Free and fair vote. We are holding this hearing and we engage regularly with social Media Companies because they are best positioned to sound the alarm if and when another external actor attempts to interfere. First, because their technical capacity and security background and allows them to protect malicious activity on their platforms, and make attributions to technical indicators that are available only to the companies themselves. And second, because we cannot have complete confidence that the white house will allow the Intelligence Community to look fully and properly inform congress, if there is a foreign interference, especially if the interference appears to assist the president s reelection. That is a dangerous state of affairs, but nonetheless it reflects the reality and why theres hearing is so important. Witnesses, as you described, a lot has changed. In many ways we are better prepared today than we were four years ago. Each of your companies have taken significant steps and have invested resources to detect coordinated and authentic behavior and foreign interference. While there cannot be a guarantee, it would be more difficult for russia or another adversary to run the same 2016 playbook undetected. The facebook and twitter bitterly update the public, the committee and congress on their findings, as they identify interrupt enters rep coordinated behavior and foreign interference affecting the u. S. And other nations globally. U. S. Government agencies, with the responsibility to unearth interference, coordinate and meet ray gurley with Technology Companies and with us. Themselves have established mechanisms to share information and indicators, both among themselves and smaller industry peers. And researchers have also taken up the mantle, to apply their skills and knowledge to detecting and analyzing malicious networks and comprehensive public reports. These are positive developments, but as i look across the landscape, i cannot say that i am confident that the 2020 election will be free of interference by malicious actors, foreign or domestic, who aspired to weaponize at your platforms to divide americans and picked us against one another, and weaken our democracy. We are learning that our adversaries are also learning as honestot only russia, investments in the ira and hacking and dumping campaign aimed at the Clinton Campaign paid off and states helping to elect the kremlins favorite candidate and wide into between americans. The lesson being, influence operations on social media are cheap and effective. And attribution to specific bad actors is not always a straightforward. In march, facebook and twitter took down a network comprised of nigerian individuals operating out of west africa, who were acting essentially as cutouts for ira length parties in russia. This network was tasked with targeting u. S. Audiences with race oriented content, echoes of 2016, but also a sign of new tactics. And this week, we saw the release of a graphic report detailing a substantial network of accounts attribute into russia, where researchers in which the researchers dubbed secondary infection. While Neither Network succeeded on the scale of the 2016 efforts, generating viral content, they showed that russian linked actors remain determined with a and malicious social media activity targeting u. S. Politics. Secondary infections Operational Security was reportedly very good. And their deployment of convincing forgeries should worry us all. Other countries have watched and learned from russia and in the mail will seek to replicate them. The takedowns of coordinated behavior have demonstrated china, iran and other nations are using similar techniques aimed at international and domestic audiences, and they may choose to ramp up foreign influence operations in the future. The question is, will your companies be able to keep up . Technology has evolved, including the rapid advent of deepfake technology, the subject of a hearing by the Committee Last year. Deepfakes and manipulated media could be weaponized by malicious byors to up and an election laundering false images into the information stream of social media and traditional media outlets. While age of your platforms has begun to it adopt policies around deepfakes and manipulated media, it remains to be seen whether they are sufficient to detect and remove malicious media at speed. Once a visceral First Impression has been made, even if proven false later, it is nearly impossible to repair the damage. I am also concerned because the nature of your platforms is to embrace and monetize virtuality. Sensational, the more divisive, the more shocking and emotionally charged, the faster it circulates. A Youtube Video can be booed can be viewed by millions in the span of hours. A policy that only identifies and acts upon misinformation, whether from a foreign or thomistic source, after millions only ale have seen it is partial response at best. I recognize that the scale of moderation is daunting and as we get closer to november the stakes will only grow. Make no mistake, foreign actors and president s alike are testing the limits of manipulated media right now. And finally, i am concerned because of an issue i raised in 2017, and repeatedly since. I am concerned about whether social media platforms, like youtube, facebook, and instagram and others, willingly or otherwise, will optimize for extreme content. These technologies are designed to engage users and keep them coming back, pushing us further apart and isolating americans into information silos. Ultimately, the best and only correct of measure to address the problem of misinformation and foreign interferences, ensuring that credible, verified information rises above the disinformation and falsehoods, whether about the location of polling places or the medical consensus surrounding covid19, it remains paramount that all sectors of our society, including Technology Companies toh us today, are postured disrupt those attempts to influence our political and societal discourse. Americans must decide american elections. With that, i want to thank and welcome our witnesses for joining us. We will proceed with a five minute Opening Statements going in alphabetical order. Nathaniel glacier, head of Security Policy at facebook is first. Then nick pickles from twitter. And finally, the director of Law Enforcement and Information Security at google. Mr. Glacier, we will begin with you. You are recognized for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Therman, members of committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you. I appreciate the opportunity to be her virtually. I am the head of Security Policy at facebook. My work is focused on addressing the adversarial threats we face every day to the security and integrity of our products and services. I have a background in Computer Science and law in before facebook i prosecuted cybercrime at the department of justice and i served as director of policy at the National Security council. These are incredibly challenging times. That is why it is more important than ever that people can have authentic conversations on are platforms about the issues that matter, whether it is covid19, racial and social justice, family and economic concerns or the upcoming elections. But we also know that malicious actors are working to interfere with these conversations, to exploit our societal divisions, to promote fraud, influence our elections, and delegitimize social protests. My team is built to stop these bad actors. And we are working tirelessly to do so. Facebook has made significant investments to protect the integrity of elections. We now have more than 35,000 people working on safety and security across the company. Nearly 40 teams focusing specifically on elections. And we are also partnering with federal and state governments, other tech companies, researchers and Civil Society groups to share information and to stop malicious actors. Over the past three years, we have worked to protect more than 200 elections around the world. We have learned lessons and we are applying them to protect the 2020 election. A variety of steps to support the security of the electoral process, including launching facebook protect, a program that helps to secure the accounts of elected officials, candidates and their staff. Increasing ad transparency. Investigating and stopping in authentic behavior. We have removed 50 separate networks in 2019 alone. So thatping posts, people understand where their news is coming from. Yesterday, we began walking ads in the u. S. From statecontrolled outlets to provide an extra layer of protection against foreign interfluence in the public debate ahead with the election. In addition, we know that misinformation and influence operations are at their most in information vacuums, so we combine our enforcement efforts with ensuring that people can access authentic, Accurate Information about major civic moments, like the Global Pandemic or voting. This is why we are creating a new Voter Information Center to fight disinformation and encourage people to vote, and to make sure they have accurate and uptodate information from their local, state and federal election authorities. Because authenticity is the cornerstone of our community, we have invested in combating in authentic behavior with coordinated networks. For example, we disabled approximately 1. 7 billion fake accounts between january and march of this year, over 99 of them we identified proactively before we received any report. A veryere removed within short time after they were created. We have also created tools to identify fake accounts targeting civic issues. In addition, so far this year we have taken down 18 coordinated networks seeking to manipulate public debate, including three networks originating from russia, two of them from iran, and two in the u. S. We shared information with thirdparty researchers to enable their own assessments and we release monthly reports to highlight actions we are taking. We have also been proactively hunting for bad actors trying to interfere with the important discussions about inequality happening around our nation. As part of the effort, we have removed isolated accounts seeking to impersonate activists, and two tied to hate groups. Also working to stop misinformation and harmful content related to the pandemic spreading on our platform. On facebook and instagram, we removed covid19 related misinformation that could contribute to harm, such as posts about fake tears. And we continue to work with our independent Fact Checking partners to debunk false claims and connect people with information from authoritative resources. We are proud of the product we have made to protect discourse on our platforms, but there is always more to do. We are up against determined adversaries and we will never be perfect, but we are committed to the vital work to stop bad actors and give people a voice. I look forward to answering your questions. Mr. Pickles, you are up. Members of the committee commit thinking for the opportunity to appear before you. Role is to serve the public conversation, never more important than in elections, the cornerstone across the globe. Our Service Gives people the ability to share what is happening and provides insight into our diverse perspective of Critical Issues in realtime. We are humbled by the way our platform is used by those seeking to speak out against injustice, to hold those in power accountable and to provide change. Interference in elections is real and evolving. Since 2016, we have made a number of investments to address challenges and we have taken lessons from the 2016 election, and those around the world. Im grateful for the opportunity to discuss our progress and i will begin by focusing on the policies, product changes and we have in place. Threatshas addressed to the integrity of elections. Under our civic and hungry policy, an individual may not use twitter to manipulate and interfere in elections or other civic protests. This includes posting or sharing content, or misleading people about when, where or how to bridge abate in a civic protest. We recently expanded this policy to include civic events, for example the census, in addition to elections. We prohibit the use of Twitter Services in a manner intended to artificially amplify or threat in organization. We prohibit fake accounts and those others. We prohibit trade secrets, or posts that could put people in harms way. In addition to the new rules, or advertising policies also play an important part in the protection of public conversation. Twitter does not allow political advertising. It represents an entirely new challenge in civic discourse, that the structure today may not be prepared to handle, particularly machinebased optimization like messaging and microtargeting. Secondly, twitter does not allow news media entities, controlled by state authorities, to be on twitter. This was taken in regard to russia, based on their activities during the 2016 election. Lester, we expanded the policy to cover all statecontrolled media entities globally come in addition to individuals who are affiliated with those organizations. While our policies are vital to protect the conversation, we also want to be proactive in helping people on twitter find credible information by providing them with additional context. This approach is informed by feedback by those people that use twitter. We opened up a Public Comment period and we heard two clear points. Twitter should not determine the length of tweets, a they should provide contextnd and they should provide context. We prioritized interventions regarding the information based on the highest potential for harm, and are currently focused on three areas of content. The manipulation media, elections and civic integrity, and covid19. Where it is not regard rules, and these three areas we may label tweets to help people come to their own views by providing additional content. These labels may link to curated set of tweets posted by people including factual statements, opinions and perspectives, and ongoing public conversation around the issue. We have apply these labels to thousands of tweets around the world, with these three policy areas. Finally, i want to outline how twitter is empowering the public. In 2018 launched a public archive of the material we had removed as part of our work to tackle platform manipulation. It is one of the resources used by experts around the world, now spanning 15 countries, including nine of media and millions of tweets. The use of the archive by stakeholders highlight the importantance of information sharing. It is critical in preventing hostile actors from interfering in public conversation. In certain circumstances, Government Agencies do have access to twitter and we are grateful for the continued partnership with the federal, state and local agencies, in particular the fbi and the u. S. Department of Homeland Securitys Election Task force. We also work in collaboration with the National Association of the secretary of state and the election directors. We also partner with Civic Alliance and National Voter registration to amplify critical content. We want people to have confidence in the integrity of information found on twitter, especially with respect information relevant to elections. We know that the threats and challenges are evolving and we continue to invest in our efforts to address these threats by hostile actors and hostile environments. We look forward to working with the committee on this vital issue. Shiff thank you. Members of the committee commit thinking for allow me to join you today. Director of Law Enforcement and Information Security at google. Google created its Search Engine in 1998 with a mission to organize the worlds information as weake it accessible. Cope with a Global Pandemic and are once again reminded of the injustices that continue to remain in our society, our role in helping people access information is more important than ever. Today, i will be focusing on three main areas. First, our efforts to combat election related interference. Second, how we are empowering people with authoritative information. And third, how we are improving transparency and accountability. I will start by highlighting our continued investigative and preventive work to combat election related interference. As we previously reported in the committee, our investigation into the 2016 elections found relatively little viable Foreign Government activity on our platform. Entering the midterms, we continued to improve our ability to detect and prevent election related threats. And engaged in information sharing in the private sector and the government. While we sell limited misconduct linked to statesponsored activity in the 2018 midterms, we continue to keep the public informed. We recently launched a quarterly bulletin to provide Additional Information about our findings concerning coordinated influence operations. This joins other public recording across products, as we shed light on what you are seeing. Looking ahead to the november covid19, we know that pandemic, widespread protests and other significant events can provide fodder for a nationstate dens information campaigns. We remain steadfast in our commitment to protecting our users. Have continued to improve the integrity of our products. Our approach is built on a framework of three strategies. Ourng quality count in ranking systems, giving users more context, and counteracting malicious actors. Ranking algorithms are an important tool in our fight against disinformation. Ranking ele