Will try to incorporate any of those questions to our panel in a bit. Social media platforms as we discussed are allowing unscrupulous actors to sell unsafe, illegal, and overpriced medical equipment during this pandemic. That is one of many issues that we see across the social media platforms. This one is not a new problem. Social media platforms continue to allow these dangerous disinformation during covid 19 pandemic, and in so doing, they expose just how dangerous and how irresponsible this kind of behavior can be and the role they play and continuing to allow it. Rampant conspiracy theories make , confusingon worse people, distracting people. Social media platforms have the technological know how and resources to fix it, that they but they have little incentive to do so. Weve got a distinguished panel these problems. People on the front lines who are dealing with these issues directly and legislators who are trying to do something about it from two countries. First, a look at some of the mistakes to launch this conversation. Masks advertised on facebook by fake companies, touting the masks can filter out 99 of harmful particles. Heres what you pay for it and heres what you get. This is a counterfeit product scam. I am a foster father for children who have no place to live. We knew we needed masks because we are responsible for overseeing these children, the health of these children, the welfare of these children. A new warning from the fbi about coronavirus scams. I noticed an ad for a mask on facebook. I saw facebook as a legitimate company, so i ordered my mask on april 3 and got the confirmation that they received my payment. Scams are on the rise with the increasing needs for these protective supplies. After my initial auto reply from facebook it has been silent. Ive got nothing from them. I absolutely thought about the fact that without these masks coming, that it put these children and their families and our organization at highrisk. I u. S. Lawmakers who are u. S. Lawmakers who are joining us, they are charged with Consumer Protection. Conspiracy theories around the coronavirus is called caused by technology my apologies for that video reversion there. A technological glitch. Trying to connect the world via web. This is a learning process for all of us. Again, my apologies. Let me try this again. We have leading u. S. Lawmakers two who are charged with Consumer Protection in the United States congress and another another from canada who is also a leader in disinformation. Senator Richard Blumenthal joins us for consumer rights. And coming from connecticut, a great state. Senator blumenthal, its a great pleasure. The states attorney more than two decades as the states attorney general and his work in the senate on the commerce judicial committee, a recognized leader in the senate. Congress woman schakowsky, from the great state of illinois, she chairs the Consumer Protection subcommittee. You served as the whip in the house leadership as well. Thanks for joining us. Were also joined by nathanael smith, a canadian member of parliament. He is on the Standing Committee on industry science and technology. He has been demanding action on disinformation for quite some time. Im going to ask our lawmakers to bear with me and allow me the timekeeper role here as i turned to our witnesses, people who are experiencing this disinformation firsthand. Randi smith is a mentor to at risk youth in round rock texas after a successful corporate career. He has become a house parent as you saw in the video. Home in roundster rock. He is a kind of Community Leader leader as we have seen in this video that we will all like to have. We thank you and celebrate you and appreciate everything you are doing. Doctor stokes, an assistant professor at mount sinai icon school of medicine and a fellow at Johns Hopkins center for health and security and bio security. Shes a clinical attending physician treating patients at mount sinai morningside hospital, also serving on the mount sinai covid19 best practices committee. Let us get a sense of what is going on with you out there in the world, and then bring that to our elected representatives for further conversation. Randi smith, let us start with you. Go ahead and share your story. We saw you expressing your experiences and your frustration and the stakes of what this is all about. But go ahead, the floor is yours. Thank you, frank. When this pandemic happened we became concerned about our ability to serve and support the teams that were in our program. We immediately started looking at the need of the teams but as well the logistics of complying with the social distancing guidelines. We knew we would need to perform tutoring, rides to work. What we quickly realized as we were also going to be responsible for supplying food and other supplies to many of the families. Initially, when i found the masks, i found some on amazon, but they were only the dust masks. Local stores were out so i followed a link to masks that were advertised on facebook. Knowing that facebook is a legitimate company, i assumed that they only allow legitimate advertisers, so i went ahead, purchased the mask from zest ads through facebook. Certainly later i received and an accurate inaccurate order confirmation from zest ads which let me know that something was wrong. And looking into that i found a Facebook Group with over 1000 members, most of whom had ordered from zest ads. By this time hundreds had posted information regarding the dispute on facebook and paypal, but it was very difficult to find anyone posting resolutions to those concerns. It was not just face masks. Hundreds had ordered these robotic robotic vacuums, drones , and had become victims of the scam. It was apparent that facebook had been aware of this for several weeks. There were no secrets. People were getting ripped off. I imagine for everyone person that reported, there might have been hundreds that did not speak up or say anything. When i look at it, if i walk into a home depot store, there they have a responsibility to make sure that i receive what i was sold. They are also regulated to protect my electronic funds. Platforms selling online need to be held to a higher standard. The fact is, there often representing a company that does there is a seller that may not be based outside the United States. Consumers are powerless confronting them. We cannot walk in and speak to the returns counter. It is easy to get ripped off. I think allowing this fraudulent practice to continue will only cause consumers to be more cautious about buying online. That is going to be at the expense of smaller Reputable Companies that rely on that platform to promote and sell their products. In the grand scheme of things, 200 may not seem like a lot of money, but regardless of the amount, it is theft of another person yes precious dollars. For someone like me, a Non Profit Organization who serves in housing the youth on essential donated dollars, every dollar is absolutely vital. Let me say a couple of things. First of all, you say 200 is not very much, one person, multiply it times one million, we are talking serious dollars and major, major fraud. Your story is known and got told properly because of the incredible work Greg Silverman from bug speed buzzfeed did along with our institute of data democracy and politics colleagues as they started looking into some of these, this proliferation of social media and email, there are a billion emails wrapped around some of these things. They found your story. I think part of what is so important is exposing these things so thank you for showing your story with them, so that it could be reported and thank you for sharing your story with us right now. We will come back to you. Doctor stokes, i want to turn it over to you for your perspective. Thank you. As an emergency physician in new york city, i have managed more than 100 cases of covid19, but i have lost count of how many people were exposed, not to the virus itself, but disinformation about the virus on social media. It is hurting my patients. One of my first cases at the beginning of was an elderly march woman walked in by her adult son. She had fever, cough, fatigue. Her heart rate was high and her oxygen level was very low. When i told her son the news, he did not believe me. He did not believe the virus even existed. He actually showed me his facebook and there was a post that said something like, covid19 is a hoax. It was made up by Drug Companies to sell vaccines. That same week, another patient was brought in by her daughter. Same symptoms, same diagnosis. But her daughter insisted to me that there was no way her mother could have the virus because she got off facebook that covid19 was prevented by antibiotics and vitamins. Bodega in her the neighborhood and picked up these pills for her mother and theyve been taking them every day. There was no way her mother could have covid19. Ive had so many of these conversations since the beginning of the outbreak. After everything we have been through over these past three months, i am still having these conversations. Most recently on my shift, just last week. When i counsel patients and their families about the facts of covid19, they are understandably confused and scared, because theyve already been exposed to so much conflicting information. They do not know what is real or what is not. The common reaction is to get angry and asked me, how is it possible for a patient to have covid19 . They will say things like, my mother has never left the house. She has not been in contact with anyone except for us and we are all healthy. They dont make the connection that even though they themselves are young and healthy and have no symptoms, they can still have the virus and they can still pass it on. Talk, ity, after we starts to sink in. One of the things i will never forget is that look on someones face when all of a sudden, they realize they are the one. They are the one that likely had the virus and passed it on to their loved ones. I have seen that look so many times. It is something i will remember for the rest of my life. I have been told that the way to disinformation is to put out accurate information. But social media is so fast i cannot keep up. In the middle of a pandemic, there is just not enough time. We are fighting just to keep our patients alive on the front lines. We should not be fighting this war with information at the same time. It is not possible. We are trained to handle mass casualty events. We are not trained for this. We need help. Thank you for listening. Wow. Doctor stokes, thank you very much. Not only are you not trained for this, you should not have to you should bee treating patients, not disinformation. I want to ask you a question before going to senator blumenthal. The stories that you tell are really disturbing and very shocking, of patients who think that they can get a pill or take a pill and they will be immune from it down at the corner bodega or whatever, and all these other examples you gave. Are these and this is not scientific, this is just anecdotal through your experience that i am asking. Are these rare cases, doctor stokes . Or are these coming from 10 , 20 , half of the people . I mean, give us a sense from your lived experience, how prevalent is this miss this misinformation, disinformation, but you hear from patients . I would say, the overwhelming majority, just to give you a sense of this, at the beginning of the outbreak, some of the people who were actually looking at some of the information and questioning it were actual doctors. One of the things i do at mount sinai is look at the literature and make sure that we are following best practices. We do notk understand what it was like in the beginning of february and march. We did not have enough information. I hate to say it, but i had colleagues of mine that could fall for some of these hoaxes that we would read on facebook. Now it is much more clear, but i think if we are having people from the medical community who were not able to necessarily identify false information from good information, what can we expect from patients . I do not know how it is possible we can put the onus on people to sift that information and make decisions for their health that are based on actual, good information. Thank you, doctor stokes. Senator blumenthal, let me turn to you. You have taken on Health Insurance industry, big tobacco, you have been an outspoken advocate for consumer rights. In this case, consumers as we just heard from doctor stokes, are getting huge amounts of Bad Information throughout social media platforms. The scammers who are selling this, leadinglike people to think now they are immune, conspiracy theories that drive people in different directions, let us turn it over. O you respond to what you have heard from doctor stokes and randy smith. What should be done about it . What should platforms be doing . Senatormuted, blumenthal. Still muted. There we go. Thank you for joining us. Let me repeat my thanks even more enthusiastically to you had and the doctor, who have described so compellingly the real harm that has resulted from this colleague, and my thank you for being here. On behalf of consumers. My reaction as i listen to these andies from the real world, i encounter them everyday, i am and really just outraged. I know you use that word a lot, but 200 here and 200 there and suddenly you are talking about real money. Been involved in classaction lawsuits less than 200. With that said so compellingly is there is a real threat to human life and safety, so big boon,which can be a great also can be the bane of our when they convey this information and too often, they are complicit. Deliberately. D dating and abetting deceptive and misleading to cause harm. Ill give you one or two examples that are particularly out of bounds, across the line, where big tech should do better. The congresswoman letterave been writing a today that says to the ftc it should be taking action against the frauds and scams around the stimulus payments that are being issued by the federal government. All too often, people who are eligible are not receiving it due to the United States treasury lacking effort and now what we are discovering his people who go to google encounter malware and fraudulent schemes and referrals that google does or should know are ftcs and we are asking the to take action, not only against the advertisers or the con artists, but also against google because it has taken action in the past against advertisers or web designers who engage in enabling frauds to reach ordinary people. We are asking the ftc to take math action. You mentioned exposing these frauds. Is very important, but enforcing against them is an obligation of the secretary trade commission and federal trades communication. Agencies have a real responsibility that affects peoples lives. Absolutely astonishing. Project we are doing today, the letter is a result of the tech transparency , a list of likewise 46 separate full cures. Dietary supplements, chemicals. There is no vaccine, as you know, for covid19 and there are no proven treatments, and certainly none of these are. Ive written to the ftc about that. Just to be clear. Hes 46 fake cures are being promoted and represented as cures . And the platforms are doing or saying nothing to pull them down, to identify them, to expose that . Sen. Blumenthal they did nothing on their own until we wrote to the ftc. Now they are down, but there are more on their plate. If you go to your key point, the platforms are failing to act against them on their own until they are ordered to do so by the ftc, and of course the ftc is limited in terms of its resources but also in the past often, it has lacked the will to do effective enforcement. We are also on the subject of masks, going to the largest marketplaces, amazon, ebay, to ask them to stop selling masks that are in fact not only ineffective but potentially dangerous to people, and dr. Stokes probably encounters a lot of people who say, i was wearing my mask all the time. It was supposed to be an n95 mask, that they may be infected because of the miss leading misleading information. You can go through price fixing, profiteering, price gouging, deceptive, misleading ads and pictures. Directly the result of these platforms complicity in false and fake scams. Congresswoman schakowsky, let me turn to you for a couple minutes. You coauthored this letter. As the senator was just talking about it. Would you talk about that . What exactly are you too calling calling to be done, and i would like to ask you, as we are here now, we are focusing on scams, fraud, ripping people off in the name of covid19 safety or health, or cures, or whatever it is. Tell us more about this letter and where this needs to go . Congresswoman, you are muted as well. There we go. Rep. Schakowsky there we go. There are a number of tools that we can use. When is going to the federal trades commission which really does have the authority, not only to force the fraudulent ads to be taken down but there are also penetrating penalties that the federal trade commission could use. We are calling at this point, we are calling out google to take responsibility. This issue of the immunity that these platforms feel, its a really dangerous situation. Ive talked with senator blumenthal. Weve also written to facebook. They are allowing the sale of these inclined sleepers that have killed 100 children already. And that the Consumer ProductsSafety Commission says should not be sold, but they are selling them in their shop. On google. I also want to thank the tech transparency project. People are looking for information, and so they go to the internet. If they just look up, who is selling the fraudulent items, including the masks. Taught us a terrible story. While there may be some that are legitimate, consumers have no way of knowing what the difference is. If there is not some regulation. So, you know, i am very concerned about making sure that we act. One of the big problems has been the immunity that these platforms feel because of the section 230 of the Communications Decency act, which they think says that they can they are just hosting this vendor. They have no responsibility whatsoever. I think that is something that we clearly have to change. We have bipartisan support for that, as well. Weve seen the ranking democrat walden republican rather, along with the chairman, they have both sent a letter saying that section 230 should not be included in Foreign Trade agreements. You heard a member of parliament talking ab