Youre watching cspan2. Your unftered view of government. Created by americans Cable Television companies emma is a public service, and brought to you today by your television provider. Acebook market zuckerberg and twitter Ceo Jack Dorsey testified about the president ial election helped erica manng misinformation online. From this in a jewish inhe judiciary committee. This is four hours. Good morning everybody. I think weave senator blumenthal remotely, is that correct. And is it okay if we moveha forward. Absolutely and thank you very much. I will make a brief Opening Statement and this is about censorshipuppression in the 2020 election. Sort of a deep dive when i facebook. Witter and about the platforms and the decisions they make and how they make them. Can we do better. Do we need to do better. So the first thing that i want to talk about here is health risket associated with social media. A 2018 Research Center survey of nearly 75013 17 yearolds found that 45 percent online almost consttly and 97 percent use social media a form such as youtube, facebook andn instagram or snapchat. So while were having the searing, the product of these two companies offer, people like they use. So the bottom line is, they probably bn more successfuln their wildest dreams. In her having to make decisions that offend people. And on the left and the right. Over trying to do is look a section 230, and is even needs to b modified or changed. Because section 230 basically allows social media platforms like twitter and facebk to pass on information without legal liability. The newspaper does sometng, you dont like, and you think of slender d end of a way, you consume them. This progr does something that you thank you so out of line, even as aolitician with a high bar, you can see them. These companies have Liability Protection when it comes to the content that theyca are these Co Protection when it users engage in. You can save the person who gave the tweet free to be cannot sue twitter the gate the person access t the world. In terms of what the said. Ive got to find a way to make sure twitter andacebook make a decision about what is reliable and what is not, but to keep up with and what today down. And that there is transparency in the syste and i think section 230 haso be changed because we cannot get there from here without change. But in 2019, study of more than 6500, 12 to 15 yearolds, found that those who spent more than three hours a day using social media, might be at high risk for mental healt problems. In another study, 12000, 12 to 13 yearold use social media mo than three times a day, dedicatedorce little bit, predicted for Mental Health in teens. Highlevel social media use and depression and anxiety and the average millennial checks or phones 157 times daily. I dont know where we fall, social media isesigned to sustain users attention with a mix of good user interface design and psychology creating an addictive next for users. Its called the slot machine effe. The technique which utilizes a poll to refresh and scrolling mechanisms on newsfeedsimilar to a slot machine rated the lighta button, the feature the provides social elevation thugh positive feedback loop, a measuring and comparing the number like the users content obtains. And social intertions, imploring game applicationf engaging users and keep tm coming back. Pray simple, strakes is the one causing the most concern. In using elongating lives to display the number of days since the users havemo interacted wit. They try to keep us engaged. The mowing gate, the me advertising benefit that the company is that a Good Business practice. Maybe so, does it create a health hard. Over time, something to look at. Now the other aspect of this debate, is are these companies the newspapers of the tv stations, do they have the power of media organizations that have rules and regulations and Current Media platforms do not. There are rules about that one television station can do. There are res voided newspaper can do. What i want to try to find out is if youre not a newspaper, or twitter or facebook, then why do u have etorial control over the near post. They decided maybe for a good reason i dont know, that the near post articles about hundred biden, needed to be flagged. Andxcluded from distribution made hardtofind. That to me seems like the ultimate editor. The editorial decision the New York Post to run thetory was overridden by twitter, and facebook in different fashions. Prevent this dissemination. Now thats n making an editorial decision. I dont know what would be. It is onehing when we do it in a private lives. Nikki haley made a post about her ncerns about male in balloting. It was flagged as something they claimed ds not been legitimid. I read it to you. Next question to ask is why is it a crime to have things start out by the holy ghost. Why should anybody who writes about this while insulting the prophet, thats a lot of. Thats ayatollah. Hes appointing raising doubts about the holocaust, should be a crime. And he is openly oered the destruction of israel, his regime has inim his suite was basically allowed tolourish. It is with nikki haley says. Despite with the media tells us, Election Fraud does happen. The policies like balloting harvesting, and male in the balance to see if we dont request them, makes it easier rated pennies to stop. This cla about Election Fraud is disputed. Lesser opinion. She believes like i do, the male in balloting is ripe forraud if you cant verify the signature. And if you do send mail ballots out to the world that are not requested, hey dont he verification system that can be trusted, you have in fact that the harvesting imbalance for nefarious purposes. The question for us as a country, at wha point does the decisions by these organizations across a line. And at what point they have to assume responsibility in section 230. Enter people about to testify. I consider your product to have change the world, mostly for the good. Were able to interact among ourselves. Rebel to talk to each other and share life experiences. We are able to in real time communicate to our neighbors and her friends those who oppose us what we thank for technology that just makes it instantaneous and can literally like have the world. Section 230 was developed to allow these technologies to flourish. Early on, if you could sue twitter or facebook for content on facebook posting or a tweet, they were liable by what somebody else said or what they felt or did, the company probably wouldve never been in existence. The companies are trying to help us deal with child pornography. Mr. That to be able to maintain Liability Protections when it comes to exploitation of media size, social media sites, sexual predators produce any passed bill that you can only maintain that Liability Protection if in fact, you use best Business Practices. Thats why think that we need to be going. My hope is that we change section 232 incentivize social media platforms to come up with standards that are transparent and opaque. That will allow us to make judgments about their judgments. The Fact Checkers, be known and that thehe Community Standards process them. What are their biases. And give some direction to these companies because they have almost an impossible task. There literally trying to engage in telling us what is reliable and what is not based on cable news commentary or tweets from politicians or average citizens. Nobody in a free society is ever had the responsibility before it and the question is, how do you control the responsibility. I dont want the government to take over the job of telling america was tweets are legitimate and what are not. I do want the government deciding with contents to go. And put down. They were all in that category. But when you have companies that have the power of governments, a far more power than traditional media,a, the outlets, something has to give. Im hoping in his hearing today, the invite of a signed agreement. The section 230 needs to be changed in the my bias would be to allow the industry itself to develop best Business Practices and to protect the site against terrorism and Child Exploitation and other concerns. That we look at the Business Practices that these companies do a health prism some of the practices need to be modified because it can become addictive. I thought tobacco was a good thing for a long time to the point that we sent to our soldiers in combat. The more we realized about the nature of tobacco, the more we changed her mind about telling the public about the product. So whether or not we do that with social media platforms, they can be addictive if used too often, i dont know if we need to go there but i do know that section 230 it if it existed today, has got to give. Theres republican and democratic concerns about the power that is being used by social Media Outlets to tell us what we can see we cannot. What is true and what is not. To the extent the section 230 in my view hasas to be rewritten. So thats the purpose of this hearing. This find a way forward and bring about change. When it comes to social media platforms and section 230, change willh come. And with that, senator blumenthal. Hank you very much. Mr. Chairman and thank you for having the. I look fward to cooperating with you knowing this hearing but also now coming because youre absolutelyn right, chaid must ce. To the social media andhe fact is that we need today, and unprecedented and precarious moment in American History. And it takes t very foundations of our democracy usina powerful megaphone, social media. The psident hasem uses megaphone spread vicious information and attempt to barter the will of voters. Everyday he posts new threats in nspiracy theories about male in ballots and voting machines, lies theyra contradict his own Election Security official and his lawyers. Uses thisti microphone potentially to block a peaceful transition of power. Now mr. Zuckerberg and mr. Darcy, you have terrifyin tools of persuasion and minute elation with power far exceeding the last and profited usually by strip mining data about our privateives and promoting hate speech and Voter Suppression. Evident mets civic and moral responsibility to ensure these instrunts of influence do not irrerably harm our count. Recognize the steps literally baby steps, and been taken so far, the desuctive and misinformation, is sti on both your platform and anothers. In fact google has been given a task from todays hearing. Is been rewarded on this committee for its information do you been lesson you have done to livep to its responsibility. There is no action youve taken in fact, are simply to check the truth of what appears on platform. Often it is Voter Suppression and incendiary malicious and misinformation and is trying to slow this insidious spread. At is not csorship. That is moral and civic responsibility. Now i believe and hope chairma believes the series of hearings on big th is long overdue on trust issues and private concerns and section 230. I breakup of the tech giants because they misuse the bness and power. Breaking off for example, instagm rigorous privacy protections because consumers should have control over their own data. Entity section 230 reform. Meaningful reform. Including even possible repeal in large part because their immunity and victims of they deserve their day in court. This hearings not the serious that we need. It may become aolitical sideshow, public tethering. [inaudible]. Cant seem to want to ignore the foreign disInformation Campaigns. Intend to interfere in our democracy and calls for quarter of fbi director ray and dr. Anthony fauci. What wer have seen fighting words. An eight speech. But certaly, deserves no Free Expression protection. E fact is that the purpose of todays hearing seems as much to slowly f or browbeat you, so to take even more responsible acts by the section 230. Censorship is really misnome friends hearing. What you have done i to label and to fact check and to avoid it amplifying misinformation. And to in effect, impose those labels to alert people had what theyre consuming may misinform them. In fiscal t down answer biden in mhigan and the aclu colorado farms about voting in short. There was action that affecd both sides. Section 230 reform, for 16 years so i have fought for prayed for my time asor attorney general, what i took on the registered offenders, and the senat i have led the only successful revision so far to secti 230. To stop enabling traffickers. And chairman grandma night hav authored the only bill to reform section 230no actually moved out of the committee. We passes unanimously. Change will come. Ere is no question. Change is on the way. I intend to be aggressive with this reform. To the section 2. But i have n nor should we be on this committee interesteed in being 2 a member of the speech police. There arere t real harms here. In some ways, this hearing is a betrayal of those real harms in the real victims. Those harms have been caused by big tech because you have failed yo responsibility as have others in thissndustry. I want to see real reform that will enable these abuses to be reforms. Because your platform has embraced an weapon eyes child predators, silent white premacist and human traffickers. No her heart wrenching stories from victims. You [applause] rights protections for muslim americans. Organized by the whites, by privat online groups you have said that consumers in competitions making that kind of antitrust actions very important. The American Public deserves and demands rea reform and accountability. National Consumer Privacy antitrust principles that curb sectiony reformo the 230 and stop shuttg the courthouse doors to the victims. I look forward to an opportunity for real change and i think you can meethis moment by putting yourower and your money on the right se of history. Thank you m mr. Chairman. Thank you a lot packed in there. Senatorc blumenthal has been great to work with. I will continue to work wit you if we control of the any. I would encourage mr. Grassley to have the hearings with mr. Blumenthal referenced this is an ongoing conversation to get it right to the extent that we can get it right. And mr. Darcy with twitter you with us. Thank you the floor is yours jack dorsey. Jack thank you for the opportunity to speak about your concerns around censorship and suppression of the specific news article. And generally what we saw on the 2020 u. S. Elections, competition. Ill call you today because of the new enforcement decision that we made guess that near post. Based on policy we created in 2018 to prevent twitter for brain gives spread materials. This resulted in us blockin people from sharing the near article publicly or privately. Any quick interpretation using no other evidence but the material in thewe article rentig to the hking. And according to our policy, we block them from being spread. Upon further consideration we admittedhe section was wrong prayed and corcted it within 24 hours. We inford the New York Post of our air and policy update and how to electur their account by deleting the original filing tweet. Which freed them to tweak the exact same content and use the article again. They chose not to. Instead of insisting that we reversed our enforcement action. We do not have a practice run retroactively overturning the enforcements. But this demonstrated that we needed one fighting so we created one wiggly despair and aropriate. And help us illustrate the rationale behind our actions. Demonstrates our ability to take feedback andender mistakes and a make changes in all transparently to the public. We acknowledge those concerns around our help we moderate the content and specifically of section 230. Three weeks ago we propose three solutions to address the concerns. And they all focus on services and moderate or remove content. Could be expanded to section 230, new legislative, or commitment to industrywide sf regulation those practices. Requiring moderation process and practices to be public, too, straightforward process to repeal the decisions and three, best efforts around algorithmic choices. For suggestion to address the concerns we all have Going Forward. Theyre all achievable in short order. Ce as critical as we consider these solutions, we optimized for new startups and independent developers. Inse doing so ensures a level Playing Field that increases the probability of competing ideas to help solve problems during court. We mustnt entrench the Largest Companies any further. And finally before i close, all share some reflections on what weor saw during the u. S. President ial election. We fused on addressing attempts t undermine civic integrity. Providing informative content and product changes to encourage your conversations. We have civic integrity policy to address misleading or disputed information that underlies competency in the election and causes rhetoric or voter intimidation or suppression oronfusion about how to vote. Or misrepresents affiliation or electionn outcomes. More than a year ago, the public ask us to offer additional content to help make potentially mislding information for parents. This exactly that, to find the labels to over 300,000 tweets from our octob 27th to november 11th. Which represented about 2. 2 percent of all u. S. Election related tweets. Massive cnge change our product works and rj help increase content and encourage more thoughtful consideraon before the suites are share while continuing to assess the product changes to inform our longterm roadmap. Thank you forin the te i look forward to a productive discussion focus on solutions. Thank you. Mr. Zuckerberg. Mark thankou chairman graham, raing member blumenthal and members of the committee. Last months hearing is about the re and platforms and suorting democracy, keeping people safe and upholding fundamental valuesy Free Expression. People of d