Transcripts For CSPAN Hearing On Online Foreign Influence Operations 20240712

Free and fair vote. We are holding this hearing and we engage regularly with social Media Companies because they are best positioned to sound the alarm if and when another external actor attempts to interfere. First, because their technical capacity and security background and allows them to protect malicious activity on their platforms, and make attributions to technical indicators that are available only to the companies themselves. And second, because we cannot have complete confidence that the white house will allow the Intelligence Community to look fully and properly inform congress, if there is a foreign interference, especially if the interference appears to assist the president s reelection. That is a dangerous state of affairs, but nonetheless it reflects the reality and why theres hearing is so important. Witnesses, as you described, a lot has changed. In many ways we are better prepared today than we were four years ago. Each of your companies have taken significant steps and have invested resources to detect coordinated and authentic behavior and foreign interference. While there cannot be a guarantee, it would be more difficult for russia or another adversary to run the same 2016 playbook undetected. The facebook and twitter bitterly update the public, the committee and congress on their findings, as they identify interrupt enters rep coordinated behavior and foreign interference affecting the u. S. And other nations globally. U. S. Government agencies, with the responsibility to unearth interference, coordinate and meet ray gurley with Technology Companies and with us. Themselves have established mechanisms to share information and indicators, both among themselves and smaller industry peers. And researchers have also taken up the mantle, to apply their skills and knowledge to detecting and analyzing malicious networks and comprehensive public reports. These are positive developments, but as i look across the landscape, i cannot say that i am confident that the 2020 election will be free of interference by malicious actors, foreign or domestic, who aspired to weaponize at your platforms to divide americans and picked us against one another, and weaken our democracy. We are learning that our adversaries are also learning as honestot only russia, investments in the ira and hacking and dumping campaign aimed at the Clinton Campaign paid off and states helping to elect the kremlins favorite candidate and wide into between americans. The lesson being, influence operations on social media are cheap and effective. And attribution to specific bad actors is not always a straightforward. In march, facebook and twitter took down a network comprised of nigerian individuals operating out of west africa, who were acting essentially as cutouts for ira length parties in russia. This network was tasked with targeting u. S. Audiences with race oriented content, echoes of 2016, but also a sign of new tactics. And this week, we saw the release of a graphic report detailing a substantial network of accounts attribute into russia, where researchers in which the researchers dubbed secondary infection. While Neither Network succeeded on the scale of the 2016 efforts, generating viral content, they showed that russian linked actors remain determined with a and malicious social media activity targeting u. S. Politics. Secondary infections Operational Security was reportedly very good. And their deployment of convincing forgeries should worry us all. Other countries have watched and learned from russia and in the mail will seek to replicate them. The takedowns of coordinated behavior have demonstrated china, iran and other nations are using similar techniques aimed at international and domestic audiences, and they may choose to ramp up foreign influence operations in the future. The question is, will your companies be able to keep up . Technology has evolved, including the rapid advent of deepfake technology, the subject of a hearing by the Committee Last year. Deepfakes and manipulated media could be weaponized by malicious byors to up and an election laundering false images into the information stream of social media and traditional media outlets. While age of your platforms has begun to it adopt policies around deepfakes and manipulated media, it remains to be seen whether they are sufficient to detect and remove malicious media at speed. Once a visceral First Impression has been made, even if proven false later, it is nearly impossible to repair the damage. I am also concerned because the nature of your platforms is to embrace and monetize virtuality. Sensational, the more divisive, the more shocking and emotionally charged, the faster it circulates. A Youtube Video can be booed can be viewed by millions in the span of hours. A policy that only identifies and acts upon misinformation, whether from a foreign or thomistic source, after millions only ale have seen it is partial response at best. I recognize that the scale of moderation is daunting and as we get closer to november the stakes will only grow. Make no mistake, foreign actors and president s alike are testing the limits of manipulated media right now. And finally, i am concerned because of an issue i raised in 2017, and repeatedly since. I am concerned about whether social media platforms, like youtube, facebook, and instagram and others, willingly or otherwise, will optimize for extreme content. These technologies are designed to engage users and keep them coming back, pushing us further apart and isolating americans into information silos. Ultimately, the best and only correct of measure to address the problem of misinformation and foreign interferences, ensuring that credible, verified information rises above the disinformation and falsehoods, whether about the location of polling places or the medical consensus surrounding covid19, it remains paramount that all sectors of our society, including Technology Companies toh us today, are postured disrupt those attempts to influence our political and societal discourse. Americans must decide american elections. With that, i want to thank and welcome our witnesses for joining us. We will proceed with a five minute Opening Statements going in alphabetical order. Nathaniel glacier, head of Security Policy at facebook is first. Then nick pickles from twitter. And finally, the director of Law Enforcement and Information Security at google. Mr. Glacier, we will begin with you. You are recognized for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Therman, members of committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you. I appreciate the opportunity to be her virtually. I am the head of Security Policy at facebook. My work is focused on addressing the adversarial threats we face every day to the security and integrity of our products and services. I have a background in Computer Science and law in before facebook i prosecuted cybercrime at the department of justice and i served as director of policy at the National Security council. These are incredibly challenging times. That is why it is more important than ever that people can have authentic conversations on are platforms about the issues that matter, whether it is covid19, racial and social justice, family and economic concerns or the upcoming elections. But we also know that malicious actors are working to interfere with these conversations, to exploit our societal divisions, to promote fraud, influence our elections, and delegitimize social protests. My team is built to stop these bad actors. And we are working tirelessly to do so. Facebook has made significant investments to protect the integrity of elections. We now have more than 35,000 people working on safety and security across the company. Nearly 40 teams focusing specifically on elections. And we are also partnering with federal and state governments, other tech companies, researchers and Civil Society groups to share information and to stop malicious actors. Over the past three years, we have worked to protect more than 200 elections around the world. We have learned lessons and we are applying them to protect the 2020 election. A variety of steps to support the security of the electoral process, including launching facebook protect, a program that helps to secure the accounts of elected officials, candidates and their staff. Increasing ad transparency. Investigating and stopping in authentic behavior. We have removed 50 separate networks in 2019 alone. So thatping posts, people understand where their news is coming from. Yesterday, we began walking ads in the u. S. From statecontrolled outlets to provide an extra layer of protection against foreign interfluence in the public debate ahead with the election. In addition, we know that misinformation and influence operations are at their most in information vacuums, so we combine our enforcement efforts with ensuring that people can access authentic, Accurate Information about major civic moments, like the Global Pandemic or voting. This is why we are creating a new Voter Information Center to fight disinformation and encourage people to vote, and to make sure they have accurate and uptodate information from their local, state and federal election authorities. Because authenticity is the cornerstone of our community, we have invested in combating in authentic behavior with coordinated networks. For example, we disabled approximately 1. 7 billion fake accounts between january and march of this year, over 99 of them we identified proactively before we received any report. A veryere removed within short time after they were created. We have also created tools to identify fake accounts targeting civic issues. In addition, so far this year we have taken down 18 coordinated networks seeking to manipulate public debate, including three networks originating from russia, two of them from iran, and two in the u. S. We shared information with thirdparty researchers to enable their own assessments and we release monthly reports to highlight actions we are taking. We have also been proactively hunting for bad actors trying to interfere with the important discussions about inequality happening around our nation. As part of the effort, we have removed isolated accounts seeking to impersonate activists, and two tied to hate groups. Also working to stop misinformation and harmful content related to the pandemic spreading on our platform. On facebook and instagram, we removed covid19 related misinformation that could contribute to harm, such as posts about fake tears. And we continue to work with our independent Fact Checking partners to debunk false claims and connect people with information from authoritative resources. We are proud of the product we have made to protect discourse on our platforms, but there is always more to do. We are up against determined adversaries and we will never be perfect, but we are committed to the vital work to stop bad actors and give people a voice. I look forward to answering your questions. Mr. Pickles, you are up. Members of the committee commit thinking for the opportunity to appear before you. Role is to serve the public conversation, never more important than in elections, the cornerstone across the globe. Our Service Gives people the ability to share what is happening and provides insight into our diverse perspective of Critical Issues in realtime. We are humbled by the way our platform is used by those seeking to speak out against injustice, to hold those in power accountable and to provide change. Interference in elections is real and evolving. Since 2016, we have made a number of investments to address challenges and we have taken lessons from the 2016 election, and those around the world. Im grateful for the opportunity to discuss our progress and i will begin by focusing on the policies, product changes and we have in place. Threatshas addressed to the integrity of elections. Under our civic and hungry policy, an individual may not use twitter to manipulate and interfere in elections or other civic protests. This includes posting or sharing content, or misleading people about when, where or how to bridge abate in a civic protest. We recently expanded this policy to include civic events, for example the census, in addition to elections. We prohibit the use of Twitter Services in a manner intended to artificially amplify or threat in organization. We prohibit fake accounts and those others. We prohibit trade secrets, or posts that could put people in harms way. In addition to the new rules, or advertising policies also play an important part in the protection of public conversation. Twitter does not allow political advertising. It represents an entirely new challenge in civic discourse, that the structure today may not be prepared to handle, particularly machinebased optimization like messaging and microtargeting. Secondly, twitter does not allow news media entities, controlled by state authorities, to be on twitter. This was taken in regard to russia, based on their activities during the 2016 election. Lester, we expanded the policy to cover all statecontrolled media entities globally come in addition to individuals who are affiliated with those organizations. While our policies are vital to protect the conversation, we also want to be proactive in helping people on twitter find credible information by providing them with additional context. This approach is informed by feedback by those people that use twitter. We opened up a Public Comment period and we heard two clear points. Twitter should not determine the length of tweets, a they should provide contextnd and they should provide context. We prioritized interventions regarding the information based on the highest potential for harm, and are currently focused on three areas of content. The manipulation media, elections and civic integrity, and covid19. Where it is not regard rules, and these three areas we may label tweets to help people come to their own views by providing additional content. These labels may link to curated set of tweets posted by people including factual statements, opinions and perspectives, and ongoing public conversation around the issue. We have apply these labels to thousands of tweets around the world, with these three policy areas. Finally, i want to outline how twitter is empowering the public. In 2018 launched a public archive of the material we had removed as part of our work to tackle platform manipulation. It is one of the resources used by experts around the world, now spanning 15 countries, including nine of media and millions of tweets. The use of the archive by stakeholders highlight the importantance of information sharing. It is critical in preventing hostile actors from interfering in public conversation. In certain circumstances, Government Agencies do have access to twitter and we are grateful for the continued partnership with the federal, state and local agencies, in particular the fbi and the u. S. Department of Homeland Securitys Election Task force. We also work in collaboration with the National Association of the secretary of state and the election directors. We also partner with Civic Alliance and National Voter registration to amplify critical content. We want people to have confidence in the integrity of information found on twitter, especially with respect information relevant to elections. We know that the threats and challenges are evolving and we continue to invest in our efforts to address these threats by hostile actors and hostile environments. We look forward to working with the committee on this vital issue. Shiff thank you. Members of the committee commit thinking for allow me to join you today. Director of Law Enforcement and Information Security at google. Google created its Search Engine in 1998 with a mission to organize the worlds information as weake it accessible. Cope with a Global Pandemic and are once again reminded of the injustices that continue to remain in our society, our role in helping people access information is more important than ever. Today, i will be focusing on three main areas. First, our efforts to combat election related interference. Second, how we are empowering people with authoritative information. And third, how we are improving transparency and accountability. I will start by highlighting our continued investigative and preventive work to combat election related interference. As we previously reported in the committee, our investigation into the 2016 elections found relatively little viable Foreign Government activity on our platform. Entering the midterms, we continued to improve our ability to detect and prevent election related threats. And engaged in information sharing in the private sector and the government. While we sell limited misconduct linked to statesponsored activity in the 2018 midterms, we continue to keep the public informed. We recently launched a quarterly bulletin to provide Additional Information about our findings concerning coordinated influence operations. This joins other public recording across products, as we shed light on what you are seeing. Looking ahead to the november covid19, we know that pandemic, widespread protests and other significant events can provide fodder for a nationstate dens information campaigns. We remain steadfast in our commitment to protecting our users. Have continued to improve the integrity of our products. Our approach is built on a framework of three strategies. Ourng quality count in ranking systems, giving users more context, and counteracting malicious actors. Ranking algorithms are an important tool in our fight against disinformation. Ranking elevates information that are her algorithms determine the most authoritative, above information that may be less reliable. Similarly, our work on youtube focuses on identifying and removing content that violates our policies and elevating authoritative content when users search for breaking news. At the same time, we find and limit the spread of borderline content that comes close, but just stops short of violating our policies. The work to protect google products is no small job, but it is important. We invest heavily in automated tools to tackle a broad set of malicious behaviors, and in people who review content and help improve these tools. We apply many of these strategies in response to the covid19 pandemic and have developed ways to connect users to authoritative government information. Similarly, we worked to remove misinformation that poses harm to people and undermine efforts to reduce infection rates. On you to come policies prohibit content that promotes medically unsubstantiated treatments or disputes the existence of covid19. We also reduce recommendations of borderline content. Third, google has made election advertising far more transparent. We not require advertisers purchasing u. S. Election and t verify ads to verify who they are in disclose who paid for the ad in the ad itself. We launched a report with a searchable and library as well. Microtargeting the election as was never allowed on google systems, but targeting election ads is no further limited to general geographic location, age, gender and context where the ad will appear. This aligns with practices in media such as tv, radio and print. Finally, this april we announced that we will extend Identity Verification to all advertisers on our platform with a rollout beginning the summer. This summer. We cannot do this important work alone. Preventing platform abuse, combating disinformation, and protecting elections requires concerted efforts and collaboration across the industry and with governments. We will continue to do our part, seek to improve and correct our mistakes and learn from them along the way. In order to better protect the collective digital ecosystem. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss these issues. Thank you to all of our witnesses for your statements. We when i begin the questions. And i will recognize myself to begin the questioning. If i could begin with a question for you, mr. Salgado. I think the conventional wisdom among observers of the tech sector, people in academia and others, is that google is probably the least transparent of the major Technology Companies, contrasting for example, contrasting for example twitters establishment of a database to make available to researchers of the public what it finds and turns of inauthentic activity on its platform. There is no such equivalent in terms of disclosures by google. Are you contemplating a change in terms of making Data Available to the public and researchers that would facilitate analyses of foreign ateven domestic efforts inauthentic content . How do you respond to the criticism that google is has essentially adopted a strategy of keeping its head down and avoiding attention to its platform . I certainly hope thats not the perception. If it is its a misperception written misperception. Particularly on youtube we have a transparency report the details quite a bit about the actions taken on videos, lots of statistics there that may be useful for Public Policymakers and the public researchers as well including on comments, not just videos. Fullerton tohed a be published quarterly that goes in to operations weve seen. We released a set a few weeks , so the transparency is important to us, the information sharing is important thomas and we have certainly engaged in the debate with Public Policymakers and the public on these important issues. Thes true we dont see volume the others in the industry say, we are talking about what it is we see and fighting it and taking it seriously. Would you be supportive of establishing a kind of database to share more data along those lines. Id have to understand about what it is. Weve done that with regards of advertisements. If you look at the ad transparency report you will see ads, the details of ads, the content of it, how much was paid , the penetration of those ads. So where we see our products deeply involved come weve done just that. If the focus is on youtube we can take it back and see if there is something useful in that arena. Can you tell us what you are seeing on a couple of issues that are of great , onern to us, the first is twitter for putting those labels on president ial tweets regarding absentee voting, but im concerned foreign powers may be amplifying that misinformation about whether voting by absentee is a safe or secure way to vote, are you seeing any mormon elation at the implication of that false information and are you seeing efforts by foreign visions aroundit black lives matter regarding the pandemic. Thank you mr. Chairman. In terms of those issues, i can begin by we havent found evidence of platform manipulation by foreign actors in either of those areas. You are right to draw the connection is we have seen a change in tactics. This in part is a result of the success weve had in clamping down on the platform operations. The covid and geopolitics. And transferred into statecontrolled media and how it transferred into the geopolitical sites. We are seeing the public use with or without an account. Those entities and government accounts are engaging in the geopolitical conversation. Weve seen some crossover from chinese actors comparing the Police Response in the United States are recent protests with Police Response in hong kong. Overt state acting is something weve observed and it reminds us of the challenges we face. We have to keep one step ahead of and how we change that behavior. I agree particularly with something he just said, we see the tactics and the space evolving. And actors trying new efforts to get around the controls put in place. We havent seen coordinated inauthentic behavior on the part of governments, particularly targeting voting systems are how to vote in the United States. Its something we are monitoring. One of the tools in this context is ensuring people we have people have Accurate Information on how to vote safely. Part of the reason we launch the voting Information Center and why we announced it yesterday feeds directly into our security strategy, providing that Accurate Information is one of the best ways to mitigate those types of threats. You also asked about coordinated into inauthentic behavior with protests. We have seen some cases of fraudsters and spammers trying to make money off public debate around the protest. Trying to sell nonexistent tshirts to attendees, we seen people try to run financial related scams. We have not seen foreign actors engage in inauthentic behavior around the protests and we are proactively hunting for that. And share that information with the committee. Jim himes. thank you mr. Chairman and thank you all for being here. Question that i feel has been infant insufficiently addressed. Ive read the testimony and im glad everybody is doing so much work to try and identify the sort of thing. Im pretty convinced when this republic dies it doesnt happen because the russians broke in to ohio Voting Machines or they managed to buy ads on facebook or twitter, it happens because our policies become so toxic, so polarized that we dont recognize each other anymore. There is a foreign nexus because all it takes if we if every single American Household is filled with toxic explosive gas, all it takes is a match from russia or iran or north korea or from china to set off a conflagration. I read the wall street journal article about the work inside facebook and i was very troubled by the apparent unwillingness of facebook to an a very public and specific way come to terms with the notion that its algorithm, which is what worries me, in terms of the security of this country, this algorithm promotes polarization, division and anger. You keep using the Word Community and authentic, i hear it over and over again. Those are value neutral words. There is nothing good or bad about authentic or community. Olympics were held in sarajevo, it was close to coming together and it was wonderful and then in the 1990s injected some authenticity, some antimuslim bias on the part of the serbs, created new communities, murderous serbian nationalists and created new communities. So the real threat to me feels like facebooks underlying Business Model on algorithms which promotes engagement, but engagement means its like me aiving a highway and watching car crash. I cant not look at it. Thats what scares me the most. Ive got two minutes and 20 seconds. I really want to understand what facebook is specifically doing and to some extent this pertains i think to twitter, youtube, etc. Not be facebook doing to the of the destruction of the American Republic . Understanding how to ensure not just authentic, but positive and collaborative public debate is absolute critical, i completely agree. People onve found is our platform dont want to see click bait, they dont want to see the type of divisive content youre describing. That,were to show only they wouldnt come back. Contenthy we down rank that qualifies as click bait, thats why we take steps to not recommend groups that are repeatedly sharing information the cross the cross a certain line. Thats why weve refocused the debate around the platform. To content from friends and family, content that centers around discussions and public conversation, not the type of divisive narrative youre describing. Politics and in the political realm, id like to see this back behind the studies underlying that people dont like divisive and dont like click bait. Its a thing because people like click bait. I know there is a difference when i walk into a room with people who think like i do and present nuances and complications and shades of gray, its a pretty boring meeting and im a pretty boring guy. When i walk into a room and present things as good versus evil, as the system is rigged against you, that is an energized room and so what you are telling me in the political realm is not resonating with me. Want it, you guys excitement, thats what draws me to facebook, but i want to understand specifically and i understand it means less profit, but what is facebook going to do to be more constructive in your words . The interesting and important distinction weve seen, people will click on click bait, hence the name and the intent. But in the long term if they are looking for community, people who want to engage, they dont want that community to be rife with that. Thats what weve taken steps to adjust content so make sure we are not prioritizing and following that. It directly aligns with having a community and platform system that uses the want to use. Time, but id like to continue this because youre just not resonating with me. Will give me 10 more seconds. Look at the president ial candidates, look at the current president , americans are drawn to people who are explosive and controversial and see the world in terms of good and evil in blackandwhite. Who remember john delaney . He was constructive and thoughtful and moderate in his approach. Concern more concerned that i started because youre telling me people dont seek that kind of thing and thats just contrary to everything i observed in my own political life and of the country. Mr. Chairman, thank you for your forbearance and i yelled back. Rep. Schiff terry sewall. Our also want to thank speakers and panelists today. We know from past disclosures that foreign actors have taken advantage of our platforms to spread misinformation which undermines our democrat influence ourrly National Conversation towards chaos and confusion. It is therefore incumbent upon each of your companies to expose floor influence operations and disable those before this misinformation spreads. Ahead oftake steps their specific sophisticated tactics which are evolving and a better understanding in order to sew more discord. We saw twitter responded to the factcheck misleading information about mailin voting tweeted by President Trump. I represent americans Voting Rights district, the heart of which is my hometown of selma, alabama. We know marchers bled, fought and died for the rights of all americans to vote in this country. ,e have secured responsibility a bigger responsibility to protect the rights of those americans to disclose actions like the one taken on twitter regardless of how powerful the person sharing the misinformation is. Propaganda designed to stifle the black vote has been part of our democracy since we were able to vote. Social media creates the potential for such Voter Suppression tactics as misinformation to spread even further. Companies to your preemptinguphold misinformation whether from foreign or domestic source. My community has been the target of information about voting for generations, always bearing the brunt of institutions like yours that dont take responsibility to stop the spread of misinformation. Ourrts to interfere in elections which we saw in 2016 largely targeted black americans and other communities of color. Between the disparate impact of covid19 has had on the black the growing unrest over the murders of george floyd and Breonna Taylor and so many others, the Political Landscape is Fertile Ground for foreign adversaries as well as domestic aggression to undermine genuine trust and confusion in this country. I would like to submit for the record two articles, one entitled facebook and twitter suspend russian links operation targeting African Americans all social media from the Washington Post and the other, Russian Election meddling his back via ghana and nigeria from cnn. May estimate these for the record . May i submit these for the record . Without objection. Id also like to summit a report called ira in ghana. These articles tell us about a sophisticated crossplatform influence operation that targeted black community in the United States. It was exposed by cnn, facebook and university professors. Question ofask a the represented from twitter, could you have found this efforts quicker and if so, what you couldve what could you have done to stop it quicker . Thank you for raising these Critical Issues. We have taken a number of tweetsns around 6000 Voter Suppression you are right highlighting the challenge here. Their,highlighted industry working together working with expert researchers. Doing incredible work we saw in their reports. Partnerships,er ine information sharing and in both of those areas weve made significant progress. Mr. Glacier, what would you have what would your platform have done to spot the sooner and what lessons were learned in how to create barriers for more sophisticated actors . What we saw and one of the things im proud of is this was a network our team found, exposed, worked with our in the industry and elsewhere. First, this technique is not new , its a call back to techniques russian actors have used for decades. We are seeing more and more they are returning to techniques from the 60s, 70s and 80s in an attempt to get around what we put in place. We have to be incredibly vigilant to that. One key thing we learned was the platforms are able to do a particular kind of investigation , on our platforms on the networks and conductivity on the platforms. Where they were able to go on the ground and interview individuals was an incredible powerful cause and reinforces how we need to have close ties to these communities to surface this quickly and get it down before passing the impact. Thank you mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Usnk you all for joining this morning. Know that may not facebook is headquartered in my congressional district. Conversationsy with Sheryl Sandberg and im still puzzled by the fact facebook does not consider itself a media platform. Are you still espousing that kind of position . We are first and foremost a Technology Company. You may be a technology , but your Technology Company is being used as a media platform, do not recognize that . A placeesswoman, we are for ideas across the spectrum. We know people use them to engage, that is the goal of the platform is to encourage and enable people to discuss the key issues of the day and talk to family and friends. Maybe i should ask this. When there was a video of Speaker Pelosi that have been tampered with, slowed down to make her look like she was drunk , youtube took a down on most immediately, what did facebook do and what went into your thinking to keep it up . Congresswoman, for a piece of content like that, we work with a network of thirdparty fact 60ckers, more than thirdparty Fact Checkers around the world. If one determines its faults, we will down rank it and put a superstition lawn it would first see a label over it saying it is false. When we down rank Something Like that, the shares of that video rapidly dropped. But you wont take it down if you know its false . Highlighting a really difficult balance and weve talked about this amongst ourselves. What i would say is if we take a piece of content like this down, it doesnt go away, it will exist on the internet. People who are looking for will still find it. I understand that, but therell always be bad actors, but that doesnt mean you dont do your level best to show the greatest deal of credibility. If youtube took it down, i dont understand how you wouldnt take it down but i will leave that one there where it lays. You said in your Opening Statements that you have taken down, i believe you said you taken down some networks from , you mightve mentioned another country. Could you drill down and tell us specifically what they were that youwhat it was found offensive that you took down where you didnt take the video nancy pelosi down. Worke focus of my teams was inauthentic behavior. That is not the content being shared, the behavioral techniques these actors use to hide their identity make their content appear more popular than it is or otherwise mislead users. Last year we took down 50 networks or more than 50 networks around the world from engaging in this. This year so far weve taken down 18. Can you drill down as to what they were doing . Absolutely. A network like this will be using fake accounts in an organized group and an organized group of fake accounts to mislead users about whats behind the network. We saw a Network Based in the United States that was representing itself as a u. S. News source when in fact it was using networks of accounts run by actors overseas to write its content and reportedly pretend to be americans. We have taken down networks linked to entities out of russia that present themselves as local when in fact they are centrally controlled by another organization. We did a takedown of a network to a state Media Organization out of russia that ran seemingly independent news organizations across europe representing them selves is independent and claiming to be independent when they were all centrally controlled and driving the message directly back from the organization that was running them. Thats the type of behavior we enforce against when we see these actors engaged in deceptive techniques. We announce it publicly, we share information with third parties and make sure we have a monthly report where we detail this and i can ensure our teams here with you will have more details. The thank you. I yield back. Thank you, i yield back. Mike quigley. Thank you chairman and thank you all for participating. Tell us what is impairing that collaboration, if anything. Is there anything that makes this more difficult . Are there actors that make it more difficult or just internal measures that limit your capacity to share information to collaborate . Are there other platforms, third parties, federal, state and local officials. Anyone . Im happy to offer some thoughts. Thank you for raising this issue. Thespace we work in is tension between privacy and security often. On the one hand a lawmaking palace to not store data for longer than needed, on the other hand we may not know the information is relevant at the time we remove the accounts. Actors who are trying to hide their behavior often use a variety of techniques and while we focus on the social media end of the spectrum, we often dont focus on the technical infrastructure they may use. We dont have the information straightaway. There is a tension between removing content and the data. That is holding onto data in case we know something later that would enable us to say these accounts were removed at the time we didnt realize but now we think they are. More government can declassify information, one of the striking things was there were 300 platforms used and while the larger platforms impacted significantly, there is responsibility to mentor our peers in the Industry Based on her skills and expertise. The government being able to share more information publicly, the Smaller Companies that are often not part of this discussion to learn. Those would be two areas. Congressman i would just add i think in the last couple of years, particularly among our partners with in government, our ability to share information has gotten better. Weve gotten tips from the fbi to help take action. Two things worth considering, there have been some questions about transparency and sharing data about these takedowns publicly. That type of sharing information publicly we think is important because it helps people understand whats happening. Share is notld entirely clear right now. That raises questions for all the platforms. How we address the public to whats happening and researchers of whats happening without impacting the privacy of users swept up in it . Thats an area where think it could be valuable. , thee same time information we are sharing here often is very sensitive and needs to be handled care carefully handled carefully. I think some clarity would help being able to share faster, more with the public and with our partners. I think the biggest struggle we have had on the information front as referred to by mr. Pickles already which is the quite understandable, the difficulty that the Intelligence Community has in sharing classified information with companies. Suggested,t is as he the issue of over infication, perhaps of the agencys finding ways to declassify parts of information that would be useful for the platforms. , the information sharing among the companies and with governments has improved greatly since 2016 almost to the point of being unrecognizable compared to where we were back then. We are not seeing a lot of legal were not seeing a lot of impediments, other than the issue of classification. I yield back. Thank you. Chairman schiff eric swalwell. , do youtubes comments the policy follow under the policy at google . Mr. Salgado we have so many products with so many policies, i have to confess that if he could follow up with a letter on that. Have you ever taken down videos for misinformation from a Media News Network . Mr. Salgado that is an issue i cannot give you a direct answer a, a specific question about specific publisher. How about fox news . Mr. Salgado again, i do not know in example of that. There is a lot of removals you can see on our transparency report, but that detail i do not know right now. The New York Times recorded och has spent 1 million on ads with youtube. Does that sound accurate . Mr. Salgado i do not know the figure, i understand that they may be an advertiser. According to a website that estimates the revenue that contact creators get paid by youtube to make their content, epoch news network and are earning 2 million collectively this year from youtube, does that seem accurate . Mr. Salgado i need to check with her team to come up with real figures i could testify to. Can you walk me through how a creator like one america news network, which has been called out by most credible news agencies, propagating russian materials, how could they get paid by google when it creates a video that people watch . Explain how they would make money in addition to running ads . Mr. Salgado well, there are of course two different products you are talking about. One is an offering where you can advertise. You can pay to have your advertiser. On on the websites o the websites of other publishers. And then there is the ability to monetize the content that you upload, for example, to youtube. There are policies on both of those around who can advertise and what can be advertised. And then there are also policies on what sort of content are we willing to actually run advertisements on. Forill google have a policy vaccine misinformation on youtube . Mr. Salgado there will be nolicies that address on ads, i particular those ads that could cause public damage, there are policies are that are actually publicly available that can be looked at. If i can do a round robin. This is an unclassified briefing, but i do want to know when have any of you how recently have any of you met with the fbi about misinformation . I do not want details about the case, the country, just when was the last time you had a conversation about something that you saw . Mr. Salgado these are routine conversations. I will not say that they are necessarily weekly, but it starts to approach the conversational cadence we have. This,ne to be open about nothing classified about it. They tend to be with the local field office here in california, sometimes ad hoc. But it is rather routine at this point. Thank you. Mr. Pickles our engagement with the fbi is incredibly regular, whether it is phone calls or emails. We do have meetings with them on a regular basis. If the fbi has concerns about a specific tweet or issue, we will have realtime dialogue, we do not need to wait for a meeting date on the calendar. , mr. Fore i go to you gleicher, i asked because the committee is working on itislation with companies, has not been passed in the senate, but tell us about your interactions with the fbi when using misinformation. Mr. Gleicher certainly. A they mentioned, we have periodic monthly meeting with the fbi and government partners that we all participate in. So we can talk about the threats we are seeing, making sure we are working together as effectively as possible. Whenever we see foreign interference, we will share information about that with Law Enforcement. For example, we announced our latest monthly report of all the takedowns we have done, that was last week or the week before. We wouldve shared information ahead of time with Law Enforcement partners to make sure that they can follow up if there is something that implicates foreign interference in the United States. Thank you. I yield back. Next, mr. Chiff heck. Being. Ck thank you for and choose not to spend my time on election interference, nor disinformation, but more along the lines of what mr. Heinz was pursuing. In fact, the exchange with mr. Gleicher leads me to ask a variation on my original question. Also addand i must that like mr. Heinz, your answer resonated with me. T civil discourse in america has degraded. That is equally selfevident that the social media platforms we are here talking about have amplified that degraded civic discourse. Thats a corollary to that, you have all profited off of it. So i want to ask you, again, do you not accept any responsibility for this . And if you dont, for the love of god tell me your logic for not accepting any responsibility. Let me say a couple things before i give you your shot. Is first of which politicians are not exempt our tradecraft has fully utilized these tools to our benefit and to suggest otherwise would be high proxy, but it reminds me a little bit of if somebody had a bullhorn to amplify their communication and they put it in your ear and kept using it until you went deaf, for you do not accept responsibility as the bullhorn ofer to me seems a stretch Product Liability and immunity. Is fact is civic discourse degraded and has set forth the extreme threat that the service to our country. The fact is that you amplify it, the fact is you profit off of it. And the First Amendment considerations, which are really important notwithstanding, do you not accept some responsibility for this . Lets start with you, mr. Gleicher. Mr. Gleicher i think we have critical responsibilities, yes to ensure that debate on our platforms is authentic, also to ensure it is as open and collaborative as possible. Part of what you are identifying is how humans interact in public discussion. It is why we have taken very serious looks, why we have thought about what we promote, how we promote and what we recommend to address these challenges. And i do also think that the rise of social media platforms, the rise of the internet has led to voices being heard at volumes that have never happened before. The most difficult challenge is how to peel these two things apart, how do you mitigate the challenges you are describing . These are essential challenges we are all grappling with, without also undermining the incredible profusion of new voices we have heard in public debate. We have looked at and we have done a number of changes to attempt to tackle this. I would never suggest we can solve the problem alone. I click part of this is how humans engage, and at the platforms have a responsibility to do everything we can to encourage and enable the best discussion, but i would never suggest that we can solve this problem. Heck the moral ark of the universe bends toward justice, in this case the moral arc of social media platforms is not bending toward justice. There is not a person on this call that does not have, or has not been told 1000 times by their staff, stop reading the comments. Stop readingus to the comments because they are so unbelievably uncivil and personal. It is character assassination and demonization. And it manifests itself in this polarization, exhibit a for which is there is no members of the Minority Party sitting in on it, so polarized as our political culture becomes. Toxic, the it is fact is it is a threat. The fact is you are the bullhorn manufacturer. And the fact is you are not moving fast enough. Thank you, i yield back. You. Man schiff thank roger krista murphy. Murphy hello, can you hear me . Chairman schiff yes. Sen. Murphy i want to direct a couple questions to mr. Pickles. Back when the protests were going on in minneapolis, the president put out a now infamous dogs ande protesters making a reference to an infamous quotation that when the looting starts, the shooting starts. And i thought that you at twitter took the right approach in putting a label on that particular post. Can you tell us about why you did that . Mr. Pickles this is a policy that we launched last year. In situations where public figures who are verified on twitter, who make a statement that we deem as , what we feel the preservation of that tweet allows essential public scrutiny and debate, then we would strike obalance to, rather than root ut the content is to allow the content to remain on twitter [indiscernible] sen. Krishnamoorthi why did you say it breaks the rules . Mr. Pickles we added a label, we felt it violated on the publication of violence. We stopped people retreating as well. So after the previous comment about engagement, we preserve it for discussion. Sen. Krishnamoorthi let me to my next question to mr. Gleicher. I cannot for the life of me understand why you folks allowed that post to stay up for as an as you did, and not issue any kind of similar comment or put any similar label on that post, as twitter did. And i would like you to have a chance to respond to why you do not think that that was glorification of violence, or that it was proper material for a post on your site. Mr. Gleicher congressman, thank you for the question. I personally found the post to be abhorrent. I know that view is widely shared. My team does not make direct content decisions. But what i can tell you is that as the markets made clear, we frame our approach in this space anchored in freedom of expression and respect for the democratic process. Sen. Krishnamoorthi but how can you show respect for anything. Reason why you reacted for anything. The reason why you reacted the way you did and called it abhorrent is you disrespect civil discourse. What if an agency took that post and put, i do not know, a million bots on it and decided to say to everyone in the United States, and put 1 billion behind the post in sponsored ads, when the looting starts, the shooting starts, so go start shooting. What would you do in that instance . Mr. Gleicher we have policies around content and around behavior. Any activity that uses fake accounts to amplify something would come down. Sen. Krishnamoorthi what if there was no fake account, what if it was just an authentic account from the russian federation. Lets just say it was a state actor, ok . Toy did not do anything modify the post donald trump put up, but just put money into sponsored ads behind the post and it said, we are the russian federation, see what your own president is telling you to do . What would you do in that instance . Mr. Gleicher given the hypothetical, it is hard to say, but what i can tell you is we have particular policies around ads, you mentioned ads as an example. From stateocking ads media coming into the u. S. Ahead of the election. If we are talking about a state media agency from russia, they would not be able to do that. They would not be able to run ads in the United States. Sen. Krishnamoorthi what if it is a private actor . There is a thug in russia that runs the ira. Mr. Heck knows him well. What if het guy, puts 1 billion behind it. It is not a state actor. Are you saying you would prohibit him from doing that . Mr. Gleicher congressman, he and his organizations, the Internet Research agency are banned from our platform. So we have enforcement on behavior and on actors. And for organizations like the Internet Research agency, given the history and activity they have engaged in, they have no place on facebook. If they tried to come back, we will identify that and remove it. We would not permit that because of the organization it is coming from. Sen. Krishnamoorthi i will close with this that post was so abhorrent, as he said, not i did, that i find it abhorrent that you wouldve allowed that to stay up. I see that mr. Zuckerberg is dancing around her this post. This is exactly why people and civil right now. Chairman schiff val demings. Demings thank you to our witnesses for joining us today. What a critical discussion. But i think we may leave with more questions than answers. We just want to feel better. And mr. Salgado, you said that your Mission Statement in 1998, do not get me wrong, we were excited about this new platform, a way to communicate and connect into receive information, was to organize other worlds information and make it universally acceptable and useful. You indicated that the integrity of your product continues to improve. Can you give me some examples of how the integrity of your product has continued to improve the integrity the integrity has continued to improve . And if you are rewriting the Mission Statement today, what would it say or what would you add or take away . Mr. Salgado thank you for the question. As for the integrity of the products part, there are so many examples. I will go to the core product for google, that it is so known for, search. And the constant improvements in our algorithms to improve the results you get when you type in a search query, in making sure that the authoritative, relevant information is what appears at the top. And we use algorithms to do it, but it is also informed through real people who check the results, make sure that things are coming out as you would expect and want for users. Constant a constant, tweaking of our algorithms to improve the search experience and that people rely on. Demings if you are going to give yourself a letter grade, what would that be from 1998 until now . Mr. Salgado the way that search is, i suppose the expectations of 1998 are very different than those in 2020. People just expect google to work. But it is amazing how fast it is. We have billions of hits, yet the results are right there like you are the only person using it. So when you think about that, i think that we are in a solid a category and i am not an easy greater. Grader. And it continues to improve. And we are adding different features. We know that people are obviously very concerned about the covid19 pandemic, so in the search product we have made it much easier for users to find good authoritative medical information, reliable, queries on covid19. So it also can be flexible, a product that notes what is important to a vast number of people who are using it at any given time. Sen. Demings thank you. I believe you said, mr. Gleicher, that voices are being heard now that have never been heard before. But i also believe that more chaos and disinformation is being heard or seen like never before. I do believe that all of your platforms is the vehicle by which disinformation, racism, hatred, sexism and any other kind of ism has traveled the most. So i would like to ask each of you this question, do you strive tos you make connections and get information out, do you have a moral obligation number one, do you have a moral obligation, yes or no . And if you do, what do you see that moral obligation as . We can start with you, mr. Salgado, but i would like to hear from everybody. Mr. Salgado we have moral and ethical obligations to our users and we have a great focus on making sure that the data that we hold for our users is secure, the accounts are secure. A lot of the election interference that we saw in 2016, even the different information, the influence operations we are seeing today implicate google mostly in the phishing attempts we see against our accounts. So there is a good deal of focus on google in that respect, to make sure that accounts remain secure, users with little action on their part can remain confident that the accounts are protected. At the same time, trying to educate users on better security practices that are available now. And that are not difficult to implement. And i think that there is an awful lot of responsibility on the part of google to make sure that the security of the data that users interest with us is maintained and we continue to improve that. Sen. Demings in terms of being the number one vehicle for transported disinformation, racism, sexism and hatred, you believe the number one priority is the security of the product, because your answer centers on that . Mr. Salgado the reason i want to give some background. The reason is what we have found historically is most of the involvement, not all of it, and we can talk about youtube and other platforms, but really the bulk of activity that we saw was the use of google platforms, like google accounts and gmail, to create accounts on other services at that were then used for disinformation and pain. So making sure we can identify those accounts, particularly where they might be compromised accounts misused for those purposes to build an infrastructure of misinformation platforms isanies important. But you are right to point out that there are other touch points, and those include, maybe to a lesser degree than what we see with other companies, platforms like youtube and even search to keep disinformation off of them entirely. And as i mentioned in my verbal statement, where it starts to get close to our lines, are policy lines, that we make it less discoverable and we do not recommend it to the viewers. Sen. Demings i am not sure where i am on time, do i have time to get answers from the other panelists . Chairman schiff you do. Sen. Demings thank you. Mr. Gleicher i think that you are identifying the fundamental tension we are all struggling with. Collectively, when you look at social media platforms and the internet, i think that they are the number one platform for public debate on a range of issues. What we have seen is wherever you see public debate happening, bad actors will participate and will try to use that to spread racism, division, to target public debate in all these ways. Sen. Demings do you have an obligation, and if so, what is it . Mr. Gleicher we have an obligation to do everything we can to combat that when we see it. That includes ensuring voice to people on the platform so they can speak, and addressing harm as it emerges. We have a team that i collaborate with that focuses on dangerous organizations and hate groups, groups that promote violence, groups that glorify violence. We identify and remove them from the platform whenever we see it. We just removed two networks linked to a couple of those groups earlier this week. We have teams that hunt proactively for actors that are hiding their identity and using that to drive division, to drive racist narratives. One of the things we have seen is not just foreign actors, but domestic actors, when they can operate with impunity, when they can mislead people, they will drive more of this harmful and divisive content. Sen. Demings thank you. Next witness. Mr. Pickles yes, twitter exists to serve the public conversation and we have a responsibility to promote the health o of that public conversation, that is why we have changed policies. We recognize that discourse in the political era may not be something that sen. Demings the answer was get rid of them or hold them accountable. Mr. Pickles that is one of the unique things about twitter, it is a public platform. Accounttter is held to those views that are in the world. 250 million, we tweets. So i think that while we focus on the worst of the conversation, we as a company are focused on being more proactive. We detected the content last year ourselves. We have focused on detecting conversations through our policies. We are here to inform people, and over all that work is having a positive impact. But the value of twitter to give people a voice and allow people to express gratitude in difficult times, we think it is incredibly important for the public. Sen. Demings thank you, mr. Chairman, for your indulgence. Thank you all. One of the questions i think that is really the focus of this is what mr. Heinz brought up, that is what is happening to public debate and public discourse. We are in a situation now where nobody is prohibited from asserting whatever facts they want. The president is able to say things that are really quite terrible to many of us. In truth, it has been a casualty of the whole public debate, and it is just a toxic part of democracy. Social mediahat platforms are incredibly popular. And in some cases it is used for constructive things. People are gathering, they are at black lives matter rallies using public platforms to do so, but then you also have state actors and pernicious political actors who are using it to undermine everything in the public wheel. So each of your companies is trying to deal with that. Mr. Zuckerberg testified before the energy and commerce committee, mr. Dorsey testified. And each company is trying to make some rules and regulations that it follows to try to bring some order to this. Theat a certain point, question is not what each individual company does or each executive does, it is whether there are laws that can pose obligations. And what has been perceived as a very important to your platforms is the decision that congress made some time ago to not hold you to responsibility of a publisher, or publishers of regular newspapers, who have to exercise editorial judgment. And you do, but you are not civilly obligated to. I want to ask each of you what recommendations you would make further legal changes that would impose some obligations on each of your platforms. That are similar to the obligation a publisher has about content. I will start with mr. Gleicher from facebook. Mr. Gleicher thank you for the question. Um, in my world i am focusing on our security and tackling the challenges we face, and what i can tell you is from my team and it teams in this area, the shield created by section 230 is essential for us to do our work. We have seen threat actors try to target us in response to consistent enforcement we have taken. Sen. Welch let me interrupt. Here is the dilemma, i know you are trying to do this in good faith, but the bottom line is in congress or wherever that has public representation authority, we cannot keep up with a each one of these things that comes your way. You are doing your best, bet at a certain point we are always chasing after the fact. That it be your view section 30 has to be sacrosanct, which in fact it leaves the final authority to u. S. Opposed to the people who have been elected representatives of americans . Mr. Gleicher congressmen, there is a healthy and important debate right now about how to adjust to the reality we are facing. Sen. Welch that is what i am asking. We will comply with the law. I hope we remember the importance of the shield to protect the voice and preserve that. Sen. Welch how about you . , let me start by saying this wasnt an was an instrument that has protected whole internet. From role, when i heard governments around the world, buildd the United States this . The answer is section 230. Is looking the world to emulate the United States with our domination and success in this area. Sen. Welch i understand that, but we are seeing the downside now. Section 230, everyone acknowledges the importance of it giving us the opportunity to build. But the downside we are all is on the legal side with all tech platforms. Mr. Pickles we are having this discussion right now. Its a range of discussion. My concern firstly is just to remind everybody that criminal law is not protected by section 230. So the concerns that the content is not in here. Toondly, people say we want stop moderation, and the same answer is offered. It is essential to investigate, i think. Of changessequences that could be damaging for competition, damaging for innovation, and damaging for our ability to promote and protect free speech. Thank you. My time is up. I yield back. Thank you, mr. Welsh. Toouple of things i wanted follow up on. In 20, thesting that representatives of your companies in, it was your general councils. It was not till the second round of questioning that we got to the issue of social responsibility and how these platforms might be serving to divide the public. When i asked about that in 2017, a member of the council for facebook said the jury was still out on whether the platforms were having the effect of dividing the public. I dont know if the jury is still out, but i think they have come back and it is reflected in the degree to which you have gotten questions about that issue. So let me follow up with a question of my own on that subject. Can you describe for us, because your algorithms are so opaque to degree are to what your do your algorithms prioritize engagement or attention as opposed to prioritizing things like , truth, ormily accuracy . To what degree are your algorithms currently amplified on the basis of attention and engagement and since this problem became apparent, has that prioritization been downgraded to less of a priority . Say, and iman, i can know we have made a number of changes to prioritization to address this kind of risk. My role is not in algorithms, so i cannot speak in detail about it. But i want to make sure we get accurate response. Mr. Schiff can you answer the algorithmdoes your give priority more than any other to engagement and attention . We prioritize a range of factors, not a single one, but i could have the team follow up on that. Mr. Schiff i realize there is a lot that affects your algorithm, but is that the number one factor . Mr. Gleicher let me follow up with the detail on that. , howchiff last question your working relationship with the fbi and their willingness to share information with you, and your willingness to share information with them when it comes to performance on your platforms . The collaboration with industry and government is much, much better than it was in 2017. We have found the fbi to be forward leaning and ready to share with us. The best case study for this was the 28 turning midterms 2018 midterms when you saw government and Civil Society coming together. The fbi gave us a tip about a network of accounts they identified were linked to russian actors. We were able to investigate and take action within a number of hours. I do think the points raised earlier about classification are not we and it is dont necessarily need all of the classified details. There would not be a good way for us to consume that. But being able to act quickly is an important value and i know that is something our partners and government are working on. Other comments from your colleagues . The contrast from 2016 to where we are now is night and day. As we discussed earlier, the dialogue is regular and valuable. Expressld like to gratitude to everyone working on these issues. The collaboration is critical to , anduccess, hard work investment and it is a force multiplied, so we are grateful for that cooperation. I agree with everything that has been said. I would add only that we have been able to be very nimble when that we arensure able to pivot immediately, not answers,ave all the but we were able to ask the right questions of the government, which has been very receptive to this topic. The same was true with the protests. It has been a nimble, quick process. To address changes quickly. Mr. Schiff thank you. Thank you to all of our witnesses. You have answered your fair share of questions and addressed a fair number of concerns. A lot of these issues are really hard. I tend to be a First Amendment absolutist. I really dont want facebook challenging what is true and what is not true. I get that these are really hard issues. I keep coming back to the i believe icause have some obligation as a citizen to be involved in active citizenship. If we have to rely on citizens to be critical thinkers, we should probably throw the towel in. Different. Orithm is i see what you want me to see. I would rather have a big bowl of doritos than eat my vegetables. I get worried when you say i would like you to elaborate this and then i have one more question for you. I thought i heard you say that people on facebook are not actually drawn to the explosive wordntroversial, that your was constructive. Theres a may 20 6 wall st journal article in which there seemed to be a real profound debate inside facebook. You. Leicher thank i agree this is an incredibly challenging issue and there is more work to be done. Highlighting,as certainly, people are drawn to click bait. They are drawn to explosive content. It is the nature of click bait to make people want to click on it. But what we have found is that people dont want a platform or experience that is just click bait. They will click it if they see it, but they dont want it prioritized. They dont want their time drawn into that. We are trying to build an environment where that is not the focus. Where they are having the conversations they want to have. But i agree with you that people seek out that type of content wherever it is. Whoof the key factors is your friends are, the pages and accounts that you follow and the actions you engage with. People have direct control over them because they are choosing the people they want to engage with. I would like to ask you a specific question. What concerns me about the algorithm is that there is a way of thinking humans use that is rational and deliberate, looking at substantive information and looking at pros and cons, and then there is the way of being a human, emotional, anger, tribal. And i think those are different parts of our brain, and i do think in a rational, analytical , the First Amendment is justifiable. But i am profoundly concerned, as the chairman said, about an algorithm that may be churning up this anger and tribalism. Aboutquestion is transparency. Would facebook be willing to make not just the attributes but the algorithm publicly available but the effects of the algorithm. Knownally, i would like to how i rate on facebook. I dont track it that well. I look at political stuff. How open is facebook to sharing with the public what the algorithm looks like and more importantly, what the behavioral outcomes are, because if you can show data that says people look at facebook and are exposed to new ideas and critical thinking, wow, im going to be happy with that. But if it shows the people go to very dark places, i have a different response. Transparency is important here. The algorithms we are talking about, the decisionmaking is incredibly complex. Showing that information in a way thats consumable and meaningful is extremely important. The two things i would offer, the first is, when thinking about the way humans make quick decisions, one of the most important pieces is whether they have context to make assessments. And one of the challenges of the internet generally is that it has historically been a context stripper. So one challenges how to provide more context to users so they can make those assessments, whether it is with Fact Checkers, statecontrolled media entities, and others. Moreld be happy to talk about that. One piece of research that is interesting, and harvard team has done some Interesting Research on polarization and the impact both on social media and in traditional media, and has some interesting conclusions, including that for certain people, it broadens and pierces bubbles, and for others, it reiterates them. I would be happy to talk more about that. Thank you. I will yield back my time. Mr. Schiff you have a question. I do. Inc. You all again for being here. This is a complicated issue and we are also thank you all again for being here. This is a complicated issue and we are all struggling to make sure it is there. To the point that you all are media outlets, the Pew Research Center found that 44 of americans use facebook, twitter, and instagram for information for the 2016 president ial campaign. Among people 1829, 35 use social media as their primary source of political news. Can understand why we are what is put on your platforms is factual. I want to point out that all of you are men. At this hearing. And there was a recent study that looked at the 2020 Democratic Party president ial primary. The study is entitled shepersisted, women, media, and politics in the modern world. It showed that female candidates are attacked more often by fake news accounts, that interviews are male politicians news is mostly negative and mostly about character. , harris was about that she was not authentically progressive, american, or black. Elizabeth warren lied about her ethnic heritage. Attacks on women tend to fall in three categories, untrustworthy, emotional, and dumb. Within these is a high volume of sexualized content, specifically women sleeping their way to the top. I can tell you personally that i endure a lot of that on the platforms. Its pretty disgusting. So, all three of you are men. How you are going to address this issue for the 2020 election. Mr. Gleicher thank you i would well thee seen as increased targeting of women, particularly online, and the way in which prominent women experience this. We have teams focused on coordinated harassment and how we can tackle it. One of the things my team focuses on in particular is cases where we see individuals singled out using either networks of fake accounts or networks of obsessive behavior. Spier how many women do you have on your team . Of gleicher its about 30 my team. One of the things i have found that applies to women and the Minority Community as well, the actors who target using these techniques target minority communities and people they believe they can victimize. So, it is extremely important that our team be diverse so we can have the creative responses we need and put ourselves in the shoes of the people being targeted. What do you do when female candidates are targeted this way . How do you address it . Mr. Gleicher it depends a little bit on the exact threat. We are Building Tools that first allow people to not have to see some of these threads. But that comes from the individual, not from you. To seedont want something, you can click it off, but how about the fact that it gets communicated throughout the traction against it gains traction. If it is negative, it gains more traction, based on the algorithm. Mr. Gleicher if we see direct threats of violence, we take that down, and we have done that a number of times. If content violates our standards, we take action. I think also thinking about how to change the product to empower people and to disincentivize this type of stuff is an important piece is well. If we are only removing things we see, we will always be in sort of a whack a mole world. We need to keep doing that and we have a responsibility to keep doing that. We also need to change the environment to make this type of thing harder and give people more tools to protect themselves. Ok, well i am going to share this report was Sheryl Sandberg in hopes that you will do more. Mr. Gleicher thank. The other representatives, please. Expired, mr. E is chairman, but i would like to hear from the other two. Algado thank you for raising this topic. It is something i feel passionate about. In terms of my team, i am the only man. We have remarkable people, majority female. Is particularly ofortant for journalists color who face additional levels of abuse and harassment. Right tobsolutely highlight that if we wait for you to report the content, we are failing. Wee than half the content remove is without a user report. If something we see is toxic or sharing private information, we have made it easier to highlight has private information been posted. Faster. Ns we can move our action rate has increased more than 100 on private information posted. We have to do more. That is why working with Civil Society and building strong relationships i will absolutely tell you there is more to do in this area and it is something we remain deeply committed to working on. Ask thank you. Thank you. Salgado for google, it is similar. About 50 of my leadership is female. A huge problem. We have seen this going back to we women andere minorities are targeted online. , the changes we have made for comments on google videos has been pretty successful. Greate also had some success in automated removal of comments on Youtube Videos that violate our policies. Most of it is automated. A high 90 percentage of removal on those comments has been automated, but user reports remain very important. Its a matter of effective, quick enforcement of the policy, not a lack of willingness, but the enforcement of policies that exist and recognizing its important and treating it as one of the areas we need to improve. Thank you. Thank you mr. Chairman for indulging me on that. Mr. Schiff thank you. Eric swalwell. Mr. Swalwell i am seeing on the news right now that this morning, facebook took down President Trump adds that nazis o symbols bd the nazis had used to designate prisoners in concentration camps. In an adgles were used by donald trump and vice and it wasence, viewed in fewer than 24 hours by just under a million people. I want to allow facebook to address this. But also, what will you do with the spread thats already out there with this hate symbol . What sanctions will you take against the trump campaign, because this is not the first time an ad has been taken down. I believe it is the third time. Mr. Gleicher we do not allow symbols that represent hateful ideology unless they are put up with context. We obviously want to allow someone to contentment. Wewhere that symbol is used, would take that same action. We are consistent in enforcing whenever our systems identify those symbols. When we identify Something Like , we look for other instances of where it might appear so that we can remove it automatically. If there is something we miss, because we are not perfect, if someone were to bring it to our attention, we would take action there as well. Swalwell how many symbols would a platform have to run before the page is taken down . Mr. Gleicher what i can tell you is if we see repeated instances of violations, repeated instances of this take increasing actions. I dont have the details on these specific thresholds, but i would be happy to have the team working on this followup. Mr. Swalwell have accounts been taken down because of repeated efforts to put this information out there . Mr. Gleicher i would be happy to followup with you for that specific detail. Mr. Swalwell do you know the answer . Mr. Gleicher i dont know the answer off the top of my head. Mr. Swalwell one of my fears is that the misinformation we see right now, one of the most perilous times is going to be between election day and inauguration day. I think the president with his rhetoric, characterizing mailin ballots as fraudulent and implying that undocumented americans will be voting in the election, i believe if the result does not go the way he ing what willseed be frivolous lawsuits and assaults on the election. My fear is that all three of your platforms will be used not only by the president , but by outside metallers to try to amplify discord and confusion in our country, and i just want a pledge from each of you as to what you will do if that is indeed the case, if the president is not exempt except the results and is cultivating outside interference and what is supposed to be a peaceful transition of power. Mr. Pickles, we will start with you. Pickles to import things. First of all, our rules apply globally. Action on any user that breaks our rules and on any ,ake accounts, foreign actors domestic actors. Absolute commitment that we will enforce our rules impartially around the world. Mr. Swalwell thank you. Salgado at google, we are committed to enforcing our policies. We will continue to improve those policies. Mr. Gleicher congressman, we will continue to enforce policies consistently around the world and at any time. Really you highlighted a important point. We have teams running red team exercises and threat ideations within the company and with colleagues outside the company that, at a time of greatest risk, what are the biggest threats . Theave always known that time after the election is a critical one. Accountme to vote vote by mail ballots, so there may be a time of uncertainty after the election that will be critical. We are focused on the time after the election with just as much laser focus as the time immediately before. Mr. Swalwell i am afraid a storm is coming and we need you to be ready. I yelled back. Mr. Schiff thank you, mr. Swalwell. Mr. Heck and then mr. Welsh. Heck insofar as mr. Hein has preemptively channeled my thoughts, i will forgo my round and just thank you for your presence today. Mr. Schiff mr. Welsh, would you like the last question. Mr. Mr. Schiff this will then conclude our hearing today. I want to think our witnesses for appearing before the committee and testifying under these circumstances. We will follow up with you, we respect to the questions you to back with you to make sure that we can complete the record. My thanks to all of you for your participation today and thanks to the numbers and staff as well. With that, we are adjourned. Thank you. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] the Homeland Security subcommittee on transportation meets this afternoon to discuss air travel safety during the coronavirus pandemic. Watch live coverage at 4 00 eastern on cspan, online at cspan. Org, or listen on the free cspan radio app. What do you think we can do about that . Protests,lice reform, and coronavirus continuing to affect the country, watch our live, unfiltered coverage of the response with briefings from the white house, congress, governors, and mayors updating the situation. And from the campaign 2020 trail , join the conversation every in programcall washington journal and if you missed any of our coverage, watch ondemand at cspan. Org or listen on the go with the cspan radio app. Coming up tonight, a House Intelligence Committee hearing to examine online foreign influence operations during the coronavirus pandemic and as the 2020 20 elections approach, see that tonight at 9 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Cspan has unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and Public Policy events. You can watch all of cspans Public Affairs programming on television, online, or listen on our free radio app and be part of the national