Other, whose platform and has done more to protect the 2020 president ial election. Mark zuckerberg is going all in on the claim that facebooks moves have been historic. They have done more than any other country in history to make sure bad, fake information about this election is staying off of their platform. I will paraphrase something he said. They introduced new policies to combat Voter Suppression and misinformation and we worked with local Election Officials to remove hundreds of thousands of false claims about polling conditions. That he worried could have led to Voter Suppression. There is one thing so far in this hearing everyone agrees on, that is which posts stay up on these platforms, which come down and which get slapped with warning labels should definitely not be up to the u. S. Government. Take a listen. When it comes time to flag content as being reliable or not reliable do either one of you believe that the government should do that . I dont believe so. I think that would be very challenging. Okay. I would agree with your sentiment that, that is not something that government should be siding deciding. Reporter republicans say warning labels getting slapped on President Trumps post are evidence of deepseeded, deep rooted anticonservative bias. Democrats on the panel are making the opposite here. Theyre saying warning labels on the president s posts dont actually go far enough. Take a listen. How many times has he allowed to call for the murder of government officials before facebook suspends his account . Will you commit to taking down that account, Steve Bannons account . Senator, no. That is not what our policy is, would suggest that we should do. Reporter so really the big question now, neil, as we move forward from this hearing, are these lawmakers really going to do anything meaningful to rein in these Tech Companies, or will they continue to drag them in for the hearings, drag them in virtually and threaten to pass new legislation to regulate them . It seems like were heading towards a lot more of the same. Which is really a lot of nothing, neil. Neil all right. I like that, a lot of nothing. Gillian, thank you very much. As gillian nicely surprised there, republicans are seeing a lot of these companies, particularly twitter, particularly facebook, moving too aggressively against conservative thought. Democrats saying not nearly aggressively enough. Lets go back to the hearing right now and see how this pingponging goes. Even having to get facebooks approval over what they publish . Thank you. Mr. Dorsey . Well make our reports and findings public also so everyone can learn. I look forward to the reading of them. Im actually [inaudible] one member of the senate will actually read them, thank you. Because you look at some of the things that were there is, i know senator blumenthal and others raised this question about the steve bannon, putting on a video. Think of what it did. It called for the murder, the beheading of dr. Fauci and the director of the fbi, christopher wray. Think what that does . I mean the fbi director travels with a security all the time. Dr. Fauci and his family are private citizens. Theyre calling for their beheading and it was seen by i think 200,000 people on facebook we have somebody threatening to murder somebody. What do you do, what do you do about that . How do you i mean i was a prosecutor. I prosecuted murders and we had to face this kind of threat at that time but what do you do when hundreds of thousand of people see a threat go murder somebody . Senator, that content violated our policies and we took it down. As been the subject of some of the other questions if someone had multiple offenses like that we would remove their whole account. Im sure that, the threat that they, do it multiple times, say go out and murder somebody, cut off the head, were going to a real problem. Facebook will take down our posting, oh, my god goodness, what a deterrent. Senator what we try to do is identify content that violates our policy before anyone in the community has to see it or even report it to us. And for some categories like terrorism which i cited before, you know, about 98 or 99 of of the content that we take down are a. I. And Human Systems find before anyone has to report it to us. On hate speech were up to 94 of the content we take down our a. I. Systems and content reviewers find it before people have to report it to us. What we try to drive 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 myanmar. Hate speech that helped fuel a genocide against muslim people. I mean horrible. Ive seen the pictures. Ive seen the genocide. You made some progress about this since you and i talked about it last but my understanding is that facebook shuts down specific confidents that violate your contentrelated policy but then the user can of course just create a new account. In myanmar for example, on october 8th, facebook took down 38 inauthentic accounts controlled by Myanmar Military authority to prevent anti content. I compliment you for doing that. The meantime the military turned around and created new accounts that promoted the same content. In some way you got a whackamole problem here but is there, a way that we can, you can stop these things, not just at the account level, at the user level . I use that as an example because people are being murdered in a systemic genocide . Please answer, senator leahys question. Then well need to move on. Go ahead. Im sorry to take long but the previous questioner took all his time plus time allotted to me. No, were 2 1 2 minutes. Lets wrap it up. Go ahead and answer the question senator, youre correctly pointing out that we diddies able certain generals in the my man march military as as dangerous figures, and they are not allowed to sign up for new accounts but as you point out these kind of integrity problems are not ones that there is a Silver Bullet where you could ever fully solve them. We will always be working to help minimize the prevalence of harm the same way a city will never eliminate all crime. You try to reduce it and get it and have it be as little as possible and thats what we try to do through a combination of building a. I. Systems to identify harmful content up front, hiring thousands of people, tens of thousands of people to do content review and partnering with organizations whether in the intelligence community, Law Enforcement, Election Officials or in myanmar, local Civil Society to help us flag things that we should be aware of and on high alert about. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I will have some questions for the record for both the witnesses. Thank you very much, senator leahy. I appreciate that. Senator cruz. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Facebook, twitter and google have massive power. They have a monopoly on Public Discourse in the online arena. I will say it is dismaying listening to the questions from our democratic colleagues 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 if we want to maintain a free and fair democracy. If we want to maintain free speech. There was a time when democrats embraced and defended the principles of free speech. There was a time when democrats embraced and defended the principles of a free press and yet there is an absolute silence from democrats speaking up for the press outlets censored by big tech. There is absolutely silence for democrats speaking out for the citizens silence by big tech. Instead there is a demand use even more power to silence dissent and that is totalitarian instinct i think is very dangerous. At the same time that big tech exercises massive power it also enjoys massive corporate welfare through the effect much section 230, a special immunity from liability that nobody else gets. Congress has Given Big Tech in effect a subsidy while they have become some of the wealthiest corporations on the face of the planet. Mr. Dorsey i want to focus primarily on twitter and ask you initially, is twitter a publisher . Is twitter publisher . Yes. No, we are not. We distribute information. So what is a publisher . An entity that is publishing under editorial guidelines and decisions. Well your answer happens to be contrary to the text of federal statute, particular section 230 which defines an information content provider as any person or entity that is responsible in whole or in part for the creation or development of information provided through 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 on 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 policies are applied in a partisan and selective manner. You claim it was hacked materials yet you didnt block the distribution of the New York Times story that alleged to talk about President Trumps tax returns even though a federal statute makes it a crime to distribute someones tax returns without their consent . You didnt block any of that discussion, did you . Our policy was focused on distribution of the actual hacked materials. Did you block the discussion of the president s tax return material . In the New York Times case we interpreted it as reporting about the hacked material. Did you block Edward Snowden when he illegally released material . I dont have the answer to that. The answer is no. You havent used this in a selective matter let me ask you, were you being a publisher when you forced politico and other journalists outlets take down their tweets on a topic you deemed imperfect missable . No. We were enforcing our policy and our terms of service. So on october 15th, jake sherman a reporter at politico the following i tweeted a link to the New York Post story right after it dropped the yesterday morning. I immediately reached out to the Biden Campaign they had any answer. I wish i had given a story before closer read before reporting it. Twitter suspended me. A reporter reported on a story asking the other side for comment, twitter says, hi, jake sherman, your account jakesherman for violating rules. What did the politico reporter do, my goal was not to spread misinformation. That is worrisome in and of itself. My goal was to raise questions about the story. Oh, my over 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 Biden Campaign was going to respond. Though later did respond and not long after jake sherman comes back with, my account is clearly no longer suspend. I deleted the tweet. When twitter is editing and censoring and silencing the New York Post, the newspaper with the fourth highest circulation in the country, and politico, one of the leading newspapers in the country is twitter behaving as publish letter when it deciding what stories reporters are at allowed tourist and not public . No that account was not suspended t followed the hack the materials policy. We realized there was error in the policy and enforcement. Hold on. Im literally looking at the tweet from twitter that says your account has been locked. Youre telling me that this is not an accurate that is lock and can be unlocked when you delete the tweet. I understand that you have the star chamber power. Your answer is always, once we silence you we can choose to allow 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 expert in voter fraud . No, im not. Well why then is twitter right now putting purported warnings on virtually any statement about voter fraud . Were simply linking to a broader conversation so that people have more information. No, youre not. You put up a page that says, quote, voter fraud of any kind is exceedingly rare in the united states. That is not linking to a broader conversation. That is taking a disputed policy position and youre a publisher when youre doing that youre entitled to take a policy position but you dont get to pretend youre not a publisher and get a 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 largest source of potential voter fraud . I imagine that we would label it so that 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 Organizations candidates and Political Party activists are involved in quote, handling absentee ballots, would you flag that as potentially misleading. I dont, you dont know the specifics of how we might enforce that but i imagine a lot of these would have a label pointing to people to a bigger conversation. Well, youre right. You would label them because you have taken the political position right now that voter fraud doesnt exist. I would note both of those quotes come from the carterbaker commission on federal election reform. That is democratic president jimmy carter and former secretary of state james baker. Twitters position is essentially voter fraud does not exist. Are you aware that just two weeks ago in the state of texas a woman was charged with 134 counts of Election Fraud . Are you aware of that . Im not aware of that. If i tweeted that statement with a link to the indictment would you put a warning on it that says, well the Democratic Party position right now is voter fraud doesnt exist . I dont think it is useful to get into hypotheticals but i dont believe so. You dont believe so . Well test that because im going to tweet that. Well see what you put on it. All right, yesterday, mr. Dorsey, you and i spent considerable amount of time on the phone. You said that you wanted to embrace transparency. So i want to ask you, i have asked twitter, i have asked facebook multiple times how times have you blocked republican candidates for office, their tweets or posts in 2016 and 2018 and 2020. How many times have you blocked Democratic Candidates for office. How many times have you pluck blocked republican officeholders and democratic officeholders. Twitter refused to answer the 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 . That is exactly what we want to do. Answer the question. Im sorry, mr. Dorsey, i didnt hear you. That is exactly what were pushing for as we think about building a upon 230. Is that a yes, you will answer those questions in writing. Transparency not just about accounts but also our process as well. Is that a yes that you will answer those questions in writing . Well certainly look into it and see actually answer them and not give lawyerly doublespeak about why youre not going to give specifics. Answer them, will you commit to committee that but i will answer those questions. Well work to answering broader transparency around our that is no. Mr. Zuckerberg how about you will you commit facebook will answer those specific questions, cataloging the number of instances in which democrats and in 16, 18, 230 have been silenced versus the number of instances where republicans have been silenced on facebook . Senator. Connell im not sure if we have that data available. I will follow up with you or your team . I will take that as a yes. I will take twitter, well see if it is a yes or transparency is bogus and we dont intend to provide it. Senator durbin. Thank you, mr. Chairman. We live in a dangerous world. Issues of national security, the worst pandemic, Public Health crisis in modern times in america and we are being challenged as to whether there is going to be a peaceful transition of power in america in the presidency. At that moment in time we decided none of those topics were important and what was important was to determine whether or not social media was discriminating against republicans. It is an interesting question. I think there are more important and timely questions. We have a recount underway in georgia. We have allegations may have had by the Election Officials there where they, the republican allegations, republican Election Officials where they have faced literally death threats. We are trying to determine whether or not the social media instruments of america are fair to the republican party. Im trying to struggle with this issue because i want to put it in a context and maybe i cant. Maybe this is unique. We certainly know what the constitution says when it comes to free speech and we know what it meant over the years. New york times vs. Sullivan and others with publications. We certainly didnt suggest that anyone that used a telephone line for nefarious illegal banned activity, somehow implicated the Telephone Company into it by its nature. And then came radio and tv and we had to come up with new rules in terms of, at one time equal time, fair content and so forth. And now we have this new, relatively new mechanism of communicating information and w