Well, good morning. I want to thank everyone for being here to examine what social Media Companies are doing to combat terrorism including terrorist propaganda and recruitment efforts on online. The social media are well documented. Youtube, twitter and facebook among others give voice around the world and provide a forum of discussion of outlets. They have thrived online. But as is so often the kascase, enemies have sought to take over this. Isis has been particularly aggressive in seeking to radicalize to go over the internet. Our companies have a very difficult task, preserving the openness upon which their platforms are thrived and swart the actions that have used it for other purposes. Islamic terrorists using social media platforms to inspire well documented. For example, the killer responsible for the orlando nightclub shooting in which 49 people were murdered reportedly digital material readily available on social media. And this itch sue not new. Over the course of several years, youtube hosted hundreds of videos by senior al qaeda recruit recruiter. And although they promised to get rid of that, their jihad video remained on the site for years. In fact, New York Times report suggested that videos influenced the terrorist, the Boston Marathon bombers, and the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino and orlando. This issue is also international in scope. In response to reresponsibility terror attacks in london, british Prime Minister has been outspoken in calling on media platforms to combat the kind of radicalization occurs online. Last fall she was joined by other leaders in calling upon social Media Companies to remove it from their sites within one to two hours after it appears. As well hear today, the companies are using technology to speed will you please the efforts to help this. In a recent blog test facebook said our Artificial Intelligence removes 99 even before it can be flagged by a member of the community. And sometimes even before it can be seen by any users. Youtube is also teaming up with jig saw. The inhouse think tank of Google Parent Company alphabet to test a new method radicalization referred to as the redirect method. Seeking to redirect or refocus potential terrorists at an earlier stage in the radicalization pros serks youtube offers users searching for specific terrorist information videos to deter them from being radicalized. A little over a year ago, facebook, youtube, microsoft and twitter committed sharing a database and digital fingerprints of some the content used for influence or recruitment. By cross sharing this, on each of the host platforms will be readily identified hopefully identified in hopefully deleting faster. Using awe automation can kick them off their platforms before they are seen. We all have a vested interest in their success. And i believe this committee has a significant role to play in overseeing the effectiveness of their efforts. I do want to thank miss bickert, miss downs, and mr. Monje being here representatives of their companies. With now, ill recognize the ranking senator nelson. Mr. Chairman, within a few hours of the pulse nightclub shooting i was there in orlando. And i just want to comment that when a great tragedy occurs such as that, its encouraging that the Community Comes together like orlando never had. The same you can say for boston. And so many other places where these tragedies occur. And yet we need to get at the root of the problem, which the chairman has outlined. Its the first time that the Commerce Committee has had three of the largest social Media Companies before us. These social media platforms and those of many other Smaller Companies have revolutionized the way that americans communicate, connect, and share information. And, by the way, a comment that the chairman made about Artificial Intelligence screening out most of the bad guys stuff. I wish one of you would explain that. That is encouraging, but its not quite enough, as the chairman has outlined. But at the same time these platforms have created a new and stunningly effective way for nefarious actors to attack and to harm. Its startling that today a terrorist can be radicalized and trained to conduct attacks all through social media. And then a terrorist cell can activate that individual to conduct a attack through the internet, creating an effective terrorist drone, in effect, controlled by social media. So thank you all of your witnesses for being here and helping explain this. And particularly explain what you are doing, to rally to the common defense of our people in our country. Because using social media to radicalize and influence users is not limited to extremists. Nation states, too, are exploiting social media vulnerabilities to conduct campaigns against this country and to interfere with our democracy. And then on basic values, we have seen the attacks utilizing social media that end up in child trafficking and so forth and so on. Now, the Russian Hackers at Vladimir Putins direction attempted to influence, and did influence, the 2016 president ial election through all of these things that we have been reading about for over a year. And we also know that putin is likely to do it again. In its january 2017 assessment, the Intelligence Community said that putin and his Intelligence Services seed the election influence campaign as a success and will seek to influence future elections. And i will be asking mr. Watts if he would outline what he sees is happening in this 2018 election. This should be a wake up call to all of your companies. Indeed, it should be a wake up call to all americans. And this should be regardless of party. This was an attack on the very foundation of american democracy. We welcome the expert that each of you bring to the table today. We welcome mr. Watts and his expertise. Over many years of how bad actors like russia use the internet and social media to influence so many things, not just elections. And we even know that putin is reaching down deep into our governments, not just at the top. You remember a few weeks ago, part of the federal Communications CommissionsNet Neutrality proceeding . A half a million comments were traced to return ip addresses. Thats shocking. Thats concerning. We should want to know why these comments were filed. What were they trying to do . And all of us should be very concerned about whats going to happen next. And in the end, the basic questions that we want to ask is what have we learned, what are we correcting, whats going to happen in the future, and how can we get ahead of it before it does. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you senator nelson. And we do appreciate the great panel of witnesses we have in front of us today. Thank you all for being here. On my left and your right is miss monica bicker ahead of product policy and Counter Terrorism facebook. Miss juniper downs at youtube. And monje on twitter. And mr. Clinton watts senior fellow of the institute. Ill start with miss bickert and well move across the table. And if you could, confine your oral statements as closely to five minutes as possible. Any additional comments, obviously, will be included as part of the record, but it will give us an optimum amount of time for members to ask questions. So thank you so much to all of you for being here. We look forward to hearing from you. Miss bickert. Thank you. Chairman thune, ranking nelson, and distinguished members of the committee. Im Monica Bickert and i lead product policy and Counter Terrorism for facebook. Im also a former federal prosecutor, having spent more than a decade as assistant u. S. Attorney for the department of justice. The issues we are discussing here today are of the utmost importance. And on behalf of facebook, i want to thank you for your leadership in seeking more effective ways to combat extremism, crime, and other threats to our National Security. We share your concerns about terrorist use of the internet. Thats why we removed terrorist content as soon as we become aware of it. Its also why we have a dedicat dedicated Counter Terrorism team working as experts. This includes people tracking new trends and tactic sz. Former intelligence and Law Enforcement officials and prosecutors who have worked in the area of counter intelligence. Also includes engineers constantly improving the technology that helps us find and remove terrorist content. In my written testimony, i describe these efforts in more detail. I also want to note we pursue this goal with the mindset its important to maximize Free Expression while keeping people safe online. We work proactively primarily through the use of Automated Systems like text base learning. Now more than 99 of isis and al qaeda propaganda we remove, is content we 50id phi ourselves before anybody has flagged it for us. Once we are aware of a piece of terrorist content, we remove the vast majority of subsequent up loads within one hour. We do flnot wait for these blow ball bad actors to put it into facebook. Rather we work with outside experts who prop prop began that released by these groups across the internet then we work with them hand proactively put it in our systems. Often it means we are able to stop this content from ever being up loaded to facebook. However, much of this work cannot be done by machines alone. Accurately removing terrorist content often requires a person to assess it. A photo of an eye isis fighter, for instance could be shared by a supporter of the group or journalist raising awareness or Civil Society group condemning violence, and we need people to be able to assess that and tell the difference. We now have more than 7500 reviewers who assess potentially violating content, including terrorist content, in dozens of different languages. And by the end of 2018, we will more than double the 10,000 people who are already working on safety and Security Issues across our company. Now, some of these people are responsible for responding to Law Enforcement requests. We appreciate the Critical Role that Law Enforcement plays in keeping people safe and we do want to do our part. Our global team responds to valid legal requests from Law Enforcement consistent with applicable laws in our policies, and this includes responding to emergency requests where we strive to respond within minutes. We also want to do our part to stop radicalization and disrupt the recruitment process. Thats why we have commissioned multiple Research Efforts over the past three years to understand how online speech can most effectively counter violent ideologies and we have sponsored efforts to put those learn ings into practice. One such example is our peer to peer challenge and Extremism Program which we sponsor with Adventure Partners and through that program we have had more than 6500 students participate. They have created hundreds of campaigns that have been viewed worldwide more than 200 million times. No one company can combat the terrorist threat alone so we partner with others including companies, Civil Society, researchers, and governments around the world. Among other things, we work with 11 other companies, including those here, to maintain a shared industry database of hashes, unique digital fingerprints of terrorist content so we can all find and remove it faster. And we have also recently launched a Global Internet forum where we can work with Smaller Companies to help them get better. In conclusion, let me reiterate that we share your goal of stopping terrorists from using social media and we are going to keep Getting Better at it. Im here today to listen to your identities and your concerns and to continue this constructive dialogue. Thank you for the opportunity. And i look forward to your questions. Thank you, miss bickert. Miss downs. Thank you, senator. Chairman thune, Ranking Member nelson and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify at todays hearing and for your leadership on these difficult issues. My name is juniper downs and i serve as the policy lead for youtube. At youtube we believe the world is a better place when we listen, share, and build community through our stories. Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world. We see over 400 hours of video up loaded to youtube every minute. With this comes many benefits to society. Unparallel access to news, our reremarkable view points and freedom to exchange ideas. We value this openness. It has democracyized how stories get told. We are aware, however, that the very platforms that have enabled these societal benefits may also be used by those who want to promo promote hatred or extremism. To that end im pleased to announce the changes. We have developed programs to defend against the use of our platform to spread hate or in sight violence. Youtube has long had policies that strictly prohibit terrorist content. This includes terrorist recruitment, violent extremism, glorification of violence, and videos that teach people how to commit terrorist attacks. We apply these policies to violent extremism of all kinds, whether insighting violence on the race or religion or part of an organized terrorist group. We use a mix of technology and humans to remove violent content quickly. Users can alert us to content they think might violate through a flag below every youtube video. We have teams reviewing 247 in multiple languages and countries around the world. We also work closely with members of our trusted Flagger Program. Ngos who have flaws and expertise on hate speech and terrorism. And of course we rely on our technology which has always been a critical part of our solution. Our image matching techniques can prevent the content by catching up loads before it comes public. Nonetheless, given the evolving nature of the threat, its necessary for us to continue enhancing our systems. Over the past year, in particular, we have taken several steps to build on our efforts. The first is an investment in Machine Learning technologies for the detection and removal of violent extremist videos. We recently deployed classifiers that detect new terrorist content and flag it for review. Machine learning is now lepg our human review serves remove nearly five times as many videos as they were before. Today, 98 of the videos we remove for violent extremism were identified by our algorithms. Second, we are focused on improving and expanding our expertise and resources on these issues. We expanded our trusted Flagger Program to additional 50 ngos in 2017, including several Counter Terrorism experts. Working with these organizations helps us to better identity emerging trends, and understand how these issues manifest annie vofl. And in 2018 we will have 10,000 people across google working to address content that might violate our policies. Finally, promoting programs counter speech on our plat forjs. Creators for change Program Support youtube supporters tackling against hate by acting as positive role models. Google jig saw group has redeployed the redirect method to disrupt online radicalization. We also clb rate across the industry. In 2016 we created a house sharing database with facebook, microsoft and twitter where we share information to stop terrorism. We added 7 companies in 2017 and shared database now contains over 50,000 video and image hashes. Last summer we countered terrorism to formalize Industry Collaboration on research, knowledge sharing, and technology. No single component or party can solve this problem in isolation. To get it right, we must all Work Together. We understand the importance of speed and comprehensiveness in our work. Since june, we have removed 160,000 videos and terminated 30,000 channels for violent extremism. We have taken down nearly 70 of violent extremist videos within eight hours of up load and nearly half within two hours. We have reviewed over 2 million videos to make sure we are catching and removing all videos that violate these policies. We achieved these results through enhanced enforcement by machines and people and collaboration with outside experts. We are deeply committed to working with Law Enforcement, government, the Tech Industry, ngos to protect our services from being exploited by bad actors. We look forward to continued collaboration with the committee as it examines these issues. Thank you for your time. I look forward tour questions. Thank you, miss downs. Mr. Monje. Thank you, chairman thune, Ranking Member nelson, distinguished members of the committee and staff. Im here on behalf of twitter, an open Communications Platform that allows more than 330 million users to see whats happening in the world and to share view points from every side. Each day we serve 500 million tweets. We have about 3,700 employees around the world. Twitter has been at the forefront of preventing terrorist exploitation of the internet. Our