Id ask each of the witnesses for the second panel to please take your seats. I apologize for that delay. We went through the three votes we had. We will now begin the second panel of five witnesses. Each witness will have a fiveminute Opening Statement followed by rounds of questions. Our first witness is Mister Dennis prager. Dennis prager is a bestselling author, columnist, nationally syndicated radio talk show host and also the cofounder of Prager University, an institution of Higher Learning on the internet which produces fiveminute videos in which experts distill complex topics in political science, history, philosophy, economics and psychology. Mister prager was appointed by Ronald Reagan to the us delegation to the vienna review conference on the helsinki accords. He was also appointed by george w. Bush to the us Holocaust Memorial council. Our second witness is facing kint, ceo of Digital Content, a trade association that serves the unique needs of Digital Content companies. Before joining Digital Content next in 2014, mister kint served in various executive roles including a general manager and Senior Vice President at cbs interactive and as the director of Online Publishers association. He is a graduate of Washington University in st. Louis. Our third witness is mister andy parker, Mister Parker is the father of Allison Parker. In 2015 allison was tragically shot and killed during a live tv broadcast. Mister parker now travels across the country to advocate on gun control issues and he has been working tirelessly to remove footage of his daughters murder fromyoutube and other internet sites. Mister parker recently published a book about his daughters life and legacy entitled for allison, the murder of a Young Journalist and a fathers for gun safety. Our third witness is doctor Francesca Tripodi who is a professor of sociology at James Madison university and an affiliated researcher data and society. Doctor tripodis research focuses on how partisan groups interact with themedia and the role that community plays in understanding what constitutes news and information. She received a phd and na from the university of virginia, and na in communication, culture and technology from Georgetown University and a ba in communications from the university of southern california. Our final witness is doctor robert epstein. Doctor epstein is an author, editor and longtime psychology researcher and professor. He is currently a Senior Research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and technology. And he is a contributing editor for the Scientific American mind. He is also the founder and director emeritus of the Cambridge Center for behavioral studies in massachusetts and a former editor in chief of psychology today. Mister prager, we will start withyou. Microphone. Okay. You would think a radio host would know how to work one. You would. That is avery fine point, i have no response. I will take just a moment, because my opening comment is under five minutes to respond on the issue of the 10 commandments video was placed on the restricted list igoogle. A representative from google mentioned that a reason that it would be on the restricted list was that it contains mentions of murder. So i was thinking i have a solution that will i think appeal to google. I will rerelease it as a nine commandments. That should solve the problem of including murder in my discussion of the 10 commandments and as regards to the swastika, there is a swastika. It is again in the commandment of do not murder where in i show that murder, there are people who believe murder is all right even today and i use the swastika and the hammer and sickle as two examples. I would think we would want young people toassociate the swastika with evil. That was why i had a swastika. It was an honor to be invited to speak in the United States senate, but i wish i were not so honored because the subject of this hearing, google and youtube and for that matter twitter and facebooks suppression of internet contact on ideological grounds threatens the future of america more than any other external enemy. In fact, never in American History has there been a stronger threat to freedom of speech as there is today. Before addressing this however i think it important that you know a bit about me and the organization i cofounded. Prager university, prager you add is referred to. Iwas born in brooklyn , my late father max prager was a cpa and an orthodox jew volunteered in the navy at the start of world war ii. My fathers senior class pieces at city college was on antisemitism in america. Yet despite his keen awareness of the subject, he believed that jews living in america were the luckiest jews to have ever lived. He was right. Having taught jewish history at brooklyn college, written a book on antisemitism and fought jew hatred my whole life, i thank god for living in america and it breaks my heart a vast number of Young Americans have not only not been taught how lucky they are to beamericans , but have been taught either how unlucky they are or how ashamed they should be. It breaks my heart for them, because contempt for ones country leaves a hole in ones soul and because ungrateful people always come unhappy and angry people. And it breaks my heart for america because no good country can survive when its people have contempt for it. I have been communicating this appreciation of america for 35 years as a radio talkshow host, the last 20 International Syndication with the salem radio network, an organization that is a blessing in american life. One reason i started prager you was to communicate americas moral purpose and achievements, both the Young Americans and the young people around the world. With the billion views a year and with more than half of the viewers under age 35, Prager University has achieved some success. My philosophy of life is easily summarized. God wants us to be good. God without goodness is fanaticism and business without god will not long endure. Everything i and Prager University do emanates from belief in the importance of being a good person. That some label is extreme or 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. Presenters included three former prime ministers, four Pulitzer Prize winners, liberals, conservatives, gays, blacks, latinos, atheists, believers, jews, muslims and professors and scientists from mit, harvard, stanford and a dozen other universities. You think the secretarygeneral of nato or the former prime ministers norway, canada or spain or the late Charles Krauthammer or philiphamburger, distinguished professor of law at columbia would make a video for an extreme or hate filled site . The idea is not onlypreposterous, it is a smear. Yet google which owns youtube has restricted access to 56 of our 305th 325 minute videos and other videos we produced. Restricted means families that have a filter to avoid pornography and violence cannot see that video. It also means no school or library can show that video. Will as even restricted access to a video on the 10 commandments as we have seen. Yes, the 10 commandments. We have repeatedly asked google 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 ever on many issues but they have always agreed that free speech is to 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 mister prager, mister kint. Good afternoon senator cruz, Ranking Member hirono and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you. I am the ceo of Digital Content here to speak on highquality digital publishers. Dc and is the only association exclusively focused on the future of publishing. Members include some of the most trusted brands on the web, hundreds large and small, old and new from the wall street journal to the new york times. Warner media , nbc and fox and digital publishers like the insider and igr and the texas tribune. I was invited here today to 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. At the same time, google leverages this data to compete against those who depend on its platforms. The web was supposed to be competitive and open but its simply lost most of that vision as googles dominance has grown. Google is the primary gatekeeper to any Digital Content business in four ways which ill cover today area ill call them for ds. Discovery and design of the content and the data and the dollars that come from consuming the content. First, discovery. Prior to my move to washington i spent 20 years running Digital Media businesses like publishers today we had entire teams focused on optimizing content for the maximum clicks from Google Search area as it controls more than 90 percent of the search market. Over time, google has pushed search results are the first screen in favor of more lucrative google ads and googles own properties. Second, design. Will more than any company influences the design of our members content. Googles web browser chrome is responsible for 60 percent of the traffic on theweb. Therefore publishers design their websites to work best inside of googles browser. With the increase of mobile device usage, google even developed its own code for the mobile web which promises even better search results or the publishers who choose to adopt it, furthering their grip on the web. Third, data. Personal data is collected and used two micro target users across the web as cheaply as possible. Our industry opaque datadriven ecosystem as mostly benefited intermediaries, primarily google. At the expense of publishers and advertisers. Last month for the first time we saw Empirical Research that demonstrated this. Googles revenue concentration ties directly to its ability to collect data in ways that no one else can. Its important to understand google owns the top five domains on the web to track us on more than 75 percent of the top 1 million websites. Ac much of what we do. Data is the source ofgoogles power and they leverage it to the hilt. With this in mind, industries rules around privacy and data are heavily determined by googles best interest. Legal teams at publishers are forced to adopt googles rules or choose not to do business with google. In other words, there is no choice. Finally and forth, the dollars. Weve been on record since 2015 describing the duopoly of Digital Advertising where almost all the incremental growth in our industry is going to google and facebook but in the case of google, it has corner advertising server market. On the supply side advertising teams are optimizing for googles ad server and the often opaque business rules and measurements google establishes. On the demand side because google oversees more advertising demand in any of the top five advertising agencies, google is able to in effect set the prices of ads in the auction market. Google determines the rules of their auctions if all knowledge whether or not they will help google or they will help publishers. It cant be both. To make matters worse, all these products in john googles algorithms which are shrouded in a proprietary black box of secrecy which absorbs most of the data cost and spit out profits according to how google decides to do them. In closing, i want to thank chairman cruz and Ranking Member hirono for convening the hearing. Its 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. Its time to end googles trying to hold on Digital Media and i look forward to your questions thank you mister kint, Mister Parker. Chairman and senator blackburn, thank you for hearing my testimony. In august 2015 my daughter journalist Allison Parker was shot and murdered while reporting on live television. The unimaginable pain by my family was amplified after the killer uploaded the first video of the murder to youtube. I pledged to honor my daughters memory and advocate for sensible gun laws so that others wouldnt suffer the same fate as allison. In response to my advocacy, countless people have targeted me, my family and allisons boyfriend online blaming allisons 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 eight filled diatribes maligning us. As the company with a virtual monopoly on internet search and online video hosting, 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 relatedconspiratorial content. Their response was to suggest that i view and flag the content i found offensive. Instead of self policing, 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 ever, nor will i ever watch any of it for obvious reasons. So in 2017 i reached out to lenny posner whose son was murdered in the sandy hook shooting and the Honor Network applied videos that i was aired. Although hundreds of videos have been taken down due to their diligence, they are often stymied with even an enforceable copyright. Ive engaged in direct medications with google regarding the proliferation of these videos but while they profess a desire to help , in reality they do nothing. On may 1 of this year, in the company of Georgetown University rights law clinic i had a videoconference with representatives from google regarding specific content and our attempts to have it removed. Their response was were really trying. Since that meeting there has been nothing but silence until coincidentally, not so but today, we got an email from themat 9 40 7 am. Next to section 230, google has complete immunity and therefore no incentive to respond and you saw some of the examples earlier. And an utter failure of ai, one video was self flagged by google and the flag was removed. Some videos were not removed and instead given the label this video may be inappropriate for some users area is also shown today which is tantamount to a perverse invitation to click and watch. The video has had over 700,000 views and specifically pointed out to google in our teleconference 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 censor 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. They must recognize the threats i faced was an attempt to intimidate me, prevent me from telling allisons story and speaking out against the violence and silence my free speech rights. I recognized the First Amendment gives everyone the right to publicly speculate that the moon landing did not happen or that the earth is flat but theres a difference between someone venting about conspiracy three and google turning its problems over to anonymous users for them to target and harass victims of this tragedy. The former is free speech, the latter is violence. If more and more public tragedies and horrific Mass Shootings occur they will be recorded, broadcasted and disseminated 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 lack of regulation. If it cannot properly protect citizens from Online Harassment he speech and moment of death videos i call on congress to step in and make sure that proper protections are in place for private citizens like me who are continually harassed and exploited. Currently, platform like google or protected against civil or criminal liabilities 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 the platforms. Mr. Chairman, there may not be a lot of issues you and i agree on philosophically, that is, but we do agree on this. We shou