I want to say on behalf of the full committee the families and friends of those effected by a senseless terror act. To most on this committee we have come to expect this. We have spent countless hours working through the threats that exist to this country and around the world and its sad we have come to the point where nothing can happen that surprises us. Its the responsibility of this committee to work hand in hand to help keep america safe by providing the tools that they need. It is in spreading disinformation and discord during the 2016 elections. This was an opportunity for each of you to tell your respective stories and if necessary correct the record it will be discussing russia and russias activities. Im hoping to provide with how foreign actors used their platforms to circulate lives and agitate unrest during last years elections. Im also hopeful youll share with us what youre companies are doing to make it harder for foreign actors to use your platforms automatted accounts and falsified stories to reduce sentiments in the United States. Very clearly this vulnerability is to an unacceptable risk and you have the responsibility to reduce that vulnerability. I want to use this to push back on some narratives that have been sprung up around this subject. A lot of folks have tried to reduce this entire conversation to one premise. Foreign actors to help elect the United States president. Im here to tell you, this story does not simplify that easily. It is shortsighted and dangerous to selectively focus on one piece of information and think that some how tells the whole story. We have heard from the media how a series of russian linked facebook ads were aimed at michigan and wisconsin during the leadup to last years president ial election. Some of those target groups in two states. The narrative here is that they were directly influenced the elections outcome. What you werent what you havent heard is that almost five times more ads were targeted at the state of maryland than of wisconsin. Maryland which is targeted by 262 ads in comparison to wisconsins 55 ads and maryland was not up for grabs. It was a state they carried by 26 . Or that 35 of the 55 ads targeted at wisconsin ran prior to the wisconsin primary before there was an identified republican candidate and moreover that not one of those 55 ads mentioned President Donald Trump by name or that the key election state of pennsylvania had fewer ads targeted than washington d. C. Where 87 voted for Hillary Clinton or that the three most heavily targeted states in america, maryland, missouri and new york were all determined by at least 18 point margin and two of them won by Hillary Clinton. One point the media has gotten correct is more of these ads ran in 2015 than 2016. G again, before President Trump was identified as a republican candidate. Some of them surrounding ads on hotbutton issues purchased by russian actors is missing. To add some detail here where the immediate what failed to do it and put the 100,000 into a frame of reference. The total ads spent for the state of wisconsin was 1,979 with all but 54 being spent before the primary. Again, before the emergence of a republican candidate. The average ad was 823. Pennsylvania is 23. To believe the narrative that they studied our process, assessed what states would be critical to the election result then snuck and invested all of 300 to execute their plan in pennsylvania. 300. More than five times as much money was spent on advertising in california, a state that hasnt voted republican and president ial elections in 1988. Even with the benefit of numbers and what can be calculated and measured this is an incredibly complex story. We can look at the number of ads purchased and draw conclusions about diversity. We can look at the pages that they directed people towards an the number of tweets and retweets in the manipulated search results and drawing inferences about the intent of the Information Operation. What we cannot do is calculate the meddling for can we assume that it must be the explanation for an election outcome that many didnt expect. I understand the urge to make this story simple. Its human nature to make complex manageable fine explanations and interpret things in ways that form to your conclusions. Thats biassed. It doesnt prove intent or even motive. It shows no ads ran there after the election. This subject is complicated. There is a whole new vocabulary that comes with this stuff. Impressions are different than views. Views are different than clicks. There is one thing im certain of, and its this. Given the come pleplexity of wh have seen, if anyone tells you they have it all figured out they are kidding themselves. We cant afford to kid ourselves about what happens and continues to happen today. That complexity ill note is exactly why we depend on you for expert incite and reliable information. 60 of the u. S. Population uses facebook. A foreign power using that platform to influence how americans see and think about about one another is as much a policy issue as much as a concern. It is effective but not overly burdensome demands faith and partnership. Just recently on the basis of a more complete and sophisticated analysis the original estimate that 10 million americans were exposed on facebook was incleesed to 126 million. That tells me that your companies are just beginning to come grips with the scale and the depth of the problem. Thats encouraging but know t s this, we do better when you do better. I would urge you to deep that in mind and work with us proactively to find the right solution to a very constant and complaining challenge. Ill take a moment here to stress that this hearing, what this hearing is and is not about. This isnt about relitigating the 2016 u. S. President ial election. This isnt about who won or who lost. This is about National Security. This is about corporate responsibility, and this is about the dlib rative and multifacetted manipulation by agents of of a hostile foreign power. Ill say it again, agents of a hostile foreign power using our own social media platform and conducted an Information Operation intended to divide our society along issues like race, immigration and Second Amendment rights. Whats even more galling is that to tear us apart they are using social media platforms americans invented that define an open and democratic society. While it is shocking to think that foreign actors use the social networks and communications mediums that is so central to our lives today in an effort to interfere what is even more troubling is the likelihood is these are being used to spread lives and drive americans apart. Your three companies have developed platforms that have tremendous reach and tremendous influence. It is enabled by the enormous amount of data on users and their active tis. The American People need to understand how russia used that information and what youre going to protect them. Your actions need to catch up to your responsibilities. We have a lot to get to this morning. I will stop here and i want to thank each of our Witnesses Today. I turn to the vice chairman for any comments you might have. Thank you. Let me express our concern and thoughts about the tragedy yesterday in new york. Ill get right at it. In the age of social media you cant afford to waste too much time or too many characters in getting the point across. Russian operatives are attempted to infiltrate and manipulate American Social media to hijack the National Conversation and to make americans angry, to set us against ourselves and at their most basic democracy. They did it during the 2016 president ial campaign. They are still doing it right now. In many ways the threat is not new. Russians have been conducting Information Warfare for decades. What is knew is the advent of social media tools with the power to magnify propaganda and fake news on a scale that was unimaginable back in the days of the berlin wall. Todays tools in many ways seem almost purpose built for russian disofgs techniques. Russias play book is simple. It works for this. They set up thousands of fake accounts, groups and pages across a wide aray. They pop late content on facebook, twitter, you tube, read it, linked in and many other platforms. Each of these fake accounts spend literally developing real people to follow and like their content, boosted by tools like paid ads and automatted bots. Most reallife followers have no idea they are caught up in these webs. These networks are later utilized to push an array of disinformation including stolen emails, statelead propaganda, fake news and devicive content. The goal is pretty simple, to get this so called news and to suddenly push the americans in the direction the kremlin wants to go, someone who deeply respects the Tech Industry and was involved in that industry for more than 20 years. It has taken me quite a bit of time. Im still learning to truly understand the nature of this threat. Even i struggle to keep up with the language and mechanics. The difference in how they generate likes, tweets and shares and how all of these players and actions are combined into an online eco system. What is clear however is that this play book offering a tremendous bang for the disinformation buck. With just a small amount of money adversaries use hackers to steal and weaponize data, fake accounts to build networks, bots to drive traffic and ads to target new audiences. They can wreak halvoc on our online discourse. It is a pretty good return on investment. So where do we go from here . I believe it will take all of us to use some of the platform companies, the United States government and the American People to deal with this new and evolving threat. The social media and innovative tools each of you have developed have changed our world for the better. You transformed everything from shopping for groceries to growing small businesses. Russias actions are further exposing the dark underbelly of the eco system you have will b replicated by other adversaries. Both nation states and terrorists that wish to do harm to democracies around the globe. This is not a unique american phenomenon. As such, each of you today needs to commit more resources to identifying bad actors and when possible preventing them from abusing our social media ecosystem. Thanks in part to pressure from this committee, each company has uncovered, i believe, only some of the evidence of the ways exploited their platforms during the 2016 election. For facebook, much of the attention has been focused on the paid ads that russian tolls targeted to americans. However, these ads are just the tip of a very large iceberg. The real story is the amount of misinformation in devisive content and pushed for free on russians, that was spread widely on news feeds of tens of millions of americans. According to the data facebook provided, 120 russian back pages built a network of over 3. 3 Million People. From these now suspended pages, 80,000 organic unpaid posts reached an estimated 126 million real people. More than a a third of the population. This is an astonishing reach from just one group in st. Petersburg. I doubt the socalled Internet Research agency in st. Petersburg represents the only russian trolls out there. Facebook has more work to do to see how deep this goes, including into the reach that we have just found in the last 48 hours of information you provided of irabacked instagram posts. Which if we take for for example, 80,000s posts from trolls on facebook, 120,000 pieces of content on instagram and we dont even have the data on how much that content reached. The anonymity provided by twitter and the speed by which it shares news makes this an ideal tool to spread disinformation. According to one study during the 2016 campaign, junk news actually outperformed real news in some battleground states leading up to election day. Another study found that bots generated 1 out of every 5 political messages posted on twitter over the entire president ial campaign. People who testified before this committee have estimated that up to 15 of active twitter bts are potentially 45 million plus accounts are fake or automated. Despite evidence of significant incursion and outreach from researchers, twitter has to date a small piece of that activity. In the last few days the numbers have gone from 200 accounts over 2700 accounts. The russian efforts and false stories and unen substantiated rumors were elevated on Google Search during the recent pass shootings in las vegas. Meanwhile, youtube has become the goto platform. Google has now uncovered 1100 videos associated with this russian campaign. Much more of your content was likely spread is through other platforms. But its not just the platforms that need to do more. The United States government has thus far proven incapable of meeting this 21st century challenge. Unfortunately, i believe this effort is suffering in part because of lack of leadership at the top. We have a president who remains unwilling to acknowledge the threat that russia poses. And should address this very real threat pose bid russian propaganda. I believe that congress, too, must do more. We need to recognize that current law was not built to address these threats. On what i believe is the most light touch legislative approach, which i hope all my colleagues on this panel will review. The honest ads act is a National Security bill intended to protect our elections from the foreign interference we all want to avoid. Finally, but perhaps most importantly, the American People also need to be aware of what is happening to our news feeds. We all need to take a more discerning approach to what we are reading and sharing and who were connecting with online. We need to recognize the person at the other end of that facebook or twitter argument may not be a real person at all. The fact is that this russian weapon has already proved its success and cost effectiveness. We can be assured that other adversaries, including foreign intelligence operatives and potentially terrorist organizations have read this playbook and are already taking action. Its why we collectively must act. To our Witnesses Today, i hope you will detail what we saw in the last election and most importantly tell us what steps you will undertake for us to get ready for the next one. We welcome your participation and encourage your commitment to addressing this shared responsibility. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator. Id like to notify members we will have sevenminute rounds today. If i could ask you to please stand and raise your right hand. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth . Please be seated. Were going to recognize you and then mr. Walker. Chairman, vice chairman warren ir and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to appear before you today. My name is collin stretch, and i have served as the general counsel of facebook. We appreciate this committees hard work to investigate russian interference in the 2016 election. At facebook our mission is to create technology that gives people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. We are proud that each of you uses facebook to connect with jr. Constituents and e we understand the people you represent expect authentic experiences when they come to our platform to share and connect. We also believe that we have an Important Role to play in the democratic process and a responsibility to protect it on our platforms. Thats why we take whats happened on facebook so seriously. The foreign interference we saw during the 2016 election is reprehensible. That foreign actors hiding behind fake accounts abused our platform and other Internet Services to try to sew division and discord and to try to undermine our election process is directly contrary to our values and everything we stand for. These foreign inging a tors set drive people apart. In our investigation, which continues to this day, we have found that these actors used fake accounts to place ads on facebook and instagram that reached millions of americans over a twoyear period. And those ads were used to promote pages, which in turn, posted more content. People shared these posts, spreading them still further. Many of these ads and posts are inflammato inflammatory, some are offensive. We know that much of this content is particularly hurtful to members of the Facebook Community that engaged with this content believing it was authentic. People should believe content is awe thebtic and should not have to worry they are being exploit ed in a cynical effort to pray on painful fault lines in our society in order to inflame discourse in this country. An aggregate, the ads we are here to discuss were a small fraction of the overall content on facebook, but any amount is too much. All of these accounts and pages violated our policies and we removed them. Going forward, we are making significant investments. We are hiring more ad reviewers, doubling or more our security engineering efforts, putting in place tighter ad content restrictions, launch iing new tools to improve ad transparency and requiring documentation from political ad buyers. Were building Artificial Intelligence for bad actors. Were working more closely with industry to share information on how to identify and prevent threats so that we can all respond faster and more effectively. And were expanding our efforts to work more closely with Law Enforcement. We know bad actors arent going to stop their efforts. We know well all have to keep learning and improving to stay ahead of them. We also know we cant do this alone. Thats why i want to thank you for this investigation. We look forward to the conclusions youll ultimately share with the american public. I look forward to your questions. Chairman, members of this committee. Twitter understands the importance of the committees inquiry into russias interference in the 2016 election and we appreciate the opportunity to appear here today. The events underline this hearing have been deeply concerning to our company and t