Next, a look at the spread of disinformation on social media and other platforms. The subcommittee hearing included a representative from facebook and other tech experts. Testifying on ways to counter the problem. Good morning everyone. The subcommittee on Consumer Protection and commerce will now come to order. We will begin with member statements and i will begin by recognizing myself for five minutes. Good morning and thank you for joining us here today. Given what is going on in the world. esentative czajkowski owski we have seen life for americans transformed in many positive ways. The internet provides new opportunities for commerce, education, information and connecting people. However, along with these many new opportunities, we have seen new challenges as well. Stocking thee online marketplace using deceptive techniques to influence the consumers with deceptive designs to fool them into giving away present information, stealing their otherand engineering unfair practices. The federal trade Commission Works to protect americans from many unfair and deceptive practices. A lack of resources, authority and even a lack of will has left Many American simmers feeling helpless in this digital world. Adding to that feeling of helplessness, new technologies are increasing the scope and scale of the problem. Manipulation of video and otherterns technologies are hurting us indirect and indirect ways. Congress has unfortunately taking a laissezfaire approach to regulation and unfair and deceptive practices online over the past decade. Platforms have let them flourish. Failed to is big tech respond to the grave threat deepfakes as evidenced by facebook scrambling to announce a new policy that strikes me as totally inadequate. We will talk about that later. It would have done nothing to the video of speaker millions ofamassed views and prompted no action by the Online Platform. Hopefully, how discussion today can change my mind about that. This isng all of section 230 of the Communications Decency act. That provides Online Platform links like facebook a legal liability shield for thirdparty content. Many have argued that this liability shield results in Online Platforms not adequately policing their platforms. Including online piracy and extreme content. Tech here we are with big wholly unprepared to tackle the challenges we face today. Concern for this to protectust be consumers regardless of whether they are online or not. For too long, big tech has argued that ecommerce and digital platforms deserve special treatment and a light regulatory touch. We are finding out that assumers can be harmed easily online as in the physical world. Onesme cases, the online arent are more dangerous. It is incumbent on the subcommittee to make clear that protecting the protections that apply to in person commerce also applies to virtual space. I think that i think the witnesses for their testimony today. I recognize Ranking Member rogers for five minutes. Thank you to everyone, welcome, i appreciate the cheerleading this effort to highlight online deception. I want to note that chairman walden also held several hearings on platform responsibility. This information is not a new problem. It was also an issue 130 years ago. When Joseph Pulitzer and the new york world and William Randolph led the age of yellow journalism. Big, onlineick platforms today, sensational headline sold newspapers and boosted advertising revenue. With far more limited sources of , themation available American People lost trust in the media. To rebuild trust, newspapers had to clean up their act. Now the pulitzer is associated with something very different. I believe we are at a similar Inflection Point today. Faith in sources we can trust online. To rebuild it, the subcommittee, members of the media are putting a spotlight on abuses and deception. Leadership has already led to efforts by platforms to take action. Just this week, facebook announced a new policy to combat deepfakes. In part by utilizing online intelligence. Ckert forate miss bi being here to discuss this in detail. Deepfakes can be and on with innovation. And preparing people with more information. They can choose to make far more Productive Outcomes when people can make the best decisions for themselves. Rather than relying on the government to make decisions for them. There isnt more regulation and government mandate. As we discuss ways to combat manipulation online, we must ensure that america will remain the Global Leader in ai development. There is no better place in the world to raise peoples of living and make sure that this technology is used responsibly. Software is already available to face swap, lipsynch and create reenactment to fabricate content. Is, we caning as it also be using ai to go after the bad actors and fight fire with fire. We cannot afford to shy away from it. Who would you rather lead the world in Machine Learning technology . America or china . China is sharing its Ai Surveillance Technology with other authoritarian governments like venezuela. Is using tell knology technology to control minorities. The New York Times has reported just last month that china is collecting dna samples and can be using this data to create images of faces. Could china be building a tool to further crackdown on minorities and political dismiss customer imagine the propaganda and lies that could develop with this Technology Behind the great chinese firewall. Where there is no free speech or an independent press to hold the communist party accountable. That is why america must lead the world in ai development. By upholding our american values, we can use this as a force for good and save peoples lives. Can help us detect cancer earlier and were quickly. Clinical trials are already underway, making major breakthroughs to diagnose cancer. The continued leadership of our innovators is crucial to make sure that we have the tools to combat online deception. America should be right in the role for this technology so real people, not an authoritarian state like china are empowered. I am also glad we are putting a spotlight on dark patterns. Laws, that reviews and bots are the latest version of robo calls scams. Reviews and bots are the latest version of robo call scams. We must be careful where we legislate so that we dont harm the practices that people enjoy. I heavyhanded regulation will make it impossible for online retailers to provide discount. This would especially hurt lower and middle income families. In a digital marketplace, Services People enjoy should not get swallowed up by a strict definition of a dark pattern. How we make these distinctions is important. I look forward to todays discussion and i want to thank the panel. I yield back. The gentlelady yields back. Recognizes the next speaker. Relyericans increasingly on internet for fundamental aspects of their daily lives. Consumers shop online for products ranging from groceries to refrigerators. They use the internet to telecommute or check the weather and traffic and they use social Media Networks to connect with family and friends as a major source of news and information. When consumers go online, they assume the reviews of the products they buy or real our bill and that the news and information they are reading is accurate. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. Online actors including nationstates, companies and individuals fraudsters are using on my toes manipulate and deceive americans. Some methods of deception are well known. Today, technology has made it difficult if not impossible for typical consumers to recognize what is real from what is fake. Why are people putting so Much Technology misuse of the trust is know key to taking advantage of people. If that actors can make people believe a lie, they can manipulate us into taking actions we would not otherwise take. In some instances, we can no longer even trust our eyes. Videos can make people appear intact not can be slowed to make people appear intoxicated. The extent of such manipulation has become extreme. Machine learning other rhythms create completely fake videos known as deepfakes that look real. They can show real people say or do things doing things that they never did. Faye swapping technology has been used to place nicholas cage into movies were he never was. Jordan peele created a deepfake supposedly showing president obama insulting President Trump. The most common use of deepfakes is nonconsensual privacy. That has been used to make it appear as if celebrities have been videotaped in compromising positions. It was also used to humiliate journalists from india who was reporting on an eightyearold rate victim. Algorithms are behind the glut of social media bots, or Automated Systems who act as if they are real people. These buyers are used by companies and other entities to build popularity of brands. Even more alarming is the use of these bots by both state and nonstate actors to spread this this information. It can influence the fabric of our society and politics. In english and can be very subtle. Darktive design known as patterns capitalize on our knowledge of senses. Have you ever tried to unsubscribe from a mailing list and there is a button that says subscribe that is eager and more colorful than the unsubscribe button . That is by design. Banners have been designed with dirt or here on the screen to tapping them on your smartphone. It is impossible for experts to detect. Computer scientists are working on technology. We are in a technological arms race. As the technology improves, so does the deceptive technology. Unrelenting advances in these technologies and their abuse rates raise 70 questions for all of us. Significante questions for all of us. What steps are companies and regulators taking to mitigate Consumer Fraud and misinformation . I looked over to beginning to answer these questions with our Expert Witness so we can transparency to fight misinformation and deceptive practices. Madam chair, i think this is a very important hearing. I was just telling my colleague hadt a discussion that we with the topic was brought up. I said we are having a hearing on this today. This is something a lot of members hear about. A keeper having the hearing today. Thank you for having the hearing today. The chair recognizes mr. Walden. The making member of the committee for five minutes for his opening statement. Thank you for having this meeting. This is the second hearing of the new year. There was one that started earlier upstairs. We are glad to hear from our witnesses today. Thank you for being here. Internetnything, the presents that actors seeking ample opportunities to manipulate users and take advantage of consumers. They tend to be some of the most horrible in the population. Harmful acts are easily exacerbated. Videosll know, fake spread at breakneck speed. That is why we try to tackle this whole issue with platform responsibility had on. We appreciate the input that we got from many. We legislated on Online Platforms not for filling the Good Samaritan fulfilling their Good Samaritan obligations. We took at how our rhythms info influence consumer behavior. Improving broadband expenses overall areas can benefit from the positive aspects of the internet. Explaining the Online Advertising ecosystem crossborder data flows. A topic we need to continue to work on. Other related issues we face such as cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence to name a few. Of the invited the heads Tech Industry to explain their practices right in this hearing from. Two of the committees highest profile hearings in recent memory. Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg came and spent about 5. 5 hours at that table to enter some pretest questions on the cameras analytical debacle and to provide the committee with more insight on how facebook collects Consumer Information and what facebook does with that information. We welcome the ceo of twitter, jack dorsey to provide more information on how twitter operates. Chairman elan brought in the ceo of reddit. A trend that we hope will continue. This hearing today helps with that. This group of experts signs a light on practices i hope that can following our series of years, there is proof that some companies are cleaning up their platforms. We appreciate the work you are doing. Following our hearing on Cambridge Analytic up, Basement Book made significant changes to its privacy policies. Is the ability for it users to control and delete information, tim gunn washes entities and invested in programs to promote local news operations. Mr. Zuckerberg was pushed pretty hard on some ads that he saw. Facebook removed those ads. We got a call as mr. Zuckerberg was headed to the airport that afternoon. Also notable through the Global Internet for him to counterterrorism, platforms such as twitter, facebook and youtube have been working together to tackle terrorist content and disrupt them. We thank you for that. This is not to suggest the online ecosystem is perfect. It is far from it. Companys could do more to conduct their platform. I think you are all working on that. That may be clear. This hearing should serve as an important reminder to all Online Platforms that we are watching closely. We want to make sure that we do not harm innovation but when we see issues or identify clear homes to consumers, we do not see online entities taking a puppet action, we are prepared to act. Thank you for having this hearing. This is tough stuff. Taking appropriate action, we are prepared to act. They keeper having this hearing. We need to call on them to call take on things we dont like and stay on the right side of the First Amendment. It is still protected under the First Amendment. If you go too far, we yell at you for taking things done that we like. If you dont take down things we dont like, we yell at you for that. Youre in a bit of a box. Is an issue we0 have to revise. We all get the opportunity to revise and extend our remarks throughout this process and clean up our bad grammar. Isbe some of that we have that reporting. We will leave that for another day. Ideal back. The gentleman yields back. I yield back. The gentleman yield back. All Opening Statements shall be made part of the record. Introducew like to our witnesses for todays hearing. Ms. Monika bickert the Vice President of Global Policy management at facebook. I want to acknowledge and thank you. Are not feeling well today and would like to abbreviate some of your testimony. We thank you very much for coming anyway. I want to introduce dr. Join donovan. Of technologytor and social change project. Also, mr. Justin hurwitz. Anddirector of Governance Technology center at the university of Nebraska College of law. And director of law and economics programs at the International Center for law and economics. Finally, dr. Tristan harris. He is the director for humane technology. We want to think our witnesses for joining us today. We look forward to testimony at this time. The chair will recognize each witness for five minutes to provide their Opening Statements. I would like to explain the lighting system for those who may not know it. In front of you is a series of lights. The lights will initially be green at the start of your opening statement. The light will turn to you when you have one minute remaining. Begin tould please wrap up your testimony at that point, the light will turn red when your time has expired. Bickert, you are recognized for five minutes. Bickert thank you members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. Y name is Monika Bickert i am the Vice President for Global Policy management at facebook and i am responsible for our content policies. I am a little under the weather today. With apologies, i will keep my remarks short but will rely on the written testimony i cemented submitted. We have an important to play at facebook and addressing manipulation and misinformation on our platform. We have our Community Standards that specify what we will remove from the site and our relationship with thirdparty Fact Checkers through which Fact Checking organization can rate content as false. We put a label over that content saying this is false information and distribution. Under the committee standards, there is some types of this information that we move remove. Attempts to suppress the vote or interfere with the census. Newnnounced yesterday a prong and our policy where we will remove videos that are edited or synthesized using Artificial Intelligence or deep learning techniques in ways that are not apparent to the average person that would mislead the average person to believe that the video said something he or she did not in fact say. Manipulated media that does not follow fall under this is still subject to our Fact Checking. Although deepfakes are an emerging technology, one area where internet experts have seen and is in nudity pornography. All that violates our policies against nudity and pornography. We would remove it. Manipulated videos are eligible to be fact checked by these thirdparty Fact Checking organizations that we work with to label and reduce distributional of misinformation. We are always improving our policies and our enforcement. We will continue to do the engagement we have done outside of the company with academics and experts to understand the new ways that these technologies are emerging. We would also welcome the opportunity to collaborate with other Industry Partners and interested stakeholders. Including academics, Civil Society and lawmakers to help develop a consistent industry approach to these issues. Our hope is that by working together with all of the stakeholders, we can make faster progress in ways that benefit all of society. Thank you, i look forward to your questions. Thank you, dr. Donovan, you are recognized for five minutes. Dr. Donovan thank you Ranking Members for having me today. It is an honor to be invited. I lead a team at Harvard Kennedy that researches Online Administration and deception. I have been a researcher of the internet for the last decade. About changes bit in policy as well as the development of platforms themselves and what they were intended to do. One of the things i want to discuss today is online fraud. Beyond malware, spam and phishing attacks, reddit card scams, there is a growing threat from new forms of Identity Fraud from enable technological design. Platform companies are unable to manage this alone and americans need governance. Deception is now a multimillion dollar industry. My Research Team tracks dangers individuals and groups who use influence brands and other people. This emerging economy of misinformation is a threat to security. Silicon Valley Companies are profiting from it. Key political socialist intrusions are struggling to Win Back Public trust. Platforms have done more than just give users a voice online. They have effectively given them the equivalent of their own broadcast station, emboldening the most luscious among us. To recap it with the media manipulation campaign, most malicious among us. Newsrooms, Healthcare Providers and Law Enforcement who are tasked with repairing the damage. We currently dont know the true cost of misinformation. Individuals and groups can quickly weaponize social media, causing others financial and physical injury. For example, fraudsters using President Trumps image, name, logo and boys have siphoned millions from his supporters by claimant to be part of his reelection coalition. In an election year, donation and scam donation scams should be of concern to everyone. My friends have studied malicious groups, particularly wiser premises to an foreign actors who use social media to inflame racial division. Even as these imposters are quickly identify to the communities they target, it takes time for platforms to remove and setting comment content. This can create a great strain on breaking news cycles, turning many journalist into unpaid content moderators and drawing Law Enforcement for its false leads. On like an indication technologies need regulatory guard best to prevent them from forg used reticulated manipulative purposes. I provided a longer list for ways you could think about technology differently. Right now, i would like to call attention to deceptively edited audio and video to drive cliques, legs and chairs. This is the Ai Technology commonly known as deepfakes. What i would like to point out is that we argued that she fakes are a wider threat. Fakes are a wider threat. Magic policy, joe biden, this poses another Nancy Pelosi Joe Biden were featured in these videos. The platforms refused to take down this cheap fake. Forms like radio towers have provided application power and platforms like radio towers have provided amplification power. These platforms are highly and month we placed the burden we place the burden on those. Actorsow, malicious jeopardized we make informed decisions about who to vote for and what causes the support. We must expand the public understanding of technology by rding against consumer guarding Consumer Rights against technological abuse and putting across sector effort to curb the distributional harmful and moshes content. Platform Companies Must address the power of amplification and malicious content. Platform Companies Must address the power of amplification. And regulation of Technology Must work, in tandem otherwise work in tandem, otherwise the future is forgery. Thank you, mr. Hurwitz, your recognized you are for five minutes. Thank you. I would be remiss if it. I might college. I am a lot faster. I wrote a short law review article for my testimony. Make sure your microphone is on. Pull it up. I will read the short law review article that a row for you i wrote. I want to make a couple of recommendations. If you want to understand what is at stake with our patterns, start by reading this book reengineering humanity. Their book discusses how modern technology, Data Analytics combined with highly programmable environment and create an environment where people are programmable. This book will scare you. After you read that book, you should read this book userfriendly. It discusses the importance and difficulty of designing technology that seamlessly operates in line with user expectation as userfriendly technologies. This book will help you understand incredible power of userfriendly design and fill you with help for what design makes possible along with appreciation for how difficult it is to do design well. Together, these books will show you both sides of the coin. Dark patterns is something this committee should be concerned about. This committee should also approach the topic with great caution. Design is powerful. It is incredibly difficult to do well. Efforts to regulate that uses a design could easily harm efforts to use design for good. How is that for having a professor testified . I have already assigned to books and a longer view article of my own for you to read. I will try to discern some of the key ideas from that article in the next three minutes or so. Ominous term. S an it is a dark pattern itself. It is a term for simple concept. He will behave in people behave in predicable ways. The concern is that sometimes we can be programmed to act against our own selfinterest. I have some examples if we can look at the first one. This is only from the internet. Look at this for a moment. Is one from the internet. Look at this for a moment. Who feels manipulated . It is ok to say if you do. Imagean is making the feel like the images controlling us. Weird stuff. Lets look at another example. You can tell from the internet. Who feels like this image is . Anipulative the previous image was harmless but this hence hints at the power of dark patterns. You missed the first line or the second line until the text pointed it out to you. This has gone from a weird stuff to scary stuff. On the other hand, these centers can be used for good. What if this trip was used to highlight and easily missed but important concern for consumers to Pay Attention to . This could be beneficial to consumers. Design is not mere aesthetic. All design influences how decisions are made. It is not impossible to regulate the design without applauding good design. How much of a problem are dark patterns . Websites actually are using them. Sometimes subtly, sometimes overly. These tactics can be effective. David consumers to do things they normally would not. I would like to leave you with a few ideas about what, if anything we should do about them. First, dark patterns are used online and offline. Tores use floorplans influence what people will buy. Try canceling a Subscription Service were returning a product. You will be given a mays of consumer representatives. If these patterns are problem online, they are a problem offline as well. We should not focus on want to the exclusion of the other. While these tricks are annoying, it is not clear how much they harm consumers or how much benefit that may confirm. Mandatory disclosure laws so they have limited these tricks can be used to benefit consumers. Most of the worst examples of dark patterns very likely fall within the fccs authority to regulate practices. The ftc should attempt to use existing authority to address them. Ineffective, the ftc should report to you, to congress on these practices. The industry has been sponsored to these issues and to some extent has been selfregulating. Web browsers and operate systems have made very bad practices hard to use. Standardization and best practices and sell regulations should be encouraged. Self, regulators regulations should be encouraged. This is an area wellsuited to cooperation. Efforts should be rewarded. Perhaps more rewarded given the complex of the of these systems. Industries should be at the front line of combating them. There is an important goal for regulation to step in. I look forward to discussion. Thank you. You are recognized for five minutes. Chairwoman. Thank you for inviting me here. I will go off script. Here because im incredibly concerned. I have a lifelong experience with deception and how Technology Influences peoples minds. I was a magician as a kid. I know the culture of the people who built these products and the way it is designed intentionally for mass deception. The thing i most want to respond often frame this as we have a few bad apples with deepfakes and we have to get them off the platform. What i want to argue is we have dark infrastructure. This is now the infrastructure people, 2. 7 billion bigger than the size of christianity make sense of the world. It is the information environment. If someone went along, private companies and build Nuclear Power plants, all across the United States and they started melting down and said it is your responsibility to have hazmat suits and have a radiation kit, that is what we are experiencing now. The responsibilities being put theonsumers when in fact, infrastructure should be put on the people building that infrastructure. There is specifically to areas of harm i want to focus on. Even though when this becomes the infrastructure, it controls all their lives. This is the structure for going to bed, children spend as much time on these devices as they do at the hours of school. The matter what you put on kids brains at school, they have all the hours they spent on their phones. Lets take the kids issue. The Business Model of this infrastructure is not aligned with the fabric of society. How much have you paid for your facebook account recently . Youtube . Zero. They monetize our attention. The attentionet is using the dark patterns or tricks to do it. The way they do it with children is saying how many likes were followers do you have . They get children addicted to getting attention from other people. The use beautification filters that enhance your self image. After two decades, the middle health of teen girls went up 170 . After the 2010, with the rise of instagram. These are your children, your constituents, this is a real issue. We are hacking the selfimage of children. The Business Model, think of it like we are drinking from the flint water supply of information. The Business Model is polarization. The whole point is i have to figure out and calculate what keeps your attention. There is a recent turn study upturn study. Polarization has a homefield advantage in terms of the Business Model. The natural portion of these platforms is to reward conspiracy theories and the race to the bottom of the brain stem. Yous the reason why all of at home have crazier and crazier constituents. Russia is manipulating our veterans. We left the digital border wide open. This is like facebook building the information infrastructure and not protecting it from any bad actors until that pressure is there. This is leading to a kind of Information Trust meltdown. No one even has to use deepfakes for people to say that must be a fake video. We are actually at the last turning point, kind of an event thezon where we protect foundation or let it go away. We say we care about gives information but we Left Technology companies to tell them that the world revolves around likes, cliques and shares. We say we want to come together but we allow technology to divide us. We allow Technology Copies to degrade our productivity and Mental Health and jeopardize the development of our future workforce. While i am finishing up here, i just want to say that instead of train to design some new federal agency, some Master Agency when technology has basically taken all of the laws of the physical world and virtualized it into a Virtual World with no laws, what happens when we have no laws for an entire virtualized infrastructure . You cant just bring new agency around and regulate all of the Virtual World. Agenciese our existing and have a digital update as it extends your jurisdiction. I know i am out of time. Thank you very much. Thank you. At this time, we will move to member questions, each member will have five minutes to ask questions of our witnesses. I will begin by recognizing myself for five minutes. As chair of the subcommittee, over and over again i am confronted with new evidence that big tech has failed in regulating itself. Had Mark Zuckerberg year, i did a review of all of the apologies we have had from him over the years. I am concerned that facebooks latest effort to address misinformation on the platform leaves a lot at. I want to begin with some mrs. Bickert. Ou, the deepfake policy only covers video that has been manipulated using Artificial Intelligence or deep learning. Is that correct . Ms. Bickert thank you. The policy we announced to theay is confined definition we set forth about Artificial Intelligence being used to make it appear i only have five minutes. Ms. Bickert the video of toaker pelosi was edited make her look like she was drunk. That would not have been taken down under the new policy. Is that right . Yes or no . Ms. Bickert it would not fall under that policy. Read the deepfake policy, italy covers it only personvideo where a appears to have said words they did not actually say. It does not cover videos where just the images altered. Is that true . Is altered. Is that true . Ms. Bickert that is correct. We do have a broader approach to miss information that would put misinformation that would put a label over that says false information and direct people to information from Fact Checkers. I dont understand why facebook should treat fake audio differently from fake images. Both can be highly misleading and result in significant harm to individuals and undermined democratic institutions. , in your testimony you noted that deepfakes are more prevalent cheapfakes are more prevalent than deepfakes. Should they be treated differently . Microphone. Course. Van of as if i am not loud enough. What is great about social media is that it makes things smaller. I understand the need for separate policies but the cheap fakes issue has not been enforced. There is uneven enforcement. Of can still find that piece this information within the wrong context in multiple places. Deep face is narrow. One thing we should understand is that presently, there is no consistent detection mechanism for finding deepfakes at this time. How theyike to know upload cut you off at this point because i want to ask mr. Harris, our platforms doing enough to stop the dissemination of this information . Do . Can government should government be seeking to clarify that if this is illegal offline, it is a legal online . The pie forms are not doing enough. Their entire Business Model is aligned with solving the problem. Not aligned with solving the problem. Their Business Model is against the issue. Protecteded children from certain content. The youtube gobbles up that economy, what do we do . When facebook gobbles up election advertising, we just removed all of the same protections. We are moving from a lawful virtualto an unlawful internet society. That is what we have to change. Rep. Schakowsky thank you. I gild yield back. The chair recognizes mr. Rogers ms. Rogers. Ms. Rogers misinformation is not a new problem. But the speed of information is increasing. Informationddress is more transparency, more sources, more speech, not less. This is not important just in an election cycle but in Public Health issues, natural disasters or any number of significant events. I am worried about this renewed trend where someone in the government says the parameters and potentially mixed speech and expression. Rt, how does free speech and expression factor into the content decisions at facebook . Can you please explain your use of thirdparty Fact Checkers . Ms. Bickert thank you. We are very much a platform for free expression. That is why we work with thirdparty Fact Checking organizations. We share more information on the surface. We put a label over it. This is false information. Here is what Fact Checkers are saying about this story. We work with more than 50 organizations worldwide. Organizations are chosen after meeting high standards for Fact Checking. Thank you. As a follow up the total volume of traffic you have, humanize alone cant keep up. Artificial intelligence and Machine Learning have a significant role to identify not only deepfakes but other content that violates your terms of service. You explain a little more to us how you use ai and the potential to use ai to fight fire with fire . Ms. Bickert we do use of combination of technology and people to identify potential information to send to Fact Checkers. We also use people and technology to try to assess whether something has been manipulated. With the Fact Checking program, we use technology to use things like but say that somebody shared a news story and our friends are commenting on that. That is some thing our technology can spot and send that content over to Fact Checkers. It is not just technology. We have ways for people to flag if they are seeing something they believed to be false. The Fact Checkers can also proactively choose to read something they are saying on facebook. Sor hurwitz, professor hurwitz, you spoke about how the designs can harm users. They can modify created structure. We have heard examples, text placement, the course of interaction with the website. These can be used to guide users into making uninformed decisions or highlight information that users should be paying attention to. This falls into the category of behavioral psychology. You highlighted some of that testimony. Can you explain how the technology can be used to raise dark pattern practices . Ftc has a long history of regulating on many practices and advertising practices. False statements, statements that are material to a consumer, making a decision that is, to the consumer harmful to the consumer. They can use at and enact rules to take action against a platform or any identity. Do you think they are doing enough . I would love to see the ftc do more in this area. Especially when it comes to rulemaking and in Court Enforcement actions. These are unknown, uncertain and untested. Bringing suits and litigation, that tells us what the agency is capable of. That is something this body needs to know before it tries to craft more legislation or get more authority to an entity. If we already have an agency that has power, lets be capable. I appreciate you all being here. I appreciate the chair for hosting. I think the Ranking Member who yields back. I recognize mr. Blonde for five minutes. Alone for five minutes. In your various testimonies, you all talked about a variety of technologies that are being used to deceive and manipulate consumers. To trick people into making certain choices, deepfakes, cheapfakes that show fictional scenarios that look real. Algorithms used to keep peoples eyes locked on their screen. We know these things are happening. What is less clear is the extent to which these technologies are being used commercially. Let me ask dr. Donovan, as a researcher focuses on the use of these technologies techniques, do you have access to commercial platform data to have a copperheads of understanding of how this is conducted . And by whom . The brief answer is now. No. We dont have access to the data as it is. There is all of these limits on the ways you can acquire data through the interface. There was aoblem is very good faith effort between facebook and scholars to get a bunch of data related to the 2016 election that fell apart. A lot of people put an incredible about of time and energy into that effort. It failed around issues related to privacy. What i would love to see also happen is twitter has started to give data related to deletions and account takedown. We need a record of that so that when we do audit these platforms for financial or social harm, the deletions are also included and marked. Like a you cant act data scavenger and go back and get data, when things are deleted, sometimes they are just gone for good. Those pieces of information are often the most crucial. Should the government be protecting collecting more information about this . Here is an example. Other addicted industries, addition is part of the deception. The Tobacco Industry does not know which users are addicted to smoking. They help a whole industry does not know who is addicted to alcohol. Each tech company doesnt know how it people are checking more than 100 times per day. Then it was leaving it late at night using it late at night. They are able to audit facebook on a quarterly basis to say how many users are addicted . What are you doing to make adjustments to reduce that . Day, they are otherwise issuing the questions and the responsibility and the resources have to be employed, by facebook. There is a quarterly route between each agency asking questions, forcing accountability with the companies for the areas of their existing jurisdictions. I am trying to figure out is that a way we can scale this to meet the scope of the problem . Thank you. This week, facebook released a new policy on how itll handle deep fakes. Ms. Bickert, under your policy, deep fakes are videos manipulated through Artificial Intelligence intended to mislead and are not parity or satire that i get that right are not parody or satire. Did i get that right . Uest you did congressman the it hate speech smc verye behavior, little consistency across the marketplace which these consumers at a loss. Then we go to dr. Donovan. Is there a way to develop a common sense advantage problematic practices so consumers are not facing different policies on different websites . Guest i think it is possible to create a set of policies, but you have to look at the features that are consistent across these platforms. If they do for instance use attention to a specific post in their algorithms to boost popularity, then we need a regulation around that, especially because unmanned accounts for lack of a better term, are often used to accelerate content and move content across platforms. These are things usually purchased offplatform and the are considered a dark market product, that you can purchase attention to an issue. As a result, there has to be something more broad that goes across platforms but also looks at the features and tries to regulate some of these markets better not built into the platform themselves. Congressman thank you madam chair. Thank you. Mr. Bush on, you are the nest for five minutes. Congressman i appreciate the hearing and the opportunity to discuss the spread of misinformation on the internet. I am stressing that i am concerned for their efforts to make Tech Companies adjudicators of truth. In a country founded on free speech, we should not be allowing private corporations, in my view, or for that matter, the government, to determine what qualifies as truth. Potentially censoring a voice because it disagrees with mainstream opinion. I understand the difficulty and the challenges we all face together. Howerning this issue, and we are together trying to work to address it. Can you provide some more information on how facebook might or will determine if a video mislead, what factors might you consider . Guest thank you. Ways clear, there are two we might be looking at that issue. One with regard to the deep fakes policy released yesterday. We will be looking to see orically what type of we seeing Artificial Intelligence and deep learning for that part of the technology that has led to change or fabricate a video in a way that really would not be evident to the average person. That would be a fundamental part to determine whether it is misleading. Congressman who is the average i amrry, your coughing playing devils advocate, who is the average person . Guest these are exactly the questions we have in discussing with more than 50 experts as we have tried to right this policy and get it to the right place. Congressman i appreciate what youre doing. I am not trying to be difficult. Guest it is a challenging issue, which is why we think the approach to disinformation, of getting more information out there from accurate sources is effective. Congressman you stated in your testimony that once a fact checker rates a photo or video as false, facebook reduces the distribution. Is there a way for an individual who may have posted these things to protest the decision . Guest yes. They can go directly to the fact checker, we make sure there is a that. Ism for they can either disputed or if they have amended whatever it was an article that was a problem. Congressman people with good lawyers can dispute a lot of things that the average citizen in southwest indiana who posts something online, there needs to be, in my view, a fairly straightforward process that the average person, whoever that might be, can understand to thatst or dispute the fact their distribution has been reduced. Thank you. Mr. Horowitz, you have discussed that the f. T. C. s Current Authority to address this. I am adjusted to hear your thoughts on how consumers can protect themselves. Is there only a solution for government action, or can Consumer Education help highlight these advertisement practices . Guest the most important thing for any company, especially in the online context, is the trust of the consumers. Consumer education, user education is important, but i think that is fair to say, with condolences perhaps to ms. Bickert to facebook has a trust proble. If consumers and users stop trusting these platforms, they will have a hard time retaining users and consumers. It puts a great deal of pressure. In addition, stability of practices. If we have one dark pardon is to change the users interface so that users dont know how it operates. If we have platforms that operate in predictable ways, that help users become educated and help them understand what the practices are and learn how to operate in this new environment, trust on the internet is different. We are still learning what it means. Congressman can you talk about how these dark pardon practices took place before the internet and are currently happening in brickandmortar stores and other areas . It is said that politicians the that politicians send out. I want to read reiterate that this is not just a problem on the internet, and has been around for a while. Guest the practices go back to the beginning of time fundamentally, they are persuasion. If i want to convince you of my worldview, to convince you to be my customer, my friend, i will do things that influence you, present myself to you in ways to get you to like me or my product. If you come into my store and ask for a recommendation, what size tire do i need for my car . Will give you information congressman my time has expired. My point was that we need to in my view, take a holistic approach to this problem and with emergent energy, how we address that consistently and not just target specific industries. Thank you. I yield back. Chariwoman i recognize congresswoman caster for five minutes. Congresswoman thank you. Thank you for calling this hearing. The internet and Online Platforms have developed over time without a lot of safeguards for the public. Can that went exercise our responsibility to keep the public safe, whether it is the cars we drive, the water we drink, airplanes, drugs for sale, and really, the same should apply to the internet and Online Platforms. There is a lot of illegal activity being promoted online. Where the First Amendment does not come into play. I hope we dont done that robert holt, because we are talking about human trafficking, terrorist plots, if he said sales of firearms. Now we have these Online Platforms that control the algorithms that manipulate the public, the deep fakes, these dark patterns, Artificial Intelligence Identity Theft. But these Online Platforms control these algorithms that steer children and adults, everyone, in certain direction. We need to get a handle on that. For example, mr. Harris, one manipulative tactic is the future, now ubiquitous across video streaming platforms. Particularly the billions of people that go to youtube or facebook. This feature automatically begins playing a new video after the current video, and the next video is determined using an algorithm designed to keep the viewers attention. This platformdriven algorithm often drives the perforation of the illegal activities and reformation ofe unit of activities and dangerous conspiracy theories that make it difficult for the average person to try to get truthbased content. I am particularly concerned about the impact on kids. You have raised that, and i appreciate that. You discuss the Mental Health of kids today, how it really is at risk. Can you talk more about context in which children may be particularly harmed by these addictionmaximizing algorithms, and what parents can do to protect kids from being trapped in the youtube vortex, and what you believe our responsibility is as honesty makers . Guest thank you so much for your question. It is deeply concerning to me. Laying it out, with more than 2 billion users, think of these on youtube as 2 billion truman shows. Each of you get a channel. Into 2actures reality billion different polarizing channels, each of which is tuned to bring you to a more extreme view. Quick example is, imagine a spectrum of all videos on youtube laid out on one line. On my left side you have the cronkhiter kwo rational side of youtube and on the other side you have, alex jones, conspiracy theories, crazy stuff. The matter where you start on youtube. You could start in the calm section or the crazy. If i want you to watch more. Will i steer you that way or that way . I am always going to steer you toward crazy town. Imagine taking 2. 1 billion humans and tilting it like that. Three examples for that. Two years ago inch youtube if a teen girl watched a dieting video, it would autoplay anorexia videos. If you watched in an 11 news video. It would recommend 9 11 conspiracy theories. Landing,out the moon it. Would recommend. Flat earth conspiracy theories flat earth Conspiracy Bureau videos were recommended hundreds of times. It might sound funny, but it is serious. I have a researcher friend who studied this. If the flat earth theory is true it doesnt mean that not only that government is lying to you, let all of science is lying to you. Think about that for a second. It is a meltdown of all of our rational and systemic understanding of the world. As he said, these are auto place autoplay hacks your brains stopping cue. As a magician, how do i know if i want you to stop, i put a stopping cue and your brain wakes up. If the water hits the bottom of the glass i can decide, do i want more . But with this, you never stop. You keep filling the water and it never stops. That is how we have millions of kids addicted. In places like the philippines, children watch youtube for 10 hours a day. Congresswoman this has significant cost for the public. That is one of the points i want people to understand. Dr. Donovan says there is an economy of misinformation now. These Online Platforms are passing along monetizing at making billions of dollars. Meanwhile, Public Health costs and Law Enforcement costs are adding up to the public and we have a real responsibility to tackle this and level the field. Guest and by not acting, we are subsidizing our societal selfdestruction. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Chairwoman i recognize representative burgess for five minutes. Congressman thank you. Thank you for holding this hearing. I apologize. We have another Health Hearing going on upstairs one of those days you have to toggle between important issues. Mr. Hurwitz, let me start by asking you, and this is a little bit offtopic, but it is important. In 2018, the u. S. District court for western pennsylvania indicted seven russians for conducting a physical cyber 2016ing operation in against western targets, including the u. S. Antidoping agency in response to the revelation of russians statesponsored doping campaigns. These hackers or members of the russian military, the gru. The stolen information was publicized by the g. R. U. As part of a Disinformation Campaign designed to undermine the legitimate interests of the victims. Information included personal medical information about u. S. Athletes. Fictitiouskers use we know hackers use fictitious identities. We are talking about largely the context of deceiving voters and consumers. The harmful potential effect is quite large. In your testimony, you define the practice of using dark patterns is not desirable behavior. Can these dark patterns be used to several people and hack them in the broader statesponsored operations. Guest absolutely, they can. It goes to the broader context in which this is happening. Where we are not only talking about Consumer Protection, we are talking about the fundamental architecture, the nature of trust online is different. All the cues we rely on for you to know who i am when you see me sitting here, we have gone through a vetting process, we telltale cuess, that you can rely on to the ym and you are. Those are different online. We need to think about trust online differently. One example i will highlight that goes to an industrybased solution and the more important nature of how we need to think about this things differently, in the context of political advertising in particular, how do we deal with targeted misinformation for political ads . One approach which facebook has been experimenting with is, instead of saying that you cant speak or you cant advertise, if i target and add at a group of speakers, facebook will let someone else target and. Add to that same group may have been experimenting with it. It is a different way of seeing how we deal with and trustworthy information. We, need more creative thinking and research about how do we establish trust in the online environment. Congressman thank you for those observations. Ms. Bickert, if i ever doubted the power of facebook, a few years ago, the doubt was completely eliminated. One of your representatives actually offered to do a Facebook Event to a district i represent in northern texas. It was a businesstobusiness event, how to facilitate and run your Small Business more efficiently, and they wanted to do a program. We selected a Tuesday Morning and i asked how big a venue we should get, thinking maybe 20, 30, and i was told 2000. Expect 2000 people to show up. A Tuesday Morning for a businesstobusiness facebook presentation, are you nuts . The place was standing room only. It was the power of facebook getting information out there. If i ever doubted the power of facebook, it was certainly brought home to me, how exactly the kind of equity you are able to wield. But recognizing that, do you have a sense of the type of information on your platforms that needs to be fact checked, because you do have such enormous amount of equity . Guest yes, congressman. Thank you for those words. We are concerned not just with misinformation, that is a good turn, and that is why we develop a relationship we have now with more than 50 Fact Checking organizations. But we are also concerned with abuse of any type. I am responsible for managing that, whether it is hate speech, threats of violence, Child Exploitation content, content that promotes eating disorders. Any of it violates policies and legal after it and remove it. Congressman do you feel you have been successful . Guest we have had a lot of successes. We are making huge strides. There is always more to do. We have began publishing reports every six months where we actually show across different of these types, how prevalent is it on facebook, from doing a sample, how much content did we find this quarter and remove, and how much did we find before anybody reported to us. The numbers are trending in a good direction in terms of how effective our enforcement measures are, and we hope that will continue to improve. Congressman as policymakers, can we access that data, for example, the number of antivaccine issues that have been propagated on your platform . Guest i can follow up with you on the reports we have and any other information. Congressman thank you. I yield back. Schakowsky if i could just clarify that question, is that information readily available to consumers or no . Guest chairwoman, the reports i mentioned are publicly available and we can followup with any detailed requests. Chairwoman schakowsky i recognize mr. For five minutes of questioning. Congressman thank you maam madam chair. Outside of Self Reporting, what can be done to help educate a community or communities that may be specifically targeted by all these different platforms . I was wondering, mr. Harris, if you could address it specifically . I think a great deal of my constituency, and , ouron the republican side constitutionss are probably being targeted on things like race, income, religion and what have you. If theres anything outside of Self Reporting that can be done to help educate people more. Guest yes, there are so many things here. The 2016ntioned, in election, russia targeted africanamerican populations. I think people dont realize, every time a campaign is discovered, how do we backand notified people, all of them affected and say, you were the target of an influence operation . We hear reports every single week of saudi arabia, iran, israel, china and russia, all doing different operations. One of them was going after veterans. Many would say it is a conspiracy theory. But facebook is a company that knows exactly who is affected. They can back notify everyone after an operation, letting those communities know what happened, and that they were targeted. We have to move from conspiracy. To, this is real. I studied wiki people up from a called. You have to show them the techniques that were used on them twominute rhythm. Every time does operations you have to show them the techniques that were used to manipulate them. Every time these operations them. , we need to teach we depend on how many people facebook chooses to hire for those teams. One example on this is that silly of los angeles spends 25 the city of los angeles spends 25 of its budget on security. Facebook spends 6 . You can make benchmarks and say, are they solving the problem . They have to push 2 billion figure counts, facebook has fake accounts that they took down. Fake accounts. 2. 2 billion figure counts. Accounts. I think they got all of them, would be the line to use here. Givenssman mr. Speaker, the fact that these foreign agents, these foreign actors are turning people specifically by their race, but other economics , is facebook doing anything to gather information or to look at how specific groups are being targeted . If African Americans are being targeted for political misinformation, if whites that live in rural america, if they are being targeted for political misinformation, if people, based on their likes if you can gather information, if these foreign actors could gather information based on things they like, say that you were white and lived in rural america, and you liked one american news, and these other things, into may be more likely to believe in these sorts of conspiracy theories, are you sure some of the things people are sharing on your platform, the likes and dislikes, are not being used as part of that scheme as well . Could you answer both of those . Guest yes, congressman, thank you for the question. There are, broadly speaking, two things that we do. One is trainings and tools to help people, especially those who might be most at risk, recognize ways to keep themselves safe from everything from hacking, thats scams and other abuse. Separately, whenever we remove our,ence operations under what we call coordinated inauthentic behavior, we have removed more than 50 such networks in the past year. Every time we do that, we are public about it because you want to expose what we are seeing. We even include examples in our post saying, here is the network, it was in this country, it was targeting people in this other country, examples of the types of posts they were putting on their pages. Them or we can shed light on this, the more we will be able to stop this. Congressman if people are being , targeted specifically if they specifically targeted because of a Certain Television or news programming they like, africanamericans specifically targeted because russian actors may think daily politics,in way in dont you think that information ought to be analyzed more closely instead of relying on, just using it to the user to be a but to figure all this out, especially when people work on hours and may only have time to digest what they immediately read, and it may not have an opportunity to go back in and analyze something so deeply as far as what youre saying . Guest congressman, i appreciate that. I will say, attribution is complicated and understanding the intent behind some of these operations is complicated. We think the best way to do that is to make them public. We dont just do this ourselves, we work handinhand with academics and security firms who are studying these types of things so that they can see, and they will sometimes say, as we take down a network, we have done this in collaboration or conversation with, and we will name the group. There are groups who can look at this and together hopefully shine light on with actors are and why they are doing what theyre doing. Congressman thank you. I yield back. Schakowsky i recognize the congressman for five minutes. Congressman thank you madam chair. The key for very important hearing today. Thank you for our witnesses for. Before us. It is important for americans to get this information. In 2018 experts estimated that criminals were successful in stealing 37 billion from americans through different scams in the internet, Identity Theft friends, family abuse and imposter schemes. Last year in my district i had the federal trade commission and the i. R. S. Out for a senior event so that seniors could be educated on the threat of these scams and how to recognize, them. Or recover from congress recognizes many of these scams carried out through these manipulative and is able robocalls is able illegal robocalls. We had just signed the trace act, which i am very glad the president signed over the holiday. What i am glad we were able to get it done, i am still concerned about the ability of scammers who utilize new technologies and techniques like deep fakes and cheap fakes. Ms. Bickert it, i wanted to pick on you. I appreciate you being here today, especially since you are a little under the weather. I also appreciated reading your testimony last night, i found it very interesting and and lightning. As more and more seniors are going online and joining facebook to keep in contact with families and neighbors and friends, in your testimony, you walked us through facebook judge efforts to recognize misinformation, and what the company is doing to combat malicious actors using manipulative media. Anythingk doing specifically to protect seniors from being targeted on the platform or teaching them how to recognize fake accounts or scams . Guest thank you for the question. We are indeed. That includes both inperson trainings for seniors, which we have done and continue to do. We also have a guide that can be more broadly to stupid that is publicly available, a guide for seniors on the best way to keep themselves safe. More broadly, and as somebody who was a federal criminal prosecutor for 11 years looking at that behavior, this is something we take seriously across the board. We dont want anybody to be using facebook to scam somebody else. We look proactively for that sort of behavior and we remove it. Congressman a quick followup. Important. Is we have learned that seniors do not report things because they are afraid. I have been taken, i do want to tell my relatives or friends because they are a friend of losing what they might have, noticed on the money side, but how they can get out there. So i think it is important that we always think about our seniors. At the workshop we had in the district last year, the f. T. C. Stated that one of the best ways to combat scams is educate individuals on how to recognize illegal behavior so that they can turn that into educating their friends and neighbors. In addition to your private sector partnerships with facebook, would facebook be willing to partner with agencies like the f. T. C. To make sure the public is informed about scammers operating under platform . Guest congressman, i am very happy to follow up on all of that. I think it is important for. The public to understand the tools available to keep them safe online. Ms. Donovan we should also consider the ways people are targeted by age, reverse mortgage scams, retirement funding scams, Fake Health Care supplements, will you do retire, it becomes very confusing. You are looking for information, and if you are looking primarily on facebook and posting about it, you might be targeted by the advertising system itself. So even if you are not informationseeking, facebooks algorithms and advertising are giving other third parties information and then serving advertising to seniors. So it is a persistent problem. Congressman thank you. Again, ms. Bickert, if i could follow up quickly with my remaining 30 seconds, many of the scammers look for ways to get around facebooks policy, including through the refinement after village and techniques. Is facebook dedicating resources to proactively combat scams, instead of reacting after the fact . Guest yes, congressman. We are. Overseeing content policy at facebook for about seven years now, and in that time, i would say that would say that we have gone from being primarily reactive in the way we enforce our policies, to primarily proactive. We are really going after abusive content and trying to find it. Be great ourselves based on how much we are finding before people reported to us. We are now publishing reports to that effect. Congressman my time has expired. I yield back. Chairwoman schakowsky budget too many yields back and i recognize mr. Ohalloran for five minutes. Congressman thank you, chairwoman, for holding this important and timely meeting in todays hearing. I echo the concerns of my colleagues. The types of deceptive online practices that have and discuss today are deeply troubling. Have continually stressed that the top priority for congress should be securing our u. S. Elections. We see dangerous consequences if the right tools are not in place to prevent the spread of misinformation online. This is a National Security concerns. As a former Law Enforcement officer i understand laws can be meaningless if they are not enforced. I look forward to hearing more from our witnesses about the f. T. C. s capability and resources to combat these deceptive online practices. Dr. Donovan, in your testimony, you say that regulatory guardrails are needed to protect users from being misled online. I share your concerns about deception and manipulation online, including the rise in use of dark patterns. Deep fakes and other kinds of bad practices that can harm consumers. Can you explain in more detail, what sort of regulatory guardrails are necessary to prevent these instances . Guest i will going to one very briefly. Is, ifthe Big Questions i post something online that is not an advertisement, i am just trying to inform my known network, the problem is not necessarily always that there is a piece of fake content out there, the problem is the scale. Being able to reach millions, right. 2010, 2011, we lauded that as a virtual platforms. It emboldened many of our important social movements and raced some incredibly important issues raised some incredibly important issues. But it was not false information meant to deceive people or siphon money out of other groups. At that time, too, you were not donations, it was much harder to create networks of fake accounts and pretend to be an entire constituency. So when i talk about regulatory guardrails you have to think about distribution differently than we think about the content. We can also assuage the fears we have about freedom of expression by looking at, what are the mechanisms in which people can break out of their known networks . Is it advertising, the use of fake accounts . How are people going viral, how our posts or information going viral . The other thing i would like to know from the government perspective is, does the f. T. C. Have enough insight into platforms to monitor that, to understand that . If they dont know why and how tens of millions of dollars are being siphoned out of trump campaign, then that is also another problem. We have to think about what is transparency, what does auditing look like, in a meaningful way. Congressman you believe then that the f. T. C. Has adequate authority under section v of the f. T. C. Act to take individuals and Companies Engaged in Deceptive Behavior and practices online . I want to point out a wall street journal report that said that of 200 something million fines, they have collected, they are on the collected about 7,000 since 2015. So. Guest wow. I think you do have to look closer at what the f. T. C. Has access to and how they can make that information actionable. For example, proving there is substantial injury. If only one group has access to the unknown cost or knows the scam, than we have to be a way to expedite the transfer of data in the investigation in such a way that we are not relying on journalists or researchers, or Civil Society organizations to investigate. I think the investigatory powers of the f. T. C. Have to also include assessing substantial injuries. Congressman thank you, dr. Mr. Harris, do you believe the agency has enough resources to responsibly, swiftly and appropriately address the issues . I just want to point out, we flatlin on them on the time. On the other side, the industry continues to expand at exponential rates. Guest i think that issue your pointing to, the problem creating aspects of the technology industry, because they operate at exponential scales, creates exponential issues, harms, problems, scams, etc. So how do you have a small body was such a large capacity . This is what i am thinking about . , how can have a digital update for all of our different agencies which already have jurisdiction over things like Public Health, and have them ask the questions, but that are forced upon the Technology Companies to use their resources to cultivate, report back, set the goals of what they will do in the next quarter. Congressman thank you mr. Harris. I yield. Chairwoman schakowsky the chair recognizes mr. Carter for five minutes. Congressman thank you, madam chair. Thank all of you for being here. This is an extremely important to all of our citizens. Saying, when we talk about deep fakes and cheap fakes, to me that is somewhat black and white. I could understand it. Mr. Hurwitz, when we talk about dark patterns, i think that is more gray in my mind. , i was a retailer for many years and i grew up in the south. We had a Grocery Store chain, some of you may be familiar with, the piggly wiggly. I always heard that the way they got their name, and i tried to fact check this, i heard they got their name because they arranged their stores because when you went in, you had to wiggle all the way around before you could get back out so you could buy more things. It was like a pic we going through the farmyard or something. That is marketing. Another example is, all of us go to the Grocery Store. When you are in the checkout line, you have all these things up there that theyre trying to get you to buy that are not necessarily you could argue that they are impulse items but you could also make the argument that when you get home you say, geez, i wish i would have gotten that at the Grocery Store. I wish i wouldve gone these batteries or bandaids, or whatever. How do you differentiate between what is harmful and what is beneficial . Guest great question. Because it is gray. As i said previously, dark patterns, the term itself is intended to make us think about, this is dark. There are clear categories. Clear lies, they are false statements where we are talking about classic deception. But when talking about his rural nudges, it becomes more talking about behavioral nudges, it becomes more difficult. Academics have studied it for decades. It is hard to predict when they l be effective and went and when they will not. There has to be proof that it is material to consumer harm. If we do not have a demonstrable harm requirement or causal connection there, position is important to any legal claim, if you dont have the facts, you are in a dark water as far as due process. Congressman so do you think we should be instructing the f. T. C. To conduct research on this, as to what is going on here . Guest i think more information is good information. The f. T. C. Is conducting some hearings already. I think greater investigation is very powerful both so that the f. T. C. Understands what they should be doing so they can use the information to establish rules. Materiality is difficult to establish, so the f. T. C. Can issue a rule, a process that makes it easier to substantiate enforcement action subsequently. And to respond to a previous question, to the extent one of the f. T. C. s core powers, even if it lacks enforcement authority, is to report to this body and say, we are seeing this and it is problematic, we dont have the authority, can you do something about it . And perhaps this body will take direct action, or perhaps the platforms and other entities. Ill say, wow, the jig is up we should change our practices before congress does something that could be even more detrimental to us. Congressman did you have something . Guest yes, i have also studied this topic for more than a decade. What is different about this . You have the supermarket aisle, the last minute purchase items. There are two distinctives that are different. The first is that this is infrastructure we live by. You talk about children waking up in the morning and have autoplay, that is not like the supermarket where i okeechobee go, and i am at the very end of it where i owe occasionally go and i have made purchases and i am at the end of it. That is just marketing. In this case, we have children spending 10 hours a day, at the supermarket, your spending 10 hours a day, imagine, and you wake up in the supermarket. There is a degree of intimacy and scope in our lives. Second thing, the degree of asymmetry between the persuader and the persuadee. In this case, you have someone who knows more about marketing, always arranging the shelf spaces, things at the top but i level and others at the bottom level. In the case of technology, we have a supercomputer pointed out vastbrain using those resources of 2. 7 billion peoples behavior to calculate the perfect thing to show you next, and to not be discriminate about whether it is good for you, whether it is true, trustworthy or credible. So it knows more about your weaknesses when you know about yourself. The degree of asymmetry is far beyond anything we have experienced. Congressman you want the federal government to control that . Guest i think we should ask questions about whether that degree of asymmetry, about intimate aspects of your weaknesses, and if the Business Model is to exploit that. It is different when they use it for a forprofit advertising Business Model. The challenge can also go the other way, it can be used to a strength. Mr. Harris used an example earlier of what if autoplay is shifting us towards conspiracy theories . That is a dark pattern. What if instead it was using it was shifting us to greater education . If we say autoplay is bad, then we are taking both those options off the table. It can be used for good. The question you asked about how we differentiate between good uses and bad, that is the question. Congressman thank you madam chair. I yield back. Chairwoman schakowsky is recognized for five minutes. Congressman thank you madam chair. Thank you for holding this very important hearing. Unfortunately, i think most americans dont understand how important this is to every single one of us, especially to our children and future generations. There is an app, tiktok. Five years ago, it was reported that the Parent Company of the Popular Video sharing up tiktok, may have built a deep fake maker. Though there is no indication tot tictoc dish intends introduce this feature, a platform that is so popular with kids, it raises a number of troubling questions. My question to you mr. Harris, in your testimony, you discussed at length the multitude of ways children are harmed by new technology. Can you talk about why this may be concerning . Guest thank you for the question. Deep fakes is a really complex issue. I think if you look at how other governments are responding to this, i dont me to look at china for legal guidance, but they have seen this as so threatening to their society, the fabric of truth and trust this society, that if you post a deep fake without labeling it as a deep fake you can actually go to jail. Not saying that if you post it, you go to jail, but if you posted without labeling it, you go to jail. Imagine a world where Facebook Says, if you post a deep fake without labeling it, we suspend your account for 24 hours, and label your accounts to other people who see your account congressman hold on a second. My colleague on the other side of the aisle just warned, you want to have the government control this . You just give an example where private industry could in fact create deterrence to bad behavior. Not the government, but actual industry. Ok, go ahead. Guest thats right. That is the point, instead of using this a. I. Whackamoles is, how many engineers at facebook, 22 languages in india where there was an election last year. They are controlling the information infrastructure, not just for this country but for every country. And they dont speak the languages of the country they operate in. They are automating that. Instead of trying to use a. I. , where they are missing everything, they have created a digital frankenstein where there is far more content, advertising, variations of text, lies, etc. , then they have the capacity to deal with. You cannot create problems with beyond the scope of your ability to address this. It would be creating Nuclear Power plants everywhere without having a plan for security. Congressman getting back to your example of where industry could dust for example, Facebook Says they will suspend your comfort and for hours, with all due respect, in that example, facebook might lose a bit of revenue as well as the person they are trying to deter from bad action is likely going to lose revenue as well, correct . Guest correct. Maybe that is unacceptable cost. Congressman maybe it is acceptable when you look at it intellectually and honestly, but when you look at it from whether or not private industry will take it upon themselves to actually impact their shareholders revenue, that is where government has a place and space to get involved in say, proper actions and reactions need to be put in place so that people can understand that you cant and you shouldnt just look at this from a profit centered motive, because in the world, sometimes negative actions are more profitable for somebody out there than positive good actions. That is one of the things that is unfortunate. You talk about languages around the world, but the number one target, in my opinion, for these bad actions, for both financial gain and also the tearing down of the fabric of the democracy of the greatest nation of the planet, the United States, is the United States. We are the biggest targets for various reasons. Two main reasons is because we are supposed to be the shining light on the hill for the rest of the world of what a good moccasin should be like. Secondly, we are by far and away the largest economy, the biggest Consumer Group of folks on the planet. So therefore, there is a motive for people to focus on profit and focus on their negative, bad intentions august our interests, the interests of the American People. Is that accurate . Guest that is exactly right. This is a National Security issue. The polarization dynamics are accelerating towards civil war levels. Civil war is coming. What colligan mind says, if you can make it trend one colleague of mine says, if you can make it trend, you can make it true. You can manipulate architecture. We are subsidizing our own selfdestruction if the government does not say these things can be done. Congressman iran out of time. I wish i had more time. Thank you. Chairwoman schakowsky the gentleman yield back and i recognize mr. Soto for five minutes. Congressman thank you, madam chair. It has been my experience that lies can travel faster on the internet than the speed of light, while the truth goes at a snails pace. I suppose that is because of the algorithms we see. I want to start with deep fakes and sheep fakes. We know that the definition of public figures requires actual malice. Some of these just appear to be malicious on their face. I appreciate the labeling, ms. Bickert, that facebook is doing now. That is something we were pondering in our office as well. But why wouldnt facebook simply take down the fake pelosi video . Guest thank you for the question. Give people is to more information so that if something will be in the public discourse, they will know how to assess it, how to contextualize it. That is why we work with Fact Checkers. I will say that in the past six months, it is feedback from academics and Civil Society groups that has led us to come up with stronger warning screens. Congressman would that be labeled under your current policy now as false that video . Guest which video . Congressman the fake pelosi video would it not be labeled as false under your policies . Guest yes, and it was labeled at false at the time. We think we could have gone back to Fact Checkers faster. We think a label we could have put on it could have been more clear. We know have the label for something that has been rated false, you have to click through rate, so it actually obscure the image and says false information, and says, this has been rated false by Fact Checkers. You click on it and see information from the Fact Checking source. Congressman in 2016, there was a fake trump rally put together by russians in florida, complete with Hillary Clinton in a prison and a fake bill clinton. Rally be created today through facebook in the United States by the russians under our existing technology . Guest the network that created that was fake and in authentic, and we removed it. We were slow to find it. I think our enforcement has gotten a lot better. As a data point for that, in 2016, we removed one such network. This past year, we removed more than 50 networks. That is a global number, all over the world, but these are organizations that are using networks of accounts, some fake, some real, in an attempt to obscure who they are or push false information. Congressman could it happen again right now . Guest our enforcement is not perfect however, we have put made huge strides shown by a dramatic increase in the number of networks we have removed. I will say, we do it not just by ourselves, but we work with security firms and academics who are studying this to make sure we are staying on top of it. Congressman what do you think facebooks duty is, as well as other social media platforms, to prevent the spread of lies across the media . Guest could you repeat that. Congressman what do you think facebook and other social platforms duty is to prevent the spread of lies across the internet . Guest i can speak for facebook. We can. Think it is important for people to connect safely and with authentic information. My team is responsible for both. Our approach to misinformation where we try to get people label content that is false and get them accurate information. Then there is everything we also do to remove abusive content that violates our standards. Congressman thank you ms. Bickert at. Dr. Donovan, i saw you reacting to the fake trump rally aspect. Good that still happen now under existing safeguards could it happen . Guest yeah. The reason it can still happen is because the platforms openness is now turning into a bit of a vulnerability for the rest of society. What is dangerous about event like that is, the kind of research we do, we are often trying to understand, what is happening online, and what happens when the interaction between when people start to be mobilized and starts to show up places, that is on order of magnitude much more dangerous. Congressman what do you think we should be doing as government to help support this . Guest there are ways in which i , particularlysing features,tures, group there has to be added transparency about who, what, when and where those events are being organized by. There have been instances in facebook very recently where they have added transparency pages, but it is not always clear to the user who is behind what page and for what reason they are launching a protest. What is dangerous is that actual constituents show up, real people show up as fodder for this. So we have to be really careful that they dont stage different parties, like they did in texas across the street from one another at the same time. We dont want to have manipulation that creates this serious problem for Law Enforcement as well as others in the area. Congressman thanks. Y time has expired chairwoman schakowsky i know recognize the congresswoman for five minutes. Congresswoman thank you very much, madam chair. I appreciate the witnesses here today, especially on this really important issue. Introduced a blockchain motion for congresswoman guthrie to to convenedepartment a group of stakeholders to deploy something on blockchain. Blockchain technologies could have interesting implications in the communication space, including new ways of Identity Verification. This technology is unique in that it can help distinction between credible and noncredible news sources in a decentralized fashion, rather than relying on one company or organization to serve as the gatekeeper. I would like i have a lot of questions i would like six it access to. Mr. Donovan, do you see value in promoting in partial, decentralized methods of Identity Verification as a tool to combat the spread of misinformation . Guest i think in limited cases, yes. Especially in purchasing of advertising, which is allowing you to break out of your known networks and reach other people, especially if those advertising features allow you to target very specific groups. I am interested in learning more about this consensus definition, because i think it might help us understand what is a social Media Company, how do we define their broadcast mechanisms, how do we define them related to the Media Company as well as the other kind of product they build. I think it would also get us a lot further in understanding what it is we say when we say deep fakes or even a. I. Congresswoman the European Commission was silly announced it would be supporting research of advanced blockchain technologies,s support of a more accurate online news environment. Sufficient. R no is to you believe the u. S. Should be keeping pace with europe, yes or no, as far as blockchain. Do you think the European Commission is supporting research to advance Blockchain Technology in support of a more accurate online news, do you believe the u. S. Should be keeping pace with europe regarding this . Guest although this is not my area, i think research is a good thing. Congresswoman ok. Dr. Donovan. Guest more research could help us understand this better. Congresswoman mr. Hurwitz. Guest around the world, many are out facing us on blockchain. Congresswoman mr. Harris. Guest it is not my area but i know that china is working on a decentralized currency and could get all countries which are in dating them to their infrastructure with their huge belt and what plan. That is a major National Security threat and it would change the entire order. More work has to be done in the u. S. To protect against china gating currency china getting currency and changing the worlds currency. Congresswoman it is an anticipated fact by American International it is an undisputed fact by american intelligence agencies that russia interfered in our 2016 campaign. American voters in 2020 will once again be exposed to is, falsehood and misinformation. I was glad to see the recent funding bill included Election Security grants, but this is on the of a much larger solution to. Rotect the most fundamental part of our democracy social Media Companies did you dig clear actions against foreign interference in our elections. How have the resen recent electn evolved . Strategies involve guest i am not an expert, but i would say that we need a Public Awareness campaign to inaugurate the public. Think of it as a cultural vaccine. There is precedent for this. In the 1940s, we had the committee for national morale, and the institute began analysis that did a domestic Awareness Campaign about the threat of fascist propaganda. You have probably seen the videos from the 1947, it was called dont be a sucker. It had us looking at a guy spouting fascist propaganda, he starts to not, than someone taps him on the shoulder and says, son, that is propaganda, and here is how to spot it. This is a threat to our country. We could have another Public Awareness campaign now and have the help of Technology Companies to collectively use their technology to distribute the inoculation campaign. Congresswoman the rest of the panel, do you agree with mr. Harris on this, to have this Public Awareness campaign . Note thatadly, i will there runs the risk of being called a dark pattern if the platforms are starting to label certain content in certain ways. So there is a crosscurrents to our discussion to note. Congresswoman if we dont come to any solutions now i appreciate it. I have run out of time. Guest i would point to the ads library we have in place the past few years that has brought an unprecedented level of openness to political advertising, so people can now see who is behind and add, paid for difficult for most people out there to do that unless it is right in front of them. I went as happening but i think we should have much more exposure about this. Thank you. Recognizeowsky i now our next speaker for five minutes. Your testimonies have been very helpful and i appreciate it. With big power comes big responsibility. I am disappointed that this book is not really stepped up to that responsibility. A letterune has sent to mr. Zuckerberg and i was joined by nearly all the democrats on the medic. In this letter, we noted that we are concerned about the potential comfort of conflict of interest between pittsburghs bottomline and addressing misinformation on its platform. This is monetization policy states that they may face reduced or restricted monetization. It is troubling that your policy does not simply been misinformation. If we see somebody intentionally sharing this information, they will lose the ability to monetize. The response i received from facebook failed to answer many of my questions. I was a debut chance to answer today. Have any project managers does facebook employee whose fulltime job it is to address misinformation . I can tell you that across my team, or engineering teams and their content review teams, this is something that is a priority. Building this network has taken the efforts of a number of people across the country. Does that include Software Engineers . Ms. Bickert it does. You need to have infrastructure. Get things over to the Fact Checking organization. I will ask you to provide that information. Identify misinformation. Ms. Bickert we are happy to try to follow up. Fromonavan on average, the time content is posted on facebooks platform, how long does it take this book to fight suspicious content . Take actionbook to once the review is completed . We actually allow Fact Checking organizations to proactively rate content they see on facebook. If they read something proactively, it happens instantly. We also use technology to fly content to them. We often see they will rated very likely. Rate it very quickly. Im concerned that this book is not prepared to address ms. Misinformation on this platform in advance of this platform. But you commit to having a for combatingdit the spread of disinformation on its platform and the results of this audit to be made available to the public . Very happy we are to as any questions about how we do what we do. We think transparency is important. We are to follow up with any suggestions you may have. I would request a thirdparty audit. The civilalking about rights audit. Ms. Bickert we are happy to follow up with any specific suggestions. Mr. Harris the thirdparty fact massivelyervices are understaffed, underfunded and a lot of people are dropping out of the program. The amount of information flowing through the channel is far beyond their capacity to respond. Fact checking is not the relevant issue. If you look at the clearest evidence of this, s own employees wrote a letter to Mark Zuckerberg say you are undermining your our election with your policy. That says it all to me. Those people closest to the problem, they understand how bad the issue is, we are on the outside. It is like they are exxon but they also own the satellite that was show us how much pollution there is. We would not know from the outside. We can only trust people on the inside. They are still not up to their policy. Thank you, i yield back. I recognize congresswoman dingle. This is a subject that really matters to me. In the past, we treated with little protections people have online as something that is separate from those we have in our daytoday lives. The line between what happens online and offline is virtually nonexistent. Gone are the days when we can separate one from the other. Millions of americans have been affected by data breaches and privacy abuses. The numbers are so large that you cant even wrap your head around them. I have talked to members here and they dont even at times understand what has happened or how people have collected data about this. The resources are to help people protect themselves. What is really happening is that the cost of failure to protect Sensitive Information is being pushed on millions of people who are being breached and not trying to do anything. It is a market externality. That is where the government must step in. Go to the pharmacy to fill up a prescription. You assume the medicine you will get will be said, it will not kill you. If you go outside, you assume the air you breathe is going to be safe or we are trying to make it that way. That is because we have laws that protect people from a long list of known market externality. The burden is not placed on their ability to find out. Is the air you are breathing clean . Any differentbe for market externalities that are digital. I have sent a letter to facebook today that has a lot of questions that did not lend themselves to answers here. I hope they will be answered. I hope to get yes or no answers from the panel on the following question. Thank you for being or even though you are sick. Mr. Harris i dont know about that specific one but the entire surveillance capital system produces vast farms that are all on the Balance Sheet of society. It is the minute version of elections, the breakdown of polarization. Based on the economic definition of externality. It can be problematic. Ms. Bickert i am not an economist but we think user consent is very important. Second question, yes or no, do you believe that have a 400 million pieces of personally identifiable information made public including passport numbers, names, addresses and Payment Information is a market externality . Mr. Harris i dont know if that was specifically qualify but it is deeply alarming. Same answer. Dr. Donavan agreed. Ms. Bickert same answer. Mr. Hurwitz same answer previously. Do you believe that having 148 million individuals identifiable information including credit cards, drivers license and social early numbers made public is a market externality marked externality . It is like an oil spill. Same answer. I would categorize it as an extra now it. You dont think we have to protect people from that . Mr. Harris that is not what i am saying. I have an economics background. Dr. Donavan it is an incredibly important problem. I would echo dr. Donavan. Do you believe having the data of 87 million users taken and used for nefarious clinical purposes is a market externality . Mr. Harris the same answer as before. If i break into your house and sell stuff on the black market, that is not annexed finale but it is a problem. Dr. Donavan it was facilitated by the features built into the platform. It is a huge problem. Ms. Bickert we think that user control and consent is very important. Do you believe that simply asking lever to get to please delete it is an appropriate response . Mr. Harris it is very hard to enforce that. You the data is out there, need to solve the problem on the front end. Ms. Bickert we think it is very important to give people control over the data. The gentle moment gentlewoman yields and i recognize myself for five minutes. Thank you to the chairwoman in her absence and thank you to the panelists. This is a vitally important conversation were having. Policyogy is outpacing and the people. We are feeling the impact on our Mental Health and our economy. We are feeling it in our form of government. This is a very important conversation. I would like to start with a few questions that are often dark pattern on those issues but really do deal with the idea of deceptive and manipulative practices. It is just a basic question. It is really surrounding the platforms that we have and the ability for people with disabilities to use them. Our each of you or any of you familiar with the term universal design . Mr. Harris daily. Mr. Hurwitz mr. Harris vaguely. Dr. Donavan vaguely. Mr. Harris vaguely. Mr. Hurwitz vaguely. There were a lot of vaguelys. Toould like to turn my time a discussion about dark patterns. Congress,le member of virtually everyone has been affected by this in some respect. Many are manipulated into purchasing products they dont need and providing Sensitive Information. Many of us are targeted. While the failure to address dark patterns harms individuals, one of the areas of deeper concern to me is the challenge of us as a society as a whole. Was adge analytica scandal. It was not just an individual that was harmed, it was our society. We see some of the remnants of it to this day. I heard someone say to me yesterday that they hope to this hearing was not just a hearing but a real wakeup call. A wakeup call to our country. My first question is to mr. Harris. Do you believe the oversight of dark patterns and oversight of manipulative practices are wellsuited to industry selfregulation . Mr. Harris absolutely not. I would like to follow up with ms. Bickert. Aes facebook have responsibility to develop interfaces that are transparent and fair to its users . Ms. Bickert we definitely want that. Yes, i think we are working on new ways to be transparent all the time. 230 provideion immunity to facebook over these issues . Ms. Bickert section 230 is an important part of my team being able to do it we do. It gives our team the ability to proactively look for abuse. Does it provide immunity . Yes. Section 230 does provide certain protections. The most important from my standpoint is to go after abuse on the platform but separately, it is also an important use them for people who internet to be able to post a platforms like facebook. One of my concerns for asking that question is we are having a Big Conversation about the balance of freedom of speech in addition to the ability for people to yell fire in a crowded place. I am going to turn it back to mr. Harris. You think we in congress can develop a more as a response to the concerning trends on the internet . You mentioned a digital update of federal agencies. And you talk about that . The problem of humanity is we have paleolithic emotions and accelerating godlike technology. Aen your Steering Wheel goes like youre behind your technology, the system crashes. Behind your technology, the system crashes. Youy category of society say where do we have jurisdiction in these areas . Plan withme up with a where the regulations are going to be. That is the only way i can see scaling this without creating a whole new digital federal agency that will be way behind these issues. I am running out of time. I other question was going to be to ms. Bickert about the role of government. I would like to have a conversation with you about what you see as the role of government against selfregulation and how we can make something happen here. The bigger concern is for us to make sure we are looking at this as in david an individual level but also as a society. I recognize the gentlewoman from new york, ms. Clark. Rep. Clark . Deepfakes currently pose a significant and unprecedented threat. Now more than ever, we need to prepare for the possibility that foreign adversaries will use deepfakes to spread disinformation in our election. Notification should begin to congress a brush or china seeks to do this. Deepfakes have been used to harm individual americans. We have already seen instances of womens images being superimposed on fake pornographic videos. These tools become more ordable and acceptable accessible. We can expect deepfakes to affect credit markets and incite violence. Actdeepfakes accountability requires creators to label deepfakes as altered content. Betweenres cooperation the government and private sector to develop detection technology. I am no working on a second bill to specifically address how Online Platforms deal with deepfake content. Dr. Donavan . Deepfakes. Talkedten costed about deepfakes but can you talk about the National Security applications of cheapfakes such as the policy video pelosi video . Dr. Donavan one of the most effective political uses of a cheap fake is to shift the entire media narrative toward false claims. Particularly, what we saw last week with the biden video is concerning. You have hundreds of newsrooms kick into gear to dispute something, a video and platforms have allowed it to scale to a level where the public is curious and are looking for that are coming into contact with other nefarious actors and networks. What would you say can be done by governments counteract the threat . Government to counteract the threat portion marked with you to have some to counteract the threat . Dr. Donavan we need some labels. I think the cost to journalism is very high. All of the energy and resources that go into tracking, mapping and getting Public Information out there, i think the Platform Companies can do a much better job of preventing that harm upfront by looking at content when it does seem to go wildly out of scale with the usual activity of an account. Proactively look at things. If you see an uptick of 500,000 views on something, maybe then is to be proactive content moderation. Facebook is a Founding Member of the deepfake moderation challenge. We also need to have a definition of what fake is. Also, a policy for which kind of fake videos are actually acceptable. One of the things i did was last summer. You informed congress that facebook is working on a precise of deepfake. Can you update us on those efforts in light of your announcement yesterday . How do you intend to between deepfakes made by hollywood for entertainment and malicious ones . Thank you for the question. The policy we put on yesterday mostsigned to address the sophisticated types of media. This fits within the definition of what many academics would call deepfakes. We do think it is useful to work with others in the industry to actually have common definitions so we are all talking about the same thing. Those are conversations we have been a part of in the past six months. We will continue to be a part of those. We are hoping that working together with industry and other stakeholders will help us come up with a copy of the definition. Withould this come up the definition. The take or the subject matter be the focus . It is often different to tell intent with many different types of abuse. That is why if you look at our policy definition, it does not focus on intent as what the effect would be on the viewer. Thank you very much. I dont back. Thank you for allowing my participation today. Rep. Schakowsky that concludes the questioning. I have things that i want to put and may theord Ranking Member does as well. I did want to make an ending comment. I would welcome her to do the same as she wishes. We had a discussion that took us to the Grocery Store. We are now in this new world we are discussing that is hugely bigger when we talk about facebook. As you say in your testimony, facebook is a community of more than 2 billion people spanning countries, cultures and languages across the globe. Is now such an incredible and justified distrust of how we are being protected. We know in the physical world, we do have laws that apply and that expectations of consumers are that those will be somehow there to protect us. In fact, they are not. We live in the Virtual World, the digital world, in a place of selfregulation. It seems that has not satisfied expectations correctly. Institutions, even n we have the authorities the authority to do what we need to do. We dont have a regulatory to i hopeall that in a bipartisan way, we can think about. It may include things like the kinds of audits that you were talking about, mr. Harris. They would not necessarily laws butw regulatory we may need to. Date taket is the away today. Communities that than any country in the entire world that are making decisions for the rest of us and we know that we have been , that the government of the United States of america does need to respond. That is my take away from this hearing. I appreciate hearing from the Ranking Member. I think the chair and i think everyone for being here. I think it is important that we all become more educated. I wanted to bring to everyones attention that the ftc is holding a hearing on january 20 regarding voice cloning. I think it is important that all of us are participating, becoming better educated and helping make sure that we take steps as we move forward. Clearly, this is a new era. On one hand, we can celebrate that america has led the world in innovation and technology and improving our lives in many ways. There is also this other side that we need to be looking at and making sure we are taking the appropriate steps to keep people safe and secure. We will continue this important discussion. Thank you. I would like to insert into i seek unanimous consent to enter the following record, ainto the the sag. Om a letter from our street, a paper written by Jeffrey Westling of the our street institute. Facebook, i seek unanimous consent. Without objection and so ordered. Think all of our witnesses today. We had good participation from our members despite the fact that there were other hearings going on. I remind members that they have 10 Business Days to submit additional questions for the record. To be answered by the witnesses and hopefully in a reasonably short time we hope they will be prompt answers. At this time, the subcommittee is adjourned. Thursday, on cspan, the housemates at 10 00 a. M. Eastern followed by legislative meetings at noon. Useress is calling for the of limited military action from the president against iran. President trump will hold a rally in toledo, ohio as part of his 2020 be election campaign. On cspan3, a look at the effort to secure voting systems ahead of the 2020 election. After a recent Iranian Missile attack on u. S. Forces in iraq, President Trump gave an address earlier today from the white house about the situation and how the u. S. Was planning to respond
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