Portion of the meeting that just wrapped up. I call the hearing to order. Good morning, i would like to welcome our Witnesses Today before i introduce them, i want to say on behalf of the full committee that our hearts and our prayers go out to the individuals of new york, the families and the friends of those who were affected by a senseless terror act. To most on this committee, we have come to expect this. We spend countless hours working through the threats that exist to this country and around the world. And its sad that we have come to the point where really nothing can happen that surprises us. But its the responsibility of this committee to work hand in hand with our intelligence community, to help to keep america safe by providing the tools they need to accomplish their mission. We will continue to do that. As is the case that were here today, and i welcome our witnesses, colin stretch, Vice President and general counsel alt facebook, sean edgett, general counsel with twitter, and kent walker from google. For several months now, the media has been fixated on the role that social media platforms played in spreading disinformation and discord during the 2016 elections. This was an opportunity for each of you to tell your respective stories, and if necessary, correct the record. My sense is that not all aspects of those stories have been told accurately. Ill note for the record that this committee is now having its 17th open hearing this year and the 12th at which well be discussing russia and russias activities. Today im hopeful we can provide the American People with an informed and credible assessment of how foreign actors used your platforms to circulate lies and to agitate unrest during last years elections. Im also hopeful youll share with us what your companies are doing to make it harder for foreign actors to use your platforms, automated accounts, and falsified stories to influence sentiment in the United States. Very clearly, this kind of National Security vulnerability represents an unacceptable risk, and your companies have a responsibility to reduce that vulnerability. While were on the topic of responsibility, i want to use this forum to push back on some narratives that have been sprung up around this subject. A lot of folks, including many in the media, have tried to reduce this entire conversation to one premise. Foreign actors conducted a surgical executed covert operation to help elect a United States president. Im here to tell you this story does not simplify that easily. It is shortsighted and dangerous to selectively focus on one piece of information and think that that somehow tells the whole story. We have heard from the media how a series of, i quote, russianlinked facebook ads were specifically aimed at michigan and wisconsin during the leadup to last years president ial election, unquote. And that, quote, some of those ads targeted specific demographic groups in two states, unquote. The narrative here is that ads linked to russia were targeted in pivotal states and directly influenced the elections outcome. What you havent heard is that almost five times more ads were targeted at the state of maryland than of wisconsin. Maryland, which was targeted by 262 ads in comparison to wisconsins 55 ads. And maryland was not up for grabs. It was a state that democrat candidate carried by 26 . Of the 35 of the 55 ads targeted at wisconsin ran prior to the wisconsin primary before there was an identified republican candidate. And moreover, that not one of those 55 ads mentioned President Donald Trump by name. Or that the key election state of pennsylvania had fewer ads targeted at it than washington, d. C. Where 87 of the electorate voted for hillary clinton. Or that the three most heavily targeted states in america, maryland, missouri, and new york, were all determined by at least 18point margin and two of them won by hillary clinton. One point the media has gotten correct is that more of these geographically targeted ads ran in 2015 than in 2016. Again, before President Trump was identified as a republican candidate for president. But some of the context surrounding the more than 100,000 dollars worth of divisive ads on hot button is e issues purchased by russian actors is missing. To add some detail here, where the media has failed to do it, and put the 100,000 into a frame of reference, the total ad spend for the state of wisconsin was 1,979. With all but 54 being spent before the primary. Again, before the emergence of a republican candidate. The ad spend in the state of michigan was 823. Pennsylvania, 300. To believe the narrative that you have to accept that these sophisticated, wellresourced russian actors studied our process, assessed what states would be critical to the election result, then snuck and invested all of 300 to execute their plan in pennsylvania. 300. More than five times as much money was spend on advertising in california, a state that hasnt voted republican in president ial elections since 1988. Even with the benefit of numbers and what can be calculated and measured, this is an incredibly complex story. We can look at the amount of money spent, the number of ads purchased, and draw conclusions about priorities. We can look at the divisive content of the ads and the pages they directed people towards and the number of tweets and retweets and the manipulated search results and draw inferences about the intent of the Information Operation. What we cannot do, however, is calculate the impact that foreign meddling in social media had on this election. Nor can we assume that it must be the explanation for an election outcome that many didnt expect. I understand the urge to make this story simple. Its human nature to make complex manageable, find explanations and interpret things in ways that conform to your conclusions. But thats biased. Pointing to a state and saying that no ads ran there after the election doesnt prove intent or even motive. It just shows that no ads ran there after the election. This subject is complicated. Theres a whole new vocabulary that comes with this stuff. Impressions are different than views. Views are different than clicks. But theres one thing that im certain of. Its this given the complexity of what we have seen, if anyone tells you theyve got this all figured out, theyre kidding themselves. And we cant afford to kid ourselves about what happened last year and continues to happen today. That complexity, ill note, is exactly why we depend on you for expert insight and reliable information. 60 of the u. S. Population uses facebook. A foreign power using that platform to influence how americans see and think about one another is as much a Public Policy issue as it is a National Security concern. Crafting an elegant policy solution that is effective but not overly burdensome demands good faith and partnership between companies and this committee. Just recently, on the basis of a more complete and sophisticated analysis, the original estimate that 10 million americans were exposed to russian content on facebook was increased to 126 million. That tells me that your companies are just beginning to come to grips with the scale and the depth of the problem. Thats encouraging but know this. We do better when you do better. I would urge you to keep that in mind and to work with us proactively to find the right solution to a very constant and complaining challenge. Ill take a moment here to stress that this hearing, what this hearing is and is not about. This isnt about relitigating the 2016 u. S. President ial election. This isnt about who won or who lost. This is about National Security. This is about corporate responsibility. And this is about the deliberative and multifaceted manipulation of the American People by agents of a hostile foreign power. Ill say it again. Agents of a hostile foreign power reached into the United States using our own social media platforms and conducted an Information Operation intended to divide our society along issues like race, immigration, and Second Amendment rights. Whats even more galling is that to tear us apart, theyre using social media platforms americans invented in connection with the First Amendment freedoms that define an open and democratic society. While its shocking to think that foreign actors use the social networking and communications mediums that are so central to our lives today in an effort to interfere with the core of our democracy, what is even more troubling is the likelihood that these platforms are still being used today to spread lies, provoke conflict, and drive americans apart. Your three companies have developed platforms that have trumendous reach, and therefore tremendous influence. That reach and influence is by the enormous amount of data you collect on your users and their activities. The American People need to understand how russia used that information and what youre doing to protect them. Your actions need to catch up to your responsibilities. We have a lot to get to this morning. Im going to stop here. Again, i want to thank each of our Witnesses Today. And i turn to the vice chairman for any comments he might have. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And let me also express our concerned thoughts about the tragedy yesterday in new york. Let me get right at it. In the age of social media, you cant afford to waste too much time or for that matter, too many characters in getting a point across. So ill get straight to the bottom line. Russian operatives are attempting to infiltrate and manipulate American Social media to hijack the national conversation, and to make americans angry. To set us against ourselves and at their most basic, to undermine our democracy. They did it during the 2016 u. S. President ial campaign. They are still doing it now. And not one of us is doing enough to stop it. Thats why were here today. In many ways, this threat is not new. Russians have been conducting Information Warfare for decades. But what is new is the advent of social media tools with the power to magnify propaganda and fake news on a scale that was unimaginable back in the days of the berlin wall. Todays tools in many ways seem almost purpose built for russian disinformation techniques. Russias playbook is simple but formidable. It works like this. First, disinformation agents set up thousands of fake accounts, groups, and pages across a wide array of platforms. These fake accounts populate content on facebook, instagram, twitter, youtube, reddit, linkedin, and many other platforms. Each of these fake accounts spend literally months developing networks of real people to follow and like their content. Boosted by tools like paid ads and automated bots. Most of the reallife followers have no idea that they were caught up in these webs. These networks are later utilized to push an array of disinformation, including stolen emails, stateled propaganda like rt news and sputnik, fake news, and divisive content. The goal is pretty simple. Its to get this socalled news into the news feeds of many potentially receptive americans and to covertly and subtly push those americans in the directions the kremlin wants to go. Someone who deeply respects the Tech Industry and who is involved in that industry for more than 20 years, it has taken me quite a bit of time, and im still learning, to truly understand the nature of this threat. Even i struggle to keep up with the language and the mechanics, the difference between bots, trolls, and fake accounts, how they generate likes, tweets, and shares. And how all of these players and actions are combined into an online ecosystem. What is clear, however, is that this playbook offers a tremendous bang for the disinformation buck. With just a small amount of money, adversaries use hackers to steal and weaponize data, trolls to craft disinformation, fake accounts to build networks, bots to drive traffic. And ads to target new audiences. They can force propaganda into the mainstream and wreak havoc on our online discourse. If you look back at the results, it was a pretty good return on investment. So where do we go from here . I believe it will take all of us, you, some of the platform companies, the United States government, and the American People to deal with this new and evolving threat. The social media and innovative tools each of you have developed have changed our world for the better. You have transformed the way we do everything from shopping for groceries to growing small businesses. But russias actions are further exposing the dark underbelly of the eco system you have created. And there is no doubt that their Successful Campaign will be replicated by other adversaries, both nation states and terrorists, that wish to do harm to democracies around the globe. This is not a unique american phenomenon. As such, each of you here today needs to commit more resources to identifying bad actors and when possible, preventing them from abusing our social media ecosystem. Thanks in part to pressure from this committee, each company has uncovered, i believe, only some of the evidence of the ways russians exploited their platforms during the 2016 election. For facebook, much of the attention has been focused on the paid ads that russian trolls targeted to americans. However, these ads are just the tip of a very large iceberg. The real story is the amount of misinformation and divisive content that was pushed for free on russianbacked pages which was then spread widely on news feeds of tens of millions of americans. According to the data facebook has provided, 120 russianbacked pages built a network of over 3. 3 Million People. From these now suspended pages, 80,000 organic unpaid posts reached an estimated 126 million real people. More than a third of the population. This is an astonishing reach from just one group in st. Petersburg. And i doubt that the socalled Internet Research agency in st. Petersburg represents the only russian trolls out there. Facebook has more work to do to see how deep this goes, including into the reach that we have just found in the last 48 hours of information you provided of irabacked instagram posts, which again, if we just take for an example, 80,000 posts from irabased trolls on facebook, 120,000 pieces of content on instagram, and we dont even have the data on how much that content reached. The anonymity on twitter and the speed it shares news makes it an ideal tool to spread information. According to study during the 2016 campaign, junk news actually outperformed real news in some battleground states leading up to election day. Another study found that bots generated one out of every five political messages posted on twitter over the entire president ial campaign. Im concerned sir, that twitter seals to be upped estimating the number of fake bots pushing information. Estimated that up 15 active twitter accounts or potentially 45 million plus accounts are fake or automated. Despite evidence of significant incursion and outreach from researchers, twitter has to date only uncovered a small piece of that activity. Although i will acknowledge that in the last few days your numbers have gone from about 200 accounts to over 2 cnn 700 accounts. And again, i believe there is more on the to be. Google search algorithms continue to have problems in surfacing fake news for propaganda. Though we cant necessarily attribute to russian efforts, false stories and unsubstantiated rumors were elevated on Google Search during the recent Mass Shootings in las vegas. Meanwhile, you tube has become rts go to platform. Google has now uncovered 1,100 videos associated with this russian campaign. Much more of your content was likely spread through other platforms. But its not just the platforms that need to do more. United States Government has thus far proven incapable of meeting this 21st century challenge. Unfortunately, i believe the effort is suffering in part because of lack of leadership at the top. We have a president who remains unwilling to acknowledge the threat that russia poses to our democracy. President trump should stop actively delegitimatizing american journalism and acknowledge and address this very real threat posed by russian propaganda. I believe that congress, too, must do more. We need to recognize that current law was not built to address these threats. I partnered with senators klobuchar and mccain on what i believe is the most light touch legislative approach which i hope all my colleagues on this panel will review. The honest ads app is a National Security bill intended to protect our elections from the foreign interference woe all want to avoid. Finally, but perhaps most importantly, the American People also need to be aware of what is happening to our news feeds. We all need to take a more discerning approach to what we are reading and sharing and who we are connecting with on line. We need to recognize the person at the other end of that facebook or twitter argument may not be a real person at all. The fact is that this russian weapon has already proved its success and costeffectiveness. We can be assured that other adversaries, including foreign intelligence operatives and potentially terrorist organizations, have read this playbook and are already taking action. Its why we collectively must act. To our Witnesses Today, i hope you will detail what we saw in the last election. Most importantly, tell us what steps you will undertake for us to g. E. Get ready for the next one. We welcome your participation and encourage your commitment to addressing this shared responsibility. Thank you mr. Chairman. Thank you senator warner. Id like to notify members we will have sevenminute rounds today by seniority. Gentlemen, if i could ask you to please stand and raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth . Yes. Please be seated. Mr. Stretch, we are going to recognize you, then mr. Edgette, then mr. Walker. Mr. Stretch, the floor is yours. Chairman burr, vice chairman warner, and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to appear before you today. My name is kolin stretch. And since july 2013 ive certained as the general counsel of facebook. We appreciate this committees hard work to investigate russian interference in the 2016 election. At facebook our mission is to create technology that gives people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. We are proud that each of you uses facebook to connect with your constituents, and we understand that the people you represent expect authentic experiences when they come to our platform to share and connect. We also believe that we have an Important Role to play in the democratic process. And a responsibility to protect it on our platform. Thats why we take what has happened on facebook so seriously. The foreign interference we saw during the 2016 election is reprehensible. That foreign actors hiding behind fake accounts abused our platform and other Internet Services to try to sew division and discord and to try to undermine our election process is directly contrary to our values and to everything we stand for. Our goal at facebook is to bring people closer together. These foreign actors sought to drive people apart. In our investigation, which continues to this day, we have found that these actors used fake accounts to place ads on facebook and instagram that reached millions of americans over a twoyear heard. And that those ads were used to promote pages, which in turn posted more content. People shared these posts, spreading them still further. Many of these ads and posts are inflammatory. Some are down right offensive. We know that much of this content is particularly hurtful to members of the Facebook Community that engaged with this content believing it was authentic. People should believe content on facebook is authentic. And should not have to worry that they are being exploited in a cynical effort to prey on painful fault lines in our society in order to inflame discourse in this country. In aggregate, the ads and posts we are here today to discuss were a very small fraction of the overall content on facebook. But any amount is too much. All of these accounts and pages violated our policies and we removed them. Going forward we are making significant investments. We are hiring more ad reviewers, doubling or more our security engineering efforts, putting in place tighter ad content restrictions, launching new tools to improve ad transparency, and requiring documentation from political ad buyers. We are building Artificial Intelligence to help locate more band content and bad actors. We are working more closely with industry to share information on how to identify and prevent threats. So that we can all respond faster and more effectively. And were expanding our efforts to work more closely with law enforcement. We know bad actors arent going to stop their efforts. We know we will all have to keep learning and improving to stay ahead of them. We also know we cant do this alone. Thats why i want to thank you for this investigation. We look forward to the conclusion you will ultimately share with the american public. And i look forward to your questions. Mr. Edgette, the floor is yours. Chairman burr, vice chairman warner and members of this committee, twitter understands the importance of the committees inquiry into russias interference in the 2016 election, and we appreciate the opportunity to appear here today. The events underlying this hearing have been deeply concerning to our company and the broader twitter community. We are committed to providing a service that fosters and facilitates free and open democratic debate and that promotes positive change in the world. We are troubled by reports that the power of twitter was misused by a foreign actor for the purpose of influencing the u. S. President ial election and undermining public faith in the democratic process. The abuse of our platform to attempt state sponsored manipulation of election is a new challenge for us, and one we are determined to meet. Today we intend to show the committee how serious we are about addressing this new threat by addressing the work we are doing to understand what happened and to ensure that it does not happen again. At the time of the 2016 election, we observed and acted on instances of automated and malicious activity. As we learned more about the scope of the broader problem, we resolved to strengthen our systems Going Forward. Elections continue all the time. So our First Priority was to do all we could to block and remove malicious activity from interfering with our userss experience. We committed dedicated teams to block malicious activity wherever and whenever we find it. Those teams continue to work every day to ensure twitter remains a safe, open, transparent, and positive platform. We have also launched a retrospective review to find russian efforts to influence the 2016 election through automation, coordinated activity, and advertising. While that review is still underway, we have made the decision to review and share what we know today in the interest of transparency and out of appreciation for the urgency of this matter. We do so recognizing that our findings may be supplement of the as we continue to work with the Committee Staff and other companies, discover more facts and gain a greater understanding of these events. My written testimony details the methodology and current findings of our retrospective review if detail. We studied tweets from the period september 1st to november 15, 2016, during that time we did find automated and coordinated activity of interest. We determined that the number of accounts we could link to russia and that were tweeting electionrelated content was comparatively small become. 01 of the total of accounts we studied. One third of one percent of election related tweets people saw came from russian linked auto accounts. We did see instances where russian linked activity was more pronounced and uncovered more accounts link to the the russian based Internet Research agency as part of our review. We have determined that advertising in seven russian accounts we have banned all of those users and advertisers. We are making meaningful improvements based on our findings. Last week we announced industryleading changes to our advertising policies that will help protect our platform from unwanted content. We are also enhancing our safety systems, sharpening our tools for stopping malicious activity, and increasing transmarntsy to promote public understanding of all of these areas. Our work on these challenges will continue for as long as malicious actors seek to abuse your system and will need to evolve to stay ahead of new tactics. We have heard concerns about russias actors use of twitter to disrupt the 2016 election and about our commitment to addressing that issue. Twitter believes that any activity of that kind, regardless of magnitude s unacceptable, and we agree that we must do better to prevent it. We hope that our appearance today and the description of the work we have undertaken demonstrates our commitment to working with you, our industry partners, and other stakeholders to ensure that the experience of 2016 never happens again. Cooperation to combat this challenge is essential. We cannot defeat this evolving shared threat alone. As with most technologybased threats, the best approach is to combine information and ideas to increase our collective knowledge. Working with the broader community, we will continue to test, to learn, to share, and to improve so that our product remains effective and safe. I look forward to answering your questions. Thank you mr. Edget. Mr. Walker, the floor is yours. Thank you very much chairman, vice chairman, members of the committee for the opportunity to speak with you today. Im kent walker from google. Ive worked at the intersection of technology, security, and the law for over 25 years. Starting my career as an assistant u. S. Attorney for the u. S. Department of justice focused on technology krimgs. Let me start my conversation with you today by joining the earlier comments acknowledging the victims and the family of the awful attack in new york yesterday. As a new york employer, we know how strong and tough new yorkers are and we look forward to doing anything we can to help. Turning to the issues before the committee today, google believes that we have a responsibility to prevent the misuse of our platforms and we take that very seriously. Google was founded with the mission of organizing the worlds information and making it universally accessible and useful. The abuse of the tools and platforms we build is antithetical to that mission. Google is deeply concerned about attempts to undermine the democratic elections. We are committed to working with congress, law enforcement, others in our industry, and the ngo committee to strengthen protections around elections to ensure the security of users, and to help combat disinformation. We recognize the importance this committees mandate and we appreciate the opportunity to share information and talk about solutions. Of course, disinformation and propaganda campaigns arent new and involved many times of media and publications over the years. Over many years we have seen attempts to interfere with our on line platforms. We take these threats very seriously. We have built industry leading Security Systems and we have put those tools into our Consumer Products as well. Back in 2007 we launched the first version of our safe browsing tool which happens protect users from phishing, malwear, and other attacks. Today safe browsing is used on more than 3 billion devices worldwide. If we suspect that use remembers subject to government sponsored attacks, we warn them about that. And last month, we launched our advance Protection Program which helps protect those at greatest risk of attack like journalis, business leaders, and politicians. We face motivated and resourceful atangers and we are continually evolving our tools to stay ahead of ever changing threats. Our tools dont just protect our physical and Network Security but they also protect and prevent attempts to manipulate your systems. On google news for example, we use fact check labels to help users spot fake news. For Google Search we have updated our quality guidelines and evaluations to help surface more authoritative content from the web. We have updated advertising guidelines to prohibit ads on sites that misrepresent themselves. And on you tube we employed a sophisticated spam and Security Breach detection season designed to detect anomalous behavior. As threats evolve we will continually evolved to understand and prevent new attempts to misuse our platforms. With respect to the committees work on the 2016 election we have looked across our products to understand whether government backed entities were used in order to interfere with the election. While we did find some deceptive activities on the platform, that activities appears to have been relatively limited. Of course any activity like this is more than we would like to see. We provided the relevant information to the committee and shared a public summary the results of your review and we will continue to cooperate with the investigation. Going forward we will protect our user and continue working with governments to ensure that our platforms arent being abused. We will make political advertising more transparent, easier for users to understand and even more secure. In 2018 we will release a transparency report showing data about who was buying election ads on our platform and how much money was being spent. We will pair that report with a database available for Public Research of election and ad content across our ads products. We are also going to make it easier for users to understand who bought the election ads they see on our networks. Going forward users will easily be able to fine the name of any advertiser running an election ad on search, you tube or a Google Display Network through an icon on the app. We will ensure only u. S. Nationals buy u. S. Election ads. We already restrict which advertisers can serve ads to political visors. Going forward we would verify the identity of anyone who wants to run an election ad and performing that that person is permitted to run that ad. We certainly cant do this alone. We will continue to work with other companies to better protect the digital ecosystem. As we take our own steps we will begin working on legislation that promotes electoral transparency. Moreover, our commitment to addressing these issues extends beyond our. Were also increasing our long standing support for the bipartisan defending Digital Democracy project. Let me conclude by recognizing the importance of the work of this committee. Our users, advertisers, and creators must be able to trust in their security and safety. We share the goal of identifying bath bad actors who attempted to interfere with our systems and abuse the electoral process. We look forward to continued cooperation both with the members of this committee and to fellow companies to provide access to tools that help people express themselves while avoiding abuses that undercut the integrity of elections. Thank you for the opportunity to tell you about our ongoing efforts. We are happy to answer any questions you might have. Mr. Walker, thank you for your testimony. The chair would recognize himself and share with members that im going to talk about one specific ad. Its not going to count to my seven minutes and the vice chairman is going to do the same at the beginning of his to sort of set the stage for much of what we will talk about today. As an example i would like to highlight one specific case with real world implications involving two facebook groups both associated with the internet Russian Research agency. You will see the first board which is up. First group is called the heart of texas with over 250,000 followers. This account promoted pro texas causes and included posts many would characterize as antiimmigration or antimuslim. The tag line for this group is referenced in the top lefthand corner of the first chart as texas homeland of guns, barbecue, and your heart with the wards time to secede emboldened on the texas flag. Turning to the second group, which is in the bottom right hand, its called the united muslims of america with over 328,000 followers this. Account claims to be pro islamic themes. The tagline for this group is referenced in the bottom right corner of the first chart is im a muslim, and im proud. So if i could have the second board up the heart of texas group created a public event on facebook to occur at noon, may 21st, 2016 at the Islamic Center in houston, texas, to stop, quote, quote, to stop the islamization of texas, unquote. The same group then placed an advertisement on facebook to promote their event with over 12,000 people viewed. Turning to the second group, its called the united muslims of america with over 328,000 followers this. Account claimed to push pro islamic themes. The tagline for this group is referenced at the bottom, im muslim and im proud. The united muslims of america subsequently created an event on facebook to occur at noon, may 21st, 2016, at the Islamic Center in houston, texas, to, i quote, save islamic knowledge. Same time. Same place as the heart of texas event. The group then placed an advertisement targeting people in the Houston Texas area to promote their event to support the Islamic Center. More than 2,700 people viewed this ad. If i could have the third board. On may 21st gs 2016, local news captured the events as they unfolded. Reporting on the protest staged by the heart of texas group and the resulting counterprotest. The he pictures you see on the third board are from the streets in front of the Islamic Center in houston, texas. What neither side could have known is that russia trolls were encouraging both sides to battle in the streets and create division among real americans. Ironically one important who attended stated the heart of texas promoted this event but we didnt see one of them. We now know why. Its hard to attend a site in houston toekz when you are trolling from a site in st. Petersburg, russia. This cost russia about 200. Mr. Stretch, you commented yesterday that your companys goal is bringing people together. In this case people were brought together to permit conflict. And facebook enabled that event to happen. I would say that facebook has failed their goal. From a computer in st. Petersburg russia, these operators can create and promote events anywhere in the United States and attempt to tear apart our society. Im certain that our adversaries are learning from the russian activities and even watching us today. Simply put, you must do better to protect the American People. And frankly, all of your users, from this kind of manipulation. I have my time can start now. I have one simple question, yes or no from each of you. Ill start with mr. Stretch and work to your left. The federal Election Campaign act fribts any Foreign National from spending funds in connection with any federal, state or local elections in the United States. Doesnt this law prohibit your publication of this content . Mr. Stretch . Prohibit publication of the content weve seen . Does fec law apply to facebook . Certainly fec, yes, applies to it prohibits foreign dollars influencing an election . It prohibits foreign actors from using really any medium, including facebook, to influence a u. S. Election. Fec law applies to facebook . Yes, it does. Mr. Edgette . It applies to twitter as well. Applies to twitter. Mr. Walker . Yes, sir. Great. The prevalence of social media use among military members who spend so much time outside the country deployed away from friends away from family seems a likely target for foreign intelligence agencies who want to collect details on u. S. Force movements, deployments, and other sensitive insights. Do you monitor your platforms for indications that your users in the u. S. Military are targeted any way . Mr. Stretch . . Senator, yes, and i would say that that that sort of that sort of Security Work really falls into the traditional cyber Security Work that we have long been focused on. We have had a Threat Intelligence team for years now that has been focused on tracking foreign actors. Its exactly that sort of tletd threat that we believe has historically been an area for focus for our adversaries and likely a area of focus for us on the defensive side. Mr. Edget. We have focused on that, and we are also focused on the other side and educating military how to use twitter and its focus and its risk. Mr. Wagner. Because we are not a social network we might not have as much visibility. But that would certainly be an area of concern. These questions are for facebook, mr. Stretch n. A blog published september 6, 2017, facebooks chief Security Officer wrote the Company Discovered 3,000 political ads that were paid for through 470 fake accounts and pages that likely operated out of russia. Facebook shut down these accounts on the ground that they were inauthentic. Had these accounts not violated facebooks prohibition against fake accounts, would they have been shut down . Senator, many of them would have because many of them violated other policies related to the type of content thats permitted on the platform. The authenticity issue is the key. Referring to the content you surfaced earlier, its pains us as a company, it pains me permanently to see that we were that our platform was abused in this way. People in this country care deeply about issues of public concern. Its one of the strengths of our country that people are so willing to speak freely about them. The fact that foreign actors were able to use our platform to exploit that openness is a deeply painful len lesson for us and one we are focused on learning from Going Forward. Does it trouble you that it took this committee to get you to look at the authentic nature of the users and the content . Senator, we are certainly troubled, i would say more than troubled, by the by the evidence of abuse of our platform during 2016. And we are certainly grateful for the committees investigation and the attention you are bringing to this issue. We think its very important. We do believe that its a larger issue than any one company, and we believe that Going Forward there are opportunities not just for us to do better but for us to Work Together to make sure we are all addressing this threat appropriately. What characteristics would indicate that an account or a page is likely operated out of russia . There are a number of characteristics that can signal potential location. The most obvious one that is typically the most reliable is Location Information thats transmitted by the users browser when they access facebook. Its also the most easily manipulatable. There are many other signals that similarly will suggest location, but because of the way the internet is architected can also be faked. Our job is to look not just for the signals that are in plain sight but understand how they can be manipulated and look for patterns of activity that reveal efforts to abuse our platform that are shrouded both geographically and in other ways. Mr. Edgette, twitter stated its expanding its theme and resources and combat automated twitter accounts or bots. What is twitters process for identifying a bot . We have a lot of data behind sort of the things you see on twitter that looks at the activity of an account. Remember, there are hundreds of millions of accounts. The activity of accounts as it relates to other accounts. As you or i senator tweet, ar activity looks pretty normal. As an automated account tweets, thousands of teams an hour, or logs in thousands of times a day. That looks pretty suspicious. So our technology is looking for that anomaly, that differentiates sort of normal accounts from automated accounts. But spammers and bad actors are Getting Better at making themselves look more real. What percentage of accounts on twitter are actually bots and not real people . So we do a monthly audit of this and investigation and determine that for years, less than 5 of our accounts are false accounts or spam. What happens to accounts on twitter that are suspended by twitter . Is there an indefinite status . Once we suspend an account, there especially an automated account they are typically personal innly banned from the platform. And we will do work to link those accounts with new accounts that may pop up. So the more we investigate and look into this and build the web of information around signals we are seeing from these accounts the better we get at linking those accounts and stopping them before they get on the platform. My time is expired but im going to ask you to submit in writing for the record twitters assessment of why independent assessments of the number of bots on twitter scantily, consistently, are higher than the 5 you have stated today. If you would rooi provide that for the record. Happy to provide it for the record and address it today. Mr. Vice chairman. We have had testimony from a representative of nato that fake and bought accounts on twitter are more in the 12 to 15 account. In a vast number of research studies, 320 million active twitter candidates, you are talking 30plus million accounts that could be being misused and abused. Put up this chart here. This is an example of how people are kind of lured in. The first ad is an ad that is pretty benign. Its obviously targeted towards christians. Its an army of Jesus Facebook ad. 217,000 followers. You like that page, and heres what happens. You would get a series of for the most part relatively benign bible quoteso or other item this. Ad appeared in october of 2016. Late october, early november, suddenly this benign site in addition to your bible quotes suddenly were getting thoese other posts. Not paid ads, but posts, from this organization. This message, obviously the bottom one would have gone to the 217,000 followers. We have no idea how many times it was liked or shared with other individuals. We have tools on how people lure people in. And once they are lured into what they think is a pro texas or pro muslim or here projesus account. And then they are manipulated by foreign actor and foreign agents. Go ahead and start my time. First of all i hear all your words. But i have more than a little bit of frustration. That many of us on this committee have been raising this issue since the beginning of this year. And our claims were frankly blown off by the leaderships of your companies, dismissed, stayed there is no possibility, nothing like like this happening, nothing to see here. Bothers me. If you are really committed to trying to work with us to try to resolve this that it took until this committee continually went at you and it was july and early august when you made your first presentations. Candidly your first presentations were less than sufficient and showed, in my mind, a lack of resources, a lack of commitment, and a lack of genuine effort. Candidly, your Companies Know more about americans in many ways than the United States government does. And the idea that you had no idea of any of this was happening strains my credibility. So my first question is this. I want a yes or no answer, not filibuster. Will you commit to continue to work with this committee to provide Additional Information and additional documents as needed as we continue to explore this challenge and threat on a Going Forward basis . We can go right down the line. Mr. Stretch . Yes. Mr. Edgette . Absolutely. Mr. Walker . Absolutely. Next. One of the things that i continue again and i will comment you here, that from the first from our friends at facebook, you identified 470 accounts, 3,000 ads. And most of the work, at least it appears to me from twitter and facebook has all been derisktive of that Additional Data dump. Again, this is a yes or no question. Do you believe that any of your companies have identified the full scope of russian active measures on your platform . Yes or no . Senator, our investigation continues. So i would have to say no, certainly not with certainty. Mr. Edgette . No, and we are still working on this. Mr. Walker . We have done a comprehensive investigation but as mr. Stretch says these are ongoing issues and we continue to investigate. Let me start with facebook here. You have identified 470 accounts from one troll farm in st. Petersburg. There have been plenty of press reports of other troll farms in russia. There have been reports of other activities that were russian controlled in Central Europe and eastern europe. In meetings with our leadership as you became more aware of this problem you aggressively promoted the fact for example, that you took down 30,000 accounts around the French Elections. Now you say not all of those were russian related. Very gone back and cross checked those russian related accounts that you took down in france to see if any of those accounts were active in the American Election . Senator, the 30,000 accounts that we took down in the accounts that were related to russian accounts that you took down, your leadership in fact, bragged about how proactively you were in the French Election process. Did you check those accounts to see if any of them were active in the American Elections . Senator, the system that ran to take down those accounts, which were fake accounts of really all type and for any purpose, has is now active worldwide. Have you please answer my question. Have you reviewed the accounts you took down in france that were russian related to see if they had played any role in the American Election . Senator, i apologize. Im trying to answer the question. Well the answer is yes or no. I dont want a long explanation. I want to know have you done because i have been signaling this to you for some time. We wanted to make sure that you would review those accounts. We on twanted to make sure that 470 accounts that paid for the 3,000 ads. You said these are all accounts except for one that were paid for in rubles. Did you explore any of those accounts that were paid for with dollars or rubles euros or other rubs. Let me yes or no. Yes, we are looking and have looked at every possible indication of russian activity in the 2016 election and the investigation continues. Sir. That includes any information we have identified from those 30,000 as well as all of that that database has been run to see if any of these accounts have been active in the United States . I will have to come back to you on that, senator. Sir we have had this hearing scheduled for months. I finds your answer very, very disappointing. On the question of we just discovered, and i appreciate this, you had 80,000 views in terms of russian views on facebook. We now discovered within the last 48 hours 120,000 russianbased posts on instagram. Have you done any of the similar analysis on those 120,000 posts . We know the 80,000 ended up reaching 126 million americans. Have you done that same analysis on the 120,000 posts on instagram . Yes, senator, we have. And how Many Americans did those touch . The data on instagram is not as complete. But the data that we do have indicates that beginning in october of 2016, those instagram posts reached an additional 16 Million People in addition to the 126 Million People that we identify. Now we are seeing the russian activity roughly at 150 million plus americans without knowing how many times they were reshared . If i can add, the time period prior to october 16th where our data is less reliable, would yield an incremental 4 million. So all towld that gets you to a little less than 150 million. Thats correct, senator. There was a fake Tennessee Republican account, ten gop. The irony was this account had 154,000 followers. The real tennessee gop party had 13,000, 13,400 followers i believe based on your numbers. I find interesting people said people should be able to spot these fake accounts. If they were able to spot these fake accounts, you had the president S Communications director retweeting this condition, claun kellyanne, the president s son, jump jr. Retweeting this account. My question is, why did it take so long to take this down when the Republican Party was asking you repeatedly. That wasas absolute miss. We have gotten better since. Let me close with this question. My time is about up. We have looked on political dissem dags of political disinformation but the same way that these bots and trolls and click farms and pages groups can be used in politics, these same tools can and have been used i believe to assist financial frauds around stock schemes. I think there is a lot of this activity in broad based digital advertising. I think weve seen some of this in schemes that sell counterfeit prescription drugs as well as the ability to encourage folks the download malwear. I believe this is a real challenge and to get this right we are going to need your ongoing copraying. Thank you mr. Chairman. You can watch this entire hearing of the Senate Intelligence committee on line at cspan. Org also tonight on our companion network cspan2 that starts at 8 00 eastern. Another committee, the house intelligence committee, will take testimony from these same witnesses at a hearing coming up at 3 00 p. M. Eastern today. That will also be live here on cspan3. Right now remarks from this morning from South Carolina senator lindsey graham. He called on President Trump to hold the man accused of running over bicyclists in new york city yesterday as an enemy