Transcripts For CSPAN3 Social Media And Combating Terrorism 20180206

Well, good morning. I want to thank everyone for being here to examine what social Media Companies are doing to combat terrorism including terrorist propaganda and recruitment efforts on online. The social media are well documented. Youtube, twitter and facebook among others give voice around the world and provide a forum of discussion of outlets. They have thrived online. But as is so often the kascase, enemies have sought to take over this. Isis has been particularly aggressive in seeking to radicalize to go over the internet. Our companies have a very difficult task, preserving the openness upon which their platforms are thrived and swart the actions that have used it for other purposes. Islamic terrorists using social media platforms to inspire well documented. For example, the killer responsible for the orlando nightclub shooting in which 49 people were murdered reportedly digital material readily available on social media. And this itch sue not new. Over the course of several years, youtube hosted hundreds of videos by senior al qaeda recruit recruiter. And although they promised to get rid of that, their jihad video remained on the site for years. In fact, New York Times report suggested that videos influenced the terrorist, the Boston Marathon bombers, and the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino and orlando. This issue is also international in scope. In response to reresponsibility terror attacks in london, british Prime Minister has been outspoken in calling on media platforms to combat the kind of radicalization occurs online. Last fall she was joined by other leaders in calling upon social Media Companies to remove it from their sites within one to two hours after it appears. As well hear today, the companies are using technology to speed will you please the efforts to help this. In a recent blog test facebook said our Artificial Intelligence removes 99 even before it can be flagged by a member of the community. And sometimes even before it can be seen by any users. Youtube is also teaming up with jig saw. The inhouse think tank of Google Parent Company alphabet to test a new method radicalization referred to as the redirect method. Seeking to redirect or refocus potential terrorists at an earlier stage in the radicalization pros serks youtube offers users searching for specific terrorist information videos to deter them from being radicalized. A little over a year ago, facebook, youtube, microsoft and twitter committed sharing a database and digital fingerprints of some the content used for influence or recruitment. By cross sharing this, on each of the host platforms will be readily identified hopefully identified in hopefully deleting faster. Using awe automation can kick them off their platforms before they are seen. We all have a vested interest in their success. And i believe this committee has a significant role to play in overseeing the effectiveness of their efforts. I do want to thank miss bickert, miss downs, and mr. Monje being here representatives of their companies. With now, ill recognize the ranking senator nelson. Mr. Chairman, within a few hours of the pulse nightclub shooting i was there in orlando. And i just want to comment that when a great tragedy occurs such as that, its encouraging that the Community Comes together like orlando never had. The same you can say for boston. And so many other places where these tragedies occur. And yet we need to get at the root of the problem, which the chairman has outlined. Its the first time that the Commerce Committee has had three of the largest social Media Companies before us. These social media platforms and those of many other Smaller Companies have revolutionized the way that americans communicate, connect, and share information. And, by the way, a comment that the chairman made about Artificial Intelligence screening out most of the bad guys stuff. I wish one of you would explain that. That is encouraging, but its not quite enough, as the chairman has outlined. But at the same time these platforms have created a new and stunningly effective way for nefarious actors to attack and to harm. Its startling that today a terrorist can be radicalized and trained to conduct attacks all through social media. And then a terrorist cell can activate that individual to conduct a attack through the internet, creating an effective terrorist drone, in effect, controlled by social media. So thank you all of your witnesses for being here and helping explain this. And particularly explain what you are doing, to rally to the common defense of our people in our country. Because using social media to radicalize and influence users is not limited to extremists. Nation states, too, are exploiting social media vulnerabilities to conduct campaigns against this country and to interfere with our democracy. And then on basic values, we have seen the attacks utilizing social media that end up in child trafficking and so forth and so on. Now, the Russian Hackers at Vladimir Putins direction attempted to influence, and did influence, the 2016 president ial election through all of these things that we have been reading about for over a year. And we also know that putin is likely to do it again. In its january 2017 assessment, the Intelligence Community said that putin and his Intelligence Services seed the election influence campaign as a success and will seek to influence future elections. And i will be asking mr. Watts if he would outline what he sees is happening in this 2018 election. This should be a wake up call to all of your companies. Indeed, it should be a wake up call to all americans. And this should be regardless of party. This was an attack on the very foundation of american democracy. We welcome the expert that each of you bring to the table today. We welcome mr. Watts and his expertise. Over many years of how bad actors like russia use the internet and social media to influence so many things, not just elections. And we even know that putin is reaching down deep into our governments, not just at the top. You remember a few weeks ago, part of the federal Communications Commissions Net Neutrality proceeding . A half a million comments were traced to return ip addresses. Thats shocking. Thats concerning. We should want to know why these comments were filed. What were they trying to do . And all of us should be very concerned about whats going to happen next. And in the end, the basic questions that we want to ask is what have we learned, what are we correcting, whats going to happen in the future, and how can we get ahead of it before it does. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you senator nelson. And we do appreciate the great panel of witnesses we have in front of us today. Thank you all for being here. On my left and your right is miss monica bicker ahead of product policy and Counter Terrorism facebook. Miss juniper downs at youtube. And monje on twitter. And mr. Clinton watts senior fellow of the institute. Ill start with miss bickert and well move across the table. And if you could, confine your oral statements as closely to five minutes as possible. Any additional comments, obviously, will be included as part of the record, but it will give us an optimum amount of time for members to ask questions. So thank you so much to all of you for being here. We look forward to hearing from you. Miss bickert. Thank you. Chairman thune, ranking nelson, and distinguished members of the committee. Im Monica Bickert and i lead product policy and Counter Terrorism for facebook. Im also a former federal prosecutor, having spent more than a decade as assistant u. S. Attorney for the department of justice. The issues we are discussing here today are of the utmost importance. And on behalf of facebook, i want to thank you for your leadership in seeking more effective ways to combat extremism, crime, and other threats to our National Security. We share your concerns about terrorist use of the internet. Thats why we removed terrorist content as soon as we become aware of it. Its also why we have a dedicat dedicated Counter Terrorism team working as experts. This includes people tracking new trends and tactic sz. Former intelligence and Law Enforcement officials and prosecutors who have worked in the area of counter intelligence. Also includes engineers constantly improving the technology that helps us find and remove terrorist content. In my written testimony, i describe these efforts in more detail. I also want to note we pursue this goal with the mindset its important to maximize Free Expression while keeping people safe online. We work proactively primarily through the use of Automated Systems like text base learning. Now more than 99 of isis and al qaeda propaganda we remove, is content we 50id phi ourselves before anybody has flagged it for us. Once we are aware of a piece of terrorist content, we remove the vast majority of subsequent up loads within one hour. We do flnot wait for these blow ball bad actors to put it into facebook. Rather we work with outside experts who prop prop began that released by these groups across the internet then we work with them hand proactively put it in our systems. Often it means we are able to stop this content from ever being up loaded to facebook. However, much of this work cannot be done by machines alone. Accurately removing terrorist content often requires a person to assess it. A photo of an eye isis fighter, for instance could be shared by a supporter of the group or journalist raising awareness or Civil Society group condemning violence, and we need people to be able to assess that and tell the difference. We now have more than 7500 reviewers who assess potentially violating content, including terrorist content, in dozens of different languages. And by the end of 2018, we will more than double the 10,000 people who are already working on safety and Security Issues across our company. Now, some of these people are responsible for responding to Law Enforcement requests. We appreciate the Critical Role that Law Enforcement plays in keeping people safe and we do want to do our part. Our global team responds to valid legal requests from Law Enforcement consistent with applicable laws in our policies, and this includes responding to emergency requests where we strive to respond within minutes. We also want to do our part to stop radicalization and disrupt the recruitment process. Thats why we have commissioned multiple Research Efforts over the past three years to understand how online speech can most effectively counter violent ideologies and we have sponsored efforts to put those learn ings into practice. One such example is our peer to peer challenge and Extremism Program which we sponsor with Adventure Partners and through that program we have had more than 6500 students participate. They have created hundreds of campaigns that have been viewed worldwide more than 200 million times. No one company can combat the terrorist threat alone so we partner with others including companies, Civil Society, researchers, and governments around the world. Among other things, we work with 11 other companies, including those here, to maintain a shared industry database of hashes, unique digital fingerprints of terrorist content so we can all find and remove it faster. And we have also recently launched a Global Internet forum where we can work with Smaller Companies to help them get better. In conclusion, let me reiterate that we share your goal of stopping terrorists from using social media and we are going to keep Getting Better at it. Im here today to listen to your identities and your concerns and to continue this constructive dialogue. Thank you for the opportunity. And i look forward to your questions. Thank you, miss bickert. Miss downs. Thank you, senator. Chairman thune, Ranking Member nelson and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify at todays hearing and for your leadership on these difficult issues. My name is juniper downs and i serve as the policy lead for youtube. At youtube we believe the world is a better place when we listen, share, and build community through our stories. Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world. We see over 400 hours of video up loaded to youtube every minute. With this comes many benefits to society. Unparallel access to news, our reremarkable view points and freedom to exchange ideas. We value this openness. It has democracyized how stories get told. We are aware, however, that the very platforms that have enabled these societal benefits may also be used by those who want to promo promote hatred or extremism. To that end im pleased to announce the changes. We have developed programs to defend against the use of our platform to spread hate or in sight violence. Youtube has long had policies that strictly prohibit terrorist content. This includes terrorist recruitment, violent extremism, glorification of violence, and videos that teach people how to commit terrorist attacks. We apply these policies to violent extremism of all kinds, whether insighting violence on the race or religion or part of an organized terrorist group. We use a mix of technology and humans to remove violent content quickly. Users can alert us to content they think might violate through a flag below every youtube video. We have teams reviewing 247 in multiple languages and countries around the world. We also work closely with members of our trusted Flagger Program. Ngos who have flaws and expertise on hate speech and terrorism. And of course we rely on our technology which has always been a critical part of our solution. Our image matching techniques can prevent the content by catching up loads before it comes public. Nonetheless, given the evolving nature of the threat, its necessary for us to continue enhancing our systems. Over the past year, in particular, we have taken several steps to build on our efforts. The first is an investment in Machine Learning technologies for the detection and removal of violent extremist videos. We recently deployed classifiers that detect new terrorist content and flag it for review. Machine learning is now lepg our human review serves remove nearly five times as many videos as they were before. Today, 98 of the videos we remove for violent extremism were identified by our algorithms. Second, we are focused on improving and expanding our expertise and resources on these issues. We expanded our trusted Flagger Program to additional 50 ngos in 2017, including several Counter Terrorism experts. Working with these organizations helps us to better identity emerging trends, and understand how these issues manifest annie vofl. And in 2018 we will have 10,000 people across google working to address content that might violate our policies. Finally, promoting programs counter speech on our plat forjs. Creators for change Program Support youtube supporters tackling against hate by acting as positive role models. Google jig saw group has redeployed the redirect method to disrupt online radicalization. We also clb rate across the industry. In 2016 we created a house sharing database with facebook, microsoft and twitter where we share information to stop terrorism. We added 7 companies in 2017 and shared database now contains over 50,000 video and image hashes. Last summer we countered terrorism to formalize Industry Collaboration on research, knowledge sharing, and technology. No single component or party can solve this problem in isolation. To get it right, we must all Work Together. We understand the importance of speed and comprehensiveness in our work. Since june, we have removed 160,000 videos and terminated 30,000 channels for violent extremism. We have taken down nearly 70 of violent extremist videos within eight hours of up load and nearly half within two hours. We have reviewed over 2 million videos to make sure we are catching and removing all videos that violate these policies. We achieved these results through enhanced enforcement by machines and people and collaboration with outside experts. We are deeply committed to working with Law Enforcement, government, the Tech Industry, ngos to protect our services from being exploited by bad actors. We look forward to continued collaboration with the committee as it examines these issues. Thank you for your time. I look forward tour questions. Thank you, miss downs. Mr. Monje. Thank you, chairman thune, Ranking Member nelson, distinguished members of the committee and staff. Im here on behalf of twitter, an open Communications Platform that allows more than 330 million users to see whats happening in the world and to share view points from every side. Each day we serve 500 million tweets. We have about 3,700 employees around the world. Twitter has been at the forefront of preventing terrorist exploitation of the internet. Our work in this area will never be complete because the threats owe involve. As new challenges emerge, will heel continue our efforts to both ensure terrorists dont have a place on twitter while also giving voice to those who promote a positive message for the future. Twitter has zero tolerance policy for terrorist content. This includes not only specific threats of violence, but also promoting terrorism, affiliating with violent Extremist Groups and floor fieg violence. Our job is to enforce this policy globally, at scale, and to evolve to stay one step ahead of the terrorists. We have dramatically improved our ability to implement these roles and have suspended more than 1. 1 million terrorist accounts since mid 2015. Our progress fighting terrorist content is due to our commitment to innovation. While there is no magic algorithm for identifying terrorist contempt, we have improved the effectiveness of inhouse proprietary technology. It does human review, and identify and remove bad content from twitter. At the beginning of 2015, our inhouse technology detected roughly a third of the terrorist accounts that we pulled down at that time. Last year, that number increased dramatically. We identified it more than 90 of suspensions for terrorism by our internal tools. And 75 or three quarters of those accounts were suspended before they had a chance to tweet even once. Let me repeat that because its important. We spot more than 90 of terrorist accounts before anyone else does and we stop 75 of those accounts before they can spread any of their deplorable ideology. Of course, like any determined adversary, as we make it harder for terrorists to use twitter, their behavior evolves. To stay in front of this we continue to invest in technology from preventing new cats to replace those rhesus spend. While also developing further the tools that prevent the distribution of propaganda in aftermath of attacks. Because this is shared challenge we have Global Internet forum. Twitter sees the forum as suck stan shall opportunity to ensure that Smaller Companies are not soft targets for terrorists. We have engaged with 68 Smaller Companies over the past several months to share best practices and learning and we plan to grow ton that, would. Removing ha tweet doesnt ee almost nate the ideology behind it. So we invest heavily in alternative narratives. Twitter has participated in more than 100 ngoss and events around the world since 2015. We work with respected organizations to empower kred nongovernmental voices against violent extremism. As part of continuing effort to make twitter a safe place for open democratic debate, late last year we broad end our rules to prohibit accounts affiliated with violent Extremist Groups and to make hateful imagery much harder to find on our platform. We also stepped up our enforcement of abuse by witnesses and increased transparency to further educate users about terms of service. Twitter has also devoted significant resources to combat disinformation and election interference by foreign state actors. To prepare for the u. S. Midterm elections this year, across functional Elections Task force is prepared to verify Major Party Candidates against impersonation to remain open lines of communication, to apply our technology to address networks of malicious automation, and to monitor trends and spikes in conversations related to the elections. The companies here today have both shared and unique challenges. And while we are competitors in the marketplace, we are close partners in combatting the threats of extremism and those who would harm or democratic process. Thank you. Thank you for your leadership on these issues. I look forward to this discussion. Thank you, mr. Monje. Mr. Watts. Thanks for having me today. A few years later played out on twitter shortly after facebook groups and twitter feeds brought theist many laic state to the worlds attention before they scurried off to other platforms like telegram. And then years ago i stumbled into Russian Influence Campaign called active measures which they have deployed across social media platform with devastating effect. Social media offered a platform for discussion over diverse tive audiences and led to uprising during the arab spring. But bad actors with motivation, money, and no how, will always come to these gate ways to pursue objectives. Lesser educatesed populations around the world via mobile phones will be particularly vulnerable to the social media manipulation of terrorists. Americans focus on social Media Recruitment or russian meddling in president ial election of 2016 overlooks other indicators of damaging activity. American companies have suffered and remain particularly vulnerable to smear campaigns launched through malicious false narratives pushing stock prices down and increasing sales. This should take seriously violence inside the u. S. Through evolution i would call this external Operations Leader in yemen recognize the power of the internet and mobilize terrorists in america. The Islamic State took this to another level with their spoe s spokesman calling on attacks at home and further enabling them by using social media battalion. A little over a year ago americans saw pizza gate and traveled to washington d. C. To investigate the claims. Arrived at arrived at a restaurant and discharged a firearm. Posting as americans on social media in filtrating one or both political extremes in the u. S. And recruiting americans. Social Media Companies will be better positioned to stop this scenario from occurring, and blind to the technical signatures behind this. Social Media Companies realize the damage these bad actors far too late. Race to implement policies but have yet to anticipate the next abuse social media platforms by emerging threats. Ive offered a range of recommendations how to do this. Ill focus on a few issues here today. The first and most pressing challenge comes in the debate over social media account. And n anonymity of social media accounts. It has empowered hackers. Under the veil of this they spread hate. Social Media Companies can and should protect the company and account holders if their user choosers but must be able to determine a real person resides behind each one. They have better advanced tools recently to certify authenticity. However the current level on twitter platform. I would encourage to many users as possible as quickly as possible. Closely connected to the issue of the authenticity is rise of propaganda. The negative effects of social bots far out weigh any benefits. Anonymous replication of accounts routinely high volumes of misinformation can pose a serious wrist to savory and direct threat to democracy. Lastly, social Media Companies continue to get beat in part because they relay too heavily to catch bad actors. Artificial intelligence will greatly insist of cleaning up nefarious activity but will fail to detect that which hasnt been seen before. Those understand the intentions of criminals must work alongside technologiness to sustain this. I think its unreasonable to think every social Media Company can do that. But that could easily be developed or collectively sponsored by social Media Companies. They could be adopted by Silicon Valley in this regard. I made other recommendations in the past which i am address during the q a but in conclusion some social Media Companies have done more than others to improve the safety integrity of their pl platforms. Others have a lot of work to dochdo. Ultimately the American Public will decide. Many are walking away from social media applications because they cant trust the information being shared or tolerate the user experience. Social Media Companies should move aggressively to do this. Thank you for having me. Tlaung, mhank you, mr. Watts. We have a new member of the committee. We do indeed. Senator jon tester of montana. He has been wanting to get on this committee for quite a while. And we are so happy that he finally was able to be appointed to the committee. He brings a wealth of experience as a Senior Member of the Appropriations Committee to this committee. So welcome, senator tester. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, ill very quickly, first of all, thanks for the welcome. I look forward to working on this committee. Although ill tell you i have flashbacks to 2007 right now. Tlau thank you. I also want to thank and welcome senator tester for joining the committee. Its always nice to have another rural senator on this committee, someone that is nye maybe and represents a state lining mine where there is are more cattle than there are people. And obviously area where there are still cell phone and broadband free areas, but we are hoping to change that. Senator tester can probably remember the days like i can with party phone lines. And a lot of the issues that we address on this committee are issues that impact the daily lives of people and his state just like they do so many members of this committee. Senator tester welcome good to have you here. Thank you. Well start with some questions. And i want to draekt this to mr. Monje and miss bickert. As you mentioned both of you in your testimony. Google, facebook, twitter and microsoft announced the formation of a hashing coalition to better identify ultimately remove offending content. The question is is there any shared standard for what constitutes extremist or terrorist content in your coalition. Thank you, chairman for that question. Our companies are constantly working with one another and with Civil Society and Smaller Companies to address the issues that change and evolve as new things that we see around the world. We are constantly adapting how we attack the challenge and we do rely on the advice and good counsel. Not only of our Peer Companies but also academics and ngos. There is no standard definition though . Okay. That youve agreed upon. Thats right, mr. Chairman. I would just add that the companies, we launched the Global Internet forum in june of 2017. But we have actually been working together for a number of years informally. Part of those meetings is discussing what the appropriate standards are. Recognizing of course that these different products work differently. But the two types of policies i think you most commonly see are first directed towards the groups having any presence on the platform. So for instance facebook if you are there, you cannot have a page on platform if you are simply talking about the weather, you simply cant be on there. And banning any praise or support of these groups or their actions. Okay. Thanks. Miss downs, according to the counter extremist project. One single bomb making video used to instruct the man chuser bomber has been up loaded to youtube and removed 11 times but continues to resurface as recently as this month. How is it possible for that to happen . Why arent your hashing efforts working to keep this video off your platform permanently . Thank you, chairman. As i mentioned, we have strict policies against terrorist content, including videos that instruct people on how to commit terrorist attacks. Certainly includes bomb making videos, videos instructsing people on how to drive vehicles into crowds and so on. This particular video was caught by our systems. We have used it in our hash sharing database and catching it quickly and removing it as soon as they are detected. Are your companies, this is anybody can answer this, are your companies, as you start to roll out some of these Counter Terrorism programs, how do you have ways of measuring their effectiveness . What sort of the metric or the standard . Chairman, at twitter, we have really doubled down on the technology on the Machine Learning to try to identify and remove contempt as quickly as possible. So our metric is how many accounts are we taking down, how many accounts are we identifying proactively, and how many are we able to take down before they are able to tweet. And we have seen steady progress in that. We started, we were taking down about a third of our content proactively with our Machine Learning. Today thats north of 90 . With 75 of that coming down before anybody gets a chance to tweet. And so thats how our main metric. Okay. So its been reported that isis sur gates are using ai bots to carry out recruiting and messaging campaigns. And as you all become more sophisticated in how to prevent and root out the bad people also become more sophisticated in how to get around. And the threat evolves. So are you seeing that level of sophistication . And if so what are you doing to mitigate it . The use of ai against you by these groups . Anybody want to take a stab at that . In it addition to our policies against terrorist content, we have spam detection systems which could catch massive up loads of videos. So our long standing fighting spam is effective it he ctechni get at that. Anybody else . I would agree with you, its a cat and mouse game and we are constantly evolving to meet the challenge. When we in the past would ban account, suspend an account, they would try to come back, and then brag about the fact they were were banned. That became a very strong signal for us which resulted them being taken down quicker. So they have stopped doing that. Okay. My time sex pieris expired. Senator nelson. Mr. Watts, i would like you to take my time and inform the committee with your expertise what the russians, for that matter anybody else, can do to us in this coming election. Thanks, senator. I think i would start off with there has been no response from the u. S. Government with regards to Russian Influence Campaigns and social media. So therefore they have stayed on course with the operations. During nonelection years, they tend to focus on social issues and what i would say is audience in filtration. So any organization, entity, social media group that they really want to be able to move or influence later, they begin in filtrate that by sharing the same content back with that audience and trying to develop their own content within it. Beyond just the United States in this president ial election, i think we should look at all elections worldwide. They realize this playback works very well. Extremely cost effective. And there has been almost no down side at least to this point of doing it. Ment so youve seen it in europe where they continue to seed audience space, anybody where they can break up a union, so european union, nato, they will continue to see it in those populations. So i would tell you to look at catalonia or scotland, they are moving there. I think mcmaster pointed to mexico as another example where they have seen some sort of audience in filtration. Key trigger i always look for is hacking, when they launch widespread they are making a decision to go after an objective. And thats one thing i would tell everyone to look for on the horizon. Beyond that, if you want to know where the russians are going with their influence, you should always look at where they are putting up new state sponsored outlets. To in filtrate an audience, you have to have a base of content to launch your campaign. So when they add an additional language or wire service, lets say sputnik news or Youtube Channel that is audience theyll reach for. And i would tell you right now they are looking very heavily into latin america. I think they would like to build the capability more in the middle east moving forward. Beyond just russia, they will focus on social issues to win over audiences during nonelection years, to then be able to pivot them towards whatever party they want to support moving forward. The goal is in one party or the other in their victory. Goal is is to create divisions within the United States and that will be their focus moving forward. I would also note that everyone is adopting this technique. You see it myanmar, philippines, any low level educated population around the world thats on social media, particularly through mobile applications, is highly vulnerable to this. They have not built up the ability to assess information or how to avoid being influenced. And so they are highly vulnerable to this influence technique. And last lip i would say its political campaigns and the Companies Going to be hired. If there is not some sort of regulation put around ads and social media, every political campaign, whether its in the u. S. Or around the world, will have to use a dark social Media Campaign through either super packs or candidates to keep up with their competitors. And it will be further, did will not only harm the societies but actually harm the social Media Companies and their platforms. They will actually make the environment so terrible and so poll ar riced polarized it will create nasty sense for democracy. If you look at russia, they did it to their own people before they came across the ocean, it creates widespread apathy, it deluds the line between fact and fiction and when that happens you cannot see a democracy moving forward. I think thats whats so dangerous, its agnostic of candidate or policy, its breaking our system and turning it against each other. So when you see them dive deep into the instrumentalities of government, such as the example that i gave there were half a million comments on the recent fcc rule, and when you see that you read the public press that they are in 20 states elections divisions, sketch out what are some of the dastardly things they could do to undermine america . The one big thing that they would try to is information tach on the integrity of democracy institution. With the fcc you cant trust them, we need to get rid of them, you cant trust them. They are trying to mind control you. The other part is elections. Integrity of an election. The Second Campaign they launched in the run up to 2016 was voter fraud, election rigged. They didnt really care what candidate won. They wanted American People to think their vote did not count. The Hacking Campaign against voter databases, it was to sow doubts when you see narrative fraud, you might think oh, maybe my candidate didnt really get elected because my vote didnt count. So its about destroying Democratic Institutions that the system is always rigged rksz you cant trust anyone. Thats really the focal point of all of those efforts the russians might run or any authority tarrian regime that wants to run a campaign against the u. S. Government. Thank you. Thank you, senator nelson. So it wasnt so much to get one elected over the other, it was knowing there would be a loser, and that relatively half of the population who supported that loser would think that vote wasnt counted . That was the Second Campaign. They ran four narratives during the first one which were specific to the candidates. Then in october of 2016 they really shifted to the integrity of Democratic Institutions. So it was two fold running to try to get a candidate they nt waed up to election day. And then beyond election day it was to create mass chaos within the United States. Thank you for clearing that up. Let me move to twitter. And is it monje, am i pronouncing it correctly . Thank you for asking, sir. Its monje. Good. Let me ask you, then, and is that a cajun name . It is. My parents are from alabama. Very good. There are Analytics Companies who purchase aggregate user data from all of you. And including from twitter. Is that correct . Yes, sir. And so, for example, if i am an Analytic Company and i want to work for the nfl, for example, i would purchase aggregate user data from twitter and using key words develop information that might be helpful to say the National Football league . It depends on what it is they plan to use it for. A lot of times what our data is used most often for is target advertising. Okay. Let me ask you this. Is that same ability to purchase aggregate Data Available to federal Law Enforcement . Is it available to federal antiterrorism agencies . It depends on what the purpose of the use of data is. And we have rules about how any entity regardless of whether governmental or not, anywhere in the world can use our data. Okay. And what are those rules with regard to terrorism . With regards to terrorism . I would have to get back to you on the exact language of that, sir. Okay. Because this is pretty important. If an Analytics Company wants to purchase data from twitter, you are willing to sell that to them. What i want to know is if that company is going to supply information to agencies that are seeking information about terrorist activities . And that activity is part of this aggregate user data, will you sell that data to them . Because, frankly, im informed that you will not do so. Well, let me tell you a little bit about what we do with our data, sir, which is we on our side, on the twitter side of the equation are very data focused and use that data to inform the machines that help us fight the terrorists. We work on daily basis with Law Enforcement. Okay. Thats within the twitter organization. Within the twitter organization. We work on daily basis with Law Enforcement, particularly with the fbi, and respond to any requests that they have. As long as they give us the proner Legal Process. And we are on a first name basis with counterparts at the fbi. What would that proper Legal Process be . Depends on what they are can looing for, it could be a warrant, depending on whether they are looking for nonprivate or private information, looking for dreblirect messages. Has twitter told these data analytic companies that the purchases of this data cannot be used for counterpurposes . They cannot be used for persistent surveillance of individuals. They can be used to target advertising and products and sales, but they cannot be used to help our antiterrorism agencies, is that correct . We do help our antitearor agencies particularly the fbi. Go ahead, please. Im sorry. In respond to the requests we have a very fast system that is input, any time they have information to us, we turn it around as quickly as we can within hours. We do not allow persistent surveillance of our users. We protect the privacy of our users. You protect the privacy of your users even if a federal agency wants to use, wants to surveil that Public Information for antiterrorism purposes . If an agency comes to us with the right process, and ilgts according to federal law. But theres not what im talking about. Im talking about an independent data Analytics Company. Yes, sir. You will sell that data to them, but you tell that company you cant use it for antiterrorism purposes. Is that correct . We are not going to allow any company, whether they are selling cars or serial or anything, nfl to persist endly figure out where someone is at a particular given. But we do have data lerts for Law Enforcement for the fbi that they use. Miss bickert, is that the policy of facebook . Thank you, senator. We dont sell user data outside the context of allowing people to target audiences in their advertisements, that is the capability that is equally available to Law Enforcement, as it would be to anybody else. Law enforcement can provide us, if they want to find out specifics about an individual user, they can provide us with Legal Process, and we will respond. What is the Privacy Concern that supersedes the need to surveil terrorists organizations that participate in facebook . Senator, we absolutely respond to valid Law Enforcement requests. If its part of an investigation, and they give us that process, we do respond. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator wicker. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I came in and three senators told me mr. Monje you were a saints fan. Is that correct . I would just like to note my scarf than who won the game. Who won the game, mr. Monje . It was an excellent game. And it was a spectacular end for the vikings. Hock. Thank y okay. Thank you very much. Lets get to serious matters. Weve had ha hearing focused on election piece. I want to get to some questions to terrorism. There are many ways we can undermine our country and democracy, when its obvious with violent attacks. Another is if americans arent able to make their own decisions about who they were voting for because they get false information. So thats why senators warner and mccain and i have introduced honest ads act. We had entire hearing over this on judiciary but i would start with you mr. Watts. Right now there are disclosure rules, so radio, tv, prints, they all have to keep on file ads of polital importance, as well as candidate ads so that opposing campaigns can see these ads as well as disclaimer requirements. Do you think those should go to paid ads a well . Absolutely. If it does not happen, both from society and social media perspective the conversation will continue to get more polarized and more negative t and people wont be able to trust information on the platform regardless. So i think its essential that the ad regulation extend to social media. Because thats where all advertising is going in the future. Exactly. 1. 4 billion in the last election. And there are projections its going to go to three or four billion and things like that. And literally no rules. Wie do appreciate the number of Companies Included ones here have stepped up to start putting in place some of their own guidelines and changes. But i do believe this wont work unless we have guidelines like we have for media. And do you agree with that . I do. If we dont, it can have a very devastating effect. And force all political campaigns to essentially try to do social media manipulation thats maybe not entirely authentic. Thank you. Terrorists online recruiting, my state has had its share of that recruiting, especially related some from isis but in past years others. We had had dozens of prosecutions out of the office successful where people have been recruited to go overseas to fight on behalf of terrorist groups. What kind of recruiting activity are you able to detect on your platforms . And what can you tell us about the trends, how are they changing their stagts . I remember the fbi showing me the ads targeted at minnesota with literally airplane tickets from minnesota to somali for terrorists. So tell me what you are doing now and what you see in terms of recruiting and what you can do about it . Anyone . Okay. Should i call on people. Well, im sure they dont want to answer as much as i do. So ill go first. What i would say is that we should note is that the social Media Companies here were the forerunners but also the dinosaurs of the social media era meaning they are the largest platforms and have greatest capacity to deter this activity. But in the future if i were a terrorist or Extremist Group trying to mobilize i would go to the smaller social media applications that have the grates es enskrichgdescription. Because there would be less ability for them to find my activity on the flplatform. Language is the key for doing recruitment. Where are the populations in the cities, and then how does that play out and who are they interfacing with overseas. Okay. One last question here. Throughout the 2016 cycle, russians worked to influence the u. S. Election, as i mentioned, and part of it they did it by searching algorithms to promote miss misinformation. In the current news area, play a significant role in seeing what content consumers see. Mr. Monje, miss bickert what are twitter and facebook doing to help ensure the information appearing in search results and on consumer feeds is free from that kind of exploitation . Thank you, very much senator for that question. And we do quite a bit to protect our search, in particular, more than 95 of our users at default setting has safe search as part of what they are experience on twitter. And so what we do is whether we identify a bot, a malicious automation, which is a lot of the ways that this kind of information has promulgated on the internet that is severely down raininged so its very hard to find. Okay. Miss bickert. Thank you, senator. We are increasingly finding new ways to disrupt false news and help people connect with authentic news. We know thats what they want to do. And we are also investing in efforts to help people distinguish between the two, which includes basic education and public outreach. As far as disrupting the false news, oftentimes because we have a requirement that people have to use facebook with their authentic name, if we can identify inauthentic accounts, and we are getting much better, we can remove the accounts and the false news goes away. The majority of the actors that we see trying to spread dys information are financially motivated so that goes a long way. We are also working with our community to flag false news, send it to Third Party Fact checkers, and make that content less visible and put it in context. So now feed that is an article that has been flagged as potentially false by our community, we will also show you some related articles underneath it so you have a sense of where this story sits in the broader spectrum of news. Were working with responsible publishers to make sure they know how to most effectively use social media. We are also working on user education campaigns. Thank you. Senator moran. Thank you, to you and the Ranking Member for conducting this hearing. This is one of the most interesting and potentially valuable hearings we will have had. Have had. What a Great Development it would be if we can reduce the military necessity and the loss of life that comes from military action in fighting terror if we can keep it from occurring. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your testimony. Let me ask this. Some of you covered in your testimony collaborative efforts among multiple businesses and groups that involve shared industry database, which eventually led to the formulation of the Global Internet forum for Counter Terrorism. I want to know more about that collaboration and part of the reason for that question is that my guess is that as larger social Media Companies become more innovative and effective in what you are attempting to accomplish, preventing terrorism, it would seem other smaller platforms may become the platform of choice in this space. If you are successful in your efforts, what prevents us from moving terrorists moving from a different platform and therefore, whats those smaller platforms engagement in what youre doing . Its directed at anyone who desires to answer. Or maybe if no one does. Thank you, senator. That is exactly what we were thinking as the large companies, was that we needed to make sure this movement was industrywide. With that in mind, we reached out to a number of Small Companies several years ago. I think we reached out to 18 companies initially. All 18 said, yes, they wanted to meet to talk about best practices to Counter Terrorism. We then met for more than a year before we ultimately launched the Global Internet forum. Through that forum, which we launched in june, we have since had five International Working Group Sessions with 68 Smaller Companies based around the world. This is an opportunity for us to share expertise and learning from the larger companies. Let me take that a step further. What are the Smaller Companies and platforms doing . Are they a participant in this collaboration . Are they doing something similar to what your companies are doing today . Yes, senator. Often, they are learning from what we are experiencing as the larger platforms in terms of the conduct we see from bad actors, the policies we have put in place and how we are thinking about using technology and people to combat those threats. Anyone else . I would just add that we have been extremely successful at taking terrorist content off of twitter. It is a tremendous success for twitter but it doesnt eliminate the terrorists and moving to the platforms like telegram doesnt help everybody. Twitter is a Smaller Company among the giants. Because we have had to be creative, innovative in our use of technology, can help be a bridge to the installer companies and tell them you can make significant progress, you just have to invest in the technology. What evidence, if any, do you see that terrorist organizations are changing their behavior as a result of what youre doing . There is open, you know, in some of their forums right now, they are trying to find a platform where they can go in a secure fashion, communicate and push their propaganda around the world. They are actively seeking new platforms. Your question is a great one. How do we help the Small Companies that are developing new social media applications who dont have the capabilities in terms of security to ward this off. I dont think there is a good answer for that question. They are seeking a new home. They just havent found it yet. Mr. Watt, is the response by terrorist organizations to seek a new home . Or are they finding ways to hinder your efforts or both . Both. They are looking for a place where they can communicate and organize. They have to be able to push their propaganda globally in order to recruit and gain resources. So they need some way to do that. They will continue to try and exploit these small applications. But it is tougher for them on these small applications, because globally, there is not as many people on it. It is a better problem to have than what we have had in the past. It really begs the question that ultimately one of these social media platforms thats popular overseas will start to gain traction due to its encryption capabilities or how they can connect with the audience or how they can load and share videos. This is important across all Extremist Groups. If you look at some of the platforms that are out there, reddit and those anonymous channels, it would be good to see them integrate with the Bigger Companies that have way more ability to detect that activity. Thank you all for being here. Context, facebook had 10. 3 billion in revenue last quarter, about 23,000 employees if im not mistaken. Twitter, 590 million in revenue last quarter, 3,700 employees. My question for facebook and twitter is, in dollars, as a percentage of revenue, however you want to calculate it and in terms of employee count, both parttime and fulltime, how many people and dollars are you devoting to this problem . Miss bickert . Thank you, senator. This has been a significant area of investment for us not just now, but over the past years. I want to point to a recent announcement from our ceo, mark zuckerberg, after we released earnings last quarter, where he specifically pointed to the fact that as we invest in safety and security, people should expect to see facebooks costs go up. Thats reflected in the fact that we now have more than 7500 people who are working to review terror content and other potential violations. We have 180 people who are focused specifically on countering terrorism. These are people like the former academics, like Brian Fishman formerly with the west point Counter Terrorism research center. 180 fulltime and 7,500, part of their job . 7,500 are content reviewers. In the area of safety and security, more generally, we have 10,000 people currently. We are looking to be at 20,000 by the end of the year. Mr. Monje . It is fewer than that. I can tell you that our entire engineering product and design team at various stages are all working on this. We are a small team. We have to be supple. We have to be able to shift as the challenges move. The numbers that are really important also to look at are two billion users, 400 hours of video every minute and for us, 350,000 tweets every minute. In order to make progress on this issue, you do need to have humans. We have former Law Enforcement. We have experts we partner with, contractors, consultants, academics. I want to give you the opportunity to set the record straight about fake accounts. I have been reading a lot about this. I saw anywhere from 9 to 15 fake. I saw another usc study that said its 48 million out of your nearly 300 million users. Whats the number . How many fake accounts do you have . We believe that fewer than 5 of the accounts on twitter are fake accounts. If youve kind of zeroed in on, lets stipulate it is 5 of almost 300 million, if you know they are fake, whats the issue here . They keep coming back. They try different methods to get back on the radar screen essentially. So we are as a matter of course consistently fighting malicious automation. We are now challenging four million malicious automated accounts a week. That means we are essentially sending them a note saying you are acting weird. Can you verify you are a human being . Thats double where we were last year. Can i talk to you about bots. I know this is a hearing about terrorism primarily but i think its worth asking what were doing about active measures. There was public reporting that the Roy Moore Campaign went from 27,000 to 47,000 twitter followers over the weekend. A substantial portion of those appeared to be located in russia. We had the take a knee thing where clearly there was an active measure to try to sow discord. Youve got bots and bot farms out there that are taking both sides of the argument. When we get into a conversation about active measures against our country, i dont think we should think of it as active measures against democrats and i dont think we should assume its just russian active measures. We have to think about it as undermining democracy itself and undermining our ability for our First Amendment rights to be exercised in any way reasonable. This is relatively recent. You can give us the measure of your activities, four million accounts are being challenged and 500,000 accounts have been taken down. But based on results, youre not where you need to be for us to be reassured that you are securing our democracy, and to the degree and extent that elected officials and people who vote and our adversaries are participating in your platform, how can we know that you are going to get this right and before the midterms . Thank you for that question. Thats exactly the question we ask ourselves every day. We think we are better prepared for this election than we have ever been. We are continually improving our tools and we are going to get better and report to the American People the results of our efforts. Thank you. Thank you, senator schatz. Senator young is not here. Senator markey. Thank you, mr. Chair, very much. Last month, the fcc gutted the Net Neutrality rules that protected the internet as we know it. As a result, the next facebook, youtube, twitter will struggle to get off the ground. I strongly oppose that fcc decision, which is why i plan to introduce a Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval which will undo the fccs recent actions and restore the 2015 open internet order. My resolution enjoys the support of democrats, susan collins, senator from maine, indicated she will vote for it. My question to each company here is simple. Do you support my cra resolution, which would put Net Neutrality back on the books . Mr. Monje . Yes, sir. Thank you for your leadership on this issue. It is an important issue for our company and users. You would support it . Yes. Thank you. Miss downs. We support strong enforceable Net Neutrality protections and we supported the 2015 rules and will support any effort to put those rules back in place. Thank you. Miss beckert . Thank you, senator. Same answer. We will support the cra and we also support and will work with anybody who is interested in working to find a way to put the rules back in place. Thank you. We thank each of you. Thank you so much. Next question, bad actors can and do use the internet and social media to acquire weapons, including firearms. Thats why in 2015 i wrote a letter to facebook and instagram asking why gun sales continue to take place on their sites even after announcement of selfimposed policy changes aimed at eliminating this type of activity. I was pleased when facebook and instagram said they would prohibit individual users from buying and selling firearms on their sites. Recent media reports indicate users are still able to access Deadly Weapons on social media. Last month, the Chicago Police Department Arrested 50 people in a case involving the sale of illegal guns in facebook groups. It appears that gun sales on your platform may have moved into private facebook groups. How is facebook working to stop the sale of firearms in that corner of your platform . Notably, the Chicago Police Department Said it did not receive cooperation from facebook during its tenmonth investigation. Law enforcement officials reported facebook hampered their investigation by shutting down accounts that officers were using to infiltrate the group in question. Thank you, senator. It is certainly an issue that we take seriously. As a former federal prosecutor based in chicago, our relationship with Law Enforcement authorities is very important to us. We have cooperated with Law Enforcement and will continue to do so in that case. We do not allow firearm sales. Enforcement has presented challenges for us. To get better, one of the things we are doing is working on our technology. Anybody in the community can report gun sales to us and we will take action. Thats important. That does happen even in private groups. We know we need to do more. Thats why we are now using things like image Prediction Technology to help us recognize when those sales might be taking place. Okay. So since instagram can turn into instagun for someone who intends on using it for nefarious purposes, the answer you would give to the Chicago Police department when it said it did not receive cooperation from facebook during the ten months investigation is that you did cooperate or you have now established a policy of cooperation with the Chicago Police department and every Police Department across the country . Thank you, senator. I believe they clarified their statement afterwards. We have been cooperative with them from the beginning. I would be happy to follow up afterwards with you on that. That would be helpful. In terms of the private facebook groups that this type of activity has migrated to, you are saying as well you are working to shut that down as well . Thats right. This is an area where we recognize enforcement can be challenging. We have to be proactive in looking for solutions. Were trying to make it easy for people to report but also going further to look for this content. Thank you. Thats why this hearing is so important. We thank you, mr. Chairman. The internet can be used to spread hate but it can also be used to spread weapons of war into those that are the haters and do enormous harm. In all of our communities across the country. Thank you. We thank each of you for your testimony. Thank you, senator markey. I would just ask the three that you would always support legislation that would put in place rules for an open internet as well . Would that be true . Twitter has long been a supporter of Net Neutrality and hopefully congress can develop good rules. Same answer. Same answer, mr. Chairman. Very good. Next up is senator baldwin. Thank you, mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, for this important hearing. Much of the conversation today has been focused on addressing foreign terrorist organizations use of your platforms as tools to recruit and radicalize individuals here and abroad. I would like to turn to how you are addressing the use of social media to further domestic extremism, whether it is the vehicular attack on counterprotesters in charlottesville this summer or the 2012 shooting at a sikh temple in my home state of wisconsin. We have seen numerous individuals subscribing to racist ideologies turning to violence. Beyond that, theres disturbing increase in hate crimes in this country, as documented by fbis limited collection of data from state and local Law Enforcement. As with other forms of extremism, social media is undoubtedly playing a role in spreading these ideologies and channeling these individuals into violent action. How do your Companies Working to address the role of social media in furthering domestic extremism, particularly white nationalists and White Supremacists violence . I would like to start with you, miss bickert. Thank you, senator. I want to be clear that our policies prohibit any group that is either a violent organization, and thats regardless of ideology, so if it is a domestic terror organization, if its a foreign terror organization, no matter what the idealogical underpinning is, they are not allowed on facebook. We also prohibit hate organizations and these are groups that are propagating hate based on a protected characteristic like race, religion, gender, gender identity and so forth. The same consequences under our policies apply. They are not allowed to be on our platform. People cannot praise or support them. Miss downs . Thank you, senator. Our violent extremism policies apply to violent extremism in all its forms, including White Supremacy and other forms of hatred. We apply our policies against incitement to violence and violent ideology consistently across violent extremism in all its manifestations. Mr. Monje . Very similar answer as well. We dont allow violent Extremist Groups. We dont allow glorification of violence. Its also when charlottesville was a hard day for a lot of folks and i think what you saw not only online was the very small minority of folks who were saying terrible things. But the vast majority of folks who were coming out to reject it. Im going to turn to a different topic. Im concerned by president trumps and secretary of state tillersons reluctance to support, fund, and staff the state Departments Global Engagement Center which is tasked with coordinating u. S. Efforts to counter extremist propaganda and recruitment as well as russian active measures like disinformation. I would like to hear from each of the companies about their experiences working with the center, and how cooperative efforts could be improved and, mr. Watts, what are the National Security impacts of this administrations failure to prioritize the center, especially in the context of russia . Why dont we go right down the line. Miss bickert . We are committed to working with governments around the world in promoting and finding counterspeech solutions. We have worked with the Global Engagement center and others in the u. S. Government. We have found that collaboration to be effective. Often, what we find is that government can be very effective as a convening power for bringing together Civil Society stakeholders. And then industry and researchers to get together and share their knowledge. Thats something that we hope to continue in the future. Thank you, senator. Our efforts to combat terrorism on our products obviously start with making sure we are removing the most egregious content. An equally important part of the strategy is our investment in counter speech, to do the hearts and mine work and address these issues at their root. We meet regularly with ngos and government actors, including the state department and the Global Engagement center to talk about counter speech and the importance of investigating in that work . A very similar answer. Government does have an Important Role in combatting this issue. Not only investing in counter speech but investing in groups that are authentic voices in their communities. Mr. Watts . I am absolutely baffled as to why the Global Engagement center, they received that mission from what i understood in 2016 before the election. Senator portman, if i recall, was one of the leaders of that. I had actually communicated with their staff on the russia issue. At a bare minimum, the u. S. Government needs to have a realtime understanding of what russia is doing in social media. The hamilton 68 platform, i tried to provide to the u. S. Government directly through multiple agencies. I have briefed the u. S. Government since 2014 in different contexts on russian active measures. I sit here today. I have no answer for you. I dont understand why we wouldnt at a minimum regardless of the outcome of the election in 2016 want to equip our intelligence agencies, Law Enforcement agencies and the department of defense with just an understanding. We dont even have to counter. Just an understanding of what russian active measures are doing around the world. There is no excuse for it. I cant understand it. Thank you, senator baldwin. Senator udall . Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. Really appreciate you and the Ranking Member pursuing this very, very important topic. Terrorism in social media is a challenging and i think pressing subject. I recognize the Technology Companies cannot solve this alone. They must do more. I think thats been highlighted by the questioning you have seen here today. Im focusing my first question, similar to senator baldwins. I am particularly concerned about the explosion of White Supremacists online. In december, after years of posting fantasies about School Shootings and hatefilled racist rants over many internet platforms and many other identities, a young man took a gun to a local high school in aztec, new mexico and killed two students before taking his own life. Listening to you, im wondering, what can be done in this kind of situation . Miss bickert, in your testimony, you highlighted the efforts that facebook has taken to counteract isis and other foreign terrorists. Can you speak to the efforts facebook is taking to fight one of the most and biggest threats to us in the United States, domestic terrorists like White Supremacists . In this kind of situation where you have an individual under various identities taking positions and indicating right on the edge of violence. What can be done in this kind of circumstance . Have you run into situations like this before . Thank you, senator. It is certainly an important issue. We stand against violence in all its forms. We dont allow any violent organization regardless of ideology. If we become aware of a credible threat of violence, of imminent harm to somebody, we proactively reach out to Law Enforcement authorities. That is something that we have done in cases where we have seen a threat like a shooter, whatever the ideology is, it doesnt matter. We will proactively provide that to Law Enforcement. Mr. Watts, do you think more could be done here based on the answers you hear . Yes. In terms of domestic extremism, i side with the social Media Companies in the sense it is difficult to understand where to fall because there is not good leadership from the u. S. Government about what a domestic Extremism Group is. We have the luxury do you think we could do more there in terms of the government . If we delineate more appropriately as a federal government, we can enable the social Media Companies to draw the line. I dont like the social Media Companies having to decide what is free speech versus violent speech or extremists versus norm. It puts them in a terrible position. I also dont think its good for business and their platforms. At the same point, how do you do that short of a violent threat or imminent threat . To do that we would have to have the equivalent of an fto or foreign terrorism Designation Program in the domestic context. Im not sure how we get there. That may be something we should consider is how to urge the government to be more specific here and outline areas where we could work with industry in order to move that along. Please go ahead. I think so. It is difficult even from the fbis perspective. There are two different play books, international and domestic terrorist playbook. Without that formalization of what Extremist Group is, it is hard for any corporation or company to evenly and legitimately enforce any sort of regulation on a user or a group. Mr. Monje, in your testimony, you outline twitter rules against terrorism that expressly include that users, and im quoting here, cannot make specific threats of violence or wish for serious physical harm, death or disease of an individual or group of individual or group of people, end quote. Im curious what twitters position is on one of the president s video tweets where he was body slamming a person with the cnn logo superimposed on their face. The video appears to promote serious physical harm to cnn reporters in the context of an alarming increase in violence against reporters in the u. S. Thank you very much, senator, for that question. No twitter user is above the twitter rules. As we action accounts on any given moment, we are looking whether they are trying to do satire or humor, even if it is not successful. We also recognize that World Leaders do have a special voice and it is in the Public Interest for their constituents to hear from them. I dont think this was humor. I dont think the result if you look at what cnn reporters have said since this, there is more violence towards them. There is more animosity towards them. I think you need to look at it in the whole context. I would encourage all the companies at this table to take threats to journalists very seriously. I am extremely concerned with any threats of violence based reporting the president finds disagreeable, with our president calling u. S. Media outlets the enemy of the people. It is up to all of us to safeguard the First Amendment. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator udall. Senator tester . Thank you for having this hearing. I want to thank the witnesses today. I think we will start with you, mr. Watts. Can you tell me why, transparency behind who is paying for political ads and issuebased ads is important . Yes. I think the number one issue with that is public safety. We saw with russian active measures one of the primary things they sought to do was actually mobilize population, regardless of the election, mobilize people to protest or counterprotest, which can lead to violent confrontations. At the same point, those advertisements when annotated and noted give legitimacy to those advertisements. So the public actually knows what is a real political stance versus a false sort of manipulated truth or narrative. They have to stand behind their actions. I think thats important for the public to restore trust and faith in the democratic processes. Could it also have impacts on Election Results . Generally speaking . Yes. It makes it more difficult for a foreign adversary or even a social media manipulator with a lot of resources and an axe to grind to do character assassination, or to tear down social movements. Okay. So and this goes to any one of the other three that wants to answer this. Can you tell me why you dont tell us who is paying for the ads . Whether they are political or issuebased ads . Who wants to answer that . Thank you, senator. And twitter is very proud that we last year announced industry leading transparency practices for political advertising. So do you tell people who is paying for the ads . For election ads, yes, sir. How about issuebased ads . Its a harder nut to crack and hard to determine. We are working with our colleagues, with our Peer Companies, to try to figure out what the right way to address those issues are. Okay. How about the other two, do you want to talk about political ads versus issuebased ads and if you are telling us whos paying for them . We are working to put more transparency into the election based advertising system and are taking four steps in advance of the 2018 midterms. The first is verification. We will require advertisers to identify who they are and where they are from before purchasing advertisements. Well also launch in ad disclosures where we notify users of who is running an election based ad. We will release a transparency report on election advertising purchased through google and also release a Creative Library to the public, where all of those advertisements are made public. And will that release of the transparency report have who paid for the ads . I believe it will, yes, sir, senator. Thank you, senator. Our answer is substantially similar to my Peer Companies on the issue of federal election related ads. Okay. And like mr. Monje, political ads writ broadly is a little bit more complicated but certainly an area where we think increased transparency is important. Political ads are more complicated than issuebased ads or the other way around . Im sorry. The issuebased ads are hard to define. That said, we are very interested in how we can increase transparency and we look forward to talking with yourselves and other policy makers about it. I would just tell you this as editorial comment. I would agree with senator schatz. I dont think this is democrat or republican issue. I think this is a democracy issue. And you guys are smart guys. And just about everybody that i read writings of tell me that its not that difficult. And they are smart people too. And so i would hope that you guys really would put pen to paper, if thats what you do these days, and figure out how you can let people know who is paying for ads. And i think issuebased ads by the way are just as important as political based ads because those fall into the political category. And i would say thats important. Every one of you said you did not like the fcc decision on Net Neutrality that came out a month or two ago. During that debate we had learned that there were bots that dropped comments into the hopper that distorted the whole Public Comment period. How is that going to be stopped the next time we have a Public Comment period on a rule thats written by an agency . Anybody want to answer that . And im out of time, so make it quick. Ill te ill tell you what. We will not occupy the time of the committee. Give me an answer to that in writing when you go back to your folks. This is a really important issue. I want to say this is a really important issue. From a terrorist standpoint from all of the questions asked before. But our democracy is at risk here. We have to figure out how to get it done right and quickly or we may not have a democracy to have you guys up here to hear you out. Thank you, senator tester. Senator young . Thank you, mr. Chairman for holding this hearing on terrorism and social media. Youtube went from having 40 of its posts take downs last june being identified by algorithms, ai and Machine Learning to 98 today. Twitter went from roughly 33 detection of terrorist accounts in 2015 to more than 90 of the detections today. Again, attributable to algorithms, ai, or Machine Learning. Facebook has stated that nearly 99 of isis and al qaeda related content is detected and removed before anyone even reports it. So what is, miss bickert, miss downs, mr. Monje, whats responsible for the recent increase in the use of ai and Machine Learning for this purpose of taking down posts . Is it primarily because of a new commitment to take down posts by your companies . Or is it simply that the technology is finally at a place to be effective or some combination thereof . Well start with miss bickert, please. Thanks, senator. Its definitely a timely question. These innovations have been happening over the years. We have seen a lot of improvement, particularly over the past one to two years at facebook. A lot of these efforts have been in place since i joined the company six years ago, such as still image hashing, but its gotten better. And in fall of 2016 is when we finally found video hashing to be sufficiently reliable where we could use it to detect these terror propaganda videos, and for some of them, like a beheading video that we knows violates our policies regardless of how its shared, we could actually accurately identify it and stop it at the time of upload. Thats something we had been trying to do for a while and had not been able to do. Another area we have gotten better is in detecting recidivists. So we take down the bad accounts. They try to come back. Thats something for a variety of reasons has been important to the company for years, but in area where weve made significant progress in the past one to two years. And then the final advance ill point to before turning to my colleagues is in the area of natural language understanding. This is hard. We have many different languages that we support on facebook. And when you train these models, they have to be trained on sufficient data. And so this process takes a long time. But we are making progress here. And we are now using it in the area of terrorism where we couldnt before. Thank you. Miss downs. Thank you, senator. We have always used a mix of technology and humans to enforce our policies. And as Technology Gets better, we see it doing more of the heavy lifting and detecting the content that violates our policies and needs to be removed. And these are reinforcing loop where as humans make judgments about what content violates our policies, that feeds back into the training set of data to teach the classifiers and algorithms what they are looking for. So the more content we review over time, the better and better these classifiers get and the more they are able to detect the content that needs to be removed. And before i turn to, my apologies, mr. Monje, i just stepped into the room, i would just note you referenced human judgments and how that feeds into an algorithm to help make, you know, more informed decisions moving forward. There wont be time to explore it here. But one of the things that i really want to learn more about is what parameters are used to determine by a human what is appropriate or inappropriate post . And is there transparency or will there be transparency about that Decision Making process . But, again, thats for another day since i have 47 seconds left. Mr. Monje . Yes. I would just very briefly, we approach it very similarly to our Peer Companies and are constantly trying to figure out ways to use technology and feeding inputs so it can tackle, ai can tackle increasingly more difficult and more nuanced challenges. Okay. I just note in the remaining time here, i really enjoyed visiting with yasmin green, director of r d at googles jigsaw group. Ill say that alphabet is doing some really great work there. And i look forward to working with all of you to improve how we remove this horrible content from the internet and keep americans more safe and secure. Mr. Chairman . Thank you, senator young. Up next is senator blumenthal. Thanks, mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding this hearing and thank you to this really allstar panel for being here today. Mr. Watts, i find your testimony absolutely chilling. The internet is a potential monster when it comes to extremists and terrorism. And it requires the kind of inventive and robust investment attitude that in fact created the internet. Ive been reading a book called the innovators by isaacson and its an inspiring account how we came to have the internet and social media involving heroes whose names have been largely lost to history, including some nobel prize winners, but the point that he makes that i think is so relevant to this discussion is that the internet itself is the result of a partnership between private industry and inventors, government, and academia. And those partners are as necessary for this effort in combatting terrorism and extremism as it was in inventing the platforms themselves. I want to join in thanking you for your commitment to Net Neutrality. I also want to thank you for the commitments that your companies have made with varying degrees of enthusiasm to our antisex trafficking efforts, most especially sesta, which hopefully will come to a vote. I encourage you to enlist more of your colleagues in that effort. And i want to highlight the importance of the nationalist hate groups and Extremist Groups that have come to pose a very dire extremist threat. You received a letter signed by 19 civil rights groups, including muslim advocates, on october 30, 2017, it was cosigned to facebook, but equally applicable to all of your companies. I ask that it be made a part of the record. And i see the chairman has stepped off, but im assuming there will be no objection. And it will be made part of the record. No objection. And im not willing to yield a part of my time to address that objection. The Southern Poverty Law Center has warned social media has been instrumental to the growth of the altright movement allowing legions of anonymous twitter users to use the hash tag altright to push far right extremism. On youtube, for example, its easy to find antisemitic content, all of these forms of extremism, often white supremacist extremism has been allowed to flourish and pose a real and present danger. In the time i have left, i want to ask about a letter that i wrote to facebook, google, and twitter, calling on these companies to individually inform all users who were exposed to false, misleading and inflammatory posts generated by russian agents. Im assuming that none of you have any doubt that the russians meddled in our 2016 election and attacked our democracy. Any question . None. And that the investigation of those efforts is not a hoax or witch hunt. That this danger is continuing, as mr. Watts has so dramatically and powerfully outlined, and that they will continue to do it unless they are made to pay a price and those who colluded and cooperated with them are made to pay a price. I want to thank facebook for its substantive response in terms of its commitment to providing consumers with an online tool to inform users if they have interacted with russian sponsored pages or accounts, im hopeful that facebook will do even more with more robust steps to further increase transparency in the future. But i am very, very grateful for your beginning. And i just want to be blunt, i am disappointed by googles written response. It essentially blew off my concerns by saying the nature of the platform made it difficult to know who has viewed its content. I look forward to responses from twitter and others. If you want to respond now, i would be eager to hear what your response is to the letter that i wrote. Thank you, senator. And we have briefed your staff on our plans and well be rolling out the full response shortly. And what will that response be . We will be working to identify and inform individually the users who may have been exposed to the ira accounts during the election. Thank you. I think its so tremendously important that we have all hands on deck in dealing with this threat. Not only the companies who are represented here, but as, again, mr. Watts said so well, some of the smaller actors, some of the newer ones, and there will be others coming that provide, in effect, platforms for hate, extremism, terrorism, division, chaos, in some ways they are the biggest threat to our democracies today. Those groups that want to foster hate, and of course the russians will continue. They have an asymmetric advantage here. Its an absolutely wondrous investment for vladimir putin. He gets more return on the dollar than any other investment he can make in sowing discord in our democracy and we must be as inventive as the innovators or inventors of the internet in combatting this threat to our democracy. Thank you. Thank you, senator blumenthal. Thank you. And welcome. Thank you for this conversation. I want to start with unfortunately a horrific tragedy that occurred in my hometown, in 2017 las vegas experienced the worst tragedy we have ever seen. It is the worst mass shooting in american history. As we were dealing with the horrific tragedy of the situation and trying to gain information, particularly for Law Enforcement purposes, unfortunately a lot of misinformation was being spread after that tragedy on some of your platforms and on the internet. And particularly misinformation about the shooter was highlighted on both google and facebook. Obviously, thats incredibly unhelpful for Law Enforcement, particularly as we move through an unfolding, potentially dangerous situation. I know both facebook and google cited need to make algorithm improvements to fight the spread of fake news during a crisis. What do you see as your companys roles in fighting fake news, especially during a crisis such as mass shooting or terrorist attack . And what specific and verifiable metrics can you provide us to ensure our trust in these remedies . And ill start with miss bickert. Thank you, senator. What happened in las vegas was horrific. And there were false news stories that we saw that we did address, but not fast enough. And its an area where we are trying to get faster. We have changed the way that our Crisis Center operates so that we can make sure that that type of false news story does not appear in the headlines that people are seeing. The Crisis Center can be incredibly useful during times like this. In las vegas, we saw people using not only our safety check, which allows people to say that they are safe, but also coordinating help, offers of housing and assistance to people throughout the city. So we want to make sure thats working effectively. Things we are doing, removing the bad accounts that are propagating this false news. Making algorithm changes to make news that is likely to be false less visible on the site. Providing related articles, when people see a news story that has been flagged as something that might be false so they can see the Broad Spectrum of information across the internet. And working with responsible publishers to make sure they know how to use our tools to get their stories out there. Thank you. Miss downs. Thank you, senator. And my heart goes out to the city of las vegas and all the victims of that senseless tragedy. We take misinformation on our platforms seriously and made a lot of efforts in our products from improvements to our ranking al agriculture go rit to higher sources and demote less reliable sources particularly when users are seeking news content. We also have strict policies in place against the new sites misrepresenting themselves in order to remove the financial incentive to create and distribute fake news. Thank you. And very similar answer for us. I would only add that, you know, one of twitters great advantages in the world is its fast, its faster than Television News often. We try to arm Emergency Responders with the knowledge of how to use that as a strength. So its one of our key pieces during the hurricanes in the gulf course, we were actively working with folks who were responding. There were actually folks in texas and houston using our platform to identify people to rescue. And so its one of the strengths of our platform. And like everyone, its a continuing challenge to address misinformation. Thank you. Mr. Watts, would you like to address this . Or is there anything else that could be done . I dont know in terms of the technical thing that could be done. But i do think the spread of misinformation so quickly like that, the first thing you see is what you tend to believe over time. What you see the most is what you tend to believe as well. It really empowers social media manipulators if you can do am e amplification through social bots or if you can generate other systems to push the news quicker than everybody else. And so you see a lot of gaming in terms of trending hash tags and things like that i think there has to be some sort of trip that you can put in technically over time. And im sure all of these companies are trying to develop that will tamp that out. When you see an artificial spike in one of those trends you should be able to detect it. I think theyre advancing on that. But its a huge safety issue regardless of that. And thank you. I know im running out of time. Let me say this i had the opportunity to work with facebook on our internet crimes against Children Task force in nevada when i was attorney general. And ill tell you for every company that we reached out to, whether it was you or youtube, google, they were willing to work with Law Enforcement. So i know there hasnt been a lot of discussion on that interaction youve had with Law Enforcement, but ive seen it from one side of it. I know now there is this balance we need to find to figure out how to continue to Work Together to address these evolving crimes and activity that are happening on the internet. And im grateful that you are here. And i look forward to figure out how we continue to evolve that relationship as well. So thank you. Thank you, senator cortez. Senator lee. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thanks to each of you for being here. We live in an exciting world. We live in a time when Companies Represented at this table today 15 years ago were just ideas. And today they change the way we interact with the world around us. Today these companies have made it possible, in ways never imagined just a couple decades ago, for few people with very few money to have an impact not only in their community but across the country and throughout the world. But with that comes a lot of challenges. And those challenges are the reason why we are here today at this hearing. In some parts of the world, there has been a suggestion that i can summarize only as an effort to make Public Utility Companies out of social Media Enterprises that would rather comprehensively attempt to regulate social media imposing escalating fines and other penalties on companies that fail to report certain types of information to the government. Some of these recommendations for policies like this have been made in the United Kingdom and the european union. To me, this is kind of distressing. In part, because i worry about what that would do to private property. What that would do to these thriving businesses that have given so many people so much of an opportunity to be heard. I also worry about what it would do to public safety. The very end sought to be achieved by these proposals. Sometimes when government gets involved and it sets a certain standard in place, that becomes both the floor and the ceiling understandably. I would worry about that. Well start with you, miss bickert, and tell me what you think about the proposals like that and what some of the risks might be to start treating social Media Companies like Public Utilities . Thank you, senator. I think whenever we think about regulations, there often are unforeseen consequences. And those can impede our ability to provide services to the people that trust and need our products. I think the big thing for us is that our incentives are often aligned with those of government in terms of creating a safe community. On this issue, absolutely. There is no question that the companies here do not want terrorists using their platforms. The longterm business interests for facebook is we need people to have a good experience when they come to facebook. We need them to like this community and want to be a part of it. And that means keeping them safe and removing bad content. So the incentives are there. These companies are working together to address these challenges. And thats how we think it can work best. That said, we will continue to have productive dialogue with governments. The concerns that you face and what you are hearing from your constituents matter to us very much, and we want to make sure we are considering that and responding to that. And in light of the fact that your company and others the progress that your company and others have made in this area, doesnt that suggest that some of these proposals are unnecessary in any event . Thank you, senator. Because our incentives are aligned, the kind of progress you are going to see is going to happen regardless of what we are seeing from governments, what we are hearing from governments. Its still important to have that dialogue. We learn every time that we engage with policy makers, but the incentives exist independently. Miss downs, would you agree with that . Yes. The security and integrity of our products is core to our business model. And that includes the expedient enforcement of all of our content policies. And so we are already sufficiently motivated to invest the necessary resources and people in addressing this threat. And how might treating it more like a public utility change that dynamic . I think the risks that you outlined are important things for policy makers to remain cognizant of. Obviously the Tech Industry is incredibly innovative, has created tremendous Economic Opportunity and anything that slows down that innovation will cause damage to the ability of the industry to continue to thrive. Mr. Monje . I agree with that. We take our responsibility extremely seriously. It is important to our business to get it right. We measure progress in matters of weeks and months. We move very quickly. So i would agree with everything that was just said. Ive got one second remaining, if i can just. How do you determine, well just go with you, mr. Monje, since we are already on you, how do you determine what constitutes terrorist or extremist content . For example, do you make this determination internally within your staff . Do you have certain subject Matter Experts that help you decide that . Yes, sir. We have former Law Enforcement officials on our team. We also interact with and communicate with governments and ngos to determine that on an individual basis. Okay. My time is expired. Thank you very much. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator lee. Senator hasan. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman, and thank you to our panelists today. I want to talk about the see something, Say Something campaign. The campaign is simple. And many of the thwarted terror attacks in the u. S. Were stopped because every day people alerted authorities to suspicious behavior. So i would like to get a better sense of whether your companies fully embrace this see something, Say Something campaign. While i understand that most of you shut down accounts that es spouse violent extremist propaganda, its not clear that you proactively report those accounts to Law Enforcement heres an example of why that makes us less safe. In 2012, Tamerlan Tsarnaev posted on youtube several videos espousing al qaeda propaganda under the name moaz. At the time the fbi was unaware of this account. However the fbi had previously investigated thanks to the tips from russians but found nothing to corroborate the russians claims. In 2012, tamerlan applied for citizenship with dhs. As part of the vetting process they instructed fbi to run a check on the application which came up all clear. However, in his application he revealed that he tried to change his legal name to muaz same name as youtube account. Resulted in the deaths of four people and almost 300 injured. In hindsight, if youtube had reported muazs troubling social media account to the fbi, then maybe the fbi would have been able to link tamerlan to muazs extremist youtube account when tamerlan was applying for citizenship. That could have prompted the fbi to reopen a closed terrorism investigation just weeks before tamerlan carried out this awful tragic bombing. So to mr. Monje and ms. Bickert and ms. Downs, i would like to understand how and when your Companies Report to Law Enforcement and has it changed since the days of the Boston Marathon bomber . Thank you, senator for that question. When we are aware of an imminent threat, we absolutely do proactively reach out to Law Enforcement. Whenever they come to us and ask for information, as long as they have the right process, which we are good to working with them to figure out, we will respond as quickly as we can. Thank you. Miss downs. Thank you, senator. We also cooperate with Law Enforcement pursuant to valid Legal Process including the emergency disclosure provisions where if we detect anything on services that poses a threat to life, we proactively report it to Law Enforcement. Ms. Bickert. Thank you, senator. The same answer. I thank you. Ill say that the see something Say Something campaign is premised on something a little different than what you all said. Because its premised on if you think, not does this meet my definition of imminent danger, but we ask members of the public if they see something suspicious, to step up. And what you are all saying if it meets certain criteria or if you are asked. And i think thats a little bit different. So let me follow up with mr. Watts. As former federal law officers, how would you grade these companies performances in addressing these extremist accounts. Do you think they could do more to actively support federal Law Enforcement and counterterrorism officials . Over the last decade or so, they have all done better. Facebook and google have outpaced twitter. Twitter in my opinion relies too much on technical signatures. And doesnt staff on the Threat Intelligence level to the extent that they should. Thank you very much. And thank you. Thats all the questions i have, mr. Chair. Thank you, senator hassan. Senator peters. Thank you, mr. Chairman and to each of our witnesses thank you for being here today. Its an important topic and i appreciate your active involvement in this. My question concerns the extent that algorithms are used and play a role in the problem, and how algorithms can also be used as a solution to this problem were dealing with. I was pleased to read miss bickert post in the facebook newsroom that facebook has started using Artificial Intelligence to help Counter Terrorist threats on your platforms. The speed and breadth of the internet makes it nearly impossible for humans to keep track of all this. So we need to have ai systems to do that. And they need to continually evolve if well be effective in using them. However, it is likely that algorithms may be partly responsible for getting extremist material in front of users, whether it be in search results through facebooks news feed or youtubes up next list, or elsewhere. So my question is, these algorithms are under your direct control as all Platform Providers can control that. What are you specifically doing to learn more about whether and how your algorithms may be promoting extremist content . Ill start with you, ms. Bickert. Thank you, senator. The first thing that we need to do is make sure we are removing the terror content, then it doesnt matter once you take it out of the equation, then the algorithm has no role in promoting it because the content is not available on facebook. Thats something that we do as you pointed out by using technology to find the content. But we dont stop there. After we find an account that is associated with terrorism, if we remove that account, we also fan out from that account. We look at associated content. Associated accounts. And remove those as well. If we can get better in that space, then we can make sure that the content is not appearing before our community. Ms. Downs. Thank you, senator. Absolutely correct that the First Priority is making sure that none of this content is on the platform in the first place. At the same time, we also have teams that are protecting our algorithms from being gamed. Obviously, this is threat to our services and to our users experience on our services across many issues so we have dedicated teams to make sure that people arent manipulating our systems and theyre working as intended to serve relevant information to users who come to youtube. Very similar answer from twitter. We have been able to use our Machine Learning, our algorithms to help identify more than 90 of the terrorist content we have taken down before anybody else brings it to our attention. 75 of those before they get to tweet once. And also we have protected our trends against manipulation. We have done that since 2014. And we continually improve our processes to protect our user experience. Mr. Watts . I would just note that any sort of algorithm technique is only as good as whats been seen out in the world. Which is part of the reason why russians have been more successful in terms of social media manipulation. They understand the terms of service. They have the capabilities to actually beat those systems and they play within the rules. The smarter, better resourced, higher comp uitational people around the world who want to use it will do better. Its kind of like zero day viruses in cybersecurity speak. Cyber Security Protection is only as good as what has been seen before in terms of malware. So only way to get in front of that is combine really smart threat analysts on whatever threat actor it is thats out there with the technologists. And those companies that do that do better in terms of getting in front of these actions. Whats your assessment of the companies here and others in the United States . Yeah, i think facebook and google ive seen massive increases in much more success in that space. I think twitter gets beat oftentimes and can continue to get beat because they rely too heavily on technology, and i dont think they have the partnerships they need to adequately get out in front of it. If i could respond to that. Because you said it twice and i disagree. I think there are many external researchers who said that a lot of this terrorist content has moved off of our platform. The average isis account in 2014 had 177 followers now they have 14. They measure their life on twitter in minutes and hours. We are extremely effective of taking them out. We do have the resources in place and the technology in place to fight the fight. Mr. Watts. They get beat by a new terrorist group every few years. I mean, al shabaab, we watched the entire westgate attack go down on twitter. Monitoring it. We had key monitoring lists we watched on that. With isis and al nusra in syria, we were able to build that list from anywhere from 3,000 to 4,000 terrorist accounts at any given time. They do better after the fact once they pick up what the signatures are. But the problem is you are always trailing what the threat actor is. You are not staying out in front of it, which is why in cybersecurity space or even some social Media Companies are taking this on, you employ the threat analyst to work with the techno technologi technologists, otherwise theyre always behind the curve. You can weed it out. They are Getting Better all the time, but ai and Machine Learning, even with advancements can only detect what are already seen before. And what humans are good at, at least up until now and until they become autonomous machines out there, they are good at Gaming Systems and figuring out ways around it. So i think in the case of the russians, for example, and ive seen the take downs of their accounts by twitter, and they are hardly making a dent in what im seeing in terms of flows. I cant confirm all the accounts out there, but i hear about troll farms, why do we think there is only one . So i think in terms of moving forward, there has to be a much bigger focus for those social Media Companies on putting threat analysts and pairing them together. And i know both analysts have gone to facebook and google in that space and some have been there longer than others, but i think thats the right approach moving forward. Thank you. Im out of time. Senator peters. Senator cruz. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Welcome to each of the witnesses. Id like to start by asking each of the Company Representatives a simple question, which is do you consider your companies to be neutral public fora . Ms. Bickert. Thank you, senator. The mission of our company is to connect people. We do not look at ideology or politics. We want people to be able to connect and share who they are. So im just looking for a yes or no whether you consider yourself to be neutral public forum. We do not have any policies about political ideology that affect our platform. Ms. Downs. Yes, we design for everyone. Subject to our policies and the types of content people might share. So you are saying you do consider youtube to be neutral public forum . Correct. We enforce our policies in a politically neutral way. Certain things prohibited from guidelines which are spelled out and provided publicly to all of our users. Mr. Monje. Yes, sir. Well, let me focus for a minute, mr. Monje, there have been several videos that were released in recent weeks that i and other people find troubling, so i wanted to give you an opportunity to respond to it. One individual described as a former Twitter Software engineer was captured on video saying the following, quote, one strategy is to shadow band, so you have ultimate control. The idea of a shadow ban is you ban someone but they dont know they have been banned because they keep posting and no one sees their content. So they just think that no one is engaging with their content when in reality no one is seeing that. Is that a practice that occurs at twitter . No, sir, we do not shadow ban users. Why would this individual described as a former Twitter Software engineer say that . Thank you for the opportunity to respond, senator, about this. These folks were caught on video, they werent speaking on behalf of the company. They were speaking in their personal capacity. We do not shadow ban folks. What we do do is if an account is spamming, meaning engaging in malicious automation, we will hide, make it harder for them to be found on our platform. If i could continue, sir. That was one of the reasons why the efforts that we saw with the russian misinformation didnt hit as big a mark as they were hoping for. We were able to stop that in realtime. Another individual, twitter content review agent, was quoted on video as saying, on stuff like that, it was more discretion on your viewpoint. I guess how you felt about a particular matter. Yeah, if they said this is, quote, pro trump, i dont want it, because it offends me, this, that, and i say i ban the whole thing, and it goes over here, and they are like you know what i dont like it too, you know mo is right. Lets carry on. Whats next . Is that individual describing a practice that occurs at twitter . No, sir. We use olal algorithms if theres an account being abusive, that also will be down ranked. If they are engaging in target abuse against minorities, if they are consistently violating our terms of service, but they havent crossed the line into being suspended, well make it less visible. But what we wont do is make your followers, theyll always be able to see you. And we ensure that if you go on twitter at any moment i want to make sure im understanding you right. You are saying some people posting youll restrict viewer ship to those only actively following them . If we believe that they are engaged in malicious automation, if we believe they are violating our terms of service when it comes to abuse. So is it your position that the individuals that are subject to this form of censorship are extremist or fringe . Is that what youre telling us . It depends on the user. I can tell you this is not something we hide from the public. This is out in the open. The fact that we reduce the visibility of tweets that are abusive or that are engaged in malicious automation. Well, let me ask, what about congresswoman marsha blackburn. Is she someone you would consider somehow abusive or fringe or otherwise . No, sir. Well, then why did twitter restrict and censor her announcement video announcing as a candidate for United States senate . I want to be very clear about that, sir. And thank you for the question. We never removed her tweet. And what she did do was advertise on our platform. We do like many platforms have a higher standard when it comes to advertising because we are putting in front of people things they didnt ask to see. Her video was reported to us. There was a decision that was made that was later reversed because of the language that was used in her account, it was a mistake, and we acknowledged it. So her announcement was censored because it was pro life. Has twitter ever censored anyone for pro choice content . She was never censored. So you are you saying Nothing Happened to her tweet . Her tweet got a lot of attention. On the organic side. We action our accounts, and we take our terms of service very seriously. Sometimes we make the wrong decision. We have action on all sides of issues. And we strive to be better every day. And let me ask a final question because my time is expired. Ms. Downs, i would like to know what is youtubes policy with respect to Prager University and the allegations that the content Prager University is putting out are being restricted and censored by youtube . As i mentioned we enforce our policies in neutral way. In the terms of specifics its subject of ongoing litigation so im not free to comment on that case. Ill say the pattern of political censorship we are seeing across the Technology Companies is highly concerning. And the opening question i asked you, whether youre a neutral public forum, if you are a neutral public forum, that does not allow for political editorializing and censorship. If youre not a neutral public forum, the entire predicate for liability immunity under the cda is claiming to be a neutral public forum, so you cant have it both ways. Thank you. Thank you, senator cruz. I think we have exhausted all the questions. Thank you all for being here. I think its been a very informative session. And we all know that the internet is an incredibly powerful tool and also offers enormous benefits to people globally, but we also realize we live in a dangerous world. And that there are people out there who want to do harm and do bad things and looking for any means in order to accomplish those. And of course we know that in the modern world, cyber has become increasingly a tool of choice for a lot of bad actors. So we appreciate your informing us about steps that you are taking to try and police some of that bad behavior. As i said earlier, you know, we have constitutional protections and bill of rights, and we also have, you know, i think we want to make sure we have a light touch when it comes to regulating the internet. And thats certainly something that i hope that this committee will continue to support and that those that regulatory agencies will adopt as well. But we also want to make sure that we are doing what we can to keep our country safe. So we appreciate the efforts that you have undertaken already and as you continue to develop and look at ways to combat some of these threats that we face. And we hope that working together as partners that we can do a better job. And there is always room for improvement. So thank you for what youve done, for what you continue to do, and well look forward to discussing im sure in the future as the threats continue to evolve things that we can do better. Thank you all for being here. Im going to just say that before we close, that ive got a letter from the consumer extremism project highlighting its work on combatting radicalization online, and im going to enter that into the record also, and a piece by the wall street journal authored by the senior adviser, doctor say this right here, hanin fareed, underscoring his work on this important issue. Well keep the hearing record open for a couple weeks. Senators are encouraged to submit any questions that they have for the record, and upon receipt of those questions, we ask the witnesses to submit their written responses to the committee as quickly as possible. Thank you all for being here. This hearing is adjourned. Senator, two questions for you. Selfdriving cars. I know senator feinstein had some concerns last year. Where are you with this . She still has not withdrawn her objection to the bill moving forward. We think that the compelling logic of saving some of the 35,000 lives that are killed every year on our highways is something that we ought to have members on both sides highly supportive of. At this point we dont have senator feinstein on board. Hopefully well be able to get her there. Anything in particular . I dont think shes asked for anything in particular. There are a couple of other objections on the democrats side. But we are willing to work with the people who have objections and address their concerns if it can done in a way that doesnt undermine the purpose and the basic framework of the legislation. Follow up. When do you expect to have a bill in the senate . Well, preferably when we have some democrats willing to work with us. And at the moment we dont have that. Im hoping we will. This was kind of a wide ranging hearing focusing on terrorism and the election, domestic terrorism, foreign terrorism. What are the next steps for the Commerce Committee in engaging with these companies and getting them to reform their practices or, you know, inform consumers better if they have been exposed to foreign content . What needs to happen next . Well digest what we heard today. This was a good first step. I feel like the companies, by and large, were pretty responsive. And i think we have a better sense for the things they are already doing. I dont know at this point that it requires or necessitates any additional action. But we will continue to dialogue with them to keep up to speed on what they are doing. And to determine if there are additional steps that the committee ought to take going forward. But at this point it was more than anything else, we know how important these platforms are to Extremist Groups, to recruit, to radicalize folks that will commit violent acts against americans. So we want to make sure we are staying on top of that issue. And staying on top of what these companies who have such powerful platforms are doing to prevent that kind of activity. So would you say getting to the bottom of that is more the aim of the Commerce Committee convening these hearings rather than trying to figure out what happened during the election . Yeah, i mean, clearly our purpose, any time you open up a hearing like this, it ends up being a wideranging discussion. So people got to ask questions on a whole range of topics. But the purpose of the hearings, stated purpose is to determine what steps, and what role social media platforms can play in helping to prevent future terrorist attacks here in the United States and around the world. And so the degree to which other members have veered off or deviated from that, you know, if that happens any time, there will be a hearing, but thats what were trying to accomplish here. Can you talk about broad bands, can you sketch out a little bit of your thinking, both the substance and the time line . We think well have a hearing as soon as we have a proposal from the administration. And we expect that to happen sometime at or around the state of the union, but, yeah, were going to we hope that the infrastructure proposal thats put forward by the administration addresses not only transportation projects, roads and bridges, but also broadband, a lot of the issues that are also under this committees jurisdiction. We look forward to that. Weve had a lot of conversations already with the administration. We have given them a lot of ideas about things they could do to promote not only highways and transportation, aviation, railroad infrastructure, but also broadband structure. Back to the hearing. Are you satisfied with what you heard from the companies in their cooperation with the Law Enforcement community . Yeah, generally. I think they are somewhat guarded in what they can say publicly because they know the terrorists are watching. So obviously, you know, i thought in light of what we were trying to accomplish with this hearing, i thought their responses were good and informative and gave us a better insight into not only what they have done previously, but steps they are taking to become more sophisticated in responding to and trying to prevent some of these terrorist activities on their platforms. So i thought it was a good hearing. Then again you said on Net Neutrality you are working on a bill . We have a draft bill that was out there two years ago, which is still, i think, a good starting point in terms of legislation. Obviously, it is a starting point. But we need democrats to work with us. And the problem right now is that the cra, as you heard senator markee point out, its something thats sort of a shiny object for democrats to shoot at, but it doesnt give them a result. Its not going to pass the house, its not going to be signed the to law by the president. So best way to get a result if you want to address the issue of having in place what i think are generally agreed upon principles for the internet with sensible guardrails around that, in terms of getting too heavy on the regulatory side, the way to do that is through legislation. So our argument has been all along democrats come to the table, lets solve this. And im hoping that will happen. But i dont think that the cra certainly isnt conducive to getting democrats to the table, so we have to see who folks, we have to get youre not working on your own social media bill, right . And this Issue Advocacy ad sponsor disclosure, youre probably not for that, right . Well, that bill has some support, as you know, but, sure, well look at anything like that. But, you know, thats probably more political activity, not so much under our committees jurisdiction. But if theres a portal there that draws us into it, well Pay Attention to it. Thanks, senator. Thanks, guys. A recent media report reveals military investigators have documented at least 500 cases of serious misconduct among generals, admirals and senior civilians in the last four years. The pentagon has created programs designed to try and prevent misconduct by military leaders, and improve transparency. Well get an update from the Different Military branches at a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing at 9 00 a. M. Eastern here on cspan3. And the afternoon, a look at the emerging global threat that weapons of mass destruction pose and the hands of terrorist groups and other countries. Were live at the Senate Subcommittee on emerging threats and capabilities at