Good morning, everybody. I think w had senator blumenthal remotely, ishat correct . Mr. Chairman. Is it okay if we move forwar absolutely. Thanks very much . Ill make a brief Opening Statement ts is about censorship, suppression and the 2020 election. A deep dive when it comes t twitter and facebook about the platforms and decisions they make, can we do better . Do we need to do better . The first thing i want to talk about here is health risk associated with social media. The 2018 Research Center survey of nearly 7150, 13 to 17 yearoldsnt 45 online almost constantly. 97 use socia media platforms such as youtube,st facebook or snapchat or instagram. Why are we having thisearing . Shes o companies offer, people like the politics ander u them. They probably more successful in their wildest dream they are having to make decisions that offend people on the left a the right. What we are trying t do is look at section 230 see if it nee to be modified or changed because section 230 basically allows social media platforms like twitter and facebook to pass on informati whout legal liability. If a newspaper does somethi you dont like, you think theyve slandered you, you can sue them. A news program does something you think i out of line even as a politician, you can sue them the companies have Liability Protection when it comes to the content that there is users engage in. You can sue the person who gave th tweet but you cant sue tweeter twier that gave access to the world in terms of what they said. Got to find a way to make sure that when twitt and facebook make a decision about what is reliable and what is not, what to keep up and what to take down, that there is transparency in the system and i think ction 230 has to be changed cause we cant get there from here witut change. In 2019, a study of more than 650015yearolds in the u. S. Found thoseho spent more than three hours a day using social media might be at risk for Mental Health problems. Another study, 12,000 13 t 15yearold in england found using social media more than three times a day precated for mental hlth predicted Mental Health and wellbeing teams. Other studies have things between high levels of social media use, depressionr anxiety. Theverage millennial check their phones 157 times daily. I dont know how members of the senate, social medias desig sister saint users atttion a mix of good user interface design and psychology creating an addictive mix for users. The techniq utilizes a pool to refresh scrolling mechanis on newsfeeds similar toiq a slot machine. A like button, social validation through a positive loop by measuring and comparing the numberf likes users content contains. Social interactions, imploring and engaging users and keep them coming back. For example, streaks calling the most concerned if using elongating lies to display the number of daysince t users interacted. Guess what tse technologies do, try to keepy this engage markrk we engage, the more advertising benefit for the company. Is it a Good Practice . Maybe so. Doesnt create a Health Hazard overtime . Something to look at. Ma the other aspect of this debate, e these companies newspapers e tv stations, do they have the power of media organizations that have rules and regulations and the Current Media platforms do not . There are rules about television stion what they can do and a newspaper what i want to try to find out is if you are not a newspape, like twitter or facebook, then why doou have editorial control over the new york most they decided that the New York Post articles about hunter biden needed to be flagged, excluded from distribution. That, to me, seems like your the ultimate etor. The editorial decision New York Post to run the storyas overridden like twitter and facebook in different fashions torevent dissemination. If thas not making an editorial decisi, i dont know what would be. It is one thing when we do it in ou privatete lives haley made a post about heroncern about mail a balloting. Itas flagged as something a claim that has not been legimized. Let me read it to you. Theext question to ask is why about the holocaust, why shoul anyone who writes about such docs in prison while insting moffat is allowed . Raising doubts about the holocaust, it should be a crime and opey call for the destruction of israel. His regime has in his tweet was basically allowed to flourish. Here is what nikkialey said. Despite the media tells us, Election Fraud does happen and policies like balloting harvesting and mail in ballots to people who dont request the makes itasier, makes that easier. It needs to stop. This cla about Election Fraud is disputed. That is her onion. She believes, like i do that mail and balloting is right for fraud if youou cant verify the signature a if we just send ballots out to the world that are not requested you dont have signature verification system that can be trusted, led to harvesting ballots one at various purposes. The question for us as a couny, went to the decisions by these organizations across the line . Wonder they have tossume responsibility that section 230 is in front of . To the people about to testify, i consider your products have changed the world, mostly for the good. We are able to interact among ourselves, we are able to talk to each other and share life expenses. We are able to realtime communicate to neighbors and friends and those who oppose what we thinknk technology that makes it instantaneous and literally light up 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 order be tweet and they were liable for what somebody else said or felt did the company probably never would have been in existence. Companies are trying to help us deal with child photography. Its able to maintain Liability Protections when it comes to Sexual Exploitation and social media of sexual predators, the bill has passed think you can only maintain Liability Protection if in fact you use best Business Practices. Where i think we need to be going. Change section 2302 incentivize social media platforms to come up with standards that are transparent and will allow us to make judgments about their judgments that the Fact Checkers be known. The Community Standards who set them, what are their biases . Give some direction to these companies because they have almost an impossible task. They are literally trying to engage in telling us what is reliable and what is not based on cable news commentary or three from politician average citizens. S nobody in a free society has had the responsibilities before. The question is, how do you control that response about it . I dont want the government to take over the job of telling america what tweets are legitimate and what are not. I want the government deciding what content to take out and put down. I think we are all in that category when we have companies that have the power of government, far more power than traditional Media Outlets, something has to give. I am hoping in this hearing today that we can find a baseline of agreement that section 230 needs to be changed, my bias would be to allow the industry itself to develop best Business Practices to protect terrorism and child exploration and exploitation and otherer concerns, look att the Business Practices of these companies through a health c prism that se of the practices need to be modified because they can become addictive. C we thought tobacco was a good thing for a long time, we sent it to our soldiers in combat. The more we realize about the nature of tobacco, the moree we change our minds about telling the public about the product. So whether or not we do that with social media platforms that the platforms can be effective if used too often, i dont know if we need to go there but i do know section 230 exists today and its got to give. I think there is publican democrat concern about the power being used by social Media Outlets to tell us what we can see and whatt we can, what is true and whats not to the extent that section 230 has to be rewritten so that is the purpose of this hearing, find a way forward to bring about change and when it comes to social media platforms section 230, change isut going to come. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. Thank you for having this today. I look forward to cooperating with you,ot only in this hearing for t upcoming congressnd other measures because you are right,hange must come in social media. The fact is, we meet today in an unprocessed president of time i history. He shakes our democracy ung a powerfulegaphone. An attempt to overturn the will of others. Its conspiracy theories everyd about mail in ballots and Voting Machines lies tha contradict his own Election Security officials and his lawyers. He uses his megaphone potentiallyo block a peaceful transition of power. Mr. Zuckerberg and dorsey, you have terrifying tools of persuasion and manipulatio with power far exceeding, you have profit usually by stripmining ta about product lines and promoting speech Voter Suppression. U have an immense civic and moral responsibility to ensure these instruments of influen do not irreparably harm our country. I recognize the steps, baby steps have taken so far destructive misinformatn is still on both ptforms and on others. In ft, google h been given a pass from today hearing. Its been reported by this committee doing even lesshan you have done to live up to its responsibility. Recent actions you have taken, in fact, are simply to check what appears on platforms, often it is Voter Suppression and incendiary delicious misinformation and slowing the insidious spread. That is n censorship. That is moral and civic sponsibly. Rs i hold a series of hearings i long overdue on antitrust issues privacy concerns and stion 230. I heard a breakup of giant because they misused their power. Breaking off, for example, an instrument will reducerivacy protects because consumers shou have control over their own data. 230 reform, meaningful reform includingven possible you in large part because they are immunity andictims deserve a day in court but this hearing is certainly not serious proceeding that we need. It has become a political sideshow like colagues seem to want to ignore the foreign disinformation campaig and integrating economic democracy, e murder of fbi director ray and doctor margie, what we see here are fighting words. And hate eech. He deserves Free Expression protection. The fact ishat the purpose of todays hearing is take the responsible action by threatening to secti 230. Censorship is known for this hearing, label and, avoid amplifying dinformation and in effect, impose the labels to alert people when they are consuming make them. Facebook took down as provided in michigan abo voting in short, there was areas that affected both des. I have fought for section 230 reform for 16ears. When i took on the spirit of registeredex offenders the senate of portland, i have the passage of the only successful region, stopped and he was only enabling it chairman and i have offered the only bill to reform section 230 moved out ofhe committee. Change is going to come. No question. Change is on the way i intend to bring proessive reform to section 230 but i am not, nor should we be on thisommittee, interested in being a memberf it. There a real farms and addictions her in some ways, it is a betrayal of the real farms and the real victimsf the forms have been lost because you have failed for responsibilitys have others. I want to see real reform that will enable these abuses to be reformed becausehe forms have embraced, used and for the last child predators, white supremacist is in human trafficker ive heard stories from victims. He sat back civil rights of amicans for Muslim America who live in fear originally organized by private online you ve consumers competition taking the antitrust and vy important, the American Public serves and demands real reform and accountability, National Consumer privacy rules antitrust principles reform, section 230. I look forward ton opportunity for real change and i think you can meet this moment but putting the power and money on the right side. Thank you a lot to impact them. I will continue to work with you if we keep control of the committee, senator grassley would be thewi chair next year d i encourage him to have the hearings that senatorlumenthal referenced. This is an ongoing conversation to get it right to the extent that we can. Mr. Dorsey of twitter, are you with us . I am. Thank you. The floor is yours. Making members of the Judiciary Committee the opportunity to speak with the american people. Twitter and concerns around censorship depression of a specific news article generally close on the 2020 u. S. Elections conversations, we were called here today because the decision made in the New York Post. Its a policy we created in 2018 to prevent twitterer from being used to spread these matials. Peopleult in us walking from sharing the New York Post article publicly or privately. Make a qui interpretation using no other evidence of the marials in the article ofi chge according to our policy, talk to them being spread. On further consideration, we admitted the action was wrong and corrected it within 24 hours. We informed the New York Post of our error and apologist and how to unlock our account with the original writing to you and they treated the exact same content and news article the game. They chose not to consistently reverse our enforcement action. We didnt have a practice overturning enforcement. Demonstrated need to do what we created one that is very inappropriate. I hope this illustrat rationale behind our action and demonstrate our ability to make mistakes and changes all transparently to the public. We acknowledge theres concerns about content and specifically in section 230. The proposed three solutions to dress concerns raised and they all focus on services to moderate or remove content the extensions to section 230, who is later frameworks for industrywide regulion and best practices requiring one moderation process and practices to be published. Two, a processo appeal decisions and three from best efforts around algorithmic trays. They are all achievable in short order. It is critical as we consider, we have startups and independent voters. Doing soti ensures a level playg field that increases probability of repeating ideas and help solve problems to enforce. We must entrench the Largest Companies any further. Finally, before i close, i wanted to share what we saw during the u. S. President ial election. Focus on addressing attempts tr undermine integrity, providing informative contexts and product changes to encourage greater conversation. We updated our civic integrity policy to address leading disputed information to undermine operatives in the u. S. Election, callsor termination suppression or confusion about how to approach or misrepresent affiliation o election outcom. Within a year ago from the puic asked to have additional contexto help potentially misleading information more apparent. It is exactly that, over 300,000 tweets from october to seven november 11. Represents about 2. 2 of all u. S. Election related tweets. In order to hp increase context and encourage more thoughtful consideration beforee was shared. We are continuing to assess the pact of these changes to info longterm roadmaps. Thank you for the time and i look forward to a productive discussion focused onoa solutio. Thank you. Th sucker work. Thank you members of the committee. Last months hearing, i spoke about the roles programs have out democracy, keeping people safe and upholdingundamental values like Free Expression. Peoplele helped beliefs about these issues andonclusions abouxp this. Wery to do what is best for our community and the world, acknowledgin their difficult tradeoffs. I believe some of tse tradeoffs and decisions will be ma for democratic process and i look forward toiscussing that survey. First, i want t update young on our efforts duringhe election. At facebook, we took our respon ability to protect the integrity of the selecon very seriously. In 26, he began to face new kinds of tha and after years of preparation,ho are ready to defend against them. Th a sophisticated system to protect against eleion interference combining artifial intelligence, human review and partnerships wit the intelligence pleated law enforcemenand other tech platforms, we taking on more than 100 networks of bad actors trying t coordinate an interview working globally. We have ft checkers that covers more than 60 langues. We think politicaldvertising for transfer of facebook than anywhere else including tv, radio and email. Introduced new policies about Voter Suppression and misinformation. Still, the pandemic created new allenges. How to handle misinformation about covid and voting by mail how to prepa people for the reality that results would take time, how to handle prematurely declareded victory for september we updated policies and to reflt the realities of voting 2020 and make sure we are taking precautions given thenique circumstances. Worked with local Election Officials to remove all claims about pulling conditions that might lead to Voter Suppression. We parked in the natnal election to provide reliable infoation about results. We touched voting permissio by candidates on both sides an additional context delegitimizing the outcome. We walked down new pitical ads in the week before the election to prevent misleading claims from spreading ty couldnt be rebutted