Good morning, everybody. I think w had senator blumenthal remotely, ishat correct . Mr. Chairman. Is it okay if we move forwar absolutely. Thanks very much . Ill make a brief Opening Statement ts is about censorship, suppression and the 2020 election. A deep dive when it comes t twitter and facebook about the platforms and decisions they make, can we do better . Do we need to do better . The first thing i want to talk about here is health risk associated with social media. The 2018 Research Center survey of nearly 7150, 13 to 17 yearoldsnt 45 online almost constantly. 97 use socia media platforms such as youtube,st facebook or snapchat or instagram. Why are we having thisearing . Shes o companies offer, people like the politics ander u them. They probably more successful in their wildest dream they are having to make decisions that offend people on the left a the right. What we are trying t do is look at section 230 see if it nee to be modified or changed because section 230 basically allows social media platforms like twitter and facebook to pass on informati whout legal liability. If a newspaper does somethi you dont like, you think theyve slandered you, you can sue them. A news program does something you think i out of line even as a politician, you can sue them the companies have Liability Protection when it comes to the content that there is users engage in. You can sue the person who gave th tweet but you cant sue tweeter twier that gave access to the world in terms of what they said. Got to find a way to make sure that when twitt and facebook make a decision about what is reliable and what is not, what to keep up and what to take down, that there is transparency in the system and i think ction 230 has to be changed cause we cant get there from here witut change. In 2019, a study of more than 650015yearolds in the u. S. Found thoseho spent more than three hours a day using social media might be at risk for Mental Health problems. Another study, 12,000 13 t 15yearold in england found using social media more than three times a day precated for mental hlth predicted Mental Health and wellbeing teams. Other studies have things between high levels of social media use, depressionr anxiety. Theverage millennial check their phones 157 times daily. I dont know how members of the senate, social medias desig sister saint users atttion a mix of good user interface design and psychology creating an addictive mix for users. The techniq utilizes a pool to refresh scrolling mechanis on newsfeeds similar toiq a slot machine. A like button, social validation through a positive loop by measuring and comparing the numberf likes users content contains. Social interactions, imploring and engaging users and keep them coming back. For example, streaks calling the most concerned if using elongating lies to display the number of daysince t users interacted. Guess what tse technologies do, try to keepy this engage markrk we engage, the more advertising benefit for the company. Is it a Good Practice . Maybe so. Doesnt create a Health Hazard overtime . Something to look at. Ma the other aspect of this debate, e these companies newspapers e tv stations, do they have the power of media organizations that have rules and regulations and the Current Media platforms do not . There are rules about television stion what they can do and a newspaper what i want to try to find out is if you are not a newspape, like twitter or facebook, then why doou have editorial control over the new york most they decided that the New York Post articles about hunter biden needed to be flagged, excluded from distribution. That, to me, seems like your the ultimate etor. The editorial decision New York Post to run the storyas overridden like twitter and facebook in different fashions torevent dissemination. If thas not making an editorial decisi, i dont know what would be. It is one thing when we do it in ou privatete lives haley made a post about heroncern about mail a balloting. Itas flagged as something a claim that has not been legimized. Let me read it to you. Theext question to ask is why about the holocaust, why shoul anyone who writes about such docs in prison while insting moffat is allowed . Raising doubts about the holocaust, it should be a crime and opey call for the destruction of israel. His regime has in his tweet was basically allowed to flourish. Here is what nikkialey said. Despite the media tells us, Election Fraud does happen and policies like balloting harvesting and mail in ballots to people who dont request the makes itasier, makes that easier. It needs to stop. This cla about Election Fraud is disputed. That is her onion. She believes, like i do that mail and balloting is right for fraud if youou cant verify the signature a if we just send ballots out to the world that are not requested you dont have signature verification system that can be trusted, led to harvesting ballots one at various purposes. The question for us as a couny, went to the decisions by these organizations across the line . Wonder they have tossume responsibility that section 230 is in front of . To the people about to testify, i consider your products have changed the world, mostly for the good. We are able to interact among ourselves, we are able to talk to each other and share life expenses. We are able to realtime communicate to neighbors and friends and those who oppose what we thinknk technology that makes it instantaneous and literally light up 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 order be tweet and they were liable for what somebody else said or felt did the company probably never would have been in existence. Companies are trying to help us deal with child photography. Its able to maintain Liability Protections when it comes to Sexual Exploitation and social media of sexual predators, the bill has passed think you can only maintain Liability Protection if in fact you use best Business Practices. Where i think we need to be going. Change section 2302 incentivize social media platforms to come up with standards that are transparent and will allow us to make judgments about their judgments that the Fact Checkers be known. The Community Standards who set them, what are their biases . Give some direction to these companies because they have almost an impossible task. They are literally trying to engage in telling us what is reliable and what is not based on cable news commentary or three from politician average citizens. S nobody in a free society has had the responsibilities before. The question is, how do you control that response about it . I dont want the government to take over the job of telling america what tweets are legitimate and what are not. I want the government deciding what content to take out and put down. I think we are all in that category when we have companies that have the power of government, far more power than traditional Media Outlets, something has to give. I am hoping in this hearing today that we can find a baseline of agreement that section 230 needs to be changed, my bias would be to allow the industry itself to develop best Business Practices to protect terrorism and child exploration and exploitation and otherer concerns, look att the Business Practices of these companies through a health c prism that se of the practices need to be modified because they can become addictive. C we thought tobacco was a good thing for a long time, we sent it to our soldiers in combat. The more we realize about the nature of tobacco, the moree we change our minds about telling the public about the product. So whether or not we do that with social media platforms that the platforms can be effective if used too often, i dont know if we need to go there but i do know section 230 exists today and its got to give. I think there is publican democrat concern about the power being used by social Media Outlets to tell us what we can see and whatt we can, what is true and whats not to the extent that section 230 has to be rewritten so that is the purpose of this hearing, find a way forward to bring about change and when it comes to social media platforms section 230, change isut going to come. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. Thank you for having this today. I look forward to cooperating with you,ot only in this hearing for t upcoming congressnd other measures because you are right,hange must come in social media. The fact is, we meet today in an unprocessed president of time i history. He shakes our democracy ung a powerfulegaphone. An attempt to overturn the will of others. Its conspiracy theories everyd about mail in ballots and Voting Machines lies tha contradict his own Election Security officials and his lawyers. He uses his megaphone potentiallyo block a peaceful transition of power. Mr. Zuckerberg and dorsey, you have terrifying tools of persuasion and manipulatio with power far exceeding, you have profit usually by stripmining ta about product lines and promoting speech Voter Suppression. U have an immense civic and moral responsibility to ensure these instruments of influen do not irreparably harm our country. I recognize the steps, baby steps have taken so far destructive misinformatn is still on both ptforms and on others. In ft, google h been given a pass from today hearing. Its been reported by this committee doing even lesshan you have done to live up to its responsibility. Recent actions you have taken, in fact, are simply to check what appears on platforms, often it is Voter Suppression and incendiary delicious misinformation and slowing the insidious spread. That is n censorship. That is moral and civic sponsibly. Rs i hold a series of hearings i long overdue on antitrust issues privacy concerns and stion 230. I heard a breakup of giant because they misused their power. Breaking off, for example, an instrument will reducerivacy protects because consumers shou have control over their own data. 230 reform, meaningful reform includingven possible you in large part because they are immunity andictims deserve a day in court but this hearing is certainly not serious proceeding that we need. It has become a political sideshow like colagues seem to want to ignore the foreign disinformation campaig and integrating economic democracy, e murder of fbi director ray and doctor margie, what we see here are fighting words. And hate eech. He deserves Free Expression protection. The fact ishat the purpose of todays hearing is take the responsible action by threatening to secti 230. Censorship is known for this hearing, label and, avoid amplifying dinformation and in effect, impose the labels to alert people when they are consuming make them. Facebook took down as provided in michigan abo voting in short, there was areas that affected both des. I have fought for section 230 reform for 16ears. When i took on the spirit of registeredex offenders the senate of portland, i have the passage of the only successful region, stopped and he was only enabling it chairman and i have offered the only bill to reform section 230 moved out ofhe committee. Change is going to come. No question. Change is on the way i intend to bring proessive reform to section 230 but i am not, nor should we be on thisommittee, interested in being a memberf it. There a real farms and addictions her in some ways, it is a betrayal of the real farms and the real victimsf the forms have been lost because you have failed for responsibilitys have others. I want to see real reform that will enable these abuses to be reformed becausehe forms have embraced, used and for the last child predators, white supremacist is in human trafficker ive heard stories from victims. He sat back civil rights of amicans for Muslim America who live in fear originally organized by private online you ve consumers competition taking the antitrust and vy important, the American Public serves and demands real reform and accountability, National Consumer privacy rules antitrust principles reform, section 230. I look forward ton opportunity for real change and i think you can meet this moment but putting the power and money on the right side. Thank you a lot to impact them. I will continue to work with you if we keep control of the committee, senator grassley would be thewi chair next year d i encourage him to have the hearings that senatorlumenthal referenced. This is an ongoing conversation to get it right to the extent that we can. Mr. Dorsey of twitter, are you with us . I am. Thank you. The floor is yours. Making members of the Judiciary Committee the opportunity to speak with the american people. Twitter and concerns around censorship depression of a specific news article generally close on the 2020 u. S. Elections conversations, we were called here today because the decision made in the New York Post. Its a policy we created in 2018 to prevent twitterer from being used to spread these matials. Peopleult in us walking from sharing the New York Post article publicly or privately. Make a qui interpretation using no other evidence of the marials in the article ofi chge according to our policy, talk to them being spread. On further consideration, we admitted the action was wrong and corrected it within 24 hours. We informed the New York Post of our error and apologist and how to unlock our account with the original writing to you and they treated the exact same content and news article the game. They chose not to consistently reverse our enforcement action. We didnt have a practice overturning enforcement. Demonstrated need to do what we created one that is very inappropriate. I hope this illustrat rationale behind our action and demonstrate our ability to make mistakes and changes all transparently to the public. We acknowledge theres concerns about content and specifically in section 230. The proposed three solutions to dress concerns raised and they all focus on services to moderate or remove content the extensions to section 230, who is later frameworks for industrywide regulion and best practices requiring one moderation process and practices to be published. Two, a processo appeal decisions and three from best efforts around algorithmic trays. They are all achievable in short order. It is critical as we consider, we have startups and independent voters. Doing soti ensures a level playg field that increases probability of repeating ideas and help solve problems to enforce. We must entrench the Largest Companies any further. Finally, before i close, i wanted to share what we saw during the u. S. President ial election. Focus on addressing attempts tr undermine integrity, providing informative contexts and product changes to encourage greater conversation. We updated our civic integrity policy to address leading disputed information to undermine operatives in the u. S. Election, callsor termination suppression or confusion about how to approach or misrepresent affiliation o election outcom. Within a year ago from the puic asked to have additional contexto help potentially misleading information more apparent. It is exactly that, over 300,000 tweets from october to seven november 11. Represents about 2. 2 of all u. S. Election related tweets. In order to hp increase context and encourage more thoughtful consideration beforee was shared. We are continuing to assess the pact of these changes to info longterm roadmaps. Thank you for the time and i look forward to a productive discussion focused onoa solutio. Thank you. Th sucker work. Thank you members of the committee. Last months hearing, i spoke about the roles programs have out democracy, keeping people safe and upholdingundamental values like Free Expression. Peoplele helped beliefs about these issues andonclusions abouxp this. Wery to do what is best for our community and the world, acknowledgin their difficult tradeoffs. I believe some of tse tradeoffs and decisions will be ma for democratic process and i look forward toiscussing that survey. First, i want t update young on our efforts duringhe election. At facebook, we took our respon ability to protect the integrity of the selecon very seriously. In 26, he began to face new kinds of tha and after years of preparation,ho are ready to defend against them. Th a sophisticated system to protect against eleion interference combining artifial intelligence, human review and partnerships wit the intelligence pleated law enforcemenand other tech platforms, we taking on more than 100 networks of bad actors trying t coordinate an interview working globally. We have ft checkers that covers more than 60 langues. We think politicaldvertising for transfer of facebook than anywhere else including tv, radio and email. Introduced new policies about Voter Suppression and misinformation. Still, the pandemic created new allenges. How to handle misinformation about covid and voting by mail how to prepa people for the reality that results would take time, how to handle prematurely declareded victory for september we updated policies and to reflt the realities of voting 2020 and make sure we are taking precautions given thenique circumstances. Worked with local Election Officials to remove all claims about pulling conditions that might lead to Voter Suppression. We parked in the natnal election to provide reliable infoation about results. We touched voting permissio by candidates on both sides an additional context delegitimizing the outcome. We walked down new pitical ads in the week before the election to prevent misleading claims from spreading ty couldnt be rebutted. We strengthe enforcement tickets againstu militia prevent them fromsing our platforms for civil unrest. Altogether, i believe thi was the largest Election Integrity effort by any private company in recent time. This is what people expect of u and i am glad from what weve seen so far from our systems performed well. Electi interference remains an ongoingg threat that will never be fully solved and we continu to improve with each ection. Integrity work is really only half the story. Welso have unprecedented Civil Engagement Program t encourage people to take part in our democracy. We have a large Voter Information Campaign in history. 140illion people visited our voting information centehe including more than 33 million on election day alone. We estimate we helped mor than 4. 5 Million People registered to vo and help recruit 100,000 cowoers. This was done in a transparent nonpartisan way as part of our ongoing commitment t support in a civic process. On top of these efforts by facebook, my wife and i personally donated 400 million to sport Election Officials around the country making sure they havehe infrastructure they needed to enable everye to vote safely during this pandemic. My last testimony said people would judge us by our performance during this election and i believe the stories of not on how we handle bad behavior on our platform but als how we encourage civil engagemen more broadly. I am proud of the wor was done to support our democracy and i look forward tont discussin. I also welcome theo opportunity to discuss internet regulation. I believe we are well overdue to update the rules for the internet ctent, collections, privacy and data portability. There are important questions including who should be responsie for what people say all in. System to work, i believe there needs to be a trsparent process that people feel they can trust this will be difficult especially since our country is so divided but i b believe it is the only way toe address tse issues longterm the challenges weace are deeper than any one platform. How we want t balance what we all care about, freedom o expression, Public Safety and ivacy. This is why i believe we would benefit from clear guidance from elected officials and i look forward to discussing this tod today. Thank you both. Well have one found and seven minutes, as always. Try to be liberal with time but its a very important type. Lets get right into it. Mr. Dorsey, you can go first. Then mr. Zuckerberg. When you heard senator blumenthals openingng statemen, what did you get from it . I think you pointed out that are facing something that feels possible. We are required to help increase the public conversation while at the same time ensuring as many people as possible can participate in order to do so, we need to make policies so people feel safe free to express themselves to minimize the of harassment misleading information, organized campaigns to amplify or influence a partular conversation in the policy creation, that enforcent is challenging but also more or less for the public and that is where i think we have a gap. Have transparey around our policies. Weo not have transparency around how we operate content moderation and a we look forward,e have more and more decisions, operations moving to algorithms which have a difficult time explaining why they make decisions, bring transparency aund those decisions an that is why we believe we should have more choice and how the algorithms are applied. Whether we use themt all so we can turn them on or off andave clarity around the outcomeshey are projecting and how they affect our experience. Thank you mr. Zuckerberg. What did you hear . I heardhat there are issues around content moderation as well as other areas frankly, i am optimistic from his statement that we may o be able to move forward and hopefullyly update some of the m rules for the inrnet around these areas. Its encouraging a i was hoping we would do this for a couple of years and from your Opening Statement, it sounds like there mayay be common groud on these views, Real Progress can be made here. From my few, the question for us is, when it comes time to flag content as being reliable or not, to either one of you believe the government should do that . Is not a solution for the government that talks about what should be upti or down . I dont believe so i think that would be very challenging. Do you agree with that . Center,t for certain types f illegal content, i think it may bebe appropriate for there to be clear rules around that but outside of clear harms including Child Exploitation and areas like that, terrorism, i would agree with your sentiment that it is not something government should side on the connt basis. Ifs we take the government ot of the picture in noncriminal areas, should we lve it up to the industrie to come up with best Business Practices . In terms of how to moderate content. I think we need around line around the problem we are trying to solve. There are Many Solutions to solving the problems but i think we also focus our efforts on what will have thee greatest impact we believe the greatest impact will be found and how we deal with algorithms they are responsible for showing us what we see what we dont see. Needs to be more choice. Do you agree, mr. Zuckerberg . Senator, i think there is a role forbe regulation in the process even if not spine content on content bas. One area i have advocated for regulation around transparency. That goes beyond just about wha the policies are and what the proces is also gs toward results. As an example, every quart fabook releases the community andard enforcement report, a transparency report that breaks down each category of potentially harmful content we track. Terrorism to Child Exploitation content, incitement of violence, pornogray yes, i dont mean to interrt but who sets the Community Standards, how are they separate the company . We have a policy that consult with a number of different stakeholders and outsideroups to make sure we get feeack is publicly known . I believe s our head of content policy has testified publicly multiple tes. When it comes to Fact Checking, would you get a list of the people accused to fact check . Senator, yes. We work with a c number of independent organizations credit by the institute including the associated press, united states, usa today, fact check. Org, signs feedback, check your fact, lead stories and the dispatch in the rest think it is important for the public to know who sets Community Standards, how they are set, who does the Fact Checking, who you reply rely upon to do that. I think that would go a long way for people havg a better understanding of the decisions you make. Mr. Zuckerberg must do you believe t product can be addictive . Certainly did not design the product in that way. We designed it to be as useful and meaningful that is not my question. It seems to b an ample body o growing medical evidence that soal media sites have an addictive nature to them. Do you agree with that . I dontes think the research has been conclusive but is an area we care about. We certainly do not want our product to be addictive. We want people to use them because they are meaningful. We take steps to make sure that this is the case. For example, we dont give a newsfeed a call around how much time people spend on our product which goes counter to a lot of memes and misinformation around how we operate my goal is to help people connect and find content and interactions that will be meaningful on our service. If that is what we deliver over a longterm and they find it useful, they will use it more but i dont think its something to optimize t just encourage people to spend as much tim as possible on them. Have you seen the movie social dilemma . I am familiar with it. Have you seen it, mr. Dorsey . No, i have not. I would encourageoth of you to see i m here is what i think we will do on the commiee overto time, ask the question more directly, are these social media sites addictive . They have Public Health component that needs to be addressed . R years, we thought tobacco was a great thing. We found out tobacco is not a great thing. Medical science around these websites are becoming very concerning toba me, particularly among children a you can manipulate how many times you watch. You can set media sites up to people will constantly interact so to both of you, i appreciate you coming for the committee we got a long way to go. I dont think the government needs toegulate what we think orat say bute have got to love our ge here. Ill end with this last question, d both of you support change to 230, reform o section 230 . I do. Mr. R. Dorsey. Yes. Thank you. Senator blumenthal. Thanks, mr. Chairman. Let me bring this down to practical terms. We are in the middle of another election. The election in georgia could determine which Party Controls the u. S. Senate. I am concerned that both of your companies are backsliding, that you are taking action against dangerous misinformation exactly the same kind of tactics that existed in the last election and that you are, in fact, reducing content modification. They are fighting words and hate speech and it sent workers into hiding. We have to expect the same tactics, they are already visible and out tweet be entered into thes record if thee is no objection, that are aimed at degitimizing the electn in january. When you cmit to the same kind of robust content modification playbook in this coming elecon . Fact checking, labeling, reducing the spread of disinformation and other steps, evenor piticians . Our policy is to have a similar approach in the upcoming Georgia Special elections we chose during the general elections. We do. We intend to learn about this election and bring rare learning to make it more robust. During the past election, disinformation on social media sanity repeati false claims of election again will you commit to taking steps t improve content modification for spanhspeaking communities for the georgia runf . This is something we are working on and worked on ahead of the general election. We have Fact Checkers the focus on spanish as a language and we make sure translated what Information Center spanish which we showed at the top facebook and instagram and everyone who uses those products in the u. S. As a couple of steps we have taken and we are certainly committed to focusing on this. In partnership with latin next groups. Iould like to know and submit to me within one week, what additional steps youre going ttake. Runoff is underway and as i have incated, ive seen backsliding that is very deeply problem that has abled disinformation. Th restarting certain algorit that will amplify the information it is very troubling i want t know within a week what additnal steps we are tang to enhance to stophis kind of amplification. Let me a about facebook and language that is serio. November 5 in facebook le video of doctor fauci and fbi directoray for not acting more favorably toward president tru trump, you removed thett video, mr. Zuckerberg but on thursy, he reportedly told facebook they had notiolate enough polic that he should be banned from facebook. How manyad times has he allowed the call for the murde of government officials facebook suspends his account as you s, the content in question violated our policies and we took it down having content violationoes not automatically mn youre account is taking down the number of strikes depends on the type of offense. People post terrorist content or Child Exploitation, the first time too it, will take down their account. For other things,t isir multiple. Id be happy to follow afterwards. We try not i did hear that will you cmit to taking down that account . Senator, no. That not what our policies do in this case. According to the internal records that are on record now facebook has removed fact check and forgiven infractions for conservative pages, donald trump junior, eric trump a tear of accusations. Had facebook avoided penalizing of Fact Checking conservative pages at violated policy based on concern of political bs and allegations. Senator, no. We have not done tha i think the reports mischaracterize the actions we take. I am not aware of any instance where we have overturned fact checks specifically certainly no action like that would be taken for the reasons your same but we do sometimes is apply judgment onhether repeat offenders policy use would render that but its different than orturning in fact check. Its not doneor the reason that you said. I am very concerned that facebook seems to have thinking aecord of making conservative pressure the president has executive order on section 230. Exerts pressure on you and othersn the industry, there working and they are winning. Let me ask you about antitrust issues in 201 facebook has a virtual project network that claims to protect users privacy. Private information with its users provided facebook unparalled ability to tract. Want to know whether facebook uses data for the purpose 2014. Senator, i believe that data was one of the sources that they look that but iont think it would have taken that to derstand that it was a break product. I dont think that was determinative in my decision to pursue that. In fact, the house and the trust report ss data was used to deterne whether it was feeling facebook messages. Time has almost expired but let me jus say finally that antitrust actions by feder trade commission is long overdue. I believe action is nessary including likely breaking up facebook as a remedy, all options on the Table Including instagram and whats up. It ought to be additions on how facebook uses and competes with val because competition. I aed the civil rights groups, hate speech on twitter, facebook and youtube and childrens otection advocates and sexual abuse material on additional platforms be entered into the record. Thank you both for being here. Oday without objection. Thank you, mr. R. Chairman. Im glad to hear both of our witnesses today, to say section 230 they are open to reform because i think it is fair to say the internet is outgrown section 230. While we have made some modifications when it comes to terrorism and Child Exploitation, i think there is more to do. I think the question will be how this regulation will come to pass. I know theres some including on this committee suggested maybe we ought create a private right of action so that individuals can sue over claims of violated rights on your platforms. I think that is one form of regulation, regulation litigation but it is certainly not my firstst choice, it is not optimal and i dont think it is something we ought tod embrace n 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. The basic concern i have, it is hard to know exactly how to classify your business model. Have a billly of rights protectg freedom of the press but yet here, while we would never let the government regulate what the press writes what is right, essentially we are allowing private companies, which are now public forms to regulate that speech. I am no more comfortable delegating those decisions to you but i am delegating the upcoming elections. The solution for bad speech is not blessed speech, it is more speech. It seems too me like the practices you are engaging in to take, remove and otherwise since each on your platforms, violates that principle. Id like to know why that shouldnt be a better approach by allowing more speech relevant censoring what is perceived as bad speech. As i think i have discussed through you, mr. Zuckerberg, i think we are all struggling to come up with. But the appropriae analogy here is to your business model. We know as newspapers have become less profitable and many have gone out of business, there is consolidation in the news media, there is proliferation of cable tv showsen and people beig able to gethe information throuh a variety of sources but there is no walter or the big tv networks the trust of inca person who people have confidence can, they will shoot with them straight. I know it is a very difficult thing to manage but i encourage both of you not to wait for the lawsuits. We saw what happened to microsoft, i still think microsoft, some of the antitrust concerns when it came to microsoft, he learned the hard way. I think therein is a better way for the american people, that is if we work on this together. Mr. Zuckerberg i believe facebook publishes on a quarterly basis a report of its actions in this area. Is that correct . That is correct. Could you describe that for us and what motivated you to undertake that transparency . Yes. I believe in order for people to trust that we are doing a good job, they have to be able to see the results and we have to be able to break down content, category by category basis across all different categories for the terrorist content, chilr exploitation or incitement of violence or pornography or intellectual property violations. How much of the violating content is on the platforms and how effective our systems are at removing it. We hold ourselves accountable, getting hypersensitive is harmful content addressing before we people have to experience and report it ourselves. The categories we do well for example confining against terrorist content, are a system and counterterrorist teams remove 98 or 99 of the harmful content before anyone has to report it to us. Other categories more challenging and we are still making more progress but i think as part of a regulatory framework, it would be good if every company had to issue a transparency report outlining whats on the platforms and effectiveness of the content of moderation systems so that we the people were responsible for holding us accountable, whether its journalists, congress, academics for half an apples to apples comparison about the Different Companies and potentially part of law, requiring companies mntain a certain level of effectiveness. Thank you. Dorsey, when twitter decided to take down the story, the New York Post story on Hunter Bidens laptop, did you to undergo terms ofervice did you do it under some other cla of authority . We did it under that service. This was a policy arod distribution tax materials. We did not want twitter to be too sheepish and for them. You do realize by taking down that story, you probably give it more prominence andnd visibility than ever would have gone had you leftt alone. We realize that and recognize it as a mistake we made both in ftterms of the intention of the policy and also enforcement action of o not allowing peopleo share publicly or privately which is why we corrected it within 24 hours. Apply to the internet platforms like yours . In other words, the cure for bad speech is not censorship. Its more speech. Why wouldnt that principle apply to 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 was that people would not put up with abuse, harassment and misleading information that would cause offline harm and they wou leave our service because of. So, our intention is to create clear policy, clear enforcement that enables people to feel that they can express themselveson our service and ultimately trust it. So it was a business decision . It was a business decision. Thank you. Setor feinstein. Thanks very much, mr. Chairman. Mr. Dorsey, in recent hearings before the Senate Commerce committee, you said, i think, that twitter has a policy against information relating to civic integrity. President trump and his allies have tweeted hundreds of false claims about the 2020 election. Trump has falsely claimed victory and alleged widespread voter fraud. So, heres the question. Does misinformation about the results of an election and voter fraud relate to civic integrity . Why or why not . Ye it does. And we lab those tweets. When the election has not been called yet or multiple sources have called it differently. Im sorry. I didnt understand that. Did you say you have been able to tweet . No. We have labeled the tweets that would indicate a different result in the election, called by multiple sources. I see. At what point was that done . Throughout the period. October 11th up till today. So, when the tweet was initially came in, how long was it before you, quote, updated it . We didnt update it. We put a label on it pointing to the broader 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 as quickly as we can. Thank you. Is 30 minutes the maximum time . I dont know. We can get you that information. Would you . Im interested in this. Does misinformation about the results of an election and voter fraud relate to civic integrity . Why or why not . Yes, it does. Nd we also label those tweets that would that would indicate whether fraud was happening. Again, we connect those to larg conversations on the atform. So, we want to provi context here. Th is our goal. Proving more context, providing more information. Okay. Now a specific question, and im not sure, actuly, what the answer tohis should be. But on november 7, President Trump tweeted, and i quote, i won this eltion by a lot, end quote. Obviously thats not true. President trump lost the election. The warning label that twitte has applied to the tweet says, and i quote, official sources may not have called the race when this was tweeted, end quote. Do you believe that label goes far enough to prevent the tweets harms when the tweet is still visible and not accurate . Ci do because its not just the surface level label. It points to a collection of news articles of information and conversation that gives you an expansion on whats happening with the election. 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, that the tweets can play a unique role in either reassuring or stirring people up to unacceptable levels. Could you comment on that . Well, i agr in spirit. Ourolicy is focus on misleading information around the election a the sic process to provide greater context, to provide additive information so people can make decisions around whats happening with the election. Its three phases. Its the runup to the elecon, thats election day, and also the phase were in right now, posteltion. Our policy is in enforcement are focused on providing more informationmore context to people in those three phases. Let me give you a specific. On november 7, president trmp tweeted this i won this election by a lot, end quote. Thats obviously not true. President rump lost the election the warning label that twitter has applied to the tweet says, and i quote, offici sources may not have called the race when this was tweeted, end quote. Now, heres the question. Does tha label d enough to prevent the tweets harms when the tweet is still visible and is not accurate . I believe its really important we show people a broader context. Thats the intention of the label. It is not just text below a tweet. Its ail link to connect to a much larger conversation and news articles across the spectrum. Well, give me an example of what would have to happen before the situation wod warrant a stnger response . Well, we did have stronger responses during election day and theeek after where we did put you hado click through to s the content of the tweet and it lmited spreador any anything that went against our civic integrit policy, includi premature calls to the o election results. Well, let me give you one more. On november 12th, presidt trump tweeted a Conspiracy Theory that 2. 7 million votes for him were deleted. The wning label that twitter ha applied to tat tweet said, quote, this claim about Election Fraud is disputed. Now, heres the question, and i think it is a tough issue. Do you beeve this label does enou to prevent the tweets rms, when the tweet is still visible, its a highly emotional situation, but the tweet has no factual basis . But the tweet has a link to more informati, the more conversation, and more context that informs the situation whats happening. So, i do believe that connecting people to the larger conversation, giving them more context is the right path here. But they have to move to solicit that contact, right . Its not contained as an addendum to the original tweet. That the label is an addendum to the original tweet. If you tap on it or click it, you will go to an expansion of the information. I see. Can i ask a question of mr. Zuckerberg . Yes, yomay. If you nt more, that would be okay. Mr. Zuckerberg,t the recent hearing before the senate commerccommittee, you said at facebook has a, quote, policy in place that prevents any candidate, end quote, from, quote, trying to deal legitimize the result of the election, end quote. But the host stealthevote garnerthe electn. Heres the queion. Do you believe facebook did enough to prevent trumps efforts to delegitimize the election result . If so, why have you reached that conclusion. Senator, i believe tat we have we have taken some very significant steps in th area. Not just the adding additional context to scific posts and making it so that when people search for diffent hashtags we show addional information, but we also took the unprecedented step of putting the voter Information Center at the top of facebook and instagram for eryone in the u. S. That showe them reliable information abut the election, including partnering with organizations like reers and the National Election pool to show them Accurate Information about the results of the election. So all taken together, i think that we really went qui far in terms of helping to distribute reliable and Accurate Information about what was going on during this election. Okay. Let me give you one more along this line. After President Trump falsely claimed that the election was being stolen, a group called stop the steal was started on facebook. It grew to more than 300,000 users in less than a day, making it one of the Fastest Growing groups, i understand, in facebook history. You shut the group dourngs but substantial damage already had been done. Trump supporters, some of them armed with assault weapons, held stop the steal rallies outside Election Offices. In philadelphia, two armed supporters who had traveled from virginia were arrested on their way to the citys vote counting center. Heres the question. And this is a tough one. What are your concerns about the spread of misinformation, no matter how innocent it is, or is not innocent, like trumps claims about the election, that they may incite violence . Senator, im very worried about this, especially any misinformation or content tha could incite violence and during such a volatile period like this, one of our top prrities is making su that people dont use our platform to organize any violence or civil unrest. That was the basis under which we took that group, because there were a number of members who were posting potentially violent or encouraging violent commen that violated our policies. We also have boader policies in place around trying to slow the spread of misinformatio even more broadly, even wen its not oing to lead to some kind of violence or imminent harm and thats why we have cated ts independent factchecking ogram where we work with more than 80 partners around the world to help do factchecking becauseeople in our community have told us they dont want to see misinformion, but they also dontant us deciding what isrue and false, so we weve taken the step of buding this program, which i believe is more sophisticated than what anyone els in our industry has. So, im very focuse on these issues. Well, im happy to hear that because im really struck by , that people armed with assault weapons as the product of a tweet could rally outside an Election Office and i think its really a serious issue that needs to be considered and there need to be once you signal that and people respond to it, it has to be, in some way, abatedor in some way pointed out or restructured on the internet itself. Now, can you sporespond to that . Senator feinstein, im sorry were almost double the time. Im sorry. Thats okay. Were going to have a vote come up senator lee. Thank you, mr. Chairm. I would like to note,s far as the president s argument about the election and how they turned out, inciting olence, i would like to pointout here that the only violence im aware of has occurred in connection wth antifa, antifas response to prorump rally peaceful rally attenders. I dont quite understand that. Maybe well have a chance to dwell on that more in aminute. First i wantto talk a little about fderal law. Existing federal law and what it quire section 5 of the federal trade commissn act prohibits businesses from engaging in unfair or deceptive trade practices. Compliance with this particular law requir there be some consistency between wh a comny represents as their practices and their products and what they actually are. In other words,ou cant sell one thing and provide another uner the guise of providing Something Different th what is sold. Both twitter and facebook represent and have represented for year to their users, their customers, that they take neutl approach to election contt moderati. However, as weve hrd today and as we will continue to hear today and into the foreseeable fuure, there are instances in which your platforms are taking a very distinctily partisan approach, and t a neutral one, to electirelat content moderation. For example, just days before the election, twitter suspended the account of ma morgan. Mark morgan is the commissioner of the u. S. Customs and Border Protection oice. They suspended commissioner morgans twitter account specifically for a tweet celebrating the success of t u. S. Southern border wall. Apparently commissionermorgans tweet, his comments about the border wall, violated twitter platform rules governing what it calls hateful conduct. Now, ive read the offending post and the offending post from commissioner mark morgan reds as follows at cbp and the army rps of engineers, continue to build new wall every day. Every mile helps us sop gang murderers, sexual predators and drugs from entering our couny. Its a fact, walls work, period, close quote. Mr. Dorsey, can you tell me in ne sentence what exact is hateful will commissioner morgs tweet that i just read . Well, we evaluated his tweet again and we found we were wrong. That was a mistakend that was duto the fact that we had heightened awareness around government accounts during this time. So, there was a mistake, we reverted it. Thank you. I appreciate that. Well get back to more of that in a minute and get back to the fact that i understand mistakes happen, but what were going to see today is that mistakes happen a whole lot more. Almost entirely on one side of the political aisle rather than the other. Now, commissioner morgans statement in that tweet, as was initially taken down, is factual. Theres nothing remotely hateful about it and yet it was taken down. On october 15th facebook relied on a thirdpartys factbased assessment to ban two advertisers from facebook for, quote, partially false information. Both were factual. They revealed joe biden and Kamala Harris views on lateterm abortion. Joe biden has stated that he wont accept any restrictions on abortion, and senator harris views are such that she voted against requiring care for a child born alive during a botched abortion. The very next day the thirdparty factchecker issued a statement retracting the assessment and retracting it as erroneous. However, it stunningly took facebook almost two more weeks, until october 29th, when voting had already started in many jurisdictions, to lift the ban on these legitimate ads. Ads the factchecker had already declared a couple of weeks earlier were erroneously taken down. Mr. Zuckberg, why on earth did it take facebook two weeks to correct this error . Senator, im not familiar with the details of us reenabling that ad. I can follow up with you after. Its possible that this was a just a mistake or delay, and, unfortunately, when we handle millions or billions of pieces of content a day, you know, while we strive to do as well as possible and be as precise as possible, we will make some mistakes. Thank you. I appreciate your acknowledgment there are mistakes, as noted previously. Those mistakes sure happen a whole lot more on one side of the political spectrum than the other. Now, this is understandable. Were humans. Its also understandable why this might occur. Maybe some of it has to deal with your employees. 92. 38 of facebook employees who donate to federal candidates gave to democrats. At twitter its even more stark than that, but 99. 3 of twitter employees who donated to federal candidates gave to democrats. So, these mistakes may be mistakes but theyre mistakes that rhyme. They may not repeat themselves, but they rhyme. And the consistent theme happens to be republicans, conservatives and prolife activists. Now, i would like ask both of you, a list of every user or every content creator who has been deplatformed or had their contents altered or had some other adverse action taken by either facebook or twitter altered. Is there some list that identifies each user for which that has happened . Mr. Zuckerberg, lets hear from you. Just a yes or no question. Does such a list exist . Senator, im not aware of anything like that existing. Mr. Dorsey, how about you . Im not exactly sure what youre asking but we do y ha a list of users content creators who had some adverse actions taken from them, having their ad altered beuse of the content of their post . Certainly whenever we take an action, its recorded somewhere in a database, but im not sure if thats helpful. What im hearing from both of you is while there may not be an actual list, and i would like you both to look to see if such a list exist, but even if there isnt there is a de facto list. I would like to ask both of you, if such a list exists, please send it to me. Id like to see it. If such a list does not exist, you certainly do have the data necessary in order to generate some. I request as a member of this committee that you generate such a list and provide it to me. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. Senator graham, the chairman of the committee has stepped out momentarily. Ive been directed to recess the hearing momentarily so that we can go and vote. And then we will pick up back here in just a few minutes. I would like to, as long as i have the gavel momentarily, im going to ask one more question before i leave to go vote and then well recess the hearing after this. And could i ask wh were coming back . Ive been waiting to ask questions for an hour now. Yeah. Well be coming back as soon a senator graham retus. He left to vote and just a moment ago. Hell be back. Mr. Zuckerberg, in septber, facebook tagged an run by the american principles project in michigan. That criticized joe biden and criticized senator gary pers. And the ad was tagged becae it was, quote unquote, msing context. Now, the next day the ad was shu down entirely by facebook. Facebookrelied on a supposed fact check from p on. Litifact, which is a nice way to avoid takinaccountability for the problem, but the fact check in question literally said that the ad, quote, makes, uote, predictions we cant fact check. Apparently this had to do wth lacking context. When did lacking context become a new standard for political ads . L political ads, all ads in general, but ceainly all political ads lack context. Ben sasse just finished a resounding victory in nebraska and i havent seen his tv ads, but im sure theyre brilliant. Hes made for television. With or without the beard. Im sure his ads didnt say, ben sasse great senator but not that great o a hockeylayer or heres always context that is lacked out that is lackig, left out in any advertisement. So, what does that mean . And have you applied the missing content label to any democratic ads, a single one, that you can identify . Senator, im not familiar with that specific standard, but as kind of a background on the factchecking program, the basis of this is that we have heard resoundingly from our community that people do not want to see misinformation and believe it is a problem. People also believe that they do not want facebook to be the ash tore in truth ideciding everything thats truth or false. Itrongly agree with that. I do not think it is the right thing to assume that role. Within those bounds we tried to create a factchecking program that works with independent thirdpartieses who have been accredited by the Pointer Institute for journalism, which i think is widely respected. And we give those factcheckers the latitude to determine whether ads or other content on our service is accurate. If not, we apply some demotions or prevent them from being run as ads. I can follow up in more detail afterwards. Thank you. The specifics of your question since im not as familiar with them rht now. I would appreciate that very much, if youd be willing to do th, because its not allaying consistent and logic with the standards that apply in every other advertising context that im familiar with. Its also inconsistent with what facebook itself es. Just to give you some context for that, whilwere talking about missing context. I recently posted something about the election on febook. And my Facebook Post was almost immediately tagged withhe following quote election offials say that voter fraud, which is historically rare, has not affect the outcome in this election. If confirmed that mailin voting was conducted in accordance with state voting rules, close quote. I find this a little disturbing. The tag to me sounds a whole lot more likestaterun media announcing the party line rather than a neual company as it purports to b running an open, online forum. This kind of edorializing insulates peoe from the truth and insinuates that anyone concerned about voter fraud must be crazy. It also states it as if it were an irretable objective fact. Maybe these kind of concerns are out of the mainstream in palo alto, but theyre not out of the mainstream with the rest of america. And i i have to reiterate. I hope this kind of manipulation wasnt intentional, but its getting harder and hder for me to acpt the premise that it could be anything but intention. And if it was intention, its yet mo evidence that facebooks actions surrounding this election, with the pomises that youve made toour own users, and thats a problm. Consistent with t directions ive been given by chairman gram, were now going to recess. I predict well be in recess for no more than 10 or 15 minutes, until cirman graham returns. We stand in recess. Child born a