so weve made mistakes in assessing whether that group should be takenn down. But it was escalated to a senior level content review who had more specific expertise and we recognize that it did violate the policy and we took it down. It was a mistake and certainly an issue where we need to figure out how to do better. One of the repeats that i would add is the person who carried out the shootings was not in any way connected to that page or linked to the content. Published content that reflects on certain religious groups. You said in a hearing, you we explicitly acted on the platform from the generated content facebook did alter some of the content that the hate groups largely remained. We looking the other way at a potentially dangerous situation . No senator this is incredibly important and we take a speech as well as violent extremism very seriously. We found more than 250 white supremacist organizations to a treat them and to identify the papacy, platform. And then to track our results and then before anybody reported that. When we were just starting to ramp up on this so there is still more progress to make and you have my commitment we do this with severity and that we are very focused on. With that content moderation and with the moderation policies that exist because i think those standards are very transparent or the execution is consistent but i am more skeptical than my a call example sides of the aisle will make it better instead of worse. I think it is odd that so many of my party are zealous to do this right now when you would have the Incoming Administration but the other party writing the rules and regulations and the others on the other side of the dais like senator blumenthal and then to be giddy of the prospect of a new Government Regulatory Agency to Police Online speech limited to take pause so many of the other side of the aisle are excited to have the next administration with the rules and regulations. The first to get to thats level but to lay out the issues he did with every Human Community be situated about policy and commitments and priorities and believes that when the 93 percent of facebook employees do so on the left and 99 percent of employees contribute on the left i would be interested to see if either of the two ofhi you think that has implications of your organization . So again i am more skeptical of a governmental fix for the problems we are talking about here today. But i am curious if mr. Zuckerbergnt if you think it is likely there is systemic bias inside your organization and the execution of content moderation and policy and that the employee basis a representative in general. It is a good question and certainly it means we have to be more intentional about what we do and thoughtful. Our principal and goal is to give everybo a voice and be a platform for all ideas. It is undisputed that our Employee Base the fulltime folks politically will be somewhat to the left of where the Overall Community is with a wideariety of people acrossociety. Sohat means we need to be careful and intentional and the bias doet seep into the decisions that we me. So people have a l of the different views and i can generally see they conduct thselves professionally. Second, the folks who do the content review work are typically not based in silicon valleyut all over the country and serving countries all over the world with a geographic divsity is more representative of the community thate serve to be full time Employee Based in headquarters in the bayh area. Obviously this is not something we interviewed for with annderstanding when people are in the company and with that understanding that are policy and enforcement is objective and i realize it looks rather opaque and certainly the outcomes might not always match up with that intention. And the peeption of those outcomes may not match up with thats why it is sohe important not to be just transparent around our policies but the actual operations for content moderation t people dont trust our intent it is a barrr and something we need to fix. But then these decisions are nobeing made by humans anymore and that is enforcement decisions that is the body of work a the conversation we are focused on. I wish it were true and wi those objective questions that is the objective question the sky is blue and white and not green. And the places that you ply content moderation labels a not simply objective questions. If we talk about medicare for all with the ten yr budget window on the assumption dont raise taxes there is aware medicaid on medicare for up is herself and none of us thank you will slaa label on that and with the policy projections. Then they are driven by policy priorities. And my suspicion is the Employee Base is not 99 percent left of ceer i bet it is less than that. I wouldpeculate lesthan 1 percent of your employees give money to candidates on the right because of the social stigma attached to have conservative vie inside your organization and i would guess the same sort of internal cultural biases and from the subjectivity of the issues are labed. Again, an odd place to beosin tt i skeptical the content moderation policy are thoug out well and not transparent enough to ow but i am definitely skeptical they are consistently applied. Im not thinking there is an easy governmtal fix. I think things are senator durbin said nobody blame the phone company for other ople spreading misinformation. And then that is not objective. And then with a five or four year window b legislation were qualitatively with content moderation changes inside inside a new regulatory scheme. And what pblems you are trying to sve . Ns. One is to conspiracy and the transparency of the results. With the enforcement reports that we would like to fill that out have more detail and to be committed to the independent external audit the people can trust them even more. For breaking the steps down the country or language and adding more data around position but that would be helpful but that would be a valuable part of a Regulatory Framework not particularly reaching. To create and apples to apples framework that all companies in the space have to report on the outcomes so we can see how everyone is doing. That seems like a sensible step to me. Junior acting chairman. With the realization the centralized global content moderation system. Operating these services. And around the practice and the outcomes of tsepr moderations. But having t more control and pushing moderation to the edges and to the customers and i think have being mortuaries how algorithms are creating my experience is important and to choose those that are sound by developers and the marketplace that would excite and energize us. And those that are ways we can move to Greater Transparency and i will follow up again. Thank you mr. Chairman. When the Tobacco Industry the product was deadly if followed the news with a program denying that set of facts. That the Tobacco Industry was not great and then to be engaged in massive fraud and around the same time and then fossil fuel ran into a similar. Plum with its product and it picked up the Tobacco Industrys playbook where it left off with the same individuals and the same entities in the same methods and there are persistent wellfunded operations. That in Intelligence Surveillance one service would run and the circuit it on secretive note election denial happening around the country right now. Se and i wonder if each of you see a difference between individual air is there a difference between on people with fringe views offering personal opinions with the orchestrated plan with the motivated interest. Senor i do think that the difference and the patterns on the platform. And then to view these coordinated inauthentic behavioror operations and combining with real accounts that push out a message to make it seem like its coming from a different place than itwi is. This is where saw the Research Internet agency from 2016 and since then a number of other governments and organizations including some compani like you have mentioned have engaged this behavior. The good news e industry has generally gotten the systems to be more sophisticated to defend against that the last several years with a combination of aii systems to find networks to behave the way a normal person would with counterterrorism o counterintelligence and then intelligence community, law enforcemen, different groups of expertise and different areas. This is a big effort on all sides to make sure that we can depend against interference and i think we are Getting Better at it. Let me encourage you to persist and then with those denominated in rubles that was not a very sophisticated theme to penetrate and with that originaled set up with a Shell Corporation between the wheel actor. And then to make sure real voices are what are you on facebook so in the context of thoughtsts recently did a study that shows 25 percent. Well add to this conversation with written answer. But i do believe that pseudonymity is important. We have seen its usefulness with activists. And i think thats critical. But certainly, there are presently there are times with the potential outcomes where we need to take action. My time is expired mr. Zuckerberg please respond. Thankan you. And to facebook and twitter do you have any internal research any evidence to suggest the platforms can be addictive . Mr. Zuckerberg . And to follow up with a summary of research that we have and then to be inconclusi most of the rearch is the vast majority do not experience these but i do think there should be controls given to people and this is something were focusedhi on. Im not aware of internal research these tools can be addictive and we should be aware of that and acknowledge it to make sure we make our customers aware of their patterns of usag usage. Thank you mr. Chairman in the late 19th century the heads of the biggest and to determine whether a control information flow except this time you over barons and how you are coordinating together a former employee of the Company Company with direct knowledge of the content moderationre practices the web facebook users recording project including censorship to allow employees to communicate projects that they are working on together including the censorship teams with Community Wellbeing team in the Integrity Team and i hate speech engineeringth team who all viewed the test platform to discuss which individuals or hashtags or websites to plan. Mr. Zuckerberg you are familiar . As you say for people coordinating all kinds of work across the company although im not sure i agree with the characterization specifically around content moderation. Lets get into that is if we can refresh your memory. Aca and those two oh electione. Nd integrityoo and then by working groups and why intrigued me as a platfm reflects censorship inputt so facebook as i understand it the censorip teams communicate with their counterparts at twitter and google and in turn of those company suggestions of censorship onto the test platform so facebook can then follow up with them and effectively coordinate censorship efforts. To space bar coordinate with those efforts in any way with the google or other. Let me be clear, we do coordinate and share signals on topics so for example the signal around a terrorist attack on Child Exploitation and imagery or a Foreign Government creating influence area where those British Airways signals its important to be clear that is distinct from content moderation policy the other companies have where the shared intelligence between the companies to make its own assessment of the i right way to address and deal with that information. Document individuals hashtags and websites and phrases. Is in your testimony you dont communicate with twitter or google with content moderation and individuals or websites or phrases or hashtags . Yes or no . To communicate with twitter or google about coordinating policies in this way . We do not quite in our policies. To teams communicate with twitter or google . Says are not aware of anything specific i think that would be normal for people to talk to others in the industry. Not aware of any aware of any particular conversation but i would expect some level of communication probably happens the difference from Court Meeting where our policies are in specific instances. The platform is searchable so will you provide a list of every mention of can go on twitter from the test Platform Committee i can follow up. Yes or no but it is so much beer to do this under oath so c you commit now to providing a list from the platform every mention of google or twitter . Respectfully senator witht having looked into this i am not aware of any sensitivity that might est around that so i dont think it would be wise for me to commit to the right now. How many items on the test platform reflected faceboo twitter and google are sharing information about platforms or hashtags or websites they want le suppress . Senator i do not know. We provide a list of every website and that content moderation teamsave discussed planning on pending the platform . It would be happy to follow up with you and your team senator to discuss fther how we may move forward on thatur. Senator cruise and senator lee asked for a list of individual website entitieso content moderation but now you have said that task platform and it is exist anis searchable so would you provide thenformation you have on the website about content moderation you have taken. Yes or no . I think it would be better to follow up they had a chance to discuss with my team what that word be. Thatv might prevent the sharing that you are talking about the ones i have done that i will be happy to follow up. You are not committee here we can subpoena the information would rather together from you voluntarily let everybody take note he has repeatedly refused to provide information he knows he has. Nd has acknowledged she has let me switch to a different topic so tell me about central what is the sce book internal tool called central . I am not aware any tool of that name. Does this fresh your memor memory . Et cetera facebook users to track users not just on facebook but across the entire internet. Attaches different files, message recipients, linked accounts, pages they visit and have facebook friends also behavioral data to monitor accounts even if registered under a differenteb claim one a different name and you can see a screenshot we brought out their name from the fire started to use facebook as well as all manner of tracking with these devices to access space bar, need different accounts are associated . What photos have they tagged on and on how many accounts have been subject to revieww and set shut down through central . I do not know because im not familiar with the name of thatat t tool. Sure we have tools that help us with our Platform Community integrity work i am not familiar with that name or are you saying that does not exist . I am saying i am notde familia familiar. I would be happy to follow up to get you the information you would like, but im limited. Its amazing how many people before t committee maybe its the air i the room colon at facebook employee accesses the personally identifiable data is a record made of that . To use that personal identifiab information anytime a facebook employee does that . I believe cell. Does it trigger an audit. Io not know the exact numbers buthen to see what would be useful. Would you commit to giving us a list of the number of Times Facebook employees have acceed using account information without their knowledge . We should follow upye only useful the operations in the company and somebody reports something that is necessary for them to review and understand the context around what is happening with somebody reports something. This is frequent and is a matter of course. We do have Security Systems that can detect a pattern that is flagged we should follow up in more detail in what you are interested in. And closing we have clear evidence of coronation between twitter and google and facebook he knows he is the tools to and i cant remember has deployed or the basic information. I submit this is totally unacceptable and predictable because it is exactly what the companies have done to American People and to congress for years now which is why its time we took action against the modern day robber barons. Senator klobuchar. Thank you very much. I am the leadti going to take because i understand why they may be coordinating when it comes to security. But start up with more consolidation and through history but that is good for consumersen but Innovative Companies are subject. So it is asked he said google is happy to take feedback and i said the justiceth department over the side and there are investigations report of the going on regarding. So want to start with exclusionary conduct regarding excluding smallest competitors with the interoperability for thet, post form and then to give a signal or but this but it depends customers of convenient access. You are one of the most Successful Companies in the world, mr. Zuckerberg with facebook. Senator i am generally in favor of intoperability and building a platform that some of t policies that you mention larger competitors like google is a rifles but at the time is not what we were trying tenable. We may have a chinese exple example. I am concerned about fabooks treatment of the subsidiary viola fine. Was and then to interact with anything twitterer shutdown brian then to shut do the service i you are not a chinese coany but that is the alternative. I about the intent on the other side but i know my own experience i we found it extremely but then we shut that down. Even though we existed prior. That i will live to somethg to but if they grow to a large scale they could be very disruptive to us. Really the tse inquiring kiss proceed to initialize t catheter. I really so i got up at the time we know anybody else. Instagram as a competitor large to produce such a proud with the the camera and photo sharing app at the time. We dont know how that uld have done when we looked at your emails wh wet sap with those competitors s ec chairman who just said last week with the anticompetitive activity this is a subject of investigation something that commite members better be aware of and what is going on with these deals and how it has led toore and more consolidation and how we, as the senate talking to chairman graham last week to change some of the standards to bring these cases and then add discussion for know the Commerce Committee you said facebook had made over 2 billion on political ads and said this is your quote a relatively small part of your revenue but it is part of the life politics and so to go with senator graham and this is why i would so broadly and in three battleground states will ride only increase so those haveum been discarded is september 29 and october 27 had 200,000 impressions who the ad was the American Action newshey advertise a lot of new platforms and it said in three battleground states and this was preelection. I will be happy to follow up. And you commit to a policy where people could review these ads rather than being hit with al gore the review . Senator, we do have a few and verification of political advertisers. As every ad go away human being. The policy is to verify the authenticity with ose social issue advertising but those not in all cases w are accurate they and the technical system. It is really yes or no or i t dot know senator i kno to the cse andnd desist order publishing a report nong over the last two u years hasnt be labeled 37 million in political ads. Why would you support the project to bring a cease and desist and scrapinghe data. So they are not violating privac and the campaign and journalistey and everyone. And that to moment that acro the system but what you are referring to that project was scraping data in a way we decree around. And then make sure we state on take steps. Mom now, just but across the system in the platform so i am buying access is my t impression so even if you say the news of the last 24 hours, something has gone awry. To be helpful if there is more transparency a bit but then to turn off those algorithms or choose a different one so people can see how it affects ones experience. Look at the bill senator kennedy and i have. Thank you and whether or not these platforms can be addictiv addictive. They probably can be based on what i have read in one of two ways just the nature of the personality and engagement of the tool they can somehow relate to but a transactional addiction that you also mentioned the social dilemma. That is the use of analytics which i dont criticize to go down a certain path with a certain outcome that could be in outcome forming an opinion or to buy something most things we have to look at going with mr. Zuckerberg. And looking at the screenshot and looking like a Work Management tool can you tell me a little bit about that and how many people are engaged on the platform and facebook and with a focus on e task system and the basic internal project management tool and by a peoe across companies thousands of times a day to assign projects. Do you know how many contractors or employees or users of the platform . I think that probably the majority of facebook employees have some interaction as part ofof the work is basically a companywe to do list. And then as a followupo understand the nature of the platform. And that tspecificallyly be familiar with the tooto be more interested in how to choose. And do their have that platform for communication among staff . Absolutely. s mckennan involved in implementing these with my time in Technology Sector but mr. Zuckerberg there was a coordination between google and twitter but you can conceive to have that relationship over a beer. And the skeptic could see how the platforms could be used 100 and facebook and hundred people at google had a political bent and then they could make it appear like it is a Corporate Initiative wellintentioned but misguided stafft is that the impossible . And specifically writing the policy of those enforcement decisions thats what i want to make sure it is clear what we do is share signals with that aftermath they keep trying to share the platform to see it and then to see that content soon from foreign interference in elections but it is quite important that each company in line with their own policies and that is very different from saying they areea coordinating to figure out what the policy should be. Thats why its clear what we do and dont do. It is to think this is a systematic approach across the platform but those numbers with we employee come i can see have these were digested in the hearing as a try to regulate certain outcomes. I want to get into details but is similar to ones i have experience with and has a lot of data. You can do yourself a service. I hear what has been suggested between groups of people and it could actually help you leave our concerns with the way the platforms are manipulated. I have time to drill down to be the specific questions but i fully expect congress blacked in the next congress to produce. Com thenis people think but if you listen to what they are asking you, they are concerned but i do believe he will be will serve to come to to to and i i like what you said about transparency. And i dont think when you talk about the scale, the most Sustainable Way to go where we will have confidence and your concept on choice as well. But we will have to have more fellow like a veterans day post and i just posted a picture for a period of time it was steering people to put Election Results. I to think of that as a result of the algorithm that my opponent and every other person up before the election got similar treatment because didnt it would see there was another factor in place and then and that case political commentary and then the opportunity to seek is opening the subcommittee hearing in the middle ofne december, but have facebook and twitter representative with very different platforms that he willen play and i think we can your current and this is in the middle of december. Can i get that commitment . Senator, yes. We will make sure we have the right stuff to join your hearin hearing. We will follow up withxp determining. Thank you. And then a series of questions i would like to ask getting around the analytics information that you certainly have them be willing but that will be done in a collaborative way in my office. Thank you for being here today. Well take a fiveminute our witnesses have earned it and if its okay we will come back in five minutes. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] okay do we have witnesses on the other end . Mr. Zuckerberg . Esther dorsey . We have both. Thank you. Sorry we went to along with a break. Senator . Thank you mr. Chairman. In the last four years we have seen unprecedented attacks on the ys in which we connect to one conduct ourselves for some woulds, say the front line are Free Expression are not but the inescapable fact of the algorithms policies shape of one people in our nation undstand that to be true we did it for Climate Change but to recoize the hard work of man many, and they that mr. Zuckerberg rains on a insert given the tragic consequences of i muslim ands that they are taken for why do we need a minute to next president of that tragedy in wisconsin, we spoke last weeand i isin where e our conversation cannot rely on you to give responses to me to the questions in this letter and then we discussed them again . Yes. That speech on the state speech and the biggest transparency with which. You mean he will be recording one. That is my understanding the prevalence but then to go to the independent argued one audit everettt consistent once but then to apply the appropriate oversight and scrutiny to your work. Thank you. Went to move on. As a fu before and also today reference the call to arms policy. The violation to the call to arms policy lets go get our guns and do something for example if you are organizing a hunting trip that isnt going to be something that should be against the policy used. What we do on some of these policies which im glad you took the opportunity to address this, they are content to specific and require a higher level of context and expertise. That is also a bit on how we operationalize these policies. It seems this was a violation of your own call to arms policy. In the House Energy Committee hearing i think it was two years agos. Will yowill you follow through r commitment to this audit . We work with groups all over t e country and around the world. To give feedback we are in constant conversation with them and we do believe that being more transparent and making our transparency more robust its imrtant for any entity to audit independently. We believe thats important because an honor like that could take away from the work we need to do. If i heard you right you are not going to pursue the indepdent audit but to release the data and consult with civil rights groups. I welcome a p thorough ansr as to which way having an independent audit would harm yourur transparency efforts. I dont think that it would harm it. We want to provide enough information so people can do the work independently of us and atthats where we need to make r transparency more robust. We have regular conversations with these groups and take feedback. You do have policies against the manipulated media. You dont have a standalone Climate Change with misinformation policy. Why not . Misleadininformation as you are aware is a large problem and its hard to define it completely and cohesively. We wanted to scope the approach to focus on the high severity and three areas manipulated media which you mentioned, civic integrity and Public Health. On the greatestt severity of ham our polici are living documents but we thought it important that we focus our energies and prioritize the work as much as we could. This. Ill close with cannot think of a greater harm than Climate Change causing harm to the entire world. We are experiencing harm as we speak and i recognize the pandemic and misinrmation about the manipulated mediand the cause of har but i would urge you to reconsider that because helping to disseminate climate denial is him in my view further facilitates and accelerates onof the greatest existential threats to the world so thank you to both of the witnesses. Thank y mr. Chair. Thank you both for being here with us today virtually and for your commitment to improve the way your platforms a serving people across the country. Theres been a lot of talk today. Many of us have been listeng from our offices or online about the censship of ide and news on the platforms and these are the things that have been at the forefront ofmericas alliance in thlines inthe lead up to thes well as the weeks since our 2020 generallection. The people that i hear from of course believe that conservatis were wrongfully being silenced while those on the left were given free reign he your platrm. One ofhe points of contention thats often brought up is that you do recruit heavily from california, which leads to your Employee Base skewg quite to the left. So, my first question is for both of you. Do you have concerns about your ability on both sides of the political aisle equally given that the majority of your employee typically do lean towards thmore Progressive Side and again to both o you, have y taken any steps to make your Employee Base more eepresentative of the countrys a whole and when it comes to your political affiliation. And if we could start with you, please. Thank you, senator. Those are both important topics. In terms of the assessing of misinformation, i think that its important we dont become the deciders on anything true and we try to build a program of independent Fact Checkers that we can work with. When those Fact Checkers are accredited not by us but the independent institute for journalism that is a part of the international Fact Checking network and it includes Fact Checkers i think it is the majority of them who would base political so we try to address the issue of making sure that there isnt a bias not having us be the deciders on that type of content ourselves. Uto your second question about making steps to diversify the Employee Base, we this is a sensitive area in that i dont think that it would be appropriate for us to ask people on the way in if they were interviewing with the political affiliation. One of the areas where i am more optimistic over time as i think alhewe will see more people worg remotely around the country and around the world which will mean more employees will have to come to the cities and areas where the headquarters are and be able to employ an increasing number of people across all the different geographies in the country. Very good. Is very good. Thank you. Mr. Dorsey. The most important thing is we build systems and trademarks independent of any particular individual in the company. And included in the system are the checkpoints to make sure we are removing any bias or crimes and checkpoints to the qanda and monitoring having an appeals process we want to build something independent of people that we hire and that is a refocus building the system we are at a stage whe we cannot centralize our company even more and we do not need people to move to San Francisco and we can have people all over the coury that can stay where they want to be and wherever they feel most creative for the corporate headquarter in any particular city its certainly over and many. I appreciate that and i think thatts taught us all a very important lesson and for those to be able to work remotely i think that you will find greater diversityt. And thought moving n to a different topic since i began my career both in the nate ive been committed to of course protecting those that need it most and our children are the most in need andts our job as lawmakers to respond to the ongoing threats against them and social media has created a whole new world for all of us and it can help us share that information and resource it with the public abouhuman trafficking and Child Exploitation and it can also hel us keep track of sexual predators and ensure children are safe from ose threatsnd in fact ive been working on legislation tt would help update what information editors have to providee about their online identitiesnf and as we all kw however social media can also be incredibly harmful. Child sexual abuse materials is present on nearly every single soci media platform that exists and in sucholarized times i am grateful that it is the subject we do find doesnt matter if you are on the left or the right we can come together to find solutions for this issue. I know you and i touch upon this briefly last week when we spoke over the pne, and i do hope that you also share the coitment to fighting the types of issues on your platforms. So just very briefly as im running t of time, i do understand facebook is planning to outfit Facebook Messenger with and to end encryption. How do you hope to prevent t dissemination of the sexual abuse material is neitheraw enforcement or you can access that messenger data is there some sortf apparatus you have in place that canin help with those situations and then we will go to you next. Senator, thank you for this. I think you were right on every count and what you just said both Child Sexual Exploitation is one of the gravest threats that we focused the most on and its also an area that will face new challenges across the messaging systems. Of course the reason why we are moving to encryption is because people want greater privacy and security in their messaging systems and over time are choosing systems that can provide more privacy and thats something that i think makes sense for us to offer but it will mean that we need to find and develop new tactics. A lot of what we found around the best way to identify bad actors on the system isnt actually by looking at the specific content itself but the patterns of activity and where is it that a group or person is not behaving in a way that a normal person would to review that. We have grown increasingly sophisticated of that and it goes across the foreign interference prevention work and it will be a factor here and i would be happy to followup in more detail on what we have planned. But overall this is something we are very focused on and i agree with your concern. Thank you very much. Ag mr. Dorsey, you as well. For those on twitter making sure Law Enforcement would have access if at all possible if you could give me an overview of that, please. Its absolutely terrie and we do not tolerate it at all. We regularly work with Law Enforcement to address anything that we s and didnt includes both the patterns mentioned. The majority is public so we do not have as much activity in te private channels, so its a different approach. But we still see the same activities and its one of the highest priority in the terms of severity. Thank you both very much for being accessible to us. It is appreciated. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I appreciate what facebook has done in the area of sexual exploitation. Youve done a veryood job of trying to help lawnforcement in that area. Senator hirono. For the second time in three eks thereve been calls bore the Senate Committee over the claims on thelatforms a bias against conservatives and the fact of the matter is that these allegations are everyone would systematically look at t social media from media matters to the Cato Institute to the form senator john kyle as no evence of anticonservati bias and shows the far right content from the elective fox news, schapiro, David Rodriguez dominates the daily top ten most engad so all of these allegationabout the fact that you hired all of your employees at the center is relevant o nothing, not in terms of the content moderation. Rthe way that i see it it is a transparent effort by m republican colleagues and in my view it is worki. The Washington Post recorded that facebook have bent over backwards to avoid claims that it was bias against conservatives and it removed the strike against the accnt that would have penalized them as a repeat offender. Apparently one of several strikes. Ey had the America First action allowed to material by facebook thirdparty checkers without penalty and tse are just a few examples. In 2019, facebook reported website described by the platfo for the alt right and one of the trusted news sources. 20 facebook selected the daily caller and othe another site wie nationalist ties to be one of its thirdparty Fact Checkers and the d future now has repord how the formedeputy chief of staff to george w. Bush had changes to the febook algorithms and the changes wouldnt disproportionately affect the initiates. You found them 80 million and the majoty share of the companys. I am wondering at one point you were not giving into the claim of the bias. My question to both of you a recent study found the source of the voting of misinformation in the runup to the president ial election President Trump continueon twitter and facebook claiming he won and that its being stolen from them. Theesponse to President Trump why you havedded a warning label on the president s misinfmation to remain online the response fro senator feinstein the defendant labeled aiming the broad conversation around the electionith serious questions about the effectiveness particularly sin esident trump and his allies continue to spread the lies. The idence that these labels are ineffective and addressing President Trump lied. Response, please. A so, i think marc mentioned this earlier as well. We are dng a retrospective on e effectiveness of all of our ations. We believe the labels point to, as you said, a broad conversation with pple to see whats happening with the election and with the results. We dont want to p ourselves inn a position o calling and election. That isnt our job, so we are pointing to sources that have traditionally done this in the past and that is the t intention of the policy and the labeling system. Senator, we view the additional context we put on the post as part of an overall response and effort to make sue people have reliable information about t election. So, we dt expect its just going to be when people see a post that may be casting doubt on a legitimate form of voting or disinformation we can correct and help people understand how they could really vote for example. So, thats why we put the voter Information Center prominently on the top ofacebook and instagram for months leading up and kt it up afterwards so pele could see the repting on the results. As i mentioned in my Opening Statement 140 million americans visited that and i think this was the largest voting Information Campaign in the story of the country. So i think when taken together, theseth actions were quite strog as an effort to communicate accurate and reliable formation to people at the time when they needed it about how to vote in the election and encouraging them to vote, how to have confidence in the system knowing who and when the election had bn called. Its part of an overall system. My time is runningbe up. The actual information provided, we are talking about all of this misinformation. And actually, there was a lie put out by the president [inaudible] the basic majority is determining whether they are labeled to actually create a larger framework. Since im running out of time, i just wanted [inaudible] this misinformation especially whether he won the election, you name it. The fraudulent elections, et cetera. But what will both of you do regarding Donald Trumps use of your platform after he stops being president . Will he still be able to use the platform to spread misinformation . Senator, let me clarify my last answer. We are also having academic studies. The effect of all of the measures will be released publicly. In terms of President Trump and moving forward, there are a small number of policies where we have exceptions from politicians under the principle that people should hear what their elected officials are saying and candidates for office. But by and large the majority of the policies have no political exception. And so, if the president or anyone else is spreading hate speech or citing violence or posting content that delegitimize is the election or valid forms of voting, those would receive the same treatment as anyone else saying those things. And that will continue to be the case. It remains to be seen. Mr. Bernstein. So, we do have [inaudible] around public interestem where r the Global Leaders we d make exceptions i terms of whether it violates the term of service we leave it up. And people are not allowed to share that so it is with the ception to your account. [inaudible] mr. Chairman, i would like to enter into the record a number of studies particularly november. The article in the wall street journal titled the shutdown effort. The studies for media matters found [inaudible] andd an article by a doctor titled [inaudible] i would like to enter these items into the record. Without objective. Senator came. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, each of you has founded an extraordinarily Successful Company and they are both American Companies and i think i would be remiss if i didnt sayth congratulations. Im very proud of the fact that it was American Ingenuity that did this. I think we can also both agree of both twitter and facebook they have enormous power as a result of your success. You are not companies, you are countries at least in terms of power. I want to test point of view. Wm sure i subscribed to it, but i want to get your thoughts on it. Mr. Dorsey, do you believe everything you read . No. Why not . I think its healthy to have skepticism about everything and have a mindset of verifying it and using as much information as possible to do so. Do you have somebody on your staff who protects youu from reading things that they think you shouldnt . No. Mr. Zuckerberg, doou believe everything you read . No, senator. Why not . Because a lot of things are incomplete or incorrect. So, you exercise your own judgment . Yes, senator. Dyou have sebody on your staff y whose job is to filter things that they think you should not be reading . Senator, not externally, although i would hope that the teams that i work with internally do their best to make sure that the information that they are presenting me with are alwaysrn accurate. Okay. Heres a point of view and im not sure that i subscribed to it. But it is a legitimate point of view, i think, and id like to know your thoughts on it. Nd you have both and this is directed to each of you you have both, democrats and republicans upset with you. The democrats are upset with you, this point of view, because they want you to publish i am not using that word as a term of art or science here the democrats want you to publish stuff on your platforms that they agree with, but they dont to publish stuff that they disagree with. This point of view also holds that the republicans are upset with you because they want you to a publish things on your platforms that they agree with but they dont want you to publish stuff on your platforms that they disagree with. What if we had a rule, what if your companys had a rule this is a question and not a suggestion what if your companys had a rule that said okay, people are not morons. I would like people to treat me that is i can read what i want to read and exercise my own good judgment about whether i choose to believe it. So, heres the rule we are adopting. If you go on twitter or facebook, you cant bully people. You cant threaten people. Maybe this is a subset of both of those, but you cant commit a crime with your words, and you cannot incite violence. Than that, you can print anything you want to and we will let the users judge. Give me your thoughts on that. Those are generally the rules we have. Ourocus on these policies no you dont, mr. Dorsey. Excuse me for interrupting, but you are censoring right and left, trying to make both sides happy. And you are making neither side happy. No, that is in the intention. The intention know it isnt the intention, but is the result. I can see where you might say that and pceive that, and thats why we do think its important that we have more transparency to how we modatee content or we give more control to the individuals to moderate their own content and focus on algorithms, but a lot of our policies are foced on making sure that people feel that they canus express themselves in the first place. Everything abo the incitement to violence, that is what our policies are excuse me for interrupting, but my time is limited and i want to hear from mr. Zuckerbe. You are not just doing that. Youve started tcensor content. Why not have both mr. Biden and mr. Trumpble to say whatever they want to on your platform . So long as they do not threaten, bully, incite violence, commit a crime . I am not s justifying t use of either twitter or facebook to hurt. Mr. Zuckerberg, what are your thoughts on my suggestion . Getting out of the censorship business other tn the exceptions i talked about. Senator, in principle, iga agree with whatt youre saying, although i think that tre are moreategories of harm than just the onesin thatouve mentioned. T i think the principle behind what you are saying is a denition of Free Expression that says people should be able to share their opinion broadly, except if it is going to cause imminent or reparable harm to another person, which there a even the most ardent first endment supporters that agree that you shouldnt be abl to yellire in a crowded theater if there isnt actuall a fire, because that could put people in the risk of harm. So you menoned terrorism and Child Exploitation and bullying as forms of harm, and i thi a lot of p the debate is around wt are other forms of harm. For example, we are in the middle of aandemic, and we have assessed that misinformation about covid and treatmentse that could put peope in additional risk of getting the disease or not seeking the rightreatment if they have it, that those are also things that could cause imminent harm. Weve taken the position that mr. Zuckerberg, let me inteupt you, and i really do apologize, but im going to be cut off in a second and appropriately so. I am not saying that you are wrong. By dng what you jt described. But that makes you a publisher. And that creates probls with section 230. And i just think one point o view is thaat some point weve got to trust people to use their own good judgment. To decide what they choose to believe and not belief. And not try to assume that we are smart and they are stupid, and that we can discern the legal information and information they shouldnt believe that everybody else was too stupid to it. Okay. I am done. Ank you, mr. Charan. On the central issue, senaton kennedy, how do we leteople ma up their own mind without what they are sayin creating violence othreats to others. Very complicated endeavor. Senator booker. Mr. Chairman, can you hear me . Yes. And to the witnesses, we have two more senators and we will be done. I appreciate your patience. Senator booker. I appreciate that, mr. Chair man, and listening to this hearing. I really want to bring just the focus back to what i think is why we are here, which is the 2020 election. Ive been saying in this committee for w many months now about the tragic consequences of normalizing things that are outrage. Not a person on the committee that doesnt know the president will be. But what is going on right now is dangerous, and it is a threat to our democracy. For the first time in American History, we are seeing a sitting president of the United States make wild and baseless accusations that undermine the democratic process that dont just delegitimize it. With the president of the United States is doing is trying to thwart the democracy. As we speak, donald trump is waging an allou all out war one truth and our democratic systems. And one of his weapons of choice in this disinformation war is social media, and specifically, the two gentlemen here, their platforms, twitter and facebook. You have the tools to prevent him from weaponize in these platforms, to degrade our democracy and our Democratic Institutions and to cause such damage that even after january 20th, it could be one of the first times that millions of americans think and believe that this election was, what is baselessly being charged by donald trump. So, lets be clear on what happened. Donald trump, the shameful and shameless lies persisting about voter fraud and the outcome of this election weres some of the most engaged content of social media in the days after the election. By one measure, duringwe the wek after, his post on facebook made tp of all, every single one of the top post, top ten most engaged posts in the United States in 22 out of 25 of the top most engaged posts in our country. The number one post, the top of them all was the false declaration p of victory. On twitter, his tweet on falsely claiming victory was viewed by millions of users. This was and is, not just a disInformation Campaign by the president of the United States, but literally the most powerful person in our country doing an allout assault on the constitutional idea of the democracy,y, that he was sworn o protect. So, lets take a step back, because i think that this would be bipartisan if we looked at what was happening in another country. If we saw, and im on the Foreign Relations committee and i know how we come togetherok on issues like this. A strong leader of democracy. He denied his loss in an election, he democratic electiona democratic election,cs if he firedf fraud military leaders while the minister talked about a smooth transition of the next term, potentially any government looking at the situation including ours would be putting out statements urging calm and calling for the peaceful transition of power and rule of law for the honoring of democratic norms and traditions. So, we are seeing concrete consequences right now. We are actually in the midst of the fourthlargest mass casualty event in American History. This is not just something that shouldnt be treated with calm and normalcy. V but we all, people who believe in this country, should be standing up and talking about the consequences. We have his political appointee, the General Service general sere administrator, refusing to generate joe biden and the Transition Team the resources mandated by federal law. It wasnt that long ago that the 9 11 Commission Said that one of the things that undermine our abilityt to meet the terrorist threats to the country happened because of the transition that was unde undermined or, excuse , the transition that did not happen in the normal course. President trumps actions since election day should shock all of us, all of us who care about the welfare of our democracy, who care about our norms. And i hope the platforms here can maintain the highest levels of vigilance. So, to the gentleman before us today, i would like to ask specifically have you taken any steps to modify your platforms algorithms to ensure that blatantly false election misinformation posted by Election Officials, and specifically the most powerful person in the United States, donald trump, isnt amplified, thatat his posts that might geta lot of interactions that are dead wrong dont somehow get boosted by your algorithms, and if you could respond to that as quickly as possible. Senator, i will go first. And i share your concern on this and think it is unfortunate that we had to put in place the policy around premature false declarations of victory, but we had to do that. I think we anticipated this back in september when we put the policy in place. A lot of what we heard trying to do is distribute reliable information we attach both to posts on the topic by President Trump or any of the other candidates or elected officials talking on the subject. But more importantly, we put that reliable information about the Election Results of the top of facebook and instagram for everyone to see, and thatcl supersedes what the algorithm i appreciate that. I would just like to get, jack, if you could respond to the information and respond about the algorithms. Do you have specific measures that you are taking to prevent the algorithms from boosting falsefi content . Yes. Many ofe the labels do change hw they amplify the content. And then, the president right now is spreading misinformation about the electoral process. Its going on right now. And maybe you two guys, these gentlemen cogently through this process, this ongoing process right now, are there steps that you will be taking that you have not already delineated as we are going into what could be very dangerous waters, unprecedented waters in this country are there any additional steps you will be taking right now in the coming days or weeks to stop the further amplification and undermining of our democracy . We are heading potentially depending upon the behavior of a president that has shown himself to be erratic are there steps that youre prepared to take in the coming days and weeks to address this misinformation that we are seeing in this manner . Ing we are this is unfortunately an eventuality that we planned for. And we have taken a number of steps, not just including the Fact Checking program, but we have stopped recommending all civic and political groups, as an example, at the risk of misinformation or harboring there. Weve temporarily paused political ads because of the risk of potential abuse or potential unrest or violence. And there are a number of other steps we have taken like this as well. We have done this in other countries when theres risks of civil unrest. And we have shown it works. I would be happy to follow up thank you. Your team has been helpful. Mr. Dorsey, any steps you want to give and imreading on the indulgence of the chair man if you could be cogent, any new steps. We are going to remain diligent around our enforcent ofco the civic integrity. I think its important that we stay agile. We need to learn about the effectiveness of this work and how to carry it forward. If the chairman could indulge me onene more question to mr. Zuckerberg. I was really pleased that the group with this misinformation tried to delegitimize the election i was grateful that he will suspended that account after 24 hours. I am concerned about what lessons you learned because clearly outside groups like this flagged that post containing violence hours before facebook did. And i am wondering what you all have learned about this whole thing that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still starting. Where does facebook factor in in terms of speed and trying to combat the surges of disinformation about this group and maybe another example, an additional addendum to the question, mr. Zuckerberg, twitter, fotwitter, for example, permanently suspended mr. Bannons account, suspended a show up twitter account after he made steps about acts of violence against doctor Anthony Fauci and fbi director ray. But not only i guess i am just asking why would facebook not take this similar step in a similar stance. Mr. Zuckerberg, very cogently could you talk about that issue and then i would at least of your platforms diverge and i wonder why one platform on twitter saw that as a standard to remove, but you all had left and didnt follow on that decision thank you, senator. I am happy to address both of those. On the speed, youre certainly right that is important. And part of what we focus on is figuring out which types of messages or things that are going to go viral the quickest. Because it isnt just about trying to get to everything within five hours, for example. Its actually much more important to get to those that are going viral quickly within an hour even if something isnt going to get much distribution at all it might be prioritized for a little bit longer. So, i think making sure that we stay on top of the hashtags and what are the groups and what are the messages, who are the bad actors trying to spread this content, and as we see the threat of alle what we are whtypically able to evolve and move faster as well we are very focused on that. Thank you. [inaudible] the second part of the question i would like to get on the reco but i would like to say youam mentioned earlier know you said cha man graham will be the chair man you said something that the effect of the social media platform thereve been many studies at the university of pittsburgh that said kids are on social media and have about twice the rate of eating disorders and image concerns. I would just really say i know that the two gentlemen there have the opportunity to discuss that with other experts. N theres something really going on in terms of the selfesteem and wellbeing of our children that are deeply affected by these platforms and whether you want to use a term like addiction or not, there is enough evidence that these platforms and childrens engagement on them is causing heightened levels of a deleterious effect. I would love if we could have such a hearing sometime soon. We will followup. Senator blackburn. Thank you mr. Chairman. Last but not least. I appreciate that. And even though my colleague from new jersey went twice this time, i am going to begin these are senate minutes. Yes. I will agree with my colleagues who talked about the impact on children. The distribution of information that damages womenlk and childrn that leads to violence against women and children, human trafficking, the utilization of these platforms about pedophiles this is something that we are going to continue to work on with other members of the house. We passed legislation to put more tools in the hands of local Law Enforcement to fight this, but you all at these social media platforms are going to have to do your part to work with us on this to protect our children. I will also say that we are keeping an eye and with each of you yesterday i talked about your financial components where there for mr. Dorsey and libra with mr. Zuckerberg and the application of these components to your sites. We are talking about 2020 elections but we are also looking ahead at how we clean up some of what transpired in and before the election. I think that its fair to say also that you all probably are now fully aware that theres americanstration with and with this committee and the way you act and the way your employees act as if you are the invincible gods of the silicon valley. Facebook and twitter do not get to be the last word in what counts as news in this country. Even if you are beginning to nvconduct yourself as news publishers and distributors. My colleagues and i have asked you all repeatedly through the years for Greater Transparency and to accept responsibility. Youve chosen to do neither, so it is going to be up to us to change existing laws and to hold you to account on behalf of the American People. Section 230, the reforms we are going to put in place, will take away this liability shield that you have turned into an opaque wall. You and your content moderators, whether they are algorithmic or human beings or a combination are hiding behind. And the online freedom and Viewpoint Diversity act. I think chair man graham and wicker for working with me on this. This is set up for a markup in this committee on thursday. Mr. Zuckerberg, you are stating earlier that we needed to put some definition in place. We are going to do that. We arere going to take away language, and we are going to be specific. Unlawful, inciting personal harm, terrorism, we are going to do that and clear that up for you. Mr. Zuckerberg, facebook is more like a government than a Traditional Company is a statement that you have made. There is a lot of power in that for you, so yes or no on a coupletr of questions here. Does facebook routinely sends her a users account at the behest of a Foreign Government, yes or no . Senator, im not sure if theres anything in particular you are referring to, but in general we there isomething in particular that i a referring to, and i wil answer yes you have done that. You have 60 million users in vietnam. Under the orders of the vietnamese government, d facebookhut down a banned the account of the vtnamese dissident because he criticiz theve governors, the governmens land policy yes or no . Senator, i am not familiar with all of the details of that, but i believe that we may have donehat, and in general we try to follow the local law in t country you keptn them off for three months. In turkey doe facebook have an antiblasphemy policy whe it will take down photos of the prophet mohammed if the turkish government orders it to do so . Senator, again, we dont have a policy against that, but we the answer is yes well, we follow the local law. The answer is yes. And in russia, under the pressure from the russian government, did facebook take down a post advertising the rally and support of the dissident alexi nepali, the answer is yes. I will help you with that. Do you believe that its facebooks a duty to comply with state sponsored nsorship so that it can keep operating in doing business i and selling ads in that country . Senator, in general, we tried to comply with the laws in ery cotry where we operate and do business. Okay. And i think tt youve prioritizedrofit over principal. When you look at these countries, i am also looking at communist china which they have banned their citizens from you. You cant operate there. And in china, twitter, you have an opponent, you he a knockof that is a Chine Communist Party oed company. But your Companies Even though they are banned, you sll try to do business in those countrs. Mr. Dorsey, does twitt do business . I do not believe so, but we can follow up. I can answer that for you, sir. You helped launch the make three pro 53 and it is featured on the marketing website. How about ali baba, do you do business wh the company within the Chinese Communist party . If by business, you mean allowing people to advertise on the platform your answer is yes. Ma mr. Zuckerberg are you aware last year china stopped internet regulator agreed to spend over 800,000 for the communist mouthpiece the peoples daily, and they did this so that they could advertise and promote china to the American People on facebook. The point ofso all of this ad the answer to that, mr. Zuckerberg, whether you are aware or not, as you probably are, and you know that what they are doing is gaining access to this market. This is why we are going to keep a close watch over all of what you are doing with libra and what you are doing with square, because we see what has happened. Its important for us to protect people and to protect human rights. Let me move to the election content and that monitoring, because we do have concerns about some of the things that happened there. Mr. Zuckerberg, let me ask you this. Have you heard of the trump accountability project . Senator, im not familiar with that. Okay. That is a project that is an attempt to blacklist americans who have served in the Trump Administration and to prohibit them from gaining future employment. Now, in communist china and putins russia and totalitarian states, the government regularly will issue a blacklist on their enemies. Enemies of the state are banned from getting a job and if their names fall on the blacklist, they are out. Now, thisat seems disturbing tht it would be happening here in this country. So, mr. Zuckerberg, do you agree with me there is seriously something wrong with and unamerican blacklist barring people from future employment simply because they belonged to a different Political Party . Senator, i generally agree people shod not be discriminated against because of polical beliefs. Okay. That is a positiv step. Now, on facebook i wrote in a post, d im quoting, the trump accountability project is the epitome of the cancel cuure. Our nation has long benefited from robust political debate, and this effort to silence those who support our president is filed. As you can tell fromhis statement, nothing was said about the election or the results, either directly or indirectly, but somehow i got slapped with your election flag sticker. So what each of you need to realize, and you have heard it time and again today, you say you do not keep lists. Obviouy you have lists, because there are some of us who are gularly censored and called down by your content moderators. Do we want to see these lists, yes. How have you built these lists . We want to know. I wod remind each of youou are a b title i service you are an informationervice. You are t be the new public square. But what you a doing with your power tt you have derived because federal law ge you the ability to standp and grow without being hit by lawsuits, youve used this power to run amok. Youve used it to silence conservative youve used it to build your lists. Youve used this power to act like you hold all the power, that you can me these decisions. You have driven this cancel culture because you have not called to account your moderators. Ou its up to us because you have proven you do not have the will, the strength, the abili and you will not accept responsibility to do it for yourself. I yield my time. Thank you very much. To the twoli witnesses, i think you hopefully will understand a little bit better about whether committee is that and concerns. I want to thank you for appearing. I wish we could do it in person but i understand why we had to do it remotely. We will have more hearings coming up in the next congress, im sure to find ways to modify 232 deal with the issues brought before the committee. I want to thank you both and say youve been hugely successful in ways probably beyond your own imagination and weve got problems around your platforms that have to be dealt with and we will do it hopefully collaboratively. Bottom line, we want to make these platforms better, we want to continue to grow as part of our society responsibly and right now, without regulation or lawsuit, its pretty much becoming the wild wild west. I appreciate both of you for being willing tried to find ways to come up with systems that will ensure more transparency, choice and confidence. If i may add my thanks to the witnesses and also to you for appearing. I think there is one certainty here which is that mr. Zuckerberg and mr. Dorsey will be back in the next session of congress. I hope joining them will be google and amazon and others to be held similarly accountable. Thank you for stepping up to the plate and the other Companies Need to be here also. Again, i think them. We need to have greater accountability by reducing a shield, now a nearly complete and i want to thank you senator graham for working with me and a number of our colleagues. The best way to counter is to act. These really are serious about all this rhetoric and the grievances weve heard. Lets begin the journey with a s single step. It is on the floor of the United States senate the fifth committee, lets have a vot changes going to come. Thank you. The hearing is adjrned. C stands washington journal every day, w are taking calls live on the air on the news of the day and discussing policy issues that impact you. Coming up wednesday mning, brendan who served under paul ryann the state of the republan Party Following the 2020 election. Jo lawrence, former chief of staff to californiaemocratic congresswoman nancy pelosi talked about house as agenda and this weeks leadership election. Watch cspans washington journal live 7 00 p. M easter eastern 7 00 a. M. Wednesday. Facebook comments, Text Messages and tweets, join us. Listen tsee spans podcast, the weekly. Talkingbout recent elections on the center for american wom in politics. What changed the election for black women and white . Joining us, doctor jeremy 11. Chair of the innovation organization. Lets begin with defining biotech