Transcripts For CSPAN3 Senate Judiciary Hearing On Google Censorship Part 1 20240714

Practices must take in especially hard look at google. That is what we are doing here today. Googles control over what people here, watch, read and say is unprecedented. Almost 90 of internet searches in the United States use google. The domination of the Search Engine market is so complete that to google is now a commonplace for. With that market power google can and often does control our discourse and sometimes Tech Companies talk about their products and the effect of those reps as we have heard time and time again google Search Engine is not some Supernatural Force it is a Computer Program written and maintained by people in the order that google decides we should do that. Type a few letters into the search bar and google will tell you what you should be looking for. The same is true of the subsidiary youtube. The second most visited webpage in existence. When you search on youtube programs written by people at youtube provide you with the results. When you watch a video a Program Written by the people at youtube suggest what you should watch next. And when you submit a video people at youtube determine whether you have engaged in a speech an everchanging and vague standard meant to give censorship and air of legitimacy. This is a Staggering Amount of power to ban speech to destroy rivals and to shape culture. More and more americans are demanding accountability from big tech for that massive power. One thing is certain, Congress Never intended to empower Large Technology companies to control our speech when it passed the section 230 of the decency act. That provision companies special privileges that no one else gets. If the New York Times or the wall street journal were to publish an oped that libels a private citizen they can be held responsible. This is the case even when those organizations dont write the content that breaks the law. They can be held responsible for publishing it. Not so for Companies Like google and youtube. If someone uses one of those services to commit slander or transmit classified material or traffic guns or drugs far too often google is off the hook. Section 230 makes it immune. Big tech is a perk, a subsidy that no one else does. Fox news, msnbc or anyone else. This community was part of a deal it was a trade the text of it refers to the internet as a forum for a true diversity of political discourse. That was the trade at the heart of it because we expect Tech Companies in the business of other speech what in favor favor other either side when they did so. There would be a conservative internet and they liberal internet there would just be the internet. That bargain today is falling apart. Big tech continues to reap the benefit of section 230 subsidy. The American People do not. The American People are subject to overt censorship and covert manipulation. I believe it is time to rethink that deal. If big tech cannot provide us with evidence, clear, compelling data and evidence that it is not playing big brother with the fast immense powers there is no reason on earth why congress should give them a special subsidy through section 230. This takes it to the heart of the problem. Google is happy to collect data on everyone everywhere constantly. On you, on me, on all of us. And make sure they know what you search, what you shop for online and what you like and they track your location they know when you visit a typical store. The information sharing is a oneway street. This must change. Google cannot hide behind its algorithms. Big tech algorithm only do what humans tell them to do. Just as big attack needs and wants data on all of us. The American People need and want data. I hope that today google will start to answer some of our questions fully and candidly. So that we can assess how we Work Together ip calendar says it is july 16 but it feels like groundhog day in the United States senate my friends were critical of witnesses from facebook and twitter claiming a vast conspiracy to silence conservative voices. After listening to some of the comments you might think that some liberal mastermind set the controls of those platforms looking at 510,000 facebook posts and 350,000 tweets posted every minute. And remove anything that might align with the Republican Party platform. I repeat now what i said then claims of bias are baseless. Study after study has debunked suggestions. In june of this year the economist release the findings of a yearlong analysis that ran on search results on the news tab in april media matters continued 37 week study into alleged conservative censorship on facebook. Found that rightleaning pages actually outperformed left leaning pages in terms of overall interaction with users. Earlier this year twitter performed a fiveweek analysis of tweets sent by all members of the house and senate and found no statistically significant difference between the number of times a tweet by democratic member is viewed as compared to a tweet by a republican member. One of our witnesses has done her own research in this area and she found no evidence that google sensors conservative content either in the main search product or on youtube. In fact, some conservative commentators another of the Witnesses Today are extremely adept at optimizing their content for google Search Engine allowing them to capture massive audiences. Three months after that initial hearing with facebook and twitter it is googles term to be raked over the holes. Google will be accused of political motives for some commonsense actions which are in their right. Just like we saw at the social media summit last week. President trump invited a rogue gallery of social media leaving racist and conspiracy theorists to share about suppose it censorship by Tech Companies. None of these people had actually been to and from any platform. Each remains free to use the microphone social media provides to spread their messages of conspiracy and hate. It comes at a cost. It has made tech Tech Companies hesitant to deal with the real problem of racist and harassing content on their platform. According to a report twitter is afraid to use the proactive algorithmic approach it uses to remove isis related content to raise a content of white supremacist and the reason twitter is afraid it might catch content posted by politicians. Despite being informed of the twoyear homophobic Harassment Campaign against journalists. When youtube did finally take action it took the half measure of removing advertisements from the video from the platform entirely. Also draws attention away from the real problem with google and other Tech Companies. Last month New York Times investigation found the recommendation served as a roadmap for pedophiles to find videos of younger and younger girls sometimes as young as five or six. That followed a wire report to use the comments section of youtube videos to identify and share videos of children. A recent wall street journal investigation found youtube is overrun by videos pushingto the pointing measles has returned to this country. Another feature the radicalization of a young man who followed the recommended video down a rabbit hole. Google is a big Successful Company and employ some of the smartest people in the country. There is no question in my mind can solve these problems. Unfortunately, as long as we are busy making google defend itself by clear evidence the bogus claims andy parker is the father of journalist Alison Parker. She worked for an affiliate in virginia and august 26 2015 she and her colleague were conducting a live interview and they were attacked by a gunman. Allison and adam died at the scene. Video of the shooting quickly spread on social media including google youtube. For the past four years andy has sent letters to google and met with google and flagged videos on youtube and begged and pleaded that these videos come down. Despite his efforts you can still find video of the tragedy on youtube to this day. I want google to tell us why that is. I look forward to hearing from andy. His work to shine a light on the failures and it provides a great Public Service and they start to focus on the real problems presented by the industry and demanding action. Thank you. Thank you. Im happy to introduce our first witness. Currently heads the Global Public policy in relation department. Before joining google he served as deputy undersecretary of commerce from 2001 to 2003. As assistant secretarydeputy u. S. Trade representative from 2005 to 2007 and is head of General Electric Government Affairs division from 2008 to 2018. He is a graduate of Princeton University and Columbia Law School. Thank you for joining us. Would you please stand and be sworn in. Raise your right hand. Do you swear and affirm the testimony you are about to get before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth . You may make your Opening Statement. Thank you. I served in the george w. Bush administration and earlier i spent time with the Heritage Foundation and in college i was editor of the conservative publication. I am a first generation american. My parents imparted to me and abiding passion for the principles of free speech, democracy and free markets and this same passion makes me enormously gratified to work at google a company that embodies these values every day around the world. Google is a probably American Company across the u. S. We are investing 13 billion to expand our presence in 14 states creating thousands of american jobs. We are also a Global Company and a big american exporter competing with competitors around the world. Through our crew with Google Program we are proud to work with thousands of small american businesses enabling them to tap into the commercial opportunity of the internet and we are focused on the future investing billions annually and innovating new products to help people live better lives by applying Artificial Intelligence to enable earlier detection of cancer or predicted natural disaster. Above all we are a company of more than 100,000 people with a wide range of views nationalities and backgrounds dedicated to the mission of organizing the worlds information and making it universally accessible and useful. We live in an amazing time for the free flow of ideas never before has it been possible for so many people to share so many ideas with so many others at so low a cost and through so many different avenues. Internet platforms have been transformative and powerful tool for the marketplace of ideas. Among the many beneficiaries have been political groups from the Tea Party Movement in the United States to the arab spring , the internet has enabled people to send political messages and build political communities. Providing a platform for sharing a broad range of information is or it is also core to our Business Model. Google needs to be useful for everyone regardless of race, nationality or political leanings. We have a strong business incentive to prevent anyone from interfering with the integrity of our products for the products for our users. Let me be clear, google is not politically biased. We go to extraordinary lengths in a analytically objective way. Our platforms mirror the world that exist. Delivered the user the most deliberate information out there and studies have shown we do that. Objective thirdparty studies most recently a comprehensive yearlong assessment of google results have found no evidence of bias in either direction. Additionally our data scientists analyze daily click through rates on search results for the official websites of members of congress. The data showed no difference whether the member was a republican or a democrat and we analyze official Youtube Channels for all and we consistently found a balance between republicans and democrats. The platform deals with massive amounts of information and to manage these we rely on algorithms and testing and evaluation by thirdparty and none of the systems are designed to filter out individuals or groups based on political viewpoints. We are bound to get criticism from both sides. Political ads may violate and we have ads from both. From time to time our knowledge panels will help you find quick facts when you search for information like Hillary Linton or the california Republican Party may reflect erroneous information and will need to be corrected. We work hard to learn from our mistakes. These mistakes have affected both parties and are not the result of bias. We know that users expect the highest degree of integrity from our products and we must meet that expectation every day. If we dont the users will go elsewhere and that is why we tested these systems and tools to help us in and analytically objective a political way. Thank you for this opportunity and i look forward to answering your question. My first question will not surprise you. Does google consider it a neutral forum . We operate a number of platforms and they are constructed and operated to be politically neutral or a political. Does google consider the search page to be a neutral forum . We construct it and build it and operate it to be politically neutral. Does google consider youtube to be a neutral platform . Similarly we build and construct and maintain it with our algorithms to be politically neutral. Mr. Bhatia, i will ask my staff to give you a hard copy of a document that was released recently that we also sent to you ahead of time so that should not be a surprise it is a document that reports to be authored by google and the title is the good sensor. How can google reassure the world that it protects users from harmful content it is dated march 2018. Is this document a document that was prepared within google . I have seen it before and i understand that it was. The copy you have the only alteration is that it has page numbers on it. With no objection i will enter a copy in the record with a notation that we entered the page numbers. I want to refer you to page 14. Page 14 this google document says an important federal statute from 1996 supports this position of neutrality and describes under section 230 the communication decency tech firms have legal immunity for the majority of content posted on their platform. This protection has empowered many to create spaces for free speech without fear of legal action. Google understood on the face of this document that immunity is predicated on as the title of this page says neutrality. I would like to refer you to page 65 of the documents. On page 65 of the document tech firms are performing a balancing act between two incompatible positions on the one side create unmediated marketplace of ideas and 100 committed to free speech for democracy by creating spaces we all value including stability norms are always for debate and that is on the one side google zone assessment and the other side is create well ordered spaces for safety and stability 100 commit to the tradition that favors dignity over liberty and freedom. By censoring and i will note this is google word censoring racial and religious hatred even when there is no provocation to violence. This google document lays this out as a balancing act and two pages later on page 67 google concludes in the eyes of big tech which side has one out and according to google document the good sensor google says tech firms have gradually shifted away from unmediated freespeech and toward censorship and moderation. I guess, my first question is is this accurate . Does google engage in censorship and moderation acts senator, to place this in context this was, as i understand it part of a discussion that was underway among the Marketing Team it was a marketing document and it was thinking about the broad tension that exists between on the one hand a forum for free speech and on the other hand seeking to introduce certain rules of the road or Community Guidelines to make sure that the online environment is one that is users we want to participate in and it was discussing that it is not reflected necessarily of the views of the company as a whole let me ask my question again. Is this document prepared within google is it accurate . Is google engaged in and the terms used are censorship and moderation and moderation in this context as i understand not to mean being moderate but actively moderating the speech. It is censoring and moderating speech on its platform. I would not say that i would say there is as i mentioned in my opening remarks a remarkable opportunity for every part to be able to participate through the online platform. We do have lets take the youtube we do have Community Guidelines that preclude people from uploading videos that might contain violent extremism that might contain a speech that would prescribe or encourage or incite violence. You have the logo if i recognize them correctly. You have them all on the side toward censorship and moderation and in fact the chart goes on to say create well ordered spaces for safety and stability and it has three words politicized, editor and publisher. Are those accurate descriptions . Is google or youtube editors and publishers . No, i dont believe we are and i dont know the context of which those workplace up there. We are not. This google document your position is just wrong. My position is there are many documents produced where you have teams to think about what is going on in the ecosystem and this reflects thinking it is being done by a Marketing Team. The next page of this which i dont think i have that i will read it it is page 68 says for long time we thought of censorship in terms of government and nationstates and i think we are in an era where people are starting to realize that private companies probably more than ever before control peoples ability to amplify their voices and whether or not there speech stays up or comes down also what they see and what they can listen to and what they can read. There has been considerable debate including an argument by the Ranking Member of this committee that there is no censorship and no one is engaging in censorship and this document and the quote i just read reflects the concerns of a great many people that google a Massive Company with monopoly power is choosing whether to amplify peoples voices or whether there speech stays up or down what they can listen to and what they and read. Do you agree that is in fact what google is doing . No, senator, this is a quote from a third party it is not someone at google. Google put it in this so it is to reflect obviously the discussion that is going out in general in society about whether platforms in general which have on the one hand in many cases a mission, a goal of trying to be available for freespeech and new voices to be heard and on the other hand creating spaces where certain kinds of speech, violent extremist speech which is clearly potentially damaging and threatening to society is not permitted. You have repeatedly made reference to violent extremism and to hate speech. One of the companies that has been democratized by google repeatedly is Prager University. He will be sitting here and testify and he is in my judgment a highly learned individual and in my experience i have found in listening to him whether i agree with a particular issue and youtube actively sensors the content mr. Prager is producing. It is it your view that he is disseminating dangerous ideas or ideas that fit into the bucket of violent extremism or hate speech . No, senator if i can explain, mr. Prager is a youtube success story. Mr. Prager has more than 2 million followers as i understand it and all of his content is available on youtube the main Youtube Channel. We do have a very small of our subscribers who opt for what we call restricted mode. These are mostly institutions like churches or perhaps schools where there is certain more mature content, but they choose not to have access. This is less than 2 of the overall watchers. We do feel it is important to give the institutions that degree of control. There is a small of his overall content as i understand it less than a quarter of his content that is deemed to be in that category of more mature so for that very small percentage they will not have access to is more mature content. Other than that and just to be clear, this is content may be perfectly acceptable to watch and for those who have references to violence or war and that is just for the record, they have produced 325 minute videos and that youtube has censored 56 of them. Roughly 20 among those that are censored include a video on the 10 commandments. Another one censored includes a video on the history of the nation of israel and the restrictions are purportedly for blocking things like pornography and apparently in the world of youtube talking about the 10 commandments and the nation of israel is comparable and should be blocked. Respectfully that is not right. What i was trying to explain is all ofthose 10 commandments, all of those are available to 90 of youtube viewers. 1. 5 of our viewers have activated this restricted mode, churches, schools, may be libraries that dont want to have their viewers exposed to more mature content. The video i believe the 10 commandments video contains references to murder and i believe potentially world war ii and there other videos that have in that category the number that you reference that may make reference to other things. They are not censored, they are available to everyone you is using normal youtube they are not available to the small subset you have chosen to activate restricted mode. It is clear that these platforms remove certain kinds of content. The premises not the removal of for example violent speechthat is what they would like to focus on and apparently the 10 commandments video hasimagery so that might be one of the reasons it is restricted. Does google discriminate against conservatism and some weight . I dont know, the world of conservative content because you just mentioned that mr. Prager who puts a lot of this kind of content on various platforms has 2 million followers and most of the content is totally available on youtube so i found that amazing that he is here to testify that he is being targeted for content removal. Does google discriminate against conservative whether on Google Search, youtube or any other form . No. Does Google Search discriminate against conservative content . No. We dont factor political leanings into the algorithm at all. What role does the Political Party affiliation play and application of the content moderation policy . We dont know the users politicalit bears no relevance into the algorithm. You mention and obviously you are familiar with mr. Prager. He has sued google for allegedly censorship. You are familiar with his organization . I am. Approximately how many are available . I dont have the exact number. 672. How much does prager u pay to host those videos . I dont believe we charge anything. How many times have videos been viewed . I dont have an exact number. All of them have. I know that he has millions of subscribers. Whitted surprise you they have been viewed nearly 1 billion times . No it would not. Have any of the videos been removed from youtube totally remove . No maam. I want to show you a chart. This is a version of a chart google submitted in the lawsuit by mr. Prager it shows the percentage of organizations videos that are not available in restrict mode due to mister content. Fewer than 23 of the videos are unavailable and restricted and this is less than the percentage of videos unavailable in restricted mode from others, the daily show, and other organizations that are generally viewed as liberal. You notice that a lot more of those socalled liberal sites have a higher percentage. To your understanding is this chart which is submitted under penalty of perjury accurate . Yes. Is google treatments show the anticonservative bias that google isnt doing a very good job of it. To go further, andy parker is in the audience and will be a witness on the second panel and these daughter allison was murdered on Live Television while conducting an interview in 2015. Footage that can still be found on youtube today. I understand when he first approached google about having the footage taken down the response was that he should identify any videos and flagged them to google for a takedown. Google is in a 100 billion company with nearly 100,000 employees. Why should her father have to search for, watch and flagged videos of his daughters murder to have it removed from youtube . Why cant google do this itself . Senator, first of all, let me start by expressing my own on behalf of google deepest sympathy to Mister Parker for what he has gone through. And we have engaged with him over the course of time. There are a number of potential concerns with different kinds of videos. The first are videos that are hopes videos they were videos that were put out that essentially tried to make the case that the shooting of his daughter had not happened. Those videos violate our policy and we have indeed taken all of those down. The second set of videos you reference are a variety of videos that may be for instance news footage or other things of the shooting and there are a couple of concerns, one is the question of copyright, in other words are these videos that are owned i understand there are some evidence that if there is we would seek to respect the copyright holders and where there are simply news videos that a major news outlet would have put out that contains portions, that becomes part of what we would generally tend to leave up. I think that is what we are trying to work our way through. You have taken down some of the footage. Can you give us any idea how many,how many of these individual posts that have been put up that you will takedown . With respect to this i dont have the number but we can get that. Are we talking about 100,000 . In general if you are talking about videos that we takedown, there are hundreds of thousands of videos that seek to get uploaded every day, every week that we takedown for violation of the terms one way or another. Every minute there are 500 hours worth of video that is thought to be uploaded. Are you still taking down these kinds of videos asked where we find videos and we deploy machine tools, a rhythm tools to try to capture what is violating of legal restriction or policy and we try to take them down based on that. Are you taking action to do these or is it only as someone points out there is another video . No, no, senator giving the quantity of video we have we have to depend upon machines effectively to try to spot videos that are violating our Community Guidelines. We certainly use that as a first instance and we then also do look to members of the community to inform us or appoint us to things that they think should be taken down and when pointed out we have human reviewers look and take them down. When Mister Parker first came to you it was more than unfortunate that the message was to find these yourself. That was not a good approach. Thank you. Senator blackburn. I thought we were five minutes. Just this week weve been able to find more footage on her murder on youtube and, again, it seems as though Mister Parker that google has Infinite Resources and i would like to know that you are actively taking down on your own volition these videos and i think i have a screenshot of one of the videos Still Available on youtube and the person made no attempt to hide the content. The description states the gunman is on the loose after killing two in the shooting that was captured on Live Television and i understand content moderation can be difficult, but it doesnt look like it should be it is right out there. What possible explanation does google have for why this video slip through the cracks and has remained available since august 2015. Again, i am not familiar with this particular video you have a picture of and again, it would depend upon the nature of the video that had been put up if it was a hoax video of some type it clearly would transgress our policies and would come down and should come down. If it is news footage that lets assume it is not any of those categories. If it violates our policies it should come down and i wouldnt know why it would be up. Is that in and of itself wouldnt that raise a lot of red flags . It would depend really on the nature of the video. There are sometimes news events that would be things that might be difficult for viewers to watch and nonetheless would be put out there on major news channels and would be appropriately included. I cant really tell. This is a screenshot from may 30, 2019 it appears that the only thing google did in response is label it as adult content and ask users to confirm their age before watching the video. I would think this would just be taken down and what is google going to do to ensure this video is removed from youtube quickly and that they dont come back . Why would you allow people to view Something Like this rather than taking it down . Again, senator difficult for me to comment on this without knowing what it is. There will be videos that will be news footage that may be disturbing to people and it is legitimate news footage giving us the appropriate label may be the outcome with the policy. On the other hand, if it violates one of our policies whether it is the policy against hoax videos or any of the other policies we might have we would look to take it down. Again, difficult for me to say. Because i started again im not sure where i am with the time. You all are being very nice, thank you. Senator blackburn. Thank you. Mr. Bhatia, thank you for coping here. I felt like 2018 marks the end of the age of innocence for the internet and if you look forward to this summer we have facebook that has been hit with a 5 billion fine from the ftc and in my opinionin my opinion thats not enough, it should have been 50 billion. We all know that they did things in violation. The privacy agreements at google, you guys are facing a Justice Department inquiry. And microsoft with their 20 year antitrust saga, if thats any indication then i hope you realize this is very serious. It is a serious inquiry. And it seems like the problems around big tech as it has become a mature industry, this is just mushrooming. And when we talk about privacy or lack there of and data security, offenders that are the biggest and the worst offenders, unfortunately for you all, people put google at the top of the list. So we appreciate that you are here today. I want to start with you and talk a little bit about prioritization of search results. I think this is important to do because i will tell you i feel like you all pushed the boundaries until your hands get slapped. As a mom and grandma , i would tell my children, dont do that again. And they would try it again and again. This is kind of what i see with you while. A big Business Company like you should not be having such childish behavior. Where you do something and you get your hands slapped and you wait to see if we are going to get after you or if a federal agency will be bringing you back in. You are always out pushing to the limit. And in doing this you have a practice that seems to suppress competition. And we know that you that through google plus you have prioritized search results over yelp and trip advisor. You did that until local search providers really push back on you. And they said you cant do that. Now we see what you are doing is consolidating many of the travel offerings together. And so you are trying to push forward to dominance in the travel market and you are doing that through an app called trips and now you will be armed with all of these details. All of this search data from people that use your service. And you are going to use that prioritization to wipe out competition from travel booking sites. And i am concerned about the threat to competition that google poses and how search prioritization harms new startups that are seeking to enter the marketplace. Does google actively prioritize googles local search results . Yes or no . We seek to provide users, senator, with responses to the queries that are most relevant and authoritative. Yes or no, do you prioritize . No, unless our services that we put forward would be more relevant. Does google know if its own search results are better than third party competitors . It would depend entirely on the different search. So you have all the data but you are not quantifying and prioritizing . There are billions of searches that get run every day. Sometimes we would surface information we have. So yes you do prioritize and yes you do use that information. People are not dumb and they can check how search results come in. When the ftc investigated google from 20112013 they discovered code occurrence signals. That is google products would be trickled triggered above 10 links when the appearance of a competitor occurred in the results. Does google still use any form of cooccurrence signals to suppress the competition in search results . Senator, you are deeper into that then i know a good answer to. I would have to get back to that. Why dont you submit something in writing for the committee so that we have that. This is a practice you are not supposed to be conducting at this point. Youve been investigated on this. On monday you said google is not politically biased but you acknowledged that google took down or limited search content accounts and did so mistakenly. If you want us to believe google is an equal opportunity Search Engine and not an equal opportunity offender, let me clarify what an equal Playing Field would look like for you all at google. Google should equally promote video reporting in its search results, whether the article is from cnn or fox news. Do you agree . We have both cnn and fox news. Should google equally promote news articles whether its from the Huffington Post or breitbart . We surface the results that are most responsive. Does youtube equally promote videos from diamond and silk as the same time as videos from john oliver . Again both are in the corporate. Thank you i will move on. There were reports surfacing of google employees blocking breitbart less than one month after President Donald Trump took office. Google employees sought to use quote unquote what they used hate speech as a pretense for banning breitbart from taking part. The emails show that and ultimately these google employees did not succeed in their efforts to censor breitbart. Has your advertising platform ever enacted policies that tended to favor certain viewpoints over others . No, madam senator, we dont use Political Initiative to influence our ads. Okay has google ever blacklisted or attempted to blacklist a company, group, individual or outlet from its advertising partners or its search results for political reasons . No, maam, we dont use blacklists or white list for our search results. For what reason would google blacklist a company . As i said per your previous question, we do not utilize blacklists or white list in our search results. It doesnt happen. I have one last question mr. Chairman. In march 2019 google set out to form a council on the future of Artificial Intelligence. Thats very important to us here at this committee. One topic was fairness and Machine Learning. Of the eight members appointed to the council, only one conservative was reported supported and shes the president of the Heritage Foundation. She is widely respected as a leader in the conservative movement. Her appointment cause 2500 google employee signing a letter a poising opposing her appointment. She was unfairly targeted for her policies. These days we are hearing a lot about implicit bias. What has google done to address the widespread implicit bias against conservative values that persist throughout your Corporate Culture and we understand this is in the physical sense and in the virtual sense. First of all with respect to the Corporate Culture let me emphasize we are 100,000 people in many states around the United States including tennessee. We are a Diverse Group of people with many different views but we do recognize there could potentially be challenges with implicit bias, and thats precisely the the reason we construct our Search Engines and construct our platforms in such a way that bias does not get built in. And core to that is the system making sure that any change in the algorithm that could be proposed or used is run through a Rating System which consists of thousands of people throughout the United States, 49 states throughout the u. S. , and any change in the algorithm of being more authoritative would be reviewed. We appreciate that in this committee will be doing a deep dive into the issues of privacy, data, antitrust, censorship and prioritization and we hope you will come with an open mind to the table and be willing to work with us. Thank you. Senator blumenthal. Thank you chairman and welcome to the committee and thank you for being here mr. Bhatia. I want to first ask you about an allegation which actually the president surfaced on monday. The president launching a treason investigation into google for allegedly working with the chinese government. This appears to be based on a comment, and i will ask that the report of that comment he entered into the record if there is no objection. Without objection a political article which is dated july 16. The claim appears to be based on allegations by peter seal that giggle google has somehow been involved in treason. We know it has been a target of chinese hacking. That was the comment from google in 2009 have you found any evidence of infiltration of your management or database . Absolutely not, senator. Has google made decisions of its contracts with the government about pressure from china . Absolutely not. Has google turned a blind eye to the software or private data with the chinese intelligence . Absolutely not we take serious those threats of any penetration of our systems. If google Software Private data or management were agreed to appoint a Intelligence Agency including china would you commit to notifying this committee immediately . Certainly sir and indeed we work closely with Law Enforcement agencies and other appropriate agencies. Thank you. I want to make an observation which i think perhaps you have sensed from the hearing but also possibly from the comments made prior to the hearing for myself and colleagues from both sides of the aisle. The hourglass has run out on antitrust, on privacy, on moral imperative. Google is in the midst of a perfect storm. It will require a restructuring and repurpose thing of what you do and i hope that you are thinking radically, if i may use that term, not radically politically but radically in terms of the role and responsibility you have for the modern american society. My complaint about facebook what we know of it right now is not the in adequate amount of proposed penalties, 5 billion is not even a slap on the wrist. But the apparent lack of any structural behavior or leadership performed that will be required. So we know precisely what the outcome will be, i mean we dont know precisely what the outcome will be but what a forsaken obligation it is if there is no radical order to restructure and change facebook. On the issue that brings us here today, i want to first disclose that Robbie Parker is a former constituent of my. His eldest daughter, sixyearold daughter, emily, was killed in a shooting that is painful for any of us but most especially for him. And so i want to thank him and pay tribute to his bravery and his courage for being here a second time. Also into the interest of full disclosure i should tell you the connecticut firm representing him in his lawsuit against alex jones is one where one of my children, my oldest son works there as a lawyer. But he and i have not discussed this case. Mr. Parker and other parents of those children repeatedly write into google and when alex jones and others use youtube and i am quoting him to regurgitate demonstrably and undeniably false information about the sandy hook shooting, while simultaneously attacking victim families for profit these lies were more than just false. They were malicious, cruel and incited harassment and physical threats. They forced his family literally every day to relive the laws. And as Robbie Parker told us the last time he was here, for just too long google and its peers were complacent to the threats. This is not speech. It is harassment and defamation. I respectfully suggest whatever your machines are, do you agree. We believe the hoax videos are the kind you reference. Those have no place on any of our platforms. They need to address this seriously. We need to amend our policies early this year. We are constantly trying to improve things. If this gets caught by another viewer we will take action against it. These platitudes are no substitute for effective enforcement. If ive said it once ive said 100 times the best policy we make is effectively enforced. I have to conclude given what i saw before today and then what senator hirono showed you, that the machines are not working. And that you are dependent on the victims coming to you and often not heated. So i guess im looking for a commitment that you will get better machines or a different way of detecting or enforcing. Again not just guidelines and policies but they need to be made real. We will continue to invest in the space. We dont want those types of videos up. It certainly not conducive to the type of community we are looking to build with you to. Given the sheer quantity of video, it is a tough Computer Science challenge. You have a provision of law from the inception of the internet that gives you in my view a very excessively broad shield. We can debate section 230 at another time but you cannot simply unleash the monster and say its too big. Its too big to control. You have a moral responsibility even if you have the legal protection. And again with all due respect, i think there is a moral imperative here and the hourglass ran out. We agree that that is a responsibility that we in all platforms have to make sure that videos like that dont appear on our system. And what specific steps are you going to take . A lot of it will come down to improving the algorithms. Excuse me, improving essentially the tools, the Machine Learning tools that we have two spot videos, two spot violent videos. Again, i will say theres dramatic improvement happening in the space that Technology Improves and we are catching far more. People will put up videos that contain snippets or a bit of video spliced with other forms of video. So there are all sorts of tools that people try to utilize to get around our policy. And again we are training machines to try to capture those as well. Ultimately technology will be part of the solution and we are working on it. I have a few more questions. Has google committed to an independent audit of how it enforces these policies with facebook and twitter . We consult with many people on how to meet these challenges the best way, senator. We look to them for input on how we are doing. We are looking for advice on how best to complete the challenges. Facebook and twitter have promised an independent audit. Has google committed to it . Im not online with what you are referencing. If the answer is no, why not . Are you talking about against hoax videos specifically . Im talking about an independent audit of policies and guidelines. Again, there are a lot of individual policies and guidelines that we apply. So youtube Community Guidelines is an example. Our advertising guidelines, we have a lot of different guidelines and each one of them will utilize different to effectively test and verify how we are doing so im not sure a single audit of the guidelines or policies would be viable. They committed to and audit of policy guidelines specifically on civil rights, which is what has brought us here today. So would google commit to that same type of audit . We have not yet but i think it is something we will be looking at. We certainly have a great deal we look to we have engagements with the civil rights leadership. I want to ask you and i apologize for interrupting. But, last month one of your colleagues turner told the Commerce Committee that recommendations for information have dropped by over 50 in the United States. These are views from youtube Recommendation System directed by youtube itself for systems it controls. Why has the number of views for harmful content dropped by only one half . Why hasnt the amount of traffic on youtube dropped to 0 . You can control that. Im not sure i entirely follow the question. But, the Recommendation System that you are referencing, we have seen a significant decrease. As we implemented policies earlier this year they are designed to get at the content you are referencing. So maybe hoax videos. Or content, marginal content, significantly deprioritized as we have improved our algorithms for what is recommended. We have seen a significant decrease on that and we will work on it. I didnt follow the other part of the question. I guess the other question would be why of you not reduced it down to zero . I will ask it differently. We can pursue that later. Thank you. You say google takes its content moderation responsibilities very seriously. That is your testimony here today, is that fair to say . Yes, we construct our algorithms to be politically neutral. And you dont impose filters on viewpoints. That your testimony. Thats correct. And exclusively your employees donate to one Political Party. 1 went to republicans and donald trump and the rest went to the other party. Its your testimony you never use content for ideological agenda, is that correct . Yes. It is contrary to our mission and business contrast ended would be incompatible with the systems that we build for political bias. Thats why we have had the thirdparty studies including the ones ive referenced. And consistent with your basic values. Except for china, right . Youre happy to censor for the chinese regime . Happy to censor mention of tenormin square. Happy to have them help control the information flow to their citizens . Youre happy to do that. Would you call that censorship with an ideal object agenda . Do you say google did not include censorship tools . [ indiscernible multiple speakers ] google cn did not include censorship material . Are you not familiar with google cn . We exited china in 2010 and we did so because google at that point in addition to being under attack we felt the censorship requirements that were being applied to google were not compatible with the products that we were able to but you did offer it and provide censorship tools that would censor things out like the mention of tenormin square. Are you talking about project dragonfly . I did not bring that up. We have terminated that. Are you willing to commit today that google will not participate in censorship with the chinese regime in china against the Chinese People . Will you agree to that . No restrictions on dataflow in china . The Chinese Market . Im trying to imagine hypothetically what you are reference thing. We do not reference searches in china. Fundamentally in china we do very little compared to any other Major Technology company. So you will not lock search terms for concentration camps or tenormin square . We dont and wont. Well you have in the past. That is what google cn was. Im now asking you for a commitment. Im glad to hear dragonfly was canceled because that is news. We have no current plans to go into the china Search Market. That is great and you are committing today that you will not do so in the future . What we are willing to commit to senator is that any decision to ever look at going back into the china Search Market is one we would take only in consultation with key stakeholders. Thats what you said in the answer to the audit by senator blumenthal. That is the longest yes or no answer. Are you confident google is not been infiltrated by chinese intelligence . We dont see any evidence of that, senator. What about typically a company who does business in china will be required to sign that to the Chinese Military . Senator as i mentioned before we dont barely do business in china. But you have tried to. In 2010 we exited the country. That was not that long ago. That was 10 years ago. Okay. My point is this. You been willing to engage in ideological censorship in the largest market in the world and you have oppressive authoritative regime on the planet, all for profit, whatever is good for google. Why would anybody believe you now. You said you wont commit to a thirdparty audit. You wont commit to me about censorship in china. Why would anybody believe you now when we say we dont impose an ideological agenda. What assurance can you give us . I can tell you that in china today we dont offer any of the products that you are referencing. I mean here. Why would we believe you now in the United States or anywhere you do business . Why would we believe anything that google says about promoting a ideological agenda. We know you have done it in the past. What assurances can you give us beside your own testimony . I disagree that these are practices for our bottom line. I will tell you that google has a demonstrated track record of building Search Engines that meet the needs of consumers here and around the world. We are a trusted brand. I dont know what answer you are looking for. What im looking for is honesty and accountability. Let me give you another shot at the question from senator blumenthal. Will you commit to a Third Party Audit . Again we have plenty of people looking at our content including economists. But that is not an independent audit. Are you a happy to do it . If a third party wants to moderate is this a yes . We are getting a yes. No. I am telling you that the content moderation has been looked at at google. So sad. Let me ask you about youtube. China is difficult for you. Youtube is difficult for you. What is so hard about ending the automatic referral of videos of minors to pedophiles . You know you can stop it so why wont you just do it . Senator, im not sure. Im familiar with the issue you are referring to. Based on our policy decisions made earlier this year, we have eliminated referencing or recommending videos that contain minors in risky situations, risky conditions. So you are telling me you taken them out of the algorithm and taken them out of the referral . Not all minors. There will be situations where there is legitimate video footage containing minors. But videos that contain minors in risky situations, risky conditions, we have stopped recommending those. How much money does youtube make from videos featuring children . We dont break down money that way, senator. Really . I thought the response in the New York Times was it would be devastating for your Business Model. I dont know about that reference. I can tell you that the kinds of videos that you are referencing, we have no desire to see pedophiles utilizing youtube for and thats the reason we have taken a number of steps. You may no i have introduced a bill that would codify this into law. Will google support the bill that would stop any company, yours or others, from automatically referring videos featuring minors in this way . I have not looked at the bill but i would certainly be happy to. It certainly an area in which the American People have an interest in protecting their children just like the American People have an interesting getting news that is free and fair and have their data protected and having company that describe themselves as a proudly American Company, those are your words, from not promoting the worst regime on the planet which is china. I think all of my colleagues here clearly are trusting in your company but our patience has run out. It certainly has run out from me and i want accountability. Thank you senator hawley. You talked about google being a trusted brand. I can tell you that i think the trust has been severely eroded. Google was founded on the motto of dont do any evil. There are more than a few americans that are skeptical that google is living up to that promise. You answered senator hawley that the economists and others have done studies. Did those economists have access to the google internal records . They ran tests based on results that they were plugging into the Search Engine. A frustrating thing about this topic is the limited data. Much of this topic gets argued by anecdote and that is a less than satisfying way to consider any topic or analysis and it yields things like democrats saying there is no censorship. The problem is google has all the data as does facebook and twitter. Lets see if we can get that data. In the year 2018, how many ads by republican officeholders did google block . I dont have the number off the top of my head. I would say the vast majority gets run. We would be happy to come back with that answer. And i want the same answer, how many advertisements by democrats did google block . How many videos by republican officers did you to block . And how many videos by democratic officers did youtube block . There were no videos blocked in congress. My understanding is as one of the members of this committee, senator Marsha Blackburn had one of her ads block because you deemed it shocking content. I thought you divided ads from videos. Ads weve had both democrats and republicans occasionally blocked. In the case of senator blackburn yes there was an advertisement she submitted that involved one of the people on the add saying an obscenity and that violates our policy. That word was bleeped out, is that correct . That violates our policy. I appreciate your commitment to answer these questions. If google will answer straightforward questions that provide the data, that may go a long way to either exonerate google or demonstrate there is a problem. And not only on the metrics of republicans versus democrats but also on the metric of pro life advertisements, how many has google refused to run. The movie unplanned about a true story about a person with planned parenthood was not run. I want that answered. How many prochoice ads did they refused to run. How many throw israel ads has google refused to run. That data, right now, google is a black box and nobody knows. What was the average add rate google charge the Trump Campaign in 2016 . Those rates are set on when they want to run it. It would be average of the rate charged across the board. I will ask you in writing what is the average ad rate that the Trump Campaign paid and the clinton Campaign Paid . If the numbers are equal that will indicate one thing. If they are different it will indicate something else. Google knows that answer right now. Just on and specifically, all ads are not the same. On youtube it could be higher priced. That would be fabulous and you can break it down. The average ad rate for the Trump Campaign was x. Just compare apples to apples. And senator we have advertising specs for all members on the website where it is publicized. There is a transparency report that we put out annually on spending by candidates. It is all up there and we will be happy to point it out to your staff. Some of us ask, will gosh who would think google would be discriminating against certain views. The Senior Leadership at google does it lean left or right . Senator, Senior Leadership consists of people from a variety of perspectives including outside of the United States. Mr. Bhatia you are managing to be less candidate candid then mr. Sacher was. He said silicone valley is overly liberal. Senator i go back to 100,000 people, 7080 countries. Leadership teams pulled from all over the world. I dont think it is a matter of easy caricature. Lets focus on simple data. I did an analysis in 2016 of Senior Executives at google. Executive, Vice President , and directors at google and found 88 unique senior officials at google made contributions to the hillary Clinton Campaign. 88. Do you know how many Senior Executives at google made contributions to the Trump Campaign . It is not my job to look at that. Do you care to guess . Zero. Goose egg. This is not even close so you cant say you dont know anything about the politics here. That would be disconnected from reality. Senator blackburn asked about the Advisory Council that you put together on Artificial Intelligence. One of the people on that Advisory Council was the head of the Heritage Foundation. You work at the Heritage Foundation i believe you said. Consider the Heritage Foundation a French Organization . I consider to be a conservative organization eric well 2500 employees from google signed a position to have james removed from the council. It implied that hers is a valid perspective worthy of inclusion. This is unacceptable. 2500 employees at google saying that miss james who by the way is an africanamerican woman and she desegregated the richmond Public Schools and 2500 people saying that her view is not valid or worthy of inclusion. Google in response to this dissolve the entire committee. Do you understand when you see that type of bias and you see this conservative African American woman poss said views are not valid . These guys are silencing voices. Senator, the 2300 amounts to something around 2 of the google employees. But google acted on the recommendation and dissolve the committee. We did not. The committee consisted of a number of members and what google did is asked time progressed, a number of members of the committee other than miss james decided to fall off and withdraw from the committee. So is it your testimony mr. Bhatia, because im finding this difficult, is it your testimony that google did not dissolve the committee that your employees were mad . We dissolve the committee and were clear at the end of the day that it wasnt going to be viable to continue the Committee Counsel given what was happening with other members of the committee. And a march 2018 email to at least 17 google employees, liam hopkins stated tran10, jordan peterson, andy shapiro are all of nazis. And this is the quote. Is it your judgment that these men are nazis . Nose or. At least two of the three are Orthodox Jews. Are you familiar with any Orthodox Jews that are nazis . Nose or. Is that not a horrifically offensive statement . Sir, we have 100,000 people in the company and there are seven times the number of people working in congress. We have people who will say things. So there were 17 google employees on the email. Did anybody object to this . I dont know if they did or not. We have many chat rooms that go on and people say things in them that do not reflect the view of the company. People around the world could say things that dont reflect the views of a Leadership Team or management. It is what it is. Do you understand why people would be skeptical of the judgment of google when you believe orthodox to the jews are secretly nazis . Again, this was a statement made by one employee on a chat board. Google executives videod saying google is training its algorithms. They wanted to do that to prevent Something Like 2016 from happening again. We are training our algorithms so like if 2016 happen again with the algorithm be different . Senator, this was taken from videos where [ indiscernible ] who is a google employee without responsibility for the search algorithms was secretly videotaped without her consent. Her reference that you are quoting here and that the video was made is to activities that we have undertaken to make sure that election interference , a foreign state interference that was seen in 2016 does not happen again and that is what that reference is to. I think one of the best things out of this commandment is your commitment to answer questions with real numbers and specific hard data to this committee on the practices from google. That will go a long way and we need the transparency. I strongly advise google to submit to an independent Third Party Audit that has no bias, with access to the google records. A audit that doesnt have access to a record or the records is meaningless. I believe the American People expect transparency. Senator hirono. Just some clarifications. My understanding is google has a very different Business Model than twitter or facebook. Those entities can agree to the thirdparty audit that would include i guess content looking into the work in a way that they can, that still enables them to maintain their business methods or whatever it is. But you are in a different category. Is that why you have a hard time saying you would submit to a Third Party Audit of your content practices . We are not a social media platform the way the other Companies Like facebook and twitter that you referenced are. We are many different platforms. Gmail. Android. A lot of different parts to they business and that certainly adds to the complication. And you were asked regarding your ads. I understand it is very different but you were asked whether youve taken down pro life, prochoice, proisrael, antiisrael, do you have an algorithm that looks to these words . No. So how do you respond to that question if youre algorithms dont flag these ads based on identifying terms . Again, as i explained before, what we do is create algorithms to try to surface the most responsive result. We dont factor in whether they use a certain term like abortion or anything, it is not constructed that way. Google is a multibillion dollar business. So regardless of your employees citing First Amendment rights or whatever, thinks they want to put out that you dont agree with, i mean google is a business and doesnt make sense for google to do content requirements . Does that even make sense . Absolutely not. If we lose user trust it will be damaging to our business. Thank you. Thank you. All right thank you mr. Bhatia. Thank you for your testimony. I appreciate you coming. The senate is in the midst of three votes so we will briefly recess the committee and go and cast those votes. We will vote on those three and i will ask the members of the committee to vote and as soon as we do so we will come back and convene the second panel. But for now the committee is temporarily recessed. Thank you. Following a break members returned to the second half of the hearing. Among the witnesses were andy parker, father of Alison Parker who was killed during a live tv broadcast. And Dennis Prager who said google and youtube sought to restrict their or his google content. This is 1 10 hours long. Good afternoon everyone and welcome back. I ask you to take your seats. I apologize for the delay as we went through the three votes that we had. We will now begin the second panel of five witnesses. Each witness will have a five minute Opening Statement followed by rounds of questions. The first witness is mr. Dennis prager , a bestselling author and columnist and nationally syndicated radio talk show host. He is the Sole Proprietor of Prager University. They look at topics in Political Science history economics and psychology. Mr. Prager was appointed by president Ronald Reagan to the vienna review conference. He was also appointed by president george w. Bush to the u. S. Holocaust memorial council. Our second witness is jason kent , he has a trade association that visits the unique needs of content companies. Mr. Kent served in various executive roles including general manager and Vice President at cbs and the director of online publisher association. Hes a graduate of Washington University in st. Louis. The third witness is mr. Andy parker who is the father of Alison Parker. In 2015 alison was tragically shot and killed during a live tv broadcast. Mr. Parker now travels across the company to advocate on gun control issues and he has been working tirelessly to remove footage of his daughters murder from youtube. Mr. Parker recently published a book about his daughters life and legacy. The third witness is an assistant professor of sociology at James Madison university and an affiliated researcher at data and society. Is research is on parson groups interacting with the media. She received a phd from the university of virginia. Our final witness doctor robert epstein. Doctor epstein is an author and editor and longtime psychology researcher and professor. He is currently a Senior Research psychologist and he is eight contributing editor for the scientific mind. Hes a narrative of behavioral studies in massachusetts. We will start with you Dennis Prager. You need to use the microphone. You would think a radio host would know that. Yes you would and i have no response. I will take just a moment to respond on the issue of the 10 commandments video. This was placed on the restricted list by google. The representative from google mentioned the reason it would be on the restricted list is that it contains mentions of murder and so i was thinking that i have a solution that i think will appeal to google. I will rerelease it as the nine commandments and that should solve the problem of including murder in my discussion of the 10 commandments. And there is a swastika and it is where i show that murder and people who believe murder is all right even today. I use the swastika and the hammer and sickle as two examples. I would think we would want young people to associate the swastika with evil. That is why have the swastika. It is an honor to be invited to speak in the United States senate but i wish i were not so honored because of the subject of this hearing is google and youtube and internet sensation and that threatens the future of america more than any external enemy. Has the been a stronger threat to freedom of speech as there is today . Before addressing this it is important to know a little bit about me and the organization i cofind it. I was born in brooklyn new york. My father served in the u. S. Navy at the start of world war ii. His senior class thesis at the city college of new york was on antisemitism in new york. Despite his keen awareness of the subject he believed jews living in america were the luckiest jews that ever lived. He was right. I think god for living in america. It breaks my heart that a vast number of americans have not only not been taught how lucky they are to be americans but not taught how ashamed they should be. Ungrateful people always become unhappy and angry people. And it breaks my heart for america can survive when its people have contempt for it. I have been communicating this appreciation of america for 35 years, as a radio talk show h t host, the last 20 in National Syndication with the salem radio network, an organization that is a blessing in american life. One reason i started prager u was to communicate americas moral purpose and moral achievements, both to Young Americans and to young people around the world. With a billion views a year, and with more than half of the viewers under age 35, prager u has achieved some success. My philosophy of life is easily summarized. God wants us to be good. Period. God without goodness is fan gnat schism and goodness without god will not long endure. Everything i and prager u do em nates from belief in the importance of being a good person. That some label us extreme or, quote, haters, only reflects on the character and the broken moral compass of those making such accusations. They are the haters and extremists. Prager u releases a fiveminute video every week. Our presenters include three former prime ministers, four Pulitzer Prize winners, liberals, conservatives, gays, blacks, latinos, jews, christ n christians, muslims, professors and scientists from m. I. T. , harvard, stanford and a dozen over universities. Do you think the secretarygeneral of nato or the former prime ministers of norway, canada or spain or the late charles crowdhammer or phillip hamburger, distinguished professor of law at Columbia Law School would make a video for an extreme or hatefilled site . The idea is not only preposterous, it is a smear. Yet google, which owns youtube, has restricted access to 56 of our 320 fiveminute videos and other videos we produce. Restricted means families that have a filter to avoid pornography and violence cannot see that video. It also means that no school or library can show that video. Google has even restricted access to a video on the Ten Commandments, as we have seen, yes, the Ten Commandments. We have repeatedly asked google why our videos are restricted. No explanation is ever given. But of course, we know why. Because they come from a conservative perspective. Liberals and conservatives differ on many issues, but they have always agreed that free speech must be preserved, while the left has never supported free speech, liberals always have. I therefore appeal to liberals to join us in fighting on behalf of americas crowning glory, free speech. Otherwise, i promise you, one day, you will say, first they came after conservatives and i said nothing and then they came after me and there was no one left to speak up for me. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Prager. Mr. Kent . Good afternoon, senator cruz, Ranking Member hirono and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I am the ceo of Digital Content ne next. Dcn is the only association exclusively focused on the future of publishing. Our members include some of the most trusted brands on the web, hundreds of them, large and small, old and new, from the wall street journal to the New York Times, disney end warner media, nbc and fox, to like the insider and the texas tribune. I was invited here to specifically address google, a company which reaches billions of people across its platforms on which it determines the rules and limits access to its massive data pool. At the same time, goolgle leverages this data to compete against those who demand on its platforms. The web was supposed to be competitive and open but it simply lost much of that vision as googles dominance has grown. Google is the primary gate keeper to any Digital Content business in four ways, which ill cover today. Ill call them the four ds. Discovery and design of the content and then the data and the dollars that come from consuming the content. First, discovery. Prior to my move to washington, i spent over 20 years running Digital Media businesses. Like publishers today, we had entire teams focused on optimizing content for the maximum clicks from Google Search, as it controls more than 90 of the Search Market. Over time, google has pushed search results off the first screen in favor of more lucrative google ads and googles own properties. Second, design. Google, more than any company, influences the design of our members content. Googles web browser, chrome, is responsible for 60 of the traffic on the web. Pub llishers design to work bes inside googles browser. With the increase of mobile device usage, google developed is own code for the mobile web, which promises even better search results for the publishers who chose to adopt it, furthering their grip on the web. Third, data. Today, personal data is collected and used to microtarget users across the web as cheaply as possible. Our industrys opaque datadriven ecosystem has mostly benefited intermediaries, primarily google. Last month, for the first time, we saw Empirical Research that demonstrated this. Googles revenue concentration ties directly to its act to collect data in ways that no one else can. Its important to understand that google owns the top five domains on the web that traffic us on more than 75 of the top 1 million websites. They see much of what we do. Data is the source of googles power and they leverage it to the hit. With this in mind, the industrys rules around privacy and data are heavily determined by googles best interests. Legal teams at publishers are forced to adopt googles rules or choose not to do business with google. In other words, there is no choi choice. Finally, the dollars. Weve been on record since 2015, describing Digital Advertising where almost all the growth in our industry is going to google and facebook. But in the case of google, it has cornered the advertising server market. On the supply side. Advertising teams are optimizing for googles ad server and the often opaque rules google establishes. Because google oversees more advertising demand than any of the top five advertising agencies, google is able to set the prices of ads in the auction markets. Google determines the rules of their auctions with full knowledge whether or not they will help google or they will help publishers. It cant be both. To make matters worse, all these products hinge on googles algorit algorithms, which are shrouded in a black box of secrecy, which absorbs most of the data across the web and spits out profits. In closing, i want to thank chairman cruz and Ranking Member hirono for convening todays hearing. From my perspective, its abundantly clear that google dominates the digital landscape and uses that dominance to enhance its own bottom line to the detriment of the marketplace and most importantly, consumers. In the absence of meaningful competition or constraints, the question we as a society must be asking ourselves is whether were comfortable with the world that google is creating for us. It is time to end googles stranglehold on Digital Media. I thank you and look forward to your questions. Thank you, mr. Kint. Mr. Parker . Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member hirono and senator blackburn, thank you all for hearing my testimony today. In august 2015, my daughter, journalist Alison Parker, was shot and murdered while reporting on Live Television. The unimaginable pain felt by my family was amplified after the killer uploaded a first person video of the murder to youtube. I pledged to honor my daughters memory and advocate for sensible gun laws so others wouldnt suffer the same fate. In response to my advocacy, countless people have targeted me, my family and alisons boyfriend online, claiming that alisons death was part of a conspiracy to seize their guns. They have taken the gruesome footage of my daughters murder, edited it into videos and flooded youtube and other social media platforms with hatefilled tie tribes maligns us. As the company with a virtual monopoly on internet search and online video host egg, google has a duty to make sure the information they make accessible to the world is based on facts and not harmful conspiracy theories. I implored google and youtube to take down the footage of her murder and the related conspiratorial content. Their response was to suggest that i view and flag the content i found offensive. Instead of selfpolicing, they put the onus on me, in essence, they wanted me to watch my daughters murder and explain to a robot why it should be removed. I never have, nor will i ever watch any of it, for obvious reasons. So, in 2017, i reached out to len lenny pozner, whose son was murdered in the sandy hook shooting, and the Honor Network that spent time flagging videos so i was spared. Though hundreds of videos have been taken down due to their diligence, they are often stymied even with an enforceable copy the right. Ive engaged in direct communications with google regarding the proliferation of these videos but while they profess a desire to help, in reality, they do nothing. On may 1st of this year, in the company of Georgetown University civil rights law clinic, i had a Video Conference with representatives from google regarding specific content and our attempts to have it removed. Their response was, were really trying. Since that meet egg, there has been nothing but silence until, quince dentally, not so, but today, we got an email from them at 9 47 a. M. Thanks to section 230, google has complete immunity and therefore no incentive to respond, and you saw some of the examples earlier. In an utter failure of their a. I. , one video was selfflagged by google, then later the flag was removed. Some videos were not removed and instead given this label, this video may be inappropriate for some users, that was also shown today. Which is tantamount to a perverse invitation to click and watch. The video has had over 700,000 views and was still and was specifically pointed out to google in our tell conference and its still up as we speak. I understand that the general purpose of this hearing is to consider whether internet gatekeepers such as google should or should not sensor the speech of the politically unpopular, however, it is important to note that turning a blind eye to targeted harassment over the internet in the name of preserving free speech has real world and life altering consequences. Further more, this harassment itself has a significant Chilling Effect on free speech and public advocacy of the people these conspiracy theorists target. Even though some on this committee may not agree with my cause, they must recognize that the harassment and threats of violence i faced was an attempt to intimidate me, prevent me from telling alisons story and speaking out against gun violence and to silence my free speech rights. I recognize the First Amendment gives everyone the right to publicly speculate that the moon landing didnt happen or that the earth is flat, but theres a difference between someone venting about a favorite Conspiracy Theory and google turning its platforms over to anonymous users for them to target and harass victims of public tragedies. The former is free speech. The latter is violence. As more and more public tragedies and horrific Mass Shootings occur, they will be recorded, broadcasted and desimilar nated on platforms like youtube like so much cheap entertainment for google to use to add a few more millions to their bottom line. Google profits massively off of lack of regulation. If it cannot properly protect citizens from online harassment, hate speech and moment of death videos, i call on congress to step in and make sure these that proper protections are in place for private citizens like me, who are continually harassed and exploited. Currently platforms like google are protected against civil or criminal liability under section 230 of the Communications Decency act. Removing the section 230 protection will allow users to hold google responsible for the conspiratorial content it allows on its platforms. Mr. Chairman, there may not be a lot of issues that you and i agree on, fiphilosophically, th is, but we do agree on this. We should protect the First Amendment but its time for google and social media to be regulated. The original founders, as you mentioned earlier, had a motto, their original motto was, dont be evil. This was replaced in 2015 by, do the right thing. Google fails miserably on both counts. Thank you, sir. Thank you, mr. Parker. And thank you for sharing your powerful story and your powerful testament to your daughter. Thank you. Doctor . Good evening. It is an honor to return before the Senate Committee to discuss my research. During the last hear egg and today, conservatives have claimed that google is biased. Scholars such as dr. Epstein argue that this bias has the capacity to sway elections. My Research Also confirms that people trust output. But where we differ is that my Research Demonstrates that the phrases we choose are encoded with bias before they hit the browser. A framework shapes what we will search for, how and why, and simple shifts in sin tax dramatically change what google will return to us. For example, in the fall of 2017, if one were to google nfl ratings down, all of the top returns supported president ial trumps claims that the anthem protests hurt nfl ratings. However, if you searched nfl ratings up, google returned entirely different headlines supporting the opposite position. When you google for information about conservative censorship, the top returns are conservative news that support this claim. Google the phrase prager u and you get their website, their twitter account, their Youtube Channel and their wikipedia page. Those interested in learning more from conservative thinkers have ample access to do so. My data shows that users shape our own realities because we teach google what we want to see based on the keywords that we enter. My findings also indicate that the process of matching key words to content can be gamed to maximize exposure. For example, the phrase aoc returns conservative videos on youtube. Even though this is the twitter handle of representative ocasiocortez. This matching is not accidental. By partnering with the data scientist, i have obtained an analyzed the meta data of 13 different untube channels including thousands of videos, and in this data, you can see that fox news is 6. 7 times more likely to use aoc as a Search Engine opt mization tag. It will link audiences to conservative News Coverage of a liberal politician. Youtube has a vested interest in keeping people on the site for as long as possible, and intentionally feeds audiences content they cant stop watching. Producers also want to maximize exposure, and conservative channels cross promote guests and ideas in order to feed these connections. Now, as a marketing strategy, this is not nefarious, but because they also host farright thinkers and provide them a platform to validate their opinions, it amplifies those ideas, as well. That is because youtube is a social Media Network of content creators, featured guests, as well as users who comment, like or share the videos. Freedom of speech is one of the fundamental rights designed by our forefathers. It is crucial for allowing americans to express both widely accepted and unpopular opinions without fear of government punishment or censorship. However, privately held corporations like facebook, google and twitter are not the new public square. They are sophisticated advertising firms designed to profit from the data we provide to them. They are also spaces where people can create mass followings and those who want to profit from youtube must adhere to their terms of service. These terms are not written to disenfranchise conservatives. These policies were created in the interest of safeguarding members of protected groups and are designed to reduce hatred, harassment, discrimination and violence. In sum, what we get from google depends primarily on what we search. And depending on what you search, conservativism thrives online. For progressive nonprofits, conservative media are the goliaths. Wellfunded companies with Large Production budgets and sophisticated Digital Marketing campaigns. This is why youtubes top returns for phrases like gender identity or social justice are conservative videos. Click on these videos and youtube doesnt try to steer the audience left, it auto plays a steady stream of conservative ideas. Simply put, if content is readily available, it is not being suppressed. What conservatives who are arguing censorship are frustrated with is not the constitutional right to free speech, but is actually a grievance against a free market economy. The right for everyone to speech their ideas does not guarantee the right to captivate a large audience nor the right to profit from them. Given how youtube tries to keep audiences on their platform, i think we can all agree that a more pressing issue for this committee to Pay Attention to is how meta data can amplify hate speech, pedophilia, conspiracy theories and disinformation. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Dr. Epstein . Please turn your microphone on. I am, indeed, dr. Robert epstein. The most important thing for you to know of me is that im the father of five wonderful children. As it happens, im a Research Psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and technology. I have been center, center left my whole adult life. But i value my country and democracy more than i value any party or candidate. That is why im speaking out today. Im here to explain why google poses a serious threat to democracy, how Monitoring Systems can protect us from Companies Like google and how congress can immediately end googles worldwide monopoly on search. My plan for ending that monopoly was published just yesterday in business week. I respectfully request that my article be entered into the congressional record, its attached to my full testimony. It will be entered without objection. Ive been a Research Psychologist for nearly 40 years, my ph. D is from harvard. My focus has been on google, its censorship capabilities and unprecedented ability to manipulate the thinking of 2. 5 billion people, soon to be 4plus billion. Ive written articles about google for time magazine, usa today, that kind of thing. But also for the daily caller and even russias sputnik news. I reach out to diverse audiences because i believe the threats posed by google and to a lesser extent facebook are so serious that Everyone Needs to know about them. Here are just three disturbing findings from my research, which adheres to the very highest standards of scientific integrity. Number one, in 2016, googles search algorithm likely impacted undecided voters in a way that shifted at least 2. 6 million votes to Hillary Clinton, whom i supported. I know this because i preserved more than 13,000 electionrelated searches prior to election day and googles search results were biased in favor of secretary clinton. I know the number of votes that shifted because ive conducted dozens of controlled experiments that measure how opinions shift when search results are biased. I call this shift the. Biased search results can easily produce shifts in the opinions and voting preferences of undecided voters by up to 80 in some demographic groups, because people blindly trust highranking search results over lower ones. This is an especially dangerous form of influence because it is, in effect, subliminal. It also leaves no paper trail for authorities to trace. Its an example of a shortlived or, quote, ephemeral experience. Youll find that in internal emails that have leaked recently from google. Im not studying seven such manipulations and unlike billboards or those russianplaced ads, these manipulations are invisible and noncompetitive. Theyre controlled entirely by big Tech Companies and there is no way to counteract them. Number two. On election day in 2018, the go vote reminder that google displayed on its home page gave one Political Party at least 800,000 more votes than it gave the other party. That reminder was not a Public Service, it was a vote manipulation. Number three. In the weeks leading up to the 2018 election, bias in googles search results may have shifted upwards of 78. 2 million votes spread across many races, to the candidates of one Political Party. This number is based on bias in data captured by my 2018 Monitoring System which preserved more than 47,000 electionrelated searches conducted by a Diverse Group of american voters. I know how to stop big tech in its tracks, and that brings me, briefly here, to Monitoring Systems and the proposal i published yesterday. A 2015 phone call from the attorney general of mississippi prompted me to start a years long project in which i have learned how to capture online ephemeral experiences. In early 2016, i deployed a system that allowed my team to look over peoples shoulders as they conducted Online Searches, with their permission. I deployed a more sophisticated system in 2018 and im raising funds now to build a much more comprehensive system in 2020, one that will allow us to catch big tech in the act to instantly spot when facebook is biassing news feeds or when twitter is suppressing tweets sent by ann coulter or elizabeth warren. This system must be built to keep an eye on big tech in 2020, because if these companies all support the same candidate, they will have the power to shift 15 million votes to that candidate. To let big tech get away with subliminal manipulation on this scale would be to make the free and Fair Election meaningless. Finally, regarding yesterdays article, congress can quickly end googles worldwide monopoly by declaring googles massive search index, the database the company uses to generate search results, to be a public commons, accessible by all. Just as a 1956 Consent Decree forced at t to share all its patents. There is precedent in both law and googles Business Practices to justify taking this step, which will make Online Search competitive again and dramatically diminish googles power worldwide. In 1961, eisenhower warned about the possible rise of a technological elite that would control Public Policy without peoples awareness. That elite now exists and you must determine where we go from here. Chairman cruz, Ranking Member hirono, mrs. Blackburn, other members of the committee, democracy as originally conceived cannot survive big tech as currently empowered. I look forward to your questions. Thank you very much for that fascinating testimony. Senator blackburn has asked that she might go early, so, ill yield my time for her and ask my questions later in this round. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I appreciate that. Weve got a telephone town hall with tennesseeans, but i did not want to miss hearing your testimony, because i think this is a tremendously important topic and one that Congress Time halts arrived for congresso take some action and to focus on appropriate light touch regulation to hold big tech responsible. And mr. Epstein, dr. Epstein, i agree with you, they are manipulators, it is not lost on my that Mark Zuckerberg said that facebook worked more like a government than a corporation, and it is a very manipulative one. And dr. Tripoti, i agree with you, too, they are nothing but big advertising companies, and their Business Model is pretty much built on greed. And mr. Parker, i will say my heart breaks for you. I i very much remember, very vividly remember seeing that footage with alison and i can only imagine, as a mom and a grandmom, i can only imagine what you and your family have lived through. And so, i thank you for your courage in speaking up. Mr. Kint, i will say to you, privacy is important and i think probably it is time that we do something on privacy. I have had the browser act, i introduced that when i was in the house. It is light touch regulation but what it does is to give the consumer the opportunity to own, as i call it, their virtual you, which is you and your presence online. Gives you control over that, and i think this body would be welladvised to move forward with legislation such as that. Mr. Prager, i i have been to your website, know your work and i share your frustration with google and youtube and i know that you filed a lawsuit against both companies in 2017 and i feel for you in sharing your frustration, as you probably know, i have borne the worst of googles culture. Their Corporate Culture and their employees political bias and yes, indeed, we could have a good discussion about this but they do bring that bias to work and it does inform those algorithms. And one of their senior engineers actually singled me out for my political views and then doubled down on that, and then google came along and refused to put up an ad from the tennessee Republican Party in support of my campaign, so, is there bias yes. Have i experienced firsthand yes. I have. And but mr. Prager, ive got just a couple of questions before we move on, and i want to go through these quickly. How did google and Youtube Censorship harm your ability to communicate your message online . Well, its its fairly evident, if things cannot be seen by any family that restricts pornography and violence, if no school can see it, by definition, if its on the restricted list, if no library can show it, thats a very serious restriction, especially given that our target audience is young people. So, theyre depriving us of the very people that we most want to touch with our message. So, thats pretty dramatic. And so, how did your viewership go down after they restricted you . Well, i cant give you a number, obviously, theres no way of knowing what number of people are in homes that have already already have fitters and dont even therefore know about a video because it just cant be accessed. We know that many teachers try to show our videos in classes and they come up they can do it on their own, but they cant do it through the school. What explanation has google given you . For the restrictions . Well, you used the great word, frustration. We have gotten none. Actually, its almost unbelievable, because if you look at the list, and like the Ten Commandments being a perfect example of how people will go, you got to be kidding. I finally found out today, you did. We all heard the representative of google told us why the Ten Commandments video was taken down, because it contains murder. So, as i said, we have a solution, well put up one without that shalt not murder in it. But thats so absurd as to be hilarious. This will be something ill replay on my radio show for years. That is the level of absurdity. I feel like im in a monty python skit here, when he says Something Like that. The only possible explanation for all of this is they dont like prager u, because were a very, very influential conservative voice touching a lot of lives. There is no other explanation. I thank you all. My time has expired. But this for your attention to the issue and mr. Chairman, thank you for the focus on this. I yield my time. Thank you. Senator hirono . Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Parker, of course, you have all of our sympathies and empathies for all that youve been going through. You did hear the google witness say that they are proactively eliminating this kind of content and you said, though, that i think you testified that theyre doing nothing. Theyve done nothing. Thats yes. And that is correct. And his testimony was not accurate at all. They are not doing anything. They continue to you heard a lot of responses from him today that tap danced around your questions. Similar to what ive experienced over the last two and a half years. So, mr. Parker, then is it still all on you, basically, and you have hired someone to help you, because an engineer to help, who specializes in a. I. To help track down . Well, ive gotten, thankfully, volunteers, theres a gentleman here thats an engineer, eric feinberg, who has flagged a lot of these videos. Lenny pozner and his group have flagged video, but essentially, yeah, the onus is still on me and the people that, and the volunteers, to take this stuff down. And when they do when they do quote unquote selfflag something, there was one that literally, it was flagged to be taken down and then two days later, two, three days later it was back up again. I think in listening to both your perspective and that of the google witness, theres obviously not a meeting of the minds, and i think it bears further inquiry on that part. I understand that the tv station that was involved has given you the copyright to the video in order to assist your efforts. Yes. Why was it necessary for you to resort to claiming Copyright Infringement . That was another avenue for us to say, well, wait a minute, if youre not going to remove violent content and moment of death, that was, you know, they have a certificate that you apply to these videos that says, if you apply the moment of death video certificate, then we take it down, except that they dont. What theyve done is purely ad hoc, arbitrary, random. Theres no rhyme or reason to it. That was one avenue, you know, if we cant get them to flag content, then well, you know, well go after them for co Copyright Infringement. We own the Digital Rights to this, and they ignore that, too. Again, because they can. So, the basis of this hearing is that the chairman is trying to show that these platforms figure out a way to take out conservative content. That is not your thats not my issue. That is not your issue at all. I think its a much more not that this isnt important, your issue isnt important, but the target that theyre showing murder and execution on, you know, on the web, you know, section 230 was, my understanding is that it had been addressed, but with child pornography and there was some legislation on that, and i think if we can take i would implore this committee and congress to take at least address a narrow issue with this, similar to that precedent and say, you cant show this stuff. So, are you suggesting that section 230, they the exceptions to the immunity liability be expanded, possibly, that we should absolutely, yes. So, for dr. Tripodi, its very clear from the examples you gave that the inquiry that you put in can come up with totally different results, so i have to say that that when were told that when search results are biased, but the results are not biased, its whats what youre asking that results in the whatever information you get. So, theres a lot of stuff on all of these platforms and this past summer, President Trump tweeted that google rigs its search results in favor of supposed liberal im sorry, in favor of liberal news outlets, but you testified that the results depend on what inquiry you put in. So, you can put in a totally innocuous result and get a lot of what would be called conservative content. So, based on your research, does google rig its search results against conservatives . So, based on my research, i dont look specifically at rigging within my research, but i look at how algorithms are working, and so algorithms are a product of the input plus the output, and for me, and what my Research Demonstrates, the input, driven by the user, does determine the kind of output that youre going to receive. Yeah. So i think thats why to show that theres an actual bias in how they moderate the content issues, its not so easy. Not to mention that i think i, you know, i showed in the graph, the chart that i showed, that actually there seems to be a lot more content thats put in the restricted mode not of prager u, but of these other entities that are deemed a lot more liberal, so, im really not understanding mr. Pragers concerns. Before i end, mr. Chairman, i would like to get unanimous content to enter the following into the record. A report titled searching for alternative facts, analyzing inference in conservative news practices, written by dr. Tripodi. Without objection. No, big tech isnt silencing conservati conservatism, also written by the doctor. Without objection. And i ask for content to enter the following statements into the record, the statement of steve del beiyan coe, of net choice all of the statements. Thank you. And the statement of caleb watney of rstreet. And finally, i ask for content to enter an editorial that ran on july 13th titled how congress can destroy social media. All of those will be entered into the record. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you to each of the witnesses. Mr. Parker, i want to thank you again for sharing your story and your daughters story. And i will say, i very much agree with you that you ought to be able to sue the heck out of google and youtube. Yeah. And if anybody else other than big tech did what they have done to you, if any other citizen delivered a vhs tape of the murder of your daughter to you and your neighbors, you would have a common law tort for intentional inflection of Emotional Distress and you could recover very significant damages. There is one group in the United States that is allowed to do what its doing to you, and that is big tech, because congress has given them a special subsidy, an immunity from liability so they dont bear the consequences of their actions. And i think this hearing has underscored the need for congress to revisit that. And i hope you will do so, sir. As do i. Mr. Prager, you described youtube restricting various videos, i guess a total, i believe it is 56 videos produced by Prager University. On topics like the Ten Commandments, another topic, as i understand it, that was restricted, was one in which noted liberal, professor alan dershowitz, who is a professor of mine in law school, did a video for you, a historical account of israels founding and as i understand it, youtube restricted that video, as well. Does youtube ever explain why it is restricting these videos . It explains nothing. This was the first explanation i heard, the incorporation of murder into the Ten Commandments. With regard to professor you would think we would want young people hearing thousand shalt not murder. It was an argument for the alternative universe at that moment for me. I had never accepted the possibility of one but i agree with you, one would think that this is exactly what young people should hear, god doesnt want you to murder. But so be it. As regardsprofessor dershowitz, we have 320 videos, 15 of them concern israel and half of them have at one time or another been restricted. There is clearly a loathing of israel at google. I suspect there is a loathing of america, as well, virtually every video that we have put out that depicts america in a favorable way has also been, at some time or another, on the restricted list. My favorite example for years was victor davis hanson, this professor of classics, and he made a video, hes one of the most calmspeaking humans i have ever met, hes the opposite of a grenadethrowing speaker, and the subject was the korean war. The korean war, in five minutes. And it is no longer on the restricted, they go in and out, apparently, in some cases, and that was on the restricted list because so, i try to think, why would that be . And i could only come up with the fact that it showed how noble americas cause in korea was, the 37,000 americans died to keep half of the Korean Peninsula free. How many people even know that . The korean war is is in t the the rubbish bin of history, as lennon used to put it. Its just unknown. So, we want people to be proud of america, not proud of its evils, of course americas had evils, because it is composed of people and people do evil, but its been largely extraordinarily good and they dont want us to depict that. And can you describe what the affect is when a video is placed on the restricted list . We heard the representative from google say, oh, its no big deal, its just 2 you should be just fine with it. What is what is the affect of google arbitrarily placing videos as i explained earlier, vast numbers of parents have filters, totally understandably, given how much junk is on the internet. So, were this is whats so very important, it not only hurts us in that that family cant see that video, it hurts us because then it is a statement by google that Prager University produces videos on the moral level of pornography. I mean, thats thats and theres no appeal. Theres no remedy. No, there is none. Arbitrary power. We have actually spoken to representatives of theirs that after they say algorithm, if we actually get someone on the phone, we have had humans review it at google and keep it up. Why . Thats Community Standards. Your video violated Community Standards. Well, how exactly does the founding of israel by harvard law professor violate Community Standards . It just does. You know, i have to say it reminds me of the famous adage about the Supreme Court, we are not infallible because we are final, but rather we are we are not final because we are infallible, but rather we are infallible because we are final. That appears to be the same approach at google. Dr. Epstein, i found your testimony incredibly powerful and incredibly concerns, and if anyone draws news out of this hearing, i would encourage you to review very carefully dr. Epsteins testimony. And i would like to take a moment to make clear several things, first of all, as i understand your background, youre not a republican and nor are you a conservative, is that accurate . That would be an understatement. And indeed youre the former editor in cheer of psychology today. Correct. So you are a respected academic. You testified before this committee that googles manipulation of votes gave at least 2. 6 million additional votes to Hillary Clinton in the year 2016. Is that correct . Thats correct. And i want to make sure i understand. You personally supported and voted for Hillary Clinton. I was a very strong public supporter of Hillary Clinton. Yes. So, youre not dismayed that people voted for her, but your testimony is that google is, through bias in search results, manipulating voters in a way theyre not aware of. On a massive scale. And what im saying is that i believe in democracy, i believe in the free and Fair Election. More than i have any kind of allegiance to a candidate or a party. And looking forward, if i understood your testimony correctly, you said in sub kwent elections, google and facebook and big techs manipula ninipul could impact in 2020, if all these companies are supporting the same candidate, there are 15 million votes on the line that can be shifted without peoples knowledge and without leaving a paper trail for authorities to trace. Now, you describe the go vote reminder and you said it wasnt a Public Service announcement, but rather manipulation. Can you explain how im not sure everyone followed the details of that. Well, sure. If on election day in 2016, if Mark Zuckerberg, for example, had chosen to send out a go vote reminder, say just to democrats and no one would have known if he had done this, that would have given that day an additional at least 450,000 votes to democrats. And we know this without doubt because of facebooks own published data, because they did an experiment that they didnt tell anyone about, during the 2010 election, they published it in 2012, it had 60 million facebook users involved, they sent out a go vote reminder and they got Something Like 360,000 more people to get off their sofas and go vote who otherwise would have stayed home. The point is, i dont think that mr. Zucker berg sent out that reminder in 2016. I think he was overconfident. I think google was overconfident, all these companies were. I dont think he sent that out without Monitoring Systems in place, well never know what these companies are doing, but the point is, in 2018, im sure they were more aggressive, we have lots of data to support that, and in 2020, you can bet that all of these companies are going to go allout. And the methods that theyre using are invisible. They are subliminal, they are more powerful than most any affects ive ever seen in the behavioral sciences, and ive been in it for almost 40 years. Our democratic colleagues on this committee often talk about what they view as the pernicious effect of big money and big corporate dollars. What are you testifying to is that a handful of Silicon Valley billionaires and giant corporations are able to spend millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars, collectively, massively influencing the results of elections and theres no acco t accountabili accountability. You said we dont know, we have no way of knowing if google or facebook or twitter sends it to democrats or republicans or how they bias it, because its a black box with no transparency or accountability whatsoever. Am i understanding you correctly . Senator, with respect, i must correct you. Please. If Mark Zuckerberg chooses to send out a go vote just to democrats on election day, that doesnt cost him a dime. Fair enough. Do you happen to know who the hillary Clinton Campaigns number one financial supporter was in the year 2016 . Ah i think i do, but please remind me. The number one financial supporter of the hillary Clinton Campaign in the 2016 election was the Parent Company of google, alphabet, who was our first witness. They were her number one financial donor and your testimony is, through their deceptive search methods, they moved 2. 6 million votes in her direction. I would think anybody, whether or not you favor one candidate or another, should be deeply dismayed about a handful of Silicon Valley billions having that much power over our elections to silently and deceptively shift vote outcomes. Again, with respect, i must correct you. The 2. 6 million is a rock bottom minimum. The range is between 2. 6 and 10. 4 million, depending on how aggressively they used the techniques that ive been studying now for 6 1 2 years. Could you say that again, please . The 2. 6 million is a rock bottom minimum. The range is between 2. 6 and 10. 4 million votes, depending on how aggressive they were in using the techniques that ive been studying. Such as the Search Engine manipulation effect, the search suggestion effect, the answer bot effect and a number of others. They control these and no one can counteract them. These are not competitive. These are tools that they have at their disposal exclusively. If any headline comes out of this hearing, that should be it. Senator hirono. I just have one clarifying question for dr. Tripodi. So, weve heard from dr. Epstein. And he has published research that substantiate what he says, although i havent there is a question as to whether or not he used all of the results that actually he should have used, but are you familiar with his methodology . Yes. Do you agree with his conclusions . I would say we would come to different conclusions, but im not sure, because we do not know what are the search terms that were used in this study. So, i read at length the testimony as well as the reports that he has submitted and based on what i see, and we can go through it together, but theres a couple of things that draw out to me. One, when we run through how the experimental studies were run, it seems that people were given in advance which search terms to search and as far as my reer is demonstrates, that different search terms will yield different kinds of results. Well, that is the whole point of your testimony. You can get all kinds of results based on what your inquiry is, and if people actually got t tth the if they were told what inquiry to put in, i think youre going to get different kind of results. And senator, excuse me, just for a second, these are very simple shifts in sin tax that have different ideology basises, gun rights versus gun control have different positions encoded into them. Senator, may i reply briefly . Yes, well, were well aware of that, so, we started with more than 500 terms, we narrowed it down to 250 and we had those rated by independent raters. We only used search terms that were not biased in one direction or another. Were acutely aware of these kinds of issues and we control for them. Are you going to possibly undertake a study on how russias interference in our election, what kind of impact that had . Are you embarking on that study . Weve look into that, senator, im very interested in it, i think its reprehensible that this kind of thing happens, but in fact, russia was using several techniques but mainly targeted ads and the problem there is theyre now in a world, in an environment thats highly, highly competitive. People also can see ads, so, they can, you know, use their judgment and confirmation bias plays a role in how they react to ads, and study that you talked about probably has all those kinds of factors as being complicating the picture. Thank you. Mr. Chairman . Dr. Epstein, senator hirono questioned your methodology and also said that there were similar problems with search results as they are with ads. I want to give you a full opportunity, simply to respond to those criticisms and explain the methodology you used. Well, sure, ads, fake news story, for that matter, theyre visible and theyre competitive. So, there have also been those kinds of manipulations. Go back 100 years, there have always been fake ads. There have always been fake news stories. And theyre competitive. Thats a competitive environment. You put up your billboard, i put up mine. The problem with my techniques that ive been discovering is that theyre brand new. The internet has made them possible. Theyve never been possible before in Human History and theyre controlled entirely and exclusively by google and to a lesser extent facebook. Theyre brand new. I had ive had to put names on them, one by one, as ive discovered them, because theyre so bizarre. One quick example. Weve shown in our experiments that just by manipulating search suggestions, those phrases that are flashed at you when youre typing in a search term, we can turn a 50 50 split among undecided voters into a 90 10 split with no one having the slightest idea that they have been manipulated. We have reason to believe can you put some specificity on that . I dont know if that example can be fleshed out. Well, yes, in fact, we did that using the names of president ial candidates and we flashed search suggestions, as people were typing letters and we deliberately withheld negative search suggestions from some of our participants and with other participants, now and then, we allowed a negative to show up on the list. Well, when you show a negative on the list, and right now, if you look up donald trump is, you will find one negative, when you put a negative on the list, that draws 10 to 15 times as many clicks as neutral or positive terms. So, if your algorithm suppressed negative search terms, search suggestions, i should say, for one candidate, as we know, google did for Hillary Clinton, my candidate, in 2016, but you allow negatives to appear now and then for the opposing candidate. Those negative search suggestions draw a tremendous amount of traffic to websites that show that candidate in a negative light and what im telling you is we have shown that using this technique, we can turn a 50 50 split among undecided voters into a 90 10 split with no one having the slightest idea they have been manipulated. We have reason to believe that google is knowingly, deliberately, strategically manipulating peoples thinking and behavior from the very first character people type into the search box. And dr. Epstein, can you elaborate, you said we have reason to believe that google is doing this knowingly and deliberately. Can you explain why why we have reason to believe that . Well, pull out your cell phones. If you if you type the letter a into Google Search box, by the way, you should never, ever use google. Com, never, because it tracks you, you should use eithershould use Something Like dark page or duck, duck, go. If you type a letter a into the search box depending on your relationship with google and how much they know about you theres a very good chance you will see amazon listed in the first or second or third position, maybe all three positions. Amazon is googles largest advertiser. Google sends more traffic to amazon than any other company. Google is trying to send you to amazon when you type the letter a. Type in the g. I just typed a. I got amazon, area 51 read, and amazon prime. So those are the three suggestions. That is actually something. I am assuming that you do not block them so you still get amazon. Type in the g and you will get something different. If you type in the g there is a good chance that you will get a list of google products. They are trying to send you to google. The lesson here for all of us is if you start a company make sure the name of it does not begin with the g. Thank you very much. Thank you to each of you. I appreciate you being here. I want to thank all of the witnesses that testified before the subcommittee. We will be keeping the record open for an additional two weeks which means it will be closed at the end of the business day on tuesday, july 30, 2019. Senators may submit followup questions by that date. If there are followup questions the witnesses are asked to respond as soon as possible imagine. With that, this hearing was not sponsored by the g and the hearing was adjourned. Wednesday the house considers a resolution that would hold attorney general william barr and commerce secretary wilbur ross in contempt of congress for failing to comply with subpoenas related to the 2020 census and the trump administrations efforts to add a citizenship question. Follow the debate live on cspan when members gavel in for legislative business at noon eastern. Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul stevens has died. The illinois native was nominated to the Supreme Court by gerald ford and served on the court for more than three decades before retiring in 2010. A statement said that Justice Stevens passed away tuesday night at a hospital in Fort Lauderdale florida due to confrontations from a recent stroke. He was 99. The house will be in order. For 40 years c span has been providing unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the Supreme Court, and Public Policy events so you can make up your own mind created by cable in 1979. Cspan is brought to you by your local cable or satisfying satellite provider. President trump spoke to reporters during a Cabinet Meeting at the white house. He was asked about his recent tweets aimed at freshman Democratic House members. He said that the congresswomen he criticized can go wherever they want or they can stay. He also spoke about the economy