Practices must take in especially hard look at google. That is what we are doing here today. Googles control over what people here, watch, read and say is unprecedented. Almost 90 of internet searches in the United States use google. The domination of the Search Engine market is so complete that to google is now a commonplace for. With that market power google can and often does control our discourse and sometimes Tech Companies talk about their products and the effect of those reps as we have heard time and time again google Search Engine is not some Supernatural Force it is a Computer Program written and maintained by people in the order that google decides we should do that. Type a few letters into the search bar and google will tell you what you should be looking for. The same is true of the subsidiary youtube. The second most visited webpage in existence. When you search on youtube programs written by people at youtube provide you with the results. When you watch a video a Program Written by the people at youtube suggest what you should watch next. And when you submit a video people at youtube determine whether you have engaged in a speech an everchanging and vague standard meant to give censorship and air of legitimacy. This is a Staggering Amount of power to ban speech to destroy rivals and to shape culture. More and more americans are demanding accountability from big tech for that massive power. One thing is certain, Congress Never intended to empower Large Technology companies to control our speech when it passed the section 230 of the decency act. That provision companies special privileges that no one else gets. If the New York Times or the wall street journal were to publish an oped that libels a private citizen they can be held responsible. This is the case even when those organizations dont write the content that breaks the law. They can be held responsible for publishing it. Not so for Companies Like google and youtube. If someone uses one of those services to commit slander or transmit classified material or traffic guns or drugs far too often google is off the hook. Section 230 makes it immune. Big tech is a perk, a subsidy that no one else does. Fox news, msnbc or anyone else. This community was part of a deal it was a trade the text of it refers to the internet as a forum for a true diversity of political discourse. That was the trade at the heart of it because we expect Tech Companies in the business of other speech what in favor favor other either side when they did so. There would be a conservative internet and they liberal internet there would just be the internet. That bargain today is falling apart. Big tech continues to reap the benefit of section 230 subsidy. The American People do not. The American People are subject to overt censorship and covert manipulation. I believe it is time to rethink that deal. If big tech cannot provide us with evidence, clear, compelling data and evidence that it is not playing big brother with the fast immense powers there is no reason on earth why congress should give them a special subsidy through section 230. This takes it to the heart of the problem. Google is happy to collect data on everyone everywhere constantly. On you, on me, on all of us. And make sure they know what you search, what you shop for online and what you like and they track your location they know when you visit a typical store. The information sharing is a oneway street. This must change. Google cannot hide behind its algorithms. Big tech algorithm only do what humans tell them to do. Just as big attack needs and wants data on all of us. The American People need and want data. I hope that today google will start to answer some of our questions fully and candidly. So that we can assess how we Work Together ip calendar says it is july 16 but it feels like groundhog day in the United States senate my friends were critical of witnesses from facebook and twitter claiming a vast conspiracy to silence conservative voices. After listening to some of the comments you might think that some liberal mastermind set the controls of those platforms looking at 510,000 facebook posts and 350,000 tweets posted every minute. And remove anything that might align with the Republican Party platform. I repeat now what i said then claims of bias are baseless. Study after study has debunked suggestions. In june of this year the economist release the findings of a yearlong analysis that ran on search results on the news tab in april media matters continued 37 week study into alleged conservative censorship on facebook. Found that rightleaning pages actually outperformed left leaning pages in terms of overall interaction with users. Earlier this year twitter performed a fiveweek analysis of tweets sent by all members of the house and senate and found no statistically significant difference between the number of times a tweet by democratic member is viewed as compared to a tweet by a republican member. One of our witnesses has done her own research in this area and she found no evidence that google sensors conservative content either in the main search product or on youtube. In fact, some conservative commentators another of the Witnesses Today are extremely adept at optimizing their content for google Search Engine allowing them to capture massive audiences. Three months after that initial hearing with facebook and twitter it is googles term to be raked over the holes. Google will be accused of political motives for some commonsense actions which are in their right. Just like we saw at the social media summit last week. President trump invited a rogue gallery of social media leaving racist and conspiracy theorists to share about suppose it censorship by Tech Companies. None of these people had actually been to and from any platform. Each remains free to use the microphone social media provides to spread their messages of conspiracy and hate. It comes at a cost. It has made tech Tech Companies hesitant to deal with the real problem of racist and harassing content on their platform. According to a report twitter is afraid to use the proactive algorithmic approach it uses to remove isis related content to raise a content of white supremacist and the reason twitter is afraid it might catch content posted by politicians. Despite being informed of the twoyear homophobic Harassment Campaign against journalists. When youtube did finally take action it took the half measure of removing advertisements from the video from the platform entirely. Also draws attention away from the real problem with google and other Tech Companies. Last month New York Times investigation found the recommendation served as a roadmap for pedophiles to find videos of younger and younger girls sometimes as young as five or six. That followed a wire report to use the comments section of youtube videos to identify and share videos of children. A recent wall street journal investigation found youtube is overrun by videos pushingto the pointing measles has returned to this country. Another feature the radicalization of a young man who followed the recommended video down a rabbit hole. Google is a big Successful Company and employ some of the smartest people in the country. There is no question in my mind can solve these problems. Unfortunately, as long as we are busy making google defend itself by clear evidence the bogus claims andy parker is the father of journalist Alison Parker. She worked for an affiliate in virginia and august 26 2015 she and her colleague were conducting a live interview and they were attacked by a gunman. Allison and adam died at the scene. Video of the shooting quickly spread on social media including google youtube. For the past four years andy has sent letters to google and met with google and flagged videos on youtube and begged and pleaded that these videos come down. Despite his efforts you can still find video of the tragedy on youtube to this day. I want google to tell us why that is. I look forward to hearing from andy. His work to shine a light on the failures and it provides a great Public Service and they start to focus on the real problems presented by the industry and demanding action. Thank you. Thank you. Im happy to introduce our first witness. Currently heads the Global Public policy in relation department. Before joining google he served as deputy undersecretary of commerce from 2001 to 2003. As assistant secretarydeputy u. S. Trade representative from 2005 to 2007 and is head of General ElectricGovernment Affairs division from 2008 to 2018. He is a graduate of Princeton University and Columbia Law School. Thank you for joining us. Would you please stand and be sworn in. Raise your right hand. Do you swear and affirm the testimony you are about to get before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth . You may make your Opening Statement. Thank you. I served in the george w. Bush administration and earlier i spent time with the Heritage Foundation and in college i was editor of the conservative publication. I am a first generation american. My parents imparted to me and abiding passion for the principles of free speech, democracy and free markets and this same passion makes me enormously gratified to work at google a company that embodies these values every day around the world. Google is a probably American Company across the u. S. We are investing 13 billion to expand our presence in 14 states creating thousands of american jobs. We are also a Global Company and a big american exporter competing with competitors around the world. Through our crew with Google Program we are proud to work with thousands of small american businesses enabling them to tap into the commercial opportunity of the internet and we are focused on the future investing billions annually and innovating new products to help people live better lives by applying Artificial Intelligence to enable earlier detection of cancer or predicted natural disaster. Above all we are a company of more than 100,000 people with a wide range of views nationalities and backgrounds dedicated to the mission of organizing the worlds information and making it universally accessible and useful. We live in an amazing time for the free flow of ideas never before has it been possible for so many people to share so many ideas with so many others at so low a cost and through so many different avenues. Internet platforms have been transformative and powerful tool for the marketplace of ideas. Among the many beneficiaries have been political groups from the Tea Party Movement in the United States to the arab spring , the internet has enabled people to send political messages and build political communities. Providing a platform for sharing a broad range of information is or it is also core to our Business Model. Google needs to be useful for everyone regardless of race, nationality or political leanings. We have a strong business incentive to prevent anyone from interfering with the integrity of our products for the products for our users. Let me be clear, google is not politically biased. We go to extraordinary lengths in a analytically objective way. Our platforms mirror the world that exist. Delivered the user the most deliberate information out there and studies have shown we do that. Objective thirdparty studies most recently a comprehensive yearlong assessment of google results have found no evidence of bias in either direction. Additionally our data scientists analyze daily click through rates on search results for the official websites of members of congress. The data showed no difference whether the member was a republican or a democrat and we analyze official Youtube Channels for all and we consistently found a balance between republicans and democrats. The platform deals with massive amounts of information and to manage these we rely on algorithms and testing and evaluation by thirdparty and none of the systems are designed to filter out individuals or groups based on political viewpoints. We are bound to get criticism from both sides. Political ads may violate and we have ads from both. From time to time our knowledge panels will help you find quick facts when you search for information like Hillary Linton or the california Republican Party may reflect erroneous information and will need to be corrected. We work hard to learn from our mistakes. These mistakes have affected both parties and are not the result of bias. We know that users expect the highest degree of integrity from our products and we must meet that expectation every day. If we dont the users will go elsewhere and that is why we tested these systems and tools to help us in and analytically objective a political way. Thank you for this opportunity and i look forward to answering your question. My first question will not surprise you. Does google consider it a neutral forum . We operate a number of platforms and they are constructed and operated to be politically neutral or a political. Does google consider the search page to be a neutral forum . We construct it and build it and operate it to be politically neutral. Does google consider youtube to be a neutral platform . Similarly we build and construct and maintain it with our algorithms to be politically neutral. Mr. Bhatia, i will ask my staff to give you a hard copy of a document that was released recently that we also sent to you ahead of time so that should not be a surprise it is a document that reports to be authored by google and the title is the good sensor. How can google reassure the world that it protects users from harmful content it is dated march 2018. Is this document a document that was prepared within google . I have seen it before and i understand that it was. The copy you have the only alteration is that it has page numbers on it. With no objection i will enter a copy in the record with a notation that we entered the page numbers. I want to refer you to page 14. Page 14 this google document says an important federal statute from 1996 supports this position of neutrality and describes under section 230 the communication decency tech firms have legal immunity for the majority of content posted on their platform. This protection has empowered many to create spaces for free speech without fear of legal action. Google understood on the face of this document that immunity is predicated on as the title of this page says neutrality. I would like to refer you to page 65 of the documents. On page 65 of the document tech firms are performing a balancing act between two incompatible positions on the one side create unmediated marketplace of ideas and 100 committed to free speech for democracy by creating spaces we all value including stability norms are always for debate and that is on the one side google zone assessment and the other side is create well ordered spaces for safety and stability 100 commit to the tradition that favors dignity over liberty and freedom. By censoring and i will note this is google word censoring racial and religious hatred even when there is no provocation to violence. This google document lays this out as a balancing act and two pages later on page 67 google concludes in the eyes of big tech which side has one out and according to google document the good sensor google says tech firms have gradually shifted away from unmediated freespeech and toward censorship and moderation. I guess, my first question is is this accurate . Does google engage in censorship and moderation acts senator, to place this in context this was, as i understand it part of a discussion that was underway among the Marketing Team it was a marketing document and it was thinking about the broad tension that exists between on the one hand a forum for free speech and on the other hand seeking to introduce certain rules of the road or Community Guidelines to make sure that the online environment is one that is users we want to participate in and it was discussing that it is not reflected necessarily of the views of the company as a whole let me ask my question again. Is this document prepared within google is it accurate . Is google engaged in and the terms used are censorship and moderation and moderation in this context as i understand not to mean being moderate but actively moderating the speech. It is censoring and moderating speech on its platform. I would not say that i would say there is as i mentioned in my opening remarks a remarkable opportunity for every part to be able to participate through the online platform. We do have lets take the youtube we do have Community Guidelines that preclude people from uploading videos that might contain violent extremism that might contain a speech that would prescribe or encourage or incite violence. You have the logo if i recognize them correctly. You have them all on the side toward censorship and moderation and in fact the chart goes on to say create well ordered spaces for safety and stability and it has three words politicized, editor and publisher. Are those accurate descriptions . Is googl