The very ne day i want to say that i recognize the challenging position that social Media Companies are in. Your platform host more t the world vws to stay informed, so youre on the frontine of both domestic and foreign disinformation campaigns, and you have to balance american ideals like freedom of speh, ou have to eliminam limit hate you have to limit meaningless information. Thats a significant challee. I saw one of the people w came hereo demonstrate last weekend in washington saying theyre there because they found out that china had, e minute before th polls closed, dumped llions of votes for joe biden. Somebody sa, well, what do you mean . They said, ell, it was on the internet. Its got to be curate. But now your platforms have taken some positive eps. I mentioned that one thing and i heard that people are tang seriously some of this misinformation, sometimes dangerous misinformation, theyve gotten it from your platforms. I often think you can and mus dobetter. Our security, i think even our democracy, the basic truth depend on you doing abetter job. President obama described this erosion of the acceptance of facts and scnce as clear evidence as tooth decay you know, its hard enough to get people to assist and your platforms cant bring people together. I think oftenhey act as a form of driving pple apart. Now, during this election, esident trump has emerged as the most prominent spewer of misinformation. Hes still doing it. He claims the election was rigged,ays the states actually cheated and fixed results, even claims that millions of trump votes were deleted, and hes doing that while his own department of Homeland Security is saying the election was the most secure in american history. And theres no evidee in any Voting System that it was in any way compromised. Thats what our own u. S. Government is saying, when the head of government is saying just the opposite. It may make him fel better about the fact tat he lost dly, but wehouldnt have to put up with it. I have a question for bot of you. Has facebook orwitter conducted an indeptpost momortm review of eltion information at how this information ads . Have you done that kind of postmortem . Senator,e will do that analysis and also ware commissioning and working with independent academics to enale them to do the studies themselvesnd to publish what they find without any intervention or permission required from facebook. Thank you. And we are doin the same, incding opening up our apis to researchers to makeure that others a able to see what we may not see oursels. Will that be made available to us . Can other people see the results of that study youre going to do, both of you, i would ask . Senator, yes. The Academic Research is going to be public, and the academics are going to be able to publish this themselves without even having to get facebooks approval over what they publish. Thank you. Mr. Dorsey . Well make our reports and findings public as well so everyone can learn. I look forward to reading them. Im actually one member of the senate who will actually read them, so thank you. You look at some of the things, i know senator blumenthal wanted me to raise the question of putting them on a video. Think of what it did. It called for the murder, the beheading of dr. Fauci and directly the fbi christopher wray. Think what that does. The fbi director travels with security all the time. Dr. Fauci is has family or private citizens. They were calling for his beheading. It was seen by thousands of people on facebook. If youre going to have somebody threatening to murder somebody, what do you do about that . I was a prosecutor. I prosecuted murderers, and we didnt have to face this kind of threat at that time. But what do you do when hundreds of thousands of people see a rea threat, go murder somebody. In that case, the threat violated our pocies. We took it don. As has been the subject of some of the other questions, if someone had multiple offenses like that, we would remove their whole account. Im sure the threat that if they multiple times, say, go out and murder somebody, cut off their head, were going to face a real problem. Facebook will take down our posting. Oh, my goodness, what a deteent. Senator, what we try to do is identify content that violates our policy fore anyone in the cmunity has to see it or report it to us. For someategories like terrorism, like ie cited before, about 98or 99 of the content that we take down, our ai and Human Systems find it before anyone haso report it to us. On hate speech, were up to 94 of the connt that we take down, our ai systemsnd content reviewers find it before people have to report it to us. What w try to drive on more effectiveness is basically finding more and more of that harmful content earlier before it is seen broadly across our system. Let me ask you about that, because, you know, weve had these discussions before. Im deeply concerned about facebooks role in spreading hate speech in miramar, hate speech that help fuel a genocide against the Muslim Rohinga people. Youve made some progress about this since you and i talked about this last. But my understanding is facebook shuts down specific accounts that violate policy, but then users can just create a new account. In miramar, for example, on october 8, facebook took down 38 inauthentic accounts created and controlled by members of the Miramar Military prior to promote rohingan content. I commend you for doing that. But in the meantime, they turned around and created new accounts that held the same content. So in some ways you have a whackamole problem here. But is there a way that you can stop these things, not just at the account level, at the user level . I use that example because people are being murdered in our systemat genocide. Please answer senator lees question, then well need to move on. Go ahead. Im sorry to take long, but the previous questioner took all his time plus the time allotted to me. No, were at 2 1 2 minutes. Lets just go ahead and answer the question. Senar, youre correctly pointing out that wedid disable certn gerals in the Myanmar Military as dangerous figures, and they are not allowed to sign up for accounts, but as you pointed out, these technical roblems are not ones that there is a Silver Bullet or you can ever fully solve them. We will always be working to help minimize the prevalence of harm in the same way that a city will never eliminate all crime. You try to reduce it and get have it be as little as possible, and thats what we try to do through a combination of building ai systems to identify harmful content up front, hiri thousands of people, tens of thousands of people to do content review, and partnering with organizations, whether its in the intelligece community, law enforcement, Election Officials or in myanmar local Civic Society to help us flag things we should be aware of and on high alert about. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, ill have some questions for the record for both of our witnesses. Thank you very much, senator lee. I appreciate that. Senator cruz. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Febook and twitter and google have massive power. They have a monopolyn Public Discourse inthe onlinearena. It is dismaying to listen to the questions from our democratic colleues, because consistently the message from Senate Democrats is for facebook and twitter and google to censor more, to abuse their power more, to silence voices that Senate Democrats disagree with more. That is very dangerous we want to maintin a free and fair democracy, if we want to maintain free speech. There was a time when decrats embraced and defended the principles of free speech. There was a time when democrats embraced and defended the principlesof the free press. And yet there is an absolute silence from democrats speaki up for the pre otlets censored by big tech. There is absolute slence for the democra speaking out for the citizens silenced by big tech. Instead there is a demand, use even more per to silence dissent, and thats a totalitarian instinct that i think is very dangerous. The same time that big tech exercises massive por, it also enjoys masve corporate welfare. Rough the effect of secton 230, a specia immunity for liability that no one el gets. Congress has given big tech, in effect, a subsidy while they become some of the weahiest corporations on the fac of the planet. Mr. Dorsey, i want to focus primarily on twitter and ask you initially, is twitter a publisher . Is twitter a bub lipublisher . Yes. No, were not. We distribute informion. So what is a publisher . Entity that is publishing under editorial guidelines and desions. Well, your answer happe to be contrary to the text of federal statute, particularly section 230, which definesan information content provider is any person or entity that is responsible in whole or i part for the creation or development of information providedhrough the internet or any other interactive computer service. Let me ask you, was twitter being a publisher when it censored the New York Post . No. We have very clear policies on the conduct we enable to the platform, and if there is a violation, we take enforcement action and People Choose to commit to those policies and to those terms of service. Except your polies were applied asuspectivemanner. You didnt talk about President Trump talking about his tax returns, even though it is a crime to submit your tax returns without consent. You didnt block that, did you . Did you block the discussion of the president s tax material . In the New York Times cas we interpreted it as reporting about the tax material. Did you block edwrd snowden whene illegally released material . I dont have the answerto that. The answer is no. You havent used this in a selective matter let mesk you, were you being a publisher when you forced politico, another journalistic outlet, and when you took down a topic you deemed inadmissible. A New York Post author said, i went to twitter to see if there was an answer. I wish i had given this story a closer read before i answered. Twitter locked it. He got a letter that said, im sorry, your information was blocked. He said, my goal was to raise questions about the story. Oh, my lords in silicon valley, i was attacking the New York Post, you dont understand, i was attacking them as i did in subsequent tweets and see how the administration responded. They responded, and shortly after, he comes back with, my account is no longer suspended, i deleted the tweet. When twitter is editing and censoring and silencing the New York Post, one of the biggest read newspapers in the country, is twitter considering that when they decide what stories to be published or not . No, we realized there was an error in that policy and the enforcement. We corrected that with 24 hours. Imooking at the tweet from twitter that sas, your account has been loked. Youre telling me this is not an accurate thats a lock and can be unlocked when you dete the material. I understand tha you ve the star chaer power. Your awer is always, once we silence you, we canhoose tool lou you to speak. But you are engaged in publishing decisions. Let me shift to a different topic. Mr. Dorsey, does voter fraud exist . I dont know for certain. Are you an exrt in voter fraud . No, im not. Why, they be, is twitter right now putting purported warnings on virtually any statement about voter fraud . Were simply linking to a broader conversation so people have more information. No, youre not, you putup a page that says, quote, voter fraud of any kind is exceedingly rare in the uited stats. Thats not linkingo a broader conrsation, thats taking response as a publisher when you do that. You can take a policy position, but you dont get to pretend youre a publisher and get special benefit under section 230 as a result. That link is pointing to a broader conversation with tweets from publishers and people all around the country. Mr. Dorsey, would the following statement violate twitters policies . Quote, absentee ballots remain the larger source of potential voter fraud. I imagine we would label it so people can have more context. How about this quote . Quote, third party organizations, candidates and political activists, voter fraud is particularly possible where, quote, Third Party Candidates and Political Party activists are involved in handling absentee ballots. Would you flag that as potentially misleading . You doni dont know the specf how we might enforce that, but i would imagine a lot of these would have a label. Youre right, you would label them because youve taken the political position right now that voter fraud doesnt exist. I would note both of those quotes come from the carterbaker commission on election reform. That is former president jimmy carter and james baker, and the question is simply voter fraud does not exist. Are you aware that just two weeks ago in the state of texas, a woman was charged with 104 counts of Election Fraud . Are you aware of that . I am not aware of that. If i tweeted that statement, would you put a warning on it that said voter fraud doesnt exist . I dont think its useful to use hypotheticals, but i dont think so. Were going to test that, because im going to tweet it and well see what you put on it. Yesterday, mr. Dorsey, you and i spent a considerable amount of time on the phone, and you said you wanted to embrace transparency. So i want to ask you, ive asked twitter, ive asked facebook multiple times, how many times have you blocked republican candidates for office, their tweets or their posts in 2016, in 2018 and 2020 . How many times have you blocked Democratic Candidates for office . How many times have you blocked Republican Office holders . How many times have you blocked democratic Office Holders . Twitter has repeatedly refused to answer that question with specific, hard data and cataloging the examples. In the interest of transparency which you said you want to embrace, will you commit in this hearing right now to answer those questions in writing . And well let that be the last question. Im sorry, mr. Dorsey, i didnt hear you. Thats exactly what were pushing for as we think about building upon 230. Is that a yes, that you will answer those questions in writing . Transparency not just of outcomes bu also our process as well. Is that a s, that you will answer those questions in writing . Well certainly look into it and see what we can do. And actually answer them and not give lawyerly double speak about why youre not giving spifics. Will you commit to this committee that you will answer those questions . Were going to work to answer broader transparency around our customer. Thats a no. Mr. Zuckerberg, how about you . Will you commit that facebook will answer those specific questions, cataloging the number of instances in which democrats in 2016, 2018 and 2020 have been silenced in many instances the way republicans have been silenced on facebook . Senator, im not sure if we have that data available, but i wil follow up with you or your team. Ill tak that as a yes. And twitter, well see if the answer is a yes, or transpency is bogus and we dont intendo provide it. We live in a dangerous world. Issues of national security, the orst Pandemic Public Health crisis in modern times in america, and w are being challenged as to whether there is going to be a peacel transition of power in america of the presidency. At that momentin time, we decided none of those topics were important, and what was important was to determine whether or not social media w discriminating against republicans. Ts an interesting question. I think there are more important and timely questions. We have an ection underway in georgia. We have timely obligations from lection officials there, public Election Officials, where they have faced literally death threats. We are trying to determine whether or not the sial media nstruments of america are fair to the republican party. Im tryi to struggle with this issue because i want t put it in a context, and maybe i nt. Maybe this is unique. Wcertainly know what the constitution sayshen it comes to free speech. And we know whatit meant over the years. We certainly didnt suggest at anyone that used a telephone line for nefarious, illegal, banned activity somehow talked the Telephone Company into it by its nature. Then came radio and tv and we had to come up with new rules in terms of equal time, fair content and so forth. And now we have this new, relatively new, mechanism of communicating information, and were trying to determine what to do with it, whether to tre it like a Newspaper Publishing or treat it like some sort of a Communications Network alone. Section 230 sis an attempt to d that, and im sure everyone finds fault wth it. I would like tosk the two witnesses if they would comment on the historical aspects of this particula debate, if they have any thoughts . Mr. Ckerberg . Senator, one of the points in the discussion that i fnd interesting is people ask if the regulatory model should be more li kind of the news industry or re like telco is. But from my perspeive, these platforms are a n industry and suld have a different regulatory model that are distinct from eith of those other two. I thk it is not the case that we are like a telco and that clearly some categories of content, whether its terrorism or child exploitatn, that people expect us to moderate and address, but were also clearly not like a news publisher in that we dont choose the content. We dont choose up front what to create, we give people a choice for content. Perhaps there should be me viability for whats on the platform, but i do not think some of these industries cated previously will ever be fully the right way toook at this. I think it deserves and needs its own regulatry framework to g built here. Thank you. Would the other witness care to respond . Kb from a historical perspective, 230 has created so much innovation, and if we had had that when we started 14 years ago, we could not start. Thats what were most concerned with, is that we continue to enable ne