Transcripts For CSPAN Facebook Twitter CEOs Testify Before Senate Judiciary Committee - Part 1 20240711

Sen. Graham i think we have senator blumenthal remotely, is that correct . Is it ok if we move forward . Sen. Blumenthal absolutely. Sen. Graham this is about censorship and suppression of the 2020 election. Sort of a deep dive when it comes to twitter and facebook about the platforms and the decisions they make, how they make them, can we do better, chemically do we need to do better . The first thing i want to talk about here is health risk associated with social media. A 2018 Pew Research Center survey of nearly 750 13 to 17yearolds found that 45 are online almost constantly and 97 use social media platforms such as youtube, facebook, instagram, or snapchat. If so why are we having this hearing . The products that these two companies offer, people like and they use. So the bottom line is theyve probably been more successful than their wildest dreams, and theyre having to make decisions that offend people on the left and the right. And what were trying to do is look at section 230 and to see if it needs to be modified or changed because section 230 basically allows social media platforms like twitter and facebook to pass on information without legal liability. If a newspaper does something you dont like, you think theyve slandered you in a certain way, you can sue them. Sen. Graham if a news program you can soothe them you them. Ie if a news program does something that you think is out of line, even as a politician with a high bar, you can sue them. These companies have a Liability Protection when it comes to the content that their users engage in. You can sue the person who gave the tweet, but you cant sue twitter who gave that person access to the world in terms of what they said. And we got to find a way to make sure that when twitter and facebook make a decision about whats reliable and whats not, what to keep up, what to take down, that theres transparency in the system. And i think section 230 has to be changed because we cant get there from here without change. But in 2019, a study of more than 6500, 12 to 15 year olds in yearolds 6500 to 15yearolds in the u. S. Found that those who spent more than a day using social media three hours might be at heightened risk for Mental Health problems. Another study 12,000, 13 to 16 year olds in england found that using social media more than three times a day, predicted poor Mental Health and wellbeing in teens. Other studies also have observed links between high levels of social media use, depression or anxiety. The average millennial checks their phone 157 times daily. I dont know how a member of the senate, i dont know where we fall. Social media is designed to sustain users attention with a mix of good user interface, design, and psychology, creating an addictive mix for users. Its called the slot machine effect. A technique which utilizes a pull to refresh and scrolling mechanisms on newsfeed similar a slot machine. The like button, a feature to provide social validation through a positive feedback loop my measuring and comparing the number of likes a users content obtains. Gamifying social interactions, employing gamification to engage users and keep them coming back. Sen. Graham for example, keep them coming back. For example, streaks is the one causing the most concern and using elongating red lines to display the number of days since two users interacted. Guess what these technologies do is try to keep us engaged. The more we engage the technology, the more advertising benefit to the company. Is that a Good Business practice . Maybe so. Does it create a Health Hazard over time . Its something to look at. Now, the other aspect of this debate is are these companies newspapers or theyre tv stations . Do they have the power of media organizations that have rules and regulations and the Current Media platforms do not . There are rules about what a television station can do. There are rules about what a newspaper can do. And what i want to try to find out is if youre not a newspaper at twitter or facebook, then why do you have editorial control over the New York Post . They decided, and maybe for a good reason i dont know, that the New York Post articles about hunter biden needed to be flagged, excluded from distribution or made hard to find. That to me, seems like youre the ultimate editor. The editorial decision at the New York Post to run the story was overwritten by twitter and facebook in different fashions to prevent its dissemination. Now, if thats not making an editorial decision, i dont know what would be. Its one thing when we do it in our private lives. Nikki haley made a post about her concerns about mailin balloting. It was flagged as something, a claim this hasnt been legitimatized. Let me read it to you. The next question to ask is why is it a crime to raise doubts about the holocaust . Why should anyone who writes about such doubts be imprisoned while insulting the prophet is allowed . Now, thats the ayatollah. Hes opining that raising doubts about the holocaust shouldnt be a crime and he is openly called for the destruction of israel. His regime has. And his tweet was basically allowed to flourish. Heres what nikki haley said. Despite what the media tells us, Election Fraud does happen and policies like ballot harvesting, and mailing ballots to people who dont request them makes that easier. That needs to stop. This claim about Election Fraud is disputed. Well, thats her opinion. She believes, like i do, that mailin balloting is ripe for fraud if you cant verify the signature. And if we just send mail ballots out to the world that are not requested, and you dont have a signature verification system that can be trusted, you have in fact led to harvesting of ballots for nefarious purposes. The question for us as a country, at what point did the decisions by these organizations cross a line . At what point do they have to assume responsibility that section 230 shields them from . And to the people who are about to testify, i consider your products to have changed the world, mostly for the good. Were able to interact among ourselves. Were able to talk to each other and share life experiences. Were able to realtime communicate to our neighbors and our friends and those who oppose us. What we think with technology that just makes it instantaneous and can literally light up the world. Section 230 was developed to allow these technologies to flourish. Early on, if you could sue twitter or facebook for content on a Facebook Posting or a tweet, and they were liable for what somebody else said or what they felt or did, then the company would have probably never been in existence. The companies are trying to help us deal with child pornography. We have the earn it act. That to be able to maintain Liability Protections when it comes to Sexual Exploitation of social media sites about sexual predators, this committee has passed a bill saying you can only maintain that Liability Protection if in fact you use best Business Practices. And thats where i think we need to be going. My hope is that we change section 230 to incentivize social media platforms to come up with standards that are transparent and opaque that will allow us to make judgements about their judgments. That the Fact Checkers be known. That the Community Standards, who sets them, what are their biases and give some direction to these companies because they have almost an impossible task. Sen. Graham theyre literally trying to engage in telling us whats reliable and whats not based on cable news commentary or tweets from politicians or average citizens. Nobody in a free society has ever had that responsibility before. And the question is, how do you control that responsibility . I dont want the government to take over the job of telling america what tweets are legitimate and what are not. I dont want the government deciding what content to take up and put down. I think were all in that category. But when you have companies that have the power of governments, have far more power than traditional Media Outlets, something has to give. And im hoping in this hearing today that we can find a baseline of agreement. Sen. Graham that section 230 needs to be changed. Find a baseline of agreement. That section 230 needs to be changed. That my bias would be to allow the industry itself, to develop best Business Practices to protect the sites against terrorism and child exportation and other concerns. That we look at the Business Practices of these companies through a health prism. That some of their practices need to be modified because it can become addictive. We thought tobacco was a good thing for a long time to the point that we sent it to our soldiers in combat. The more we realized about the addictive nature of tobacco, the more we changed our mind about telling the public about the product. Sen. Graham so whether or not we do that with social media platforms, that these platforms can be addictive if used too often. I dont know if we need to go there, but i do know that section 230 exists today is got to give. And i think theres republican and democrat concern about the power thats being used by social Media Outlets to tell us what we can see and what we can. Whats true and whats not to the extent that section 230 in my view has to be rewritten. So thats the purpose of this hearing is to find a way forward to bring about change. And when it comes to social media platforms and section 230, change is going to come. With that, senator blumenthal. Sen. Blumenthal thank you very, very much mr. Chairman. And thank you for having this hearing today. And i look forward to cooperating with you not only in this hearing, but in the up coming congress on our own earn it bill, on other measures, because youre absolutely right. Change must come to social media. The fact is we meet today in an unprecedented and precarious moment in american history. Daily, the president shocks our conscience and shakes the very foundations of our democracy using a powerful megaphone, social media. The president has used this microphone to spread vicious falsehoods and an apparent attempt to overturn the will of voters. Every day, he posts new threats and conspiracy theories about mailin ballots and voting machines, lies that contradict his own Election Security officials and his lawyers. He uses this megaphone potentially to block a peaceful transition of power. Now, mr. Zuckerberg and mr. Dorsey, you have built terrifying tools of persuasion and manipulation with power far exceeding the robber barons of the last guilded age. You have profited hugely by strip mining data about our private lives and promoting hate speech and Voter Suppression. You have an immense civic and moral responsibility to ensure these instruments of influence do not irreparably harm our country. I recognize the steps. Theyre really baby steps that youve taken so far. The destructive incendiary misinformation is still a scourge on both your platforms and on others. In fact, google has been given a pass from todays hearing. Its been rewarded by this committee for its timidity, doing even less than you have done to live up to its responsibilities. The recent actions you have taken in fact are simply to check the truth of what appears on platform. Often it is Voter Suppression and incendiary malicious misinformation. And youve tried to slow its insidious spread. Thats not censorship, thats moral and civic responsibility. Now, i believe and i hope the chairman agrees that a series of hearings on big tech is long overdue on antitrust issues, on privacy concerns and section 230. I have urged, in fact, a breakup of tech giants because theyve misused their bigness and power. Breaking off, for example, whatsapp and instagram. Rigorous privacy protection, because consumers should have control over their own data. And indeed section 230 reform, meaningful reform, including even possible repeal in large part because their immunity is way too broad and victims of their harms deserve a day in court. But this hearing is certainly not the serious proceeding that we need. It may become a political sideshow, a public tar and feathering. My colleagues seem to want to ignore the foreign disInformation Campaigns intended to interfere in our democracy and calls for murder of fbi director ray and dr. Fauci. What weve seen here are fighting words and hate speech that certainly deserve no Free Expression protection. The fact is that the purpose of todays hearing seems as much to bully or brow beat you mr. Zuckerberg and mr. Dorsey from taking the more responsible action by threatening cuts to section 230. Censorship is really a misnomer for this hearing. What youve done is to label and to fact check to avoid amplifying misinformation and to in effect impose those labels to alert people that what they are consuming may misinform them. And facebook took down ads for biden in michigan and the aclu in colorado for mistaken information about voting. In short, there was action that affected both sides. I have fought for section 230 reform for 16 years. From my time as connecticuts attorney general, when i took on the scourge of registered sex offenders grooming children on facebook and myspace. With senator portman, i have led passage of the only successful revision so far to section 230 to stop enabling sex traffickers act known as sesta. Sen. Blumenthal and chairman graham and i have authored the only bill to reform section 230 that has actually moved out of the committee. The earn it act passed this committee unanimously. Change is going to come, no question. Change is on the way and i intend to bring aggressive and targeted reform to section 230. But i am not, nor should we be on this Committee Interested in being a member of the speech police. There are real harms and real victims here. And in some ways, this hearing is a betrayal of those real harms and the real victims of them. Those harms have been caused by big tech because you have failed your responsibility as have others in this industry. I want to see real reform that will enable these abuses to be reformed because your platforms have embraced abuse and weaponized child predators, violent White Supremacists and human traffickers. And ive heard heart wrenching stories from victims. Youve set back civil rights protections for Muslim Americans who live in fear of armed militias organized by private online groups. You have setback consumers and competition making that kind of antitrust action very, very important. The American Public deserves and demands real reform and accountability, National Consumer privacy rules, antitrust principles that curb predatory power and reforms the section 230 that stops shutting the courthouse door to victims. I look forward to an opportunity for real change, and i think you can meet this moment by put in your power and your money on the right side of history. Thanks mr. Chairman. Thanks, mr. Chairman. Sen. Graham well, thank you. A lot to unpack there. Senator blumenthal, its been great to work with. Ill continue to work with you. If we keep control of the committee, senator grassley would be the chairman next year. And i would encourage him to have the hearings that senator blumenthal referenced. That this is a ongoing this is an ongoing conversation to get it right to the extent that we can get it right. Mr. Dorsey from twitter, are you with us, mr. Dorsey . Mr. Dorsey i am. Can you hear me . Sen. Graham thank you. The floor is yours. Is yours. Thank you to the members of the judiciary committee, for the opportunity to speak with the American People about twitter and your concerns around censorship and suppression of a specific news article and generally what we saw in the 2020 u. S. Elections conversation. We were called here today because of an enforcement decision we made against the New York Post, based on a policy we created in 2018 to prevent twitter from being used to spread hack materials. This resulted in us blocking people from sharing a New York Post article, publicly or privately. We made a quick interpretation, using no other evidence, that the materials in the article were obtained through hacking, and according to our policy, we blocked them from being spread. Upon further consideration we admitted this action was wrong, and corrected it within 24 hours. We informed the New York Post of our error, and policy update, and how to unlock their account by deleting the original violating tweet, which freed them to tweet the exact same content and news article again. They chose not to, instead insisting we reverse our enforcement action we did not have a practice of overturning, this incident dmn straited we needed one so we created one thats fair and appropriate. I hope this illustrates the rationale behind our actions and demonstrates our ability to take feedback, admit mistakes, and make changes, all transparently to the public, we acknowledge there are still concerns around how we moderate content and specifically our use of section 230. Three weeks ago we proposed three solutions to address the concerns raised and they all focus on services that decide to moderate or remove content. It could be expansions to section 230. New legislative frameworks or a commitment to industrywide selfregulation best practices, requiring one moderation process in practices to be published, two, straightforward process to appeal decisions, and three, best efforts around algorithmic choice are suggestions to address the concerns we all have Going Forward and theyre all achievable in short order. Its critical as we consider these solutions we optimize for new startups and independent developers. Doing so ensures a level Playing Field that increases the probability of competing ideas to help solve problems Going Forward. We must not entrench the Largest Companies Going Forward. Before i close i want to share reflections on what we saw during the u. S. President ial election. We focus on addressing attempts to undermine civic integrity, providing informative context and product changes to encourage greater conversation. We updated our civic integrity policy to address misleading or disputed information that undermines confidence in the election, causes voter intimidation or suppression or confusion about how to vote, or misrepresents affiliation or election outcomes. More than a year ago the public asked us to offer additional context to help make potentially misleading information more apparent. We did exactly that, applying labels to over 300,000 tweets from october 27th to november 11th. Which represented about 2. 2 of all u. S. Electionrelated tweets. We also changed how a product works in order to help increase context and encourage more thoughtful consideration before tweets are shared broadly. Were continuing to assess the impact of these product changes to inform our longterm road map. Thank you for the time, and i look forward to a productive discussion focused on solutions. Thank you, mr. Dorsey. Mr. Zuckerberg. Thank you, chairman graham, ranking memb ranking blumenthal. I spoke about the role internet platforms play in supporting democracy, keeping people safe and upholding fundamental values like Free Expression. People have deeply held beliefs about these issues and can reach very different conclusions about the right balance. We try to do whats best for our community and the world, acknowledging that there are difficult tradeoffs. I believe that some of these tradeoffs and decisions would be better made through a democratic process, and i look forward to discussing that today. But first, i want to update you on our efforts during the election. At facebook we took our responsibility to protect the integrity of this election very seriously. In 2016 we began to face new kinds of threats. And after years of preparation, we were ready to defend against them. Weve built sophisticated systems to protect against election interference that combine artificial intelligence, significant human review and partnerships with the intelligence community, Law Enforcement and other tech platforms. Weve taken down more than a hundred networks of bad actors who were trying to coordinate and interfere globally. We established a network of independent Fact Checkers that cover more transparent on facebook than anywhere else, including tv, radio and email and we introduced new policies to combat Voter Suppression and misinformation. Still, the pandemic created new challenges, how to handle misinformation about covid, and voting by mail, how to prepare people for the reality that results would take time, and how to handle, if someone prematurely declared victory or refused to accept the results. So in september we updated our policies again to reflect these realities of voting in 2020 and make sure that we were taking precautions given these unique circumstances. We worked with the local Election Officials to remove false claims about polling conditions that might lead to Voter Suppression, we part nerd with reuters in the National Election poll, we additional contexts to posts trying to delegitimize the outcome. We locked down new political ads in the week before the election to prevent misleading claims from spreading when they couldnt be rebutted. We strengthened our enforcements against conspiracy efforts like qanon to prevent them from using our platforms to promote violence and civil unrest. I believe by any private company in recent times. This is what people expect of us, and im glad that from what weve seen so far our systems performed well. But election interference remains an ongoing threat that will never fully be solved so we continue to improve with each election. But our integrity work is really only half the story. We also ran an unprecedented Civic Engagement program to encourage people to take part in our democracy. We ran the largest Voter Information Campaign in history, 140 Million People visited our voting information center, including more than 33 million on election day alone. We estimate that we helped more than 4. 5 Million People register to vote and helped states recruit 100,000 poll workers. This was done in a transparent and nonpartisan way, as part of our ongoing commitment to supporting the civic process. And on top of these efforts by facebook, my wife priscilla and i personally donated 400 million to support Election Officials around the country in making sure that they had the infrastructure they needed to enable everyone to vote safely during this pandemic. And my last testimony i said that people would judge us by our performance during this election. And i believe that the full story is not only how we handled bad behavior on our platforms, but also how we encouraged Civic Engagement more broadly. Im proud of the work weve done to support our democracy, and i look forward to discussing this. I also welcome the opportunity to discuss internet regulation. I believe we are well overdue to update the rules for the internet around content, elections, privacy, and data portability. There are important questions here including who should be responsible for what people say online. For any system to work, i believe there needs to be a transparent process that people feel they can trust. And this will be difficult, especially since our country is so divided, but i believe its the only way to address these issues for the long term. The challenges that we face are deeper than any one platform. Theyre about how we want to balance basic social equities that we all care about, like Free Expression, public safety, and privacy. This is why i believe we would benefit from clearer guidance from elected officials and i look forward to discussing this today. Well, thank you both. Well have one round, and seven minutes, but ill, as always, try to be a little bit liberal with the time because this is a very important topic. So lets just get right into it. Mr. Dorsey, you can go first, then mr. Zuckerberg. When you heard senator blumenthals Opening Statement and mine, what did you get from it . Well, i think you pointed out that we are facing something that feels impossible. We are required to help increase the health of the public conversation while at the same time ensuring that as many people as possible can participate. And in order to do so we need to make policies so that people feel safe, and they feel free to express themselves, so minimize threats of abuse of harassment, of misleading information, of organized campaigns to artificially amplify or influence a particular conversation. And that policy creation, that enforcement, is challenging, but also it is more or less opaque to the public and thats where i think we have a gap. We have transparency around our policies. We do not have transparency around how we operate content moderation, the rationale behind it, the reasoning. And as we look forward we have more and more of our decisions, of our operations moving to algorithms, which have a difficult time explaining why they make decisions, bringing transparency around those decisions. And that is why we believe that we should have more choice in how these algorithms are applied to our content, whether we use them at all so we can turn them on or off. And have clarity around the outcomes that they are projecting and how they affect our experience. Thank you. Mr. Zuckerberg, very quickly, please. What did you hear . Senator, i heard that there are issues around content moderation, as well as other areas. And frankly im optimistic from the statements that we may be able to move forward and hopefully update some of the rules for the internet around these areas. Ive been encouraging and hoping that we would do this for a couple of years, and from your Opening Statements it sounds like there may be now enough Common Ground on views that Real Progress can be made here. So from my point of view, the question for us is, when it comes time to flag content as being reliable or not reliable, do either one of you believe that the government should do that . Is that a solution . Where the government sets a regulatory scheme that talks about what should be up and what should be down . I dont believe so. I think that would be very challenging. Okay. Do you agree with that, mr. Zuckerberg . Senator, for certain types of illegal content, i think it may be appropriate for there to be clear rules around that. But outside of clear harms, including things like Child Exploitation and areas like that, terrorism, i would agree with your sentiment that thats not something that governments should be deciding on a piece of content by piece of content basis. So if we take the government out of the picture, at least, in noncriminal areas, should we leave it up to the industry to come up with best Business Practices . In terms of how to moderate content . I think thats i think we need to align around the problem that were trying to solve and there are Many Solutions to solving those problems, but i think we also have to focus our efforts on what is going to have the greatest impact, and we believe that the greatest impact is going to be found in how we deal with algorithms, how we use those algorithms because they are responsible for showing us what we see, or what we dont see. And they need to be there needs to be more choice in their use. Do you agree with that, mr. Zuckerberg . Senator, i think that there is a role for regulation in the process, even if not finding it on a piece of content by piece of content basis. One of the areas ive advocated for is regulation around transparency. That goes beyond just about what the policies are, and what the process is, but also goes towards results. And as an example of this, every quarter facebook releases a Community Standards enforcement report, its basically a transparency report that breaks down each category of harm, potentially harmful content that we track, ranging from terrorism to Child Exploitation content to incitement of violence i dont mean to interrupt. Who sets those Community Standards . How are they set by the company . Senator, we have a policy team that consults with a number of different stakeholders and outside groups to make sure were getting feedback from broad swaths of our is that publicly known . Senator, i believe so. And our head of content policy has testified publicly multiple times. Okay. So when it comes to Fact Checking would you give us a list of the people you use to fact check . Senator, yes, we work with a number of independent organizations that are accredited by the Pointer Institute, and they include reuters, the Associated Press, press to the United States, usa today, fact check. Org, science feedback, politifact, check your fact, lead stories and the dispatch in the United States. I think its important for the public to know who sets Community Standards, how theyre set, who does the Fact Checking, who you rely upon to do that. I think that would go a long way to people having a better understanding of the decisions you make. Mr. Zuckerberg, do you believe your product can be addictive . Senator, we certainly do not design the product in that way. We design the product to be as useful and meaningful as possible. Thats not my question. My question is, theres seems to be an ample body of growing medical evidence that social media sites have an addictive nature to them. Do you agree with that . Senator, i dont think the research has been conclusive. But it is an area that we care about and study. We certainly do not want our products to be addictive. We want people to use them because they are meaningful and we take steps to make sure that this is the case. So, for example, you know, we dont give the team thats running news feed a goal around how much time people spend on our products, which goes counter to a lot of the memes and misinformation out there around how we operate. But my goal is to help people connect and find content and interactions that are going to be meaningful to them on our service and our view is that if thats what we deliver over the long term and people find the services useful then theyll use them more but i dont think that company should be optimizing to just encourage people to spend as much time as possible on them. My time is about up. Have you seen the movie social dilemma . Im familiar with it, senator. Have you seen it, mr. Dorsey . No, i have not. I would encourage both of you to see it. So heres what i think were going to do on the committee over time, i hope, is to ask the question more directly, are these social media sites addictive . Do they have a Public Health component that needs to be addressed . For years we thought tobacco was a great thing. We found out tobacco was not such a great thing. The medical science around these websites are becoming more concerning to me, particularly among children. And that you can manipulate how many times you watch, and you can set these media sites up so that people will constantly interact. So to both of you, i appreciate you coming before the committee. Weve got a long way to go. I dont think the government needs to regulate what we think or what we say. But weve got to up our game here. And ill end with this last question. Do both of you support change to 230 reform of section 230 . Senator, i do. Mr. Dorsey . Yes. Thank you. Senator blumenthal. Thanks, mr. Chairman. Let me bring this down to very practical terms. Were in the middle of another election. This election in georgia could determine, in fact, which Party Controls the United States senate. Im concerned that both of your countries are, in fact, backsliding or retrenching, that you are failing to take action against dangerous disinformation, exactly the same kind of Voter Suppression tactics that existed in the last election, and that you are, in fact, reducing content modification. The fighting words and hate speech in the last election could inflame violence and send poll workers into hiding. Discourage people from coming to the polls. We have to expect the same kinds of malign tactics. In fact, they are already visible, and im going to ask, mr. Chairman, that these posts and tweets be entered into the record. If theres no objection. That are aimed at delegitimizing the election in january. My question is, will you commit to the same kind of robust content modification playbook in this coming election, including Fact Checking, labeling, reducing the spread of misinformation, and other steps, even for politicians in the runoff elections ahead . Senator, our policy is to have a similar approach in the upcoming Georgia Special elections that we took during the general election. Mr. Dorsey . Yes, we do. We and we intend to learn from all of our experience with this election and bring all that learning Going Forward to make it more robust. During the past election there was rampant disinformation on social media in spanishspeaking sites, repeating qanon conspiracies and false claims of election rigging. In my view you need to do better. Will you commit to taking steps to improve content modification for spanishspeaking communities before the georgia runoff . Senator, this is something that we are already working on and worked on ahead of the general election. We have multiple Fact Checkers who focus on the spanish as a language, and we made sure that we translated our Voter Information Center into spanish, which we showed at the top of facebook and instagram to everyone who uses those products in spanish in the u. S. Those are a couple of steps that weve taken and were certainly committed to focusing on this. Yes, we will. And in partnership with latin x civil Rights Groups. Id like to know, and perhaps you could submit to me within one week, what additional steps youre going to take. Because this georgia runoff is under way. And as ive indicated, ive seen a backsliding and retrenchment that is very deeply troubling that have enabled the spread of this disinformation, the restarting of certain algorithm, for example, that promote or amplify misinformation is very, very troubling. And i think i want to know within a week what additional steps youre taking to enhance the efforts to stop this kind of amplification the efforts to stop this kind of amplification and spread. Let me ask about facebook standards that, quote, incite serious violence. As you know, on november 5th steve bannon in a Facebook Live video called for beheadings of dr. Fauci and fbi director wray for not acting more favorably toward President Trump. Twitter banned bannon for these remarks. You removed the video, mr. Zuckerberg, but on thursday you reportedly told facebook employees that bannon had not violated enough policies that he should be banned from facebook. My question to you, how many times is steve bannon allowed to call for the murder of government officials before facebook suspends his account . Senator, as you say, the content in question did violate our policies and we took it down. Having a content violation does not automatically mean your content your account gets taken down and the number of strikes varies depending on the amount the type of offense. So, people are posting terrorist content or Child Exploitation content, then the first time they do it, then we will take down their account. For other things, its multiple. Id be happy to follow up afterwards. We try not to disclose these you took down his account . Im sorry, i didnt hear that. Will you commit to taking down that account, Steve Bannons . Senator, no. Thats not what our policies would suggest we should do. In this case. According to the internal records that are on record now, leaked by nbc news, facebook has removed fact checks and forgiven infractions for conservative pages and pundits such as breitbart, donald trump jr. , eric trump, gateway pundit based on a fear of accusations of bias. Has facebook avoided penalizing or factchecking conservative changes that violated its policies based on concerns of political bias and allegations of bias . Senator, no, we havent done that. And i think that those reports mischaracterize the actions we take. Im not aware of any instance where we have overturned a fact check specifically. And certainly no action like that would be taken for the reasons that youre saying. What we do sometimes is if is apply some judgment on whether the repeat offender policies would render too harsh of a penalty, but thats different from overturning a specific fact check and not done for it the reasons you said. Well, im very concerned that, in fact, facebook seems to have a record of making accommodations and caving to conservative pressure. And the president has tried to use an executive order on section 230 to, again, bully or brow beat and exert pressure on you and others in this industry. Theyre, in effect, working the rest and winning. Let me ask you about antitrust issues. In 2013, facebook bought a virtual private records network that claimed to protect users privacy. In fact, access about its private users, provided facebook with unparalleled ability to track potential competition. I want to know whether facebook used data from anavo when it decided to purchase whatsapp in 2013 . I think that was one of the sources we looked at but it wouldnt have taken anavo to understand that whatsapp was a great product. The house antitrust report says the data was used to determine was, quote, whatsapp was killing Facebook Messenger, end quote. My time has almost expired. Let me say finally that antitrust action by the federal trade commission is long overdue. I believe that Decisive Action is necessary, including very likely breaking up facebook as a remedy. All options ought to be on the table, including divestment of instagram and whatsapp. The abuse of competition must end. Mr. Chairman, i ask the three letters from civil Rights Groups, from hate speech on facebook and youtube and letter of coalition of protection childrens on child sexual abuse be entered into the record. Thank you both for being here today. Without objection. Senator cornyn. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Well, im glad to hear both of our Witnesses Today say section 230 theyre open to reform because i think its fair to say the internet has outgrown section 230. While weve made some modifications when it comes to terrorism and when it comes to Child Exploitation, i think theres more to do. But i think the question is going to be how this regulation is going to come to pass. I know theres some, including on this committee, who suggest maybe we ought to create a private right of action so individuals can sue over claims of violated rights on your platforms. I think thats one form of regulation. Its called regulation by litigation, but its certainly not my first choice and its not optimal. And i dont think its something we ought to be embracing in the first instance. But i do think its critical that each of you and your counterparts work with us to try to come up with something that will address the concerns. And the basic concern i have is its hard to know exactly how to classify your business model. We have a provision in the bill of rights protecting freedom of the press, but yet here, while we would never let the government regulate what the press writes or doesnt write, essentially we are allowing private companies which are now de facto Public Forums to regulate that speech. Im no more comfortable delegating those decisions to you than i am delegating to you my vote in the last or upcoming elections. Louis brandeis famously said the solution for bad speech is not more speech, its less speech. It seems to me like the practices you are engaging in to tag, remove and otherwise censor speech on your platforms violates that principle. I would like to know why that shouldnt be a better approach by allowing more speech rather than krcensuring what is perceid as bad speech. As i discussed with you, mr. Zuckerberg, i think were all sort of struggling to come up with what the appropriate analogy here is to your business model. We know as newspapers have become less profitable, theres been consolidation in the news media. Theres a proliferation of cable tv shows and people being able to get information through a variety of sources but theres no Walter Cronkite or the big tv networks that with the trusted anchor person who people have confidence in that they will shoot with them straight. So i know its a very difficult thing to manage, but i would just encourage both of you not to wait for the lawsuits. We saw what happened to microsoft. I think bill gates said that was one of his biggest mistakes, failing to engage with some of the antitrust concerns when it came to microsoft. He learned that the hard way. And i think there is a better way for the American People, and thats if we work on this together. Mr. Zuckerberg, i believe that facebook publishes on a quarterly basis a report of its actions in this area. Is that correct . Senator, thats correct. Could you describe that for us and what motivated you to undertake that sort of transparency . Yes. Senator, i believe in order for people to trust that were doing a good job, they have to be able to see the results. We have to be able to break down on a content on a kind of category by category basis, across all the categories of harm. Whether its terrorist content or Child Exploitation or incitement of violence or child pornography, how much of the violating content is on our platforms and how effective our systems are at removing it. What we hold ourselves accountable towards is getting as high a percent of this harmful content down addressing it before real people have to experience it and report it to us themselves. In categories where we do quite well, for example, in fighting against terrorist content, our ai and counterterrorism teams are able to remove 98 or 99 of that harmful content before anyone has to report it to us. In other categories its more challenging and were still making more progress. But i think that as part of a Regulatory Framework here, it would be good if every company had to issue a transparency report outlining what theyre seeing on their platforms and the results of effectiveness of their content moderation system, so that way the people who are responsible for holding all of us accountable, whether its journalists, congress, academics, could have an apples to apples comparison about how all the Different Companies are doing, and potentially as part of a law, require that Companies Even maintain a certain level of effectiveness. Thank you. When twitter decided to take down the story, the New York Post story on Hunter Bidens laptop, did you do that under your terms of service or did you do it under some other claim of authority . We did it under terms of service, which, as you know, everyone agrees to when they sign up for twitter. This was a policy around distribution of hacked materials. We did not want twitter to be a distribution point for hacked materials. You do realize that by taken down that story, you probably gave it more prominence and visibility than had you left it alone . We realize it and we recognize it as a mistake that we made, both in terms of the intention of the policy and also the enforcement action of not allowing people to share it publicly or privately, which is why we corrected it within 24 hours. Mr. Dorsey, why isnt Justice Brandeis formulation in whitney versus california, why shouldnt that apply to the internet platforms like yours . In other words, the cure for bad speech is not censorship. Its more speech. Why wouldnt that principle apply to twitter . I think it does apply. All of our policies are focused on encouraging more speech. What we saw and what the market told us was that people would not put up with abuse, harassment and misleading information that would cause offline harm and they would leave our service because of it. So, our intention is to create clear policy, clear enforcement that enables people to feel that they can express themselves on our service and ultimately trust it. So it was a business decision . It was a business decision. Thank you. Senator feinstein. Thanks very much, mr. Chairman. Mr. Dorsey, in recent hearings before the Senate Commerce committee, you said, i think, that twitter has a policy against information relating to civic integrity. President trump and his allies have tweeted hundreds of false claims about the 2020 election. Trump has falsely claimed victory and alleged widespread voter fraud. So, heres the question. Does misinformation about the results of an election and voter fraud relate to civic integrity . Why or why not . Yes, it does. And we label those tweets. When the election has not been called yet or multiple sources have called it differently. Im sorry. I didnt understand that. Did you say you have been able to tweet . No. We have labeled the tweets that would indicate a different result in the election, called by multiple sources. I see. At what point was that done . Throughout the period. October 11th up till today. So, when the tweet was initially came in, how long was it before you, quote, updated it . We didnt update it. We put a label on it pointing to the broader conversation. Our goal is to connect people with more information around whats happening with the election. And that occurred anywhere from five minutes to 30 minutes. But as quickly as as quickly as we can. Thank you. Is 30 minutes the maximum time . I dont know. We can get you that information. Would you . Im interested in this. Does misinformation about the results of an election and voter fraud relate to civic integrity . Why or why not . Yes, it does. And we also label those tweets that would that would indicate whether fraud was happening. Again, we connect those to larger conversations on the platform. So, we want to provide context here. That is our goal. Providing more context, providing more information. Okay. Now a specific question, and im not sure, actually, what the answer to this should be. But on november 7, President Trump tweeted, and i quote, i won this election by a lot, end quote. Obviously thats not true. President trump lost the election. The warning label that twitter has applied to the tweet says, and i quote, official sources may not have called the race when this was tweeted, end quote. Do you believe that label goes far enough to prevent the tweets harms when the tweet is still visible and not accurate . Ci do because its not just the surface level label. It points to a collection of news articles of information and conversation that gives you an expansion on whats happening with the election. I guess, you see, my concerns are that these tweets arouse people, and it seems to me that the entity that runs this operation ought to have an understanding that when there is a major situation, that the tweets can play a unique role in either reassuring or stirring people up to unacceptable levels. Could you comment on that . Well, i agree in spirit. Our policy is focused on misleading information around the election and the sic process to provide greater context, to provide additive information so people can make decisions around whats happening with the election. Its three phases. Its the runup to the election, thats election day, and also the phase were in right now, postelection. Our policy is in enforcement are focused on providing more information, more context to people in those three phases. Let me give you a specific. On november 7, President Trump tweeted this i won this election by a lot, end quote. Thats obviously not true. President trump lost the election. The warning label that twitter has applied to the tweet says, and i quote, official sources may not have called the race when this was tweeted, end quote. Now, heres the question. Does that label do enough to prevent the tweets harms when the tweet is still visible and is not accurate . I believe its really important we show people a broader context. Thats the intention of the label. It is not just text below a tweet. Its ail link to connect to a much larger conversation and news articles across the spectrum. Well, give me an example of what would have to happen before the situation would warrant a stronger response . Well, we did have stronger responses during election day and the week after where we did put you had to click through to see the content of the tweet and it limited spread for any anything that went against our civic integrity policy, including premature calls to the to Election Results. Well, let me give you one more. On november 12th, President Trump tweeted a Conspiracy Theory that 2. 7 million votes for him were deleted. The warning label that twitter has applied to that tweet said, quote, this claim about Election Fraud is disputed. Now, heres the question, and i think it is a tough issue. Do you believe this label does enough to prevent the tweets harms, when the tweet is still visible, its a highly emotional situation, but the tweet has no factual basis . But the tweet has a link to more information, the more conversation, and more context that informs the situation whats happening. So, i do believe that connecting people to the larger conversation, giving them more context is the right path here. But they have to move to solicit that contact, right . Its not contained as an addendum to the original tweet. That the label is an addendum to the original tweet. If you tap on it or click it, you will go to an expansion of the information. I see. Can i ask a question of mr. Zuckerberg . Yes, you may. If you want more, that would be okay. Mr. Zuckerberg, at the recent hearing before the Senate Commerce committee, you said that facebook has a, quote, policy in place that prevents any candidate, end quote, from, quote, trying to deal legitimize the result of the election, end quote. But the host stealthevote garnerthe election. Heres the question. Do you believe facebook did enough to prevent trumps efforts to delegitimize the election result . If so, why have you reached that conclusion. Senator, i believe that we have we have taken some very significant steps in this area. Not just the adding additional context to specific posts and making it so that when people search for different hashtags we show additional information, but we also took the unprecedented step of putting the Voter Information Center at the top of facebook and instagram for everyone in the u. S. That showed them reliable information about the election, including partnering with organizations like reuters and the National Election pool to show them Accurate Information about the results of the election. So all taken together, i think that we really went quite far in terms of helping to distribute reliable and Accurate Information about what was going on during this election. Okay. Let me give you one more along this line. After President Trump falsely claimed that the election was being stolen, a group called stop the steal was started on facebook. It grew to more than 300,000 users in less than a day, making it one of the Fastest Growing groups, i understand, in facebook history. You shut the group dourngs but substantial damage already had been done. Trump supporters, some of them armed with assault weapons, held stop the steal rallies outside Election Offices. In philadelphia, two armed supporters who had traveled from virginia were arrested on their way to the citys vote counting center. Heres the question. And this is a tough one. What are your concerns about the spread of misinformation, no matter how innocent it is, or is not innocent, like trumps claims about the election, that they may incite violence . Senator, im very worried about this, especially any misinformation or content that could incite violence and during such a volatile period like this, one of our Top Priorities is making sure that people dont use our platform to organize any violence or civil unrest. That was the basis under which we took that group, because there were a number of members who were posting potentially violent or encouraging violent comments that violated our policies. We also have broader policies in place around trying to slow the spread of misinformation even more broadly, even when its not going to lead to some kind of violence or imminent harm and thats why we have created this independent factchecking program where we work with more than 80 partners around the world to help do factchecking because people in our community have told us they dont want to see misinformation, but they also dont want us deciding what is true and false, so we weve taken the step of building this program, which i believe is more sophisticated than what anyone else in our industry has. So, im very focused on these issues. Well, im happy to hear that because im really struck by it, that people armed with assault weapons as the product of a tweet could rally outside an Election Office and i think its really a serious issue that needs to be considered and there need to be once you signal that and people respond to it, it has to be, in some way, abated or in some way pointed out or restructured on the internet itself. Now, can you sporespond to that . Senator feinstein, im sorry were almost double the time. Im sorry. Thats okay. Were going to have a vote come up. Senator lee. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I would like to note, as far as the president s argument about the election and how they turned out, inciting violence, i would like to point out here that the only violence im aware of has occurred in connection with antifa, antifas response to protrump rally peaceful rally attenders. I dont quite understand that. Maybe well have a chance to dwell on that more in a minute. First i want to talk a little about federal law. Existing federal law and what it requires. Section 5 of the federal trade Commission Act prohibits businesses from engaging in unfair or deceptive trade practices. Compliance with this particular law requires there be some consistency between what a Company Represents as their practices and their products and what they actually are. In other words, you cant sell one thing and provide another under the guise of providing Something Different than what is sold. Both twitter and facebook represent and have represented for years to their users, their customers, that they take a neutral approach to election content moderation. However, as weve heard today and as we will continue to hear today and into the foreseeable future, there are instances in which your platforms are taking a very distinctively partisan approach, and not a neutral one, to electionrelated content moderation. For example, just days before the election, twitter suspended the account of mark morgan. Mark morgan is the commissioner of the u. S. Customs and Border Protection office. They suspended commissioner morgans twitter account specifically for a tweet celebrating the success of the u. S. Southern border wall. Apparently commissioner morgans tweet, his comments about the border wall, violated twitter platform rules governing what it calls hateful conduct. Now, ive read the offending post, and the offending post from commissioner mark morgan reads as follows at cbp and the army corps of engineers, continue to build new wall every day. Every mile helps us stop gang murderers, sexual predators and drugs from entering our country. Its a fact, walls work, period, close quote. Mr. Dorsey, can you tell me in one sentence what exactly is hateful will commissioner morgans tweet that i just read . Well, we evaluated his tweet again and we found we were wrong. That was a mistake and that was due to the fact that we had heightened awareness around government accounts during this time. So, there was a mistake, we reverted it. Thank you. I appreciate that. Well get back to more of that in a minute and get back to the fact that i understand mistakes happen, but what were going to see today is that mistakes happen a whole lot more. Almost entirely on one side of the political aisle rather than the other. Now, commissioner morgans statement in that tweet, as was initially taken down, is factual. Theres nothing remotely hateful about it and yet it was taken down. On october 15th facebook relied on a thirdpartys factbased assessment to ban two advertisers from facebook for, quote, partially false information. Both were factual. They revealed joe biden and Kamala Harris views on lateterm abortion. Joe biden has stated that he wont accept any restrictions on abortion, and senator harris views are such that she voted against requiring care for a child born alive during a botched abortion. The very next day the thirdparty factchecker issued a statement retracting the assessment and retracting it as erroneous. However, it stunningly took facebook almost two more weeks, until october 29th, when voting had already started in many jurisdictions, to lift the ban on these legitimate ads. Ads the factchecker had already declared a couple of weeks earlier were erroneously taken down. Mr. Zuckerberg, why on earth did it take facebook two weeks to correct this error . Senator, im not familiar with the details of us reenabling that ad. I can follow up with you after. Its possible that this was a just a mistake or delay, and, unfortunately, when we handle millions or billions of pieces of content a day, you know, while we strive to do as well as possible and be as precise as possible, we will make some mistakes. Thank you. I appreciate your acknowledgment there are mistakes, as noted previously. Those mistakes sure happen a whole lot more on one side of the political spectrum than the other. Now, this is understandable. Were humans. Its also understandable why this might occur. Maybe some of it has to deal with your employees. 92. 38 of facebook employees who donate to federal candidates gave to democrats. At twitter its even more stark than that, but 99. 3 of twitter employees who donated to federal candidates gave to democrats. So, these mistakes may be mistakes but theyre mistakes that rhyme. They may not repeat themselves, but they rhyme. And the consistent theme happens to be republicans, conservatives and prolife activists. Now, i would like to ask both of you, a list of every user or every content creator who has been deplatformed or had their contents altered or had some other adverse action taken by either facebook or twitter altered. Is there some list that identifies each user for which that has happened . Mr. Zuckerberg, lets hear from you. Just a yes or no question. Does such a list exist . Senator, im not aware of anything like that existing. Mr. Dorsey, how about you . Im not exactly sure what youre asking but we do you have a list of users or content creators who had some adverse actions taken from them, having their ad altered because of the content of their post . Certainly whenever we take an action, its recorded somewhere in a database, but im not sure if thats helpful. What im hearing from both of you is while there may not be an actual list, and i would like you both to look to see if such a list exist, but even if there isnt there is a de facto list. I would like to ask both of you, if such a list exists, please send it to me. Id like to see it. If such a list does not exist, you certainly do have the data necessary in order to generate some. I request as a member of this committee that you generate such a list and provide it to me. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. Senator graham, the chairman of the committee has stepped out momentarily. Ive been directed to recess the hearing momentarily so that we can go and vote. And then we will pick up back here in just a few minutes. I would like to, as long as i have the gavel momentarily, im going to ask one more question before i leave to go vote and then well recess the hearing after this. And could i ask when were coming back . Ive been waiting to ask questions for an hour now. Yeah. Well be coming back as soon as senator graham returns. He left to vote and just a moment ago. Hell be back. Mr. Zuckerberg, in september, facebook tagged an ad run by the american principles project in michigan. That criticized joe biden and criticized senator gary peters. And the ad was tagged because it was, quote unquote, missing context. Now, the next day the ad was shut down entirely by facebook. Facebook relied on a supposed fact check from p on. Litifact, which is a nice way to avoid taking accountability for the problem, but the fact check in question literally said that the ad, quote, makes, quote, predictions we cant fact check. Apparently this had to do with lacking context. When did lacking context become a new standard for political ads . All political ads, all ads in general, but certainly all political ads lack context. Ben sasse just finished a resounding victory in nebraska and i havent seen his tv ads, but im sure theyre brilliant. Hes made for television. With or without the beard. Im sure his ads didnt say, ben sasse, great senator but not that great of a hockey player or theres always context that is lacked out that is lacking, left out in any advertisement. So, what does that mean . And have you applied the missing content label to any democratic ads, a single one, that you can identify . Senator, im not familiar with that specific standard, but as kind of a background on the factchecking program, the basis of this is that we have heard resoundingly from our community that people do not want to see misinformation and believe it is a problem. People also believe that they do not want facebook to be the ash tore in truth in deciding everything thats truth or false. I strongly agree with that. I do not think it is the right thing to assume that role. Within those bounds we tried to create a factchecking program that works with independent thirdpartieses who have been accredited by the Pointer Institute for journalism, which i think is widely respected. And we give those factcheckers the latitude to determine whether ads or other content on our service is accurate. If not, we apply some demotions or prevent them from being run as ads. I can follow up in more detail afterwards. Thank you. On the specifics of your question since im not as familiar with them right now. I would appreciate that very much, if youd be willing to do that, because its not allaying consistent and logic with the standards that apply in every other advertising context that im familiar with. Its also inconsistent with what facebook itself does. Just to give you some context for that, while were talking about missing context. I recently posted something about the election on facebook. And my Facebook Post was almost immediately tagged with the following quote, Election Officials say that voter fraud, which is historically rare, has not affected the outcome in this election. If confirmed that mailin voting was conducted in accordance with state voting rules, close quote. I find this a little disturbing. The tag to me sounds a whole lot more like staterun media announcing the party line rather than a neutral company as it purports to be, running an open, online forum. This kind of editorializing insulates people from the truth and insinuates that anyone concerned about voter fraud must be crazy. It also states it as if it were an irrefutable objective fact. Maybe these kind of concerns are out of the mainstream in palo alto, but theyre not out of the mainstream with the rest of america. And i i have to reiterate. I hope this kind of manipulation wasnt intentional, but its getting harder and harder for me to accept the premise that it could be anything but intentional. And if it was intentional, its yet more evidence that facebooks actions surrounding this election, with the promises that youve made to your own users, and thats a problem. Consistent with the directions ive been given by chairman graham, were now going to recess. I predict well be in recess for no more than 10 or 15 minutes, until chairman graham returns. We stand in recess. Sunday night on q a, his documentary, the second killing fields of cambodia. Nobody is really curt about, its been undocumented it, which is a humanitarian crisis that happened in 1979. My father was among many refugees who found themselves in a horrifying situation. That is the story that is important and everyone should hear. Sunday night at 8 00 eastern on q a. Now back to the Committee Hearing with Mark Zuckerberg and jack dorsey. Their testimony continued with questions about the president ial election and how they are combating online disinformation. This is one hour and 25 minutes. Child born alive during a botched abortion. The ve i understand the challenging situations that social media platforms are in. You are on the frontline of both the domestic and foreign disInformation Campaigns. You have to look into hate speech and dangerous misinformation. It is a significant challenge. Last weekend, people said they dumpedut that china had millions of votes for joe biden. It was on the internet but now here the platforms have taken some positive steps. Sometimes there is very dangerous misinformation. Theyve gotten it from the platform and i have to think you can and must do better. I think even our democracy have the understanding of the basic truth that depend upon you doing a better job. President obama described it as the erosion of the science and clear evidence and truth decay. Its hard to imagine how it could exist and your platforms can bring people together. President trump has emerged emerged as the misleading election information began to without evidence of routine. Some of the states cheated and fixed the results and even claims millions of trump votes were deleted. Hes doing that with his own department of Homeland Security saying that the election was the most secure in american history, and there is no evidence that anything has been deleted or that it was in any way compromised. It may make them feel better about the fact that he lost badly, but we should not have to put up with it. So i have a question for both of you. Badly, but we shouldnt have to put up with it. I have a question for both of you. Has facebook or twitter conducted an indepth post momom review of election information at how this information reads . Have you done that kind of postmortem . Senator, we will do that analysis and also we are commissioning and working with independent academics to enable them to do the studies themselves and to publish what they find without any intervention or permission required from facebook. Thank you. And we are doing the same, including opening up our apis to researchers to make sure that others are able to see what we may not see ourselves. Will that be made available to us . Can other people see the results of that study youre going to do, both of you, i would ask . Senator, yes. The Academic Research is going to be public, and the academics are going to be able to publish this themselves without even having to get facebooks approval over what they publish. Thank you. Mr. Dorsey . Well make our reports and findings public as well so everyone can learn. I look forward to reading them. Im actually one member of the senate who will actually read them, so thank you. You look at some of the things, i know senator blumenthal wanted me to raise the question of putting them on a video. Think of what it did. It called for the murder, the beheading of dr. Fauci and directly the fbi christopher wray. Think what that does. The fbi director travels with security all the time. Dr. Fauci is has family or private citizens. They were calling for his beheading. It was seen by thousands of people on facebook. If youre going to have somebody threatening to murder somebody, what do you do about that . I was a prosecutor. I prosecuted murderers, and we didnt have to face this kind of threat at that time. But what do you do when hundreds of thousands of people see a threa threat, go murder somebody. In that case, the threat violated our policies. We took it down. As has been the subject of some of the other questions, if someone had multiple offenses like that, we would remove their whole account. Im sure the threat that if they multiple times, say, go out and murder somebody, cut off their head, were going to face a real problem. Facebook will take down our posting. Oh, my goodness, what a deterrent. Senator, what we try to do is identify content that violates our policy before anyone in the community has to see it or report it to us. For some categories like terrorism, like ive cited before, about 98 or 99 of the content that we take down, our ai and Human Systems find it before anyone has to report it to us. On hate speech, were up to 94 of the content that we take down, our ai systems and content reviewers find it before people have to report it to us. What we try to drive on more effectiveness is basically finding more and more of that harmful content earlier before it is seen broadly across our system. Let me ask you about that, because, you know, weve had these discussions before. Im deeply concerned about facebooks role in spreading hate speech in miramar, hate speech that help fuel a genocide against the Muslim Rohinga people. Youve made some progress about this since you and i talked about this last. But my understanding is facebook shuts down specific accounts that violate policy, but then users can just create a new account. In miramar, for example, on october 8, facebook took down 38 inauthentic accounts created and controlled by members of the Miramar Military prior to promote rohingan content. I commend you for doing that. But in the meantime, they turned around and created new accounts that held the same content. So in some ways you have a whackamole problem here. But is there a way that you can stop these things, not just at the account level, at the user level . I use that example because people are being murdered in our systematic genocide. Please answer senator lees question, then well need to move on. Go ahead. Im sorry to take long, but the previous questioner took all his time plus the time allotted to me. No, were at 2 1 2 minutes. Lets just go ahead and answer the question. Senator, youre correctly pointing out that we did disable certain generals in the Myanmar Military as dangerous figures, and they are not allowed to sign up for accounts, but as you pointed out, these technical problems are not ones that there is a Silver Bullet or you can ever fully solve them. We will always be working to help minimize the prevalence of harm in the same way that a city will never eliminate all crime. You try to reduce it and get have it be as little as possible, and thats what we try to do through a combination of building ai systems to identify harmful content up front, hiring thousands of people, tens of thousands of people to do content review, and partnering with organizations, whether its in the intelligence community, Law Enforcement, Election Officials or in myanmar local Civic Society to help us flag things we should be aware of and on high alert about. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, ill have some questions for the record for both of our witnesses. Thank you very much, senator lee. I appreciate that. Senator cruz. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Facebook and twitter and google have massive power. They have a monopoly on Public Discourse in the online arena. It is dismaying to listen to the questions from our democratic colleagues, because consistently the message from Senate Democrats is for facebook and twitter and google to censor more, to abuse their power more, to silence voices that Senate Democrats disagree with more. That is very dangerous if we want to maintain a free and fair democracy, if we want to maintain free speech. There was a time when democrats embraced and defended the principles of free speech. There was a time when democrats embraced and defended the principles of the free press. And yet there is an absolute silence from democrats speaking up for the press outlets censored by big tech. There is absolute silence for the democrats speaking out for the citizens silenced by big tech. Instead there is a demand, use even more power to silence dissent, and thats a totalitarian instinct that i think is very dangerous. At the same time that big tech exercises massive power, it also enjoys massive corporate welfare. Through the effect of section 230, a special immunity for liability that no one else gets. Congress has given big tech, in effect, a subsidy while they become some of the wealthiest corporations on the face of the planet. Mr. Dorsey, i want to focus primarily on twitter and ask you initially, is twitter a publisher . Is twitter a bub lipublisher . Yes. No, were not. We distribute information. So what is a publisher . An entity that is publishing under editorial guidelines and decisions. Well, your answer happens to be contrary to the text of federal statute, particularly section 230, which defines an information content provider is any person or entity that is responsible in whole or in part for the creation or development of information provided through the internet or any other interactive computer service. Let me ask you, was twitter being a publisher when it censored the New York Post . No. We have very clear policies on the conduct we enable to the platform, and if there is a violation, we take enforcement action and People Choose to commit to those policies and to those terms of service. Except your policies were applied in a suspective manner. You didnt talk about President Trump talking about his tax returns, even though it is a crime to submit your tax returns without consent. You didnt block that, did you . Did you block the discussion of the president s tax material . In the New York Times case, we interpreted it as reporting about the tax material. Did you block Edward Snowden when he illegally released material . I dont have the answer to that. The answer is no. You havent used this in a selective matter let me ask you, were you being a publisher when you forced politico, another journalistic outlet, and when you took down a topic you deemed inadmissible. A New York Post author said, i went to twitter to see if there was an answer. I wish i had given this story a closer read before i answered. Twitter locked it. He got a letter that said, im sorry, your information was blocked. He said, my goal was to raise questions about the story. Oh, my lords in silicon valley, i was attacking the New York Post, you dont understand, i was attacking them as i did in subsequent tweets and see how the administration responded. They responded, and shortly after, he comes back with, my account is no longer suspended, i deleted the tweet. When twitter is editing and censoring and silencing the New York Post, one of the biggest read newspapers in the country, is twitter considering that when they decide what stories to be published or not . No, we realized there was an error in that policy and the enforcement. We corrected that within 24 hours. Im looking at the tweet from twitter that says, your account has been locked. Youre telling me this is not an accurate thats a lock and can be unlocked when you delete the material. I understand that you have the star chamber power. Your answer is always, once we silence you, we can choose tool lou you to speak. But you are engaged in publishing decisions. Let me shift to a different topic. Mr. Dorsey, does voter fraud exist . I dont know for certain. Are you an expert in voter fraud . No, im not. Why, they be, is twitter right now putting purported warnings on virtually any statement about voter fraud . Were simply linking to a broader conversation so people have more information. No, youre not, you put up a page that says, quote, voter fraud of any kind is exceedingly rare in the United States. Thats not linking to a broader conversation, thats taking response as a publisher when you do that. You can take a policy position, but you dont get to pretend youre a publisher and get a special benefit under section 230 as a result. That link is pointing to a broader conversation with tweets from publishers and people all around the country. Mr. Dorsey, would the following statement violate twitters policies . Quote, absentee ballots remain the larger source of potential voter fraud. I imagine we would label it so people can have more context. How about this quote . Quote, third party organizations, candidates and political activists, voter fraud is particularly possible where, quote, Third Party Candidates and Political Party activists are involved in handling absentee ballots. Would you flag that as potentially misleading . You doni dont know the specf how we might enforce that, but i would imagine a lot of these would have a label. Youre right, you would label them because youve taken the political position right now that voter fraud doesnt exist. I would note both of those quotes come from the carterbaker commission on election reform. That is former president jimmy carter and james baker, and the question is simply voter fraud does not exist. Are you aware that just two weeks ago in the state of texas, a woman was charged with 104 counts of Election Fraud . Are you aware of that . I am not aware of that. If i tweeted that statement, would you put a warning on it that said voter fraud doesnt exist . I dont think its useful to use hypotheticals, but i dont think so. Were going to test that, because im going to tweet it and well see what you put on it. Yesterday, mr. Dorsey, you and i spent a considerable amount of time on the phone, and you said you wanted to embrace transparency. So i want to ask you, ive asked twitter, ive asked facebook multiple times, how many times have you blocked republican candidates for office, their tweets or their posts in 2016, in 2018 and 2020 . How many times have you blocked Democratic Candidates for office . How many times have you blocked Republican Office holders . How many times have you blocked democratic Office Holders . Twitter has repeatedly refused to answer that question with specific, hard data and cataloging the examples. In the interest of transparency which you said you want to embrace, will you commit in this hearing right now to answer those questions in writing . And well let that be the last question. Im sorry, mr. Dorsey, i didnt hear you. Thats exactly what were pushing for as we think about building upon 230. Is that a yes, that you will answer those questions in writing . Transparency not just of outcomes but also our process as well. Is that a yes, that you will answer those questions in writing . Well certainly look into it and see what we can do. And actually answer them and not give lawyerly double speak about why youre not giving specifics. Will you commit to this committee that you will answer those questions . Were going to work to answer broader transparency around our customer. Thats a no. Mr. Zuckerberg, how about you . Will you commit that facebook will answer those specific questions, cataloging the number of instances in which democrats in 2016, 2018 and 2020 have been silenced in many instances the way republicans have been silenced on facebook . Senator, im not sure if we have that data available, but i will follow up with you or your team. Ill take that as a yes. And twitter, well see if the answer is a yes, or transparency is bogus and we dont intend to provide it. We live in a dangerous world. Issues of national security, the worst pandemic Public Health crisis in modern times in america, and we are being challenged as to whether there is going to be a peaceful transition of power in america of the presidency. At that moment in time, we decided none of those topics were important, and what was important was to determine whether or not social media was discriminating against republicans. Its an interesting question. I think there are more important and timely questions. We have an election underway in georgia. We have timely obligations from Election Officials there, public Election Officials, where they have faced literally death threats. We are trying to determine whether or not the social media instruments of america are fair to the republican party. Im trying to struggle with this issue because i want to put it in a context, and maybe i cant. Maybe this is unique. We certainly know what the constitution says when it comes to free speech. And we know what it meant over the years. We certainly didnt suggest that anyone that used a telephone line for nefarious, illegal, banned activity somehow talked the Telephone Company into it by its nature. Then came radio and tv and we had to come up with new rules in terms of equal time, fair content and so forth. And now we have this new, relatively new, mechanism of communicating information, and were trying to determine what to do with it, whether to treat it like a Newspaper Publishing or treat it like some sort of a Communications Network alone. Section 230 sis an attempt to d that, and im sure everyone finds fault with it. I would like to ask the two witnesses if they would comment on the historical aspects of this particular debate, if they have any thoughts . Mr. Zuckerberg . Senator, one of the points in the discussion that i find interesting is people ask if the regulatory model should be more like kind of the news industry or more like telco is. But from my perspective, these platforms are a new industry and should have a different regulatory model that are distinct from either of those other two. I think it is not the case that we are like a telco and that clearly some categories of content, whether its terrorism or Child Exploitation, that people expect us to moderate and address, but were also clearly not like a news publisher in that we dont choose the content. We dont choose up front what to create, we give people a choice for content. Perhaps there should be some viability for whats on the platform, but i do not think some of these industries created previously will ever be fully the right way to look at this. I think it deserves and needs its own Regulatory Framework to get built here. Thank you. Would the other witness care to respond . Kb from a historical perspective, 230 has created so much innovation, and if we had had that when we started 14 years ago, we could not start. Thats what were most concerned with, is that we continue to enable new companies to contribute to the internet, to contribute to conversation. And we do have to be very careful and thoughtful about changes to 230, because going one direction might box out new competitors and new setups. Going another might create a demand for an impossible amount of resources to handle it, and going yet another might encourage even more blocking of voices or whats being raised here, which is censorship of voices and changing the internet dramatically. So i believe that we can build upon 230. I think we can make sure were earning Peoples Trust by encouraging more transparency around content moderation and our process of it. I think we need much more straightforward appeals, and i think the biggest point to really focus on Going Forward is algorithms and how they are managing and creating these experiences and being able to have choice in how to use those algorithms on platforms like ours. Let me get into a specific, mr. Zuckerberg. October 10th, Detroit Free Press reported 13 men charged thursday in the conspiracy to kidnap michigan governor gretchen whitmer, used apps to add more. In 2019, according to an affidavit by brian russell, michigan sergeant, Michigan State police. They encrypted a platform. Facebook alerted the fbi about the kidnappers Online Activity several months before the arrest. Thank goodness. However, in august, a Facebook Page for the kenosha guard militia which advocated violence in the aftermath of the shooting of jacob blake was reportedly flagged over 455 times to facebook. However, the page was deemed nonviolating and left up. More than 4,000 people responded to that event. Hundreds of armed militia showed up. A member of this group, a teenager from illinois, later shot and killed two people on the streets of kenosha. Mr. Zuckerberg, you describe facebooks handling of this militia page as an operational mistake. Can you explain the exact reason why the kenosha militia page was not taken down . Senator, yes, and first, what happened in kenosha was obviously terrible. What happened here was we rolled out a strengthened policy around militia pages in general. Whereas before that, we would have allowed a group that was a militia as long as it wasnt planning violence directly. Leading up to the election, we strengthened the policy to disallow more of those groups because we were on high alert and were teaching these situations as highly vulnerable around the election. We just put that policy in place. For a number of reasons, it had not yet been fully rolled out, and all of the content reviewers hadnt been fully trained on that. So we made mistakes in assessing whether that group should be taken down. But upon appeal, when it was escalated to a more senior level of content review folks who have more specific expertise in these areas, we recognize that it did violate the policy and we took it down. It was a mistake. It was certainly an issue, and were debriefing and figuring out how we can do better. However, one more piece that i would add is that the person who carried out the shootings was not in any way connected to that page or linked to any of the content there from anything that we or others could tell. Yesterday the fbi released a hate crime report. They found that more people were involved in hate crimes since they started collecting hate crime data in 1990. Document and religionbased hate crimes and hispanic hate crimes and hate crimes targeting individuals based on gender identity. Given these statistics, its clear to me that its more important that social media combat this more than ever. This is not antifa. These are documented hate crimes from fbi. Musl muslims have reached out to you many times, mr. Zuckerberg, about this issue, relating to published content that reflects on certain religious groups. You said in a hearing, you do not allow hate crimes on facebook. Yet in may 2020, the tech transparency project found more than 100 american white supremacist groups, many of them explicitly antimuslim, acting on the platform of group pages as well as other content. Facebook altered some of the content but the hate groups largely remained. Are you looking the other way, mr. Zuckerberg, at a potentially dangerous situation . No, senator, this is incredibly important and we take hate crimes of violence very seriously. We banned 150 white supremacist organizations and treat them as fairly as other hate organizations around the world. Weve ramped up our capacity to identify hate speech and incitement to violence before people even see it on the platforms. Our ai and human review teams, you can track our results in the transparency reports that we issue. Now take down about 94 of the hate speech that we find on our platforms before anyone has to even report it to us, which is a dramatic amount of progress from where we were a few years ago where, when we were just starting to ramp up on this, we were taking about 20 of it down before people had to report it to us. There is still more progress to make. Were very invested in this, and you have my commitment that we view this as an issue of the highest severity and one that we are very focused on. Thank you very much. Senator sasse. Thank you, mr. Chairman, and thank you for hosting this hearing. Clearly important topics around content moderation. Im a skeptic of the contract moderation policies that exist because i dont think its trance apparent and i dont think the execution is consistent. Im skeptical like my colleagues on both sides of the aisle that there is a regulatory fix that will make it better instead of worse. I also i think its odd that so many in my party are zealous to do this right now when you would have ane coming administration of the other party that would be writing the rules and regulations about it, and i think its telling that a number of folks on the other side of the dias, and i think of senator blumenthal, a guy i like, but who seems almost giddy about the prospect of a new Government Authority to treat online speech, and i think some of us take pause that somebody on the other side of the aisle gets to write these rules and regulations. But to the broader question, first, just to get kind of a level set, and i want to thank both witnesses for being here today, but when senator lee lays out some of the issues he did about just every Human Community is going to be situated in a different place, about policy commitments and priorities and beliefs, but when senator lee said that 93 of facebook employees who contribute to politics do so on the left and 99 , i think it was, of twitter employees contribute on the left, i would just be interested to see if either of the two of you think that has implications in the shepherding of your organizations. Again, i recognize fully that youre private organizations, so again, im more skeptical of a governmental fix for a lot of the problems were talking about here today, but im curious as to whether or not mr. Zuckerberg and mr. Dorsey, and i guess well start with facebook, im curious as to whether you think its likely there is systemic bias inside the organization in the execution of moderate policies given your Employment Base is so representative of america in general. Senator, i think its a good question, and certainly i think it means we have to be more intentional about what we it do, and thoughtful. Our principle and goal is to give everyone a voice and to be a platform for all ideas. As you mentioned, i do think its undisputed that our Employee Base, at least the fulltime folks, politically would be somewhat or maybe more than just a little somewhat to the left of where our Overall Community is, where the community basically spends almost a wide variety of people across the society. So i think that means we need to be careful and intentional internally to make sure that bias doesnt seep in to decisions that we make. Although i would point out a couple of things. One is that, you know, people have a lot of different views outside of work, and we expect, and i think generally see that people conduct themselves professionally. And, second, the folks who are doing the content review work, we have about 35,000 people doing content review, are typically not based in silicon valley, theyre based in places all over the country and all over the world, because we serve people in countries all over the world, so i think that the geographic diversity of that is more representative of the community that we serve than just the fulltime Employee Base in our headquarters in the bay area. Thanks, mr. Zuckerberg. Mr. Dorsey . You know, this is obviously not something we interview for and even have an understanding of when people are in the company. And with that understanding, we intend to make sure our enforcement and our policy is objective. I realize it looks rather opaque, and certainly the outcomes might not always match up with that intention, with our intention, and the perception of those outcomes may not match up, but thats why i think its so important that were not just transparent around our policies, but the actual operations of our content moderation. If people dont trust our intent, if people are questioning that, thats a failure, and that is something that we need to fix and intend to fix. And i think it would benefit the industry as well. But i do, again, point back to something i said earlier in the testimony, which is a lot of these decisions are not being made by humans anymore, theyre being made by algorithms. Thats around enforcement decisions but also to the things you see and dont see. That is the conversation we should be focused on because that is the enduring use case for everyone in these circumstances. Thank you. I wish it was true that these were all objective, easy questions. A question where if someone said, is the sky green, thats an objective question that the sky is blue and white, not green, but most of the things were talking about here and the places where youre applying content moderation labels are not really simply objective questions, theyre mostly subjective questions. If we talked about medicare for all being easily paid for inside a budget window on assumptions x, y and z that dont raise taxes, thats not true. There isnt any math by which medicare for all pays for itself in some shortterm window, but i dont think any of us really think youre going to slap a label on that saying this is disputed math or policy projections. Really whats happening is there is a policy organization grid that people go through when they build the algorithms, even those not built by humans, and theyre run by policy individuals. I would suspect your Employment Base is not 94 left of center, its probably more than that, and i would speculate that part of the reason less than 1 of your employees give money to candidates on the right is there is a social stigma attached to having conservative views inside your organization, and i would guess those same sort of internal, cultural biases inform the subjectivity of which issues end up labeled. So, again, this is sort of an odd place to be in that i am skeptical that the content moderation policies are thought out well, theyre not transparent enough for us to really know, but im definitely skeptical that theyre consistently applied, and yet im not really on the side of thinking there is some easy governmental fix here. There is a lot about section 230 we could debate. I think some of the things senator durbin said about how, in the era of telephones, nobody blamed the phone company for other people having spread misinformation by the phone. Exactly, thats what would be the case if section 230 were actually neutral. But youre applying content moderation policies and seemingly in a way thats not objective. I know im nearly out of time, but i think it would be useful for us to hear from both of you to give a sort of three or fiveyear window into the future. If there isnt new legislation, what is changing besides just saying were moving from humans to more ai . What kwaqualitatively is changi short of the regulations of a new regulation scheme . Can you tell me what problems youre trying to solve . Mr. Zuckerberg first, please. Senator, one thing were trying to improve on is transparency both in the policy and the results. Every quarter we issue a standards report that basically details the prevalence of each category of harmful content and how effective we are at addressing it before people have to even report it to us. Over time, we would like to fill that out and have more detail on that and make it more robust. Weve already committed to an external audit of those metrics that people can trust them even more. People have all kinds of different requests about where we might go in the future, whether thats breaking down the stats by country or language or into more granular buckets, adding more data around precision. But i think that that would all be very helpful so people can see and hold us accountable for how were doing. For what its worth, i think that that would be part of a regular together framework that would not feel particularly overreaching to me, is something that could be put in law that would create an apples to apples framework that all companies in this space would have to report on the outcomes and effectiveness of their programs so that way at least we can see how everyone is doing. That seems like a sensible step to me. Thank you, mr. Dorsey. Sorry, mr. Dorsey, same question and then ill give it back. Its a junior acting chairman. Mr. Dorsey . Thank you. If were considering three to five years out, i think the realization that a centralized global content moderation does not scale, and we need to think how we operate these services. And i would point to we certainly need transparency around any process that we have, and around the practice and the outcomes of those moderations. But i think having more control so that individuals can moderate themselves, you know, pushing the power of moderation to the edges and to our customers and to the individuals using the service is something well see more of, and i also believe having more choice around how algorithms is altering my experience and creating my experience is important. So being able to turn off algorithms, being able to choose differential algorithms that a found and written by third parties in the marketplace, i think is important and a future that would excite and energize us. Thank you. I appreciated my interaction with both your companies in the runup to this, and i think both of you said some meaty things there about ways we can move toward Greater Transparency, so ill follow up again. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. Senator whitehouse. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, let me start with just a moments history to give some context to my questions. When the Tobacco Industry discovered that its product was deadly, it responded to that news with a systematized program of denying that set of facts. The upshot for the Tobacco Industry was not great. It was found in federal court to have been engaged in massive fraud and was put under court order to cease its fraudulent behavior. At around the same time, the fossil fuel industry began to have a similar problem regarding its product, and it picked up the Tobacco Industrys scheme kind of where it left off, including using some of the same individuals, some of the same sbit tis entities, many of the same methods as the Tobacco Industrys participation. These are persistent, highly motivated, funded operations not unlike a Hostile Intelligence Service would run, and they are quite secretive and were now seeing a new form, i guess you would call it election denial, happening around our country right now. So thats the background that i come at this with seeing, and i wonder if each of you see a difference in individual error and basically mass disinformation. Is there a difference between odd people with fringe views who offer personal opinions and an orchestrated plan of deliberate misinformation or disinformation that is driven by motivated interests, whether foreign or domestic . Senator, i absolutely think that there is a difference, and you can see it on the platforms. Under our policies and operations, we view these coordinated and authentic behavior operations, networks of fake and sometimes combining with real accounts to push out a message but make it seem like its coming from a different place that it is or might be more popular than it is. This is what we saw the Internet Research agency out of russia do in 2016, and since then a number of other governments and private organizations including some Companies Like what youve mentioned have engaged in this behavior. Now, the good news is that i think that the industry has generally gotten its systems to be a lot more sophisticated to defend against that in the last several years. Its a combination of ai systems that we built to find networks of accounts that arent really behaving quite the way a normal person would, coupled with large numbers of content reviewers, sometimes with expertise in counterterrorism or counterintelligence, and then some signal sharing, whether its with the intelligence community, Law Enforcement, different groups that have expertise in different areas and with other tech platforms. But this is a big effort on, i think, all of our sides to make sure that we can defend against this kind of interference, and i think we are Getting Better and better at it. Well, let me encourage you to persist. As you know, the last time you were here, you were asked about advertising paid for on facebook denominated in rubles, which was not a scheme easy to penetrate, but your organization was able to penetrate it, and your original setup was simply to allow a shelled corporation to act between the real reader and not, so i ask you to continue to make sure real voices are what are heard on facebook. Mr. Dorsey, let me turn to you and ask the same question in the context of bots. Brown university recently did a study that showed about 25 of all tweets about Climate Change are generated by bots. Most of them obviously push out climate denial as i describe that operation. How is twitters capacity to identify a bot as opposed to a real customer . To build off your previous question, i do think there is a difference, as mark said, and i do think there are many coordinated campaigns to manipulate the public conversation, to divide people all around the world, to confuse and generally to distract, and we do have policies enforcement to prevent as much of this as possible. Its a growing threat and it shows no signs of slowing down. One way that entities do this, sometimes it may look like a bot, its actually a human that is organized with other humans for a particular agenda. So it is challenging. We are doing work right now to better identify bots on our service. Let me just interject, mr. Dorsey, real quick. As a baseline proposition, do you agree that a bot does not deserve a voice on your platform, that it should be actual people and organizations . I dont believe that as a highlight, i think we should be labeling bots so people know what theyre interacting with. There are plenty of bots on our service that provide a valuable function and i wouldnt want to take that away. Let me ask both of you, and maybe you can supplement this with an answer in writing for the record, because my time is getting short and this is a complicated question. But the question is, when does it matter to twitter, and when know who the actual entity is who is using your platform . Well start with you, mr. Dorsey, since mr. Zuckerberg went first last time. You can defer to it in answer if you like, since my time is running short. Well add to this conversation with written answer. But i do believe that pseudonymity is important. We have seen its usefulness with activists. And i think thats critical. But certainly, there are times, and its judged by severity of potential outcomes where we need to dig into identity and take actions. Well follow up with that. And let me just ask you, since my time has expired, mr. Zuckerberg, to respond or have your organization respond in writing. Thank you. Thank you. Before we senator whitehouse brought up something very important. Im going to ask this as directly as i can. To facebook and twitter, do you have any internal research or evidence to suggest that your platforms can be addictive . Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, i think we can followup with a summary of research that we have. But from what ive seen so far, its inclusive, and most of the Research Suggests that the vast majority of people do not perceive or experience these services as addictive or have issues. But i do think that should be controls given to people, to help them manage their experience there. And its being focused on. Mr. Dorsey. Im not aware of internal research, but we can followup. But i do think, like anything else, these tools can be addictive. And we should be aware of it, acknowledge it and make sure that were making our customers aware of habits of usage. The more information, the better. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Chairman. In the late 19. Caller 19th centuries, the heads of the big corporations, the robert barons got together, they set rates, got together, determined how to control record flow and competition. Ill be darned if were not back there again except this time, youre the robert barrons, your companies are the most powerful companies in the world. In recent, my office was contacted by a former whistleblower with content of the company. I want to start with an internal platform calls tasks that facebook uses to coordinate projects inclueing censorship. The task platform allows facebook employees to communicate about projects theyre working on together, that begins facebook censor teams including the socalled Community Wellbeing team, the Integrity Team and the hate speech engineering team. Who all use the test platform to discuss which individuals or hash tags or websites to ban. Mr. Zuckerberg, youre familiar with the test platform, arent you . Senator, we use the task system for i think as you say, for people coordinating all kinds of work across the company, although im not sure if id agree with the characterizations specifically around content moderation that you gave. Well, lets get into that. And let me see if we can refresh your memory and provide folks at home watching with an example. Here over my shoulder is an example, a screen shot, of the task platform in use. Youll notice that the cameras zoom in, several references to Election Integrity throughout, on these lists of tasks. Again, this is shared across facebook sites, company locations, by working groups. What particularly intrigued me is that the platform reflects censorship input from google and twitter as well. So, facebook, as i understand it, facebook censorship teams communicate with their counterparts at twitter and google. And then enter those companys suggestions for censorship on to the task platform, so that facebook can then follow up with them. And effectively coordinate their censorship efforts. Mr. Zuckerberg, let me just ask you directly, under oath now, does facebook coordinate its content moderation policies in any way with google or twitter . Senator, let me be clear about this, we we do coordinate and share signals on securityrelated topics. So, for example, if there is a signal around a terrorist attack. Or around Child Exploitation imagery, or around a Foreign Government creating an influence operation, that is an area where the companies do share signals about what they see. But i think its important to be very clear that is distinct from the content and moderation policies that we or the other companies have, where once we share intelligence or signals between the companies, each Company Makes its own assessment of the right way to address and deal with that information. Well, im talking about content moderation, im talking about individuals, websites, hash tags, phrases to ban. Is it your testimony that you do not communicate with twitter or google, about content moderation . About individuals, websites, phrases, hash tags to ban . Just yes or no . Do you communicate with twitter or google about coordinating your policies in this way . Senator, we do not coordinate our policies. Do your Facebook Content moderation teams communicate with their counterparts at twitter or google . Senator, im not aware of anything specific. But i think it would be probably pretty normal for people to talk to their peers and colleagues in the industry. It would be normal, and you dont do it . No, im saying that im not aware of any particular conversation. But i would expect at some level of communication probably happens. Ah. But its different from coordinating what our policies are or our responses in specific instances. Well, fortunately, i understand that the task platform is searchable. So, will you provide a list of every mention of google or twitter from the task platform to this committee . Senator, thats something that i can followup with you and your team after on. Yes or no . Im sure you can followup with the list. Why dont you commit while ive got you here under oath. Its so much better to do this under oath. Will you commit now of providing a list to the task platform of every mention of google or twitter . Senator, respectfully, without having looked into this, im not aware of any sensitivity that might exist around that. So, i dont think it would be wise for me to commit to that right now. How many items on the task platform reflect that facebook, twitter and google are sharing information about websites or hash tags or platforms that they want to suppress . Senator, i do not know. Will you provide a list of every website and hash tag that Facebook Content moderation teams have discussed, banning on the task platform . Senator, again, i would be happy to follow up with you or your team, to discuss further how we might move forward on that. Will you commit sir senator cruz and senator lee both asks you for lists, website that have been subject to content moderation. You were in doubt whether any exists. But youve acknowledged that the task platform exists, that it is searchable. So, will you commit to providing the information you have logged on the task website about content moderation that your company has undertaken . Yes or no . Senator, i think it would be better to follow up, once ive had a chance to discuss with my team what a sense of that would be. That might prevent the kind of sharing that youre talking about. But once ive done that, ill be happy to follow up. You wont commit to do it here. We could, of course, subpoena this information but id much more want to get it voluntarily from you. Let everybody take note that mr. Zuckerberg has repeatedly refused to provide information that he knows that he has. Let me switch to a different topic, mr. Zuckerberg, tell me absenout sentra. Tell about the tool named sentra. Im not aware of any tool. Theres a demonstrative be iviv shoulder. Sentra tracks different profiles that a user visits. The message recipients. Their linked accounts, the pages they visit around the web that have facebook buttons. Central also uses behavorial data to monitor User Accounts even if accounts are under a different name. You can see a screen shot provided on the sentra platform. We blocked out the individuals name. Although you see their birth date and age when they first started using facebook, last login, as well as any manner of trackings how many different accounts are associated with their name. What accounts have they visited. What photos have they tagged on and on and on. Mr. Zuckerberg, how many sites in the United States have been shut down and subject to review by sentra . Senator, i dont actually know, because im not familiar with that tool. Im sure we have tools but im not familiar with that name. Do you have a tool that does exactly as ive described and that you can see here over my shoulder . Or are you saying that doesnt exist . Senator, im saying that im not familiar with it. And id be happy to follow up. And get you and your team the information you that would like on this. But im limited in what i can what im familiar with and can share today. Almost amazing to me, mr. Chairman, how many people before this committee suddenly develop amnesia, maybe its about something in the air in the room. When a Facebook User accesses a private information like personal preferences or data, is a record made of that, mr. Zuckerberg . Sorry, senator, can you repeat that . Is a record made anytime a facebook employee accesses a Facebook Users messages . Is there a record made anytime a facebook employee does that . Senator, i believe so. Does it trigger an audit . Senator, i think sometimes it may. How many audits have been conducted . Senator, i do not know the exact number of you can give me a list . Senator, we can follow up on that, to see what would be used here. Im almost finished, mr. Chairman. Will you commit to giving us a list of how many Times Facebook employees have accessed users personal information without their knowledge, yes or no . Senator, we should follow up on what would be useful here, of course in the operations of the company, if somebody reports sometimes, sometimes, its necessary for people at the company to go review and understand the context around what is happening when someone reports something. So, this is fairly frequent. And as a matter of course, we do have Security Systems that can detect and now most patterns to flag. But we should follow up on more detail on what youre interested in. Mr. Chairman, id just say in closing what we have is clear evidence of coordination between twitter, google and facebook. Mr. Zuckerberg knows he has the tools to track this, yet, he doesnt remember or wont commit to letting us see it. We have evidence of facebook tracking users across the web. Mr. Zuckerberg wont answer questions about it, cant remember the name, isnt sure of tools deployed in this way and wont give us basic information. I submit to you this is totally unacceptable and totally predictable. Because this is exactly what the Tech Companies have done to the American People and congress for years now. Which is why it is time we took action against these modern day barrons. Senator klobuchar. And as you know, mr. Chair, im the chair on the subcommittee. Im going to take a little different approach when it comes to policy because i understand why they might be coordinating when it comes to security. What i want to focus on is what i think were seeing all over this country, not just in tech. Were seeing a startup slump. Were seeing more and more consolidation, and throughout history, were seen that is not good for Small Businesses. Its not good for consumers, and its not good for capitalism in the end. Even successful companies, even popular companies, and even Innovative Companies are subject to the antitrust laws of this country. When i asked mr. Pichai about this at the commerce Committee Hearing a few weeks ago, he told me google was happy to take feedback. And my response was that the Justice Department already provided feedback in the form of antitrust complaint. And i know there is investigation reportedly going on out of the ftc right now regarding your company, mr. Zuckerberg. So, i want to start with exclusionary conduct, regarding excluding smaller competitors by limiting intraoperability with the facebook platform. The investigation we saw in the house recently gauge ve us a nu of Companies Including via and arc. Not only damaged the ability of these Small Businesses to compete, but it deprived customers of convenient access. Youre one of the most successful companies, Biggest Companies in the world, mr. Zuckerberg. Facebook. Do you think this is fair competition or not . With regard to the intraoperability and how youve conducted yourself with these companies . Senator, im generally in favor of intraoperability, and able to access. Thats why we built the facebook platform in 2007. Some of the policies that you mentioned, i think came about, because what we were seeing was not necessarily startups, but larger competitors like google and some of our chinaese arri access the system. At the time that wasnt what we were trying to enable. We may have a nonchinese example here. I just want to know i know that maybe we could hear from mr. Dorsey. And i have concerns about facebooks treatment of twitter subsidiary vine. Its my understanding what facebook recognize the vine as a competitor after twitter acquired it cut off vines ability to operate with facebook so that users couldnt upload their videos to facebook. I think that twitter shut down vine in 2016. Mr. Dorsey, you can tell me about the actual impact of facebooks actions on vines business . On vines ability to compete and your decision to shut down the service . And i know youre not a chinese company. Well, i dont know about the intent on the other side, but i know our own experience was we found it extremely challenging to compete with vine. And ultimately, it decided that the ball moved past us, and we shut it down. I dont know the specifics and tactics and what was done, but we did find it very, very Challenging Market to enter, even though we existed prior to some of our peers doing the same thing. Okay. Im going to move to Something Else quickly. Instagram and whatsapp and weve had terms that instagram was nascent and if they grow they could be disruptive to us. Later, you write in an email, one of the purposes of facebook to acquire it would be to neutralize a competitor. You wrote those emails referenced in a house report, is that right, mr. Zuckerberg . Senator, i believe so. Ive always distinguished between two things, though. One is that we had some competition with instagram in the growing space of kind of camera apps and photo sharing apps. But at the time i dont think we or anyone else viewed instagram as a competitor, as a large multipurpose social platform. In fact, people at the time kind of mocked our acquisition, because they thought that we dramatically spent more money than we should have to acquire something that was viewed as primarily as a camera and photosharing app at the time. Heres the view, though, we dont know it would have done. And when we look at your emails, it kind of leads us down this road as well with whatsapp, that part of the purchase of these nascent competitors is to ill use the words of ftc chairman joe simons who just said last week a competitor can squash a competitor by buying it not just by targeting it with anticompetitive activity. So, i know that this is a subject of investigation. Maybe well be hearing something soon. But i think its something that Committee Members better about wear of, not just with facebook. But whats been going on with these deals that have gone through. And how has that led to more and more consolidation. And how we as the senate, and i just talked to chairman graham about this last week could actually do something about this, by change something of the standards in our laws to make it easier to bring these cases and not just involving tech. So, i want to go to something here at the end. The political ad we had in front of the commerce committee. Mr. Zuckerberg, i know you said that facebook had made over 2 billion on political ads over the last few years. You said this was your quote, relatively small part of your revenue. I know that. But its kind of a big part of the lives of politics when that much money is being spent on ads. This was a bill actually housed with senator graham. Yet, we have seen political ads that keep creeping through despite your efforts to police them on your own. This is why id so badly like to pass the honest ad act. In three battleground states ballots marked for donald trump will be discarded. It stated in three battleground states, paid ad, ballots for donald trump have been discarded. This played between december 29th and october 29th 2020, does this ad violate facebooks policy . Sorry, you can repeat what the ad was . The ad was an American Action news ad. Theyve advertised a lot of them on your platform. And it said in three battleground states, ballots marked for donald trump had to have been discarded. This was preelection. Senator, i dont know off the top of my head if that ad violates our policies id be heal to follow up on that. Would you commit to a policy where actually peoples eyes, people could review these ads, instead of just being hit with algorithm review . Senator, we do have review and verification of political advertisers before they can advertise. Okay. So does every ad go through a human being . Senator, i dont know huh . I think every our policy is that we want to verify the authenticity of anyone whos doing political or social issue advertising. And i think its worth noting that our people reviewers are not in all cases always more accurate than the technical systems. So are you saying people really review every ad, yes or no, or i dont know. Senator, i dont know. Well follow up in the written. You brought this cease and desist order against nyu for publishing a report that facebook is now properly labeled approximately 37 million in political ads. Why would you not support this project . Why would you bring a cease and desist against them . Senator, is that the project that was scraping the data in the way that might have been its your definition. With the ftc Consent Decree that we have. The reason its happening is because we havent passed the honest ads act. Theyre trying, theyre not violating privacy. Theyre trying to get the ads so people can see the ads, other campaigns, journalists, everyone. Senator, you know that i support the honest ads act and agree that we should have that passed. And even before that, that weve implemented it across our systems. But i think in the case that youre referring to, that project was scraping data in a way that we agreed in our ftc Consent Decree around privacy that we would not allow. So, we have to follow up on that. And make sure that we take steps to stop that violation. Okay. Of the last, mr. Dorsey, do you think there should be more transparency with algorithms . As part of this is not just im off of the ads now, im on just generically, part of this is that people dont know how this data is going across the systems and across the platforms. And people basically are buying access, within my impression, so that even if you say, whats the news in the last 24 hours, old stuff comes up, somethings gone awry from the beginnings of this. Would it be helpful, do you think, if there was more transparency with algorithms . I do think it would be helpful, but its technically very, very challenging to enforce that. I think a better option is providing more choice, to be able to turn off the algorithms or choose a different algorithm, so people can seal how it affects ones experience. Okay, thank you. I ask that both of you look at the bill that senator kennedy and i have, the journalist and conservation act to help the content providers negotiate with digital platforms. Thank. Thank you. Senator tillis. Thank you mr. Chairman, thank you, gentlemen, for joining. Whether cha mr. Chairman, i know youve asked the question a couple times whether or not these platforms can be addictive. I think they probably can be based on what ive read one of two ways, they could be in personality and engagement of a tool that they can somehow relate to. But i also think theres a transactional addiction. And i think you also mentioned social dilemma. I think thats the use of analytics, which i dont criticize among the platforms. But its the use of analytics to addict you to go down a certain path to produce a certain outcome. And that could either be an outcome performing an opinion, or an outcome buying something you didnt even think about 30 minutes before you started going down that path. So, i think there are things that weve got to look at. I do agree with mr. Zuckerberg and mr. Dorsey, its not conclusive, but common sense would tell you its a problem already and could become a bigger problem. Mr. Zuckerberg, id like to go back to the task platform for a minute. When i looked at the screen shot that senator hawley put up, it looked a lot like a Work Management tool. Can you tell me a little bit about that . And how many people are actually engaged as users on that platform at facebook . Senator, yes. Thank you. I was a bit surprised by senator hawleys focus on our task system, because all this is, its a basic internal project management tool. Its exactly what the name sounds like. Its used by companies by people across our company, thousands of times a day torsion assign projects and track them. Its used for all manner of different types of tasks. Across different people and teams. And do you know, roughly, how many facebook, either contractors or fulltime employees are actually users of the task platform . I think that probably the majority of facebook employees, people that we work with, have some interaction with the task system as part of some part of their work. Its basically just a companywide todo list. The other platform that senator hawley mentioned was the se sentra platform. You said you werent familiar with that one. I think it would be something as a followup to really understand the nature of that platform. I wont press you on it today because you said you werent specifically familiar with the name of the tool. But i would be more interested in how its used. But, mr. Dorsey, does twitter have a platform similar to the task platform for Work Management communication among staff . Absolutely. Even the Smallest Companies use these tools. We use a tool called jeera. I was involved in implementing these in my time in technology i can see why you have these platforms. Mr. Zuckerberg, you didnt think there was a systemic connection between google and twitter. But you can see how people in similar professions may have a discussion, relationship, maybe talk about it over a beer. But could you see how the skeptic could see how these platforms could be used across platforms to force certain outcomes . Lets say you had 100 people at facebook, 100 people at twitter and 100 people at google that all had a political event. They get together. They share notes, and then they go back and make decisions that could make it appear like its a corporate initiative. But it could be an initiative by wellintentioned, but misguided staff. Cow at least see of that as the possible . Senator, i understand the concern. And i think that coordination, specifically, on writing the policies or enforcement decisions could be problematic in the way that youre saying. Which is why i really wanted to make sure it was clear that what we do is share significaals aro potential harms that were seeing. Whether its specific content in the aftermath of that terrorist attack that people are trying to share virally. So that one, if one platform is seeing it, another platform can be prepared. That it will probable see that content soon, too. Signals around foreign interference in elections but i think its quite important that each company deals with the signals in a way that is in line with its own policy use. That in away is very different from saying that companies are sort of coordinating what the policy should be. I understand the policy should be clear on that. With what we do and dont do there. I agree with that. I would find it horribly irresponsible to see that is this a systematic approach across the platforms. But just with the sheer numbers of people that you all employ now, i could see how some of whats been suggested in the hearing could actually occur, with just small groups of people trying to manipulate certain outcomes. I dont want to get into details there, except to know, the task platform, if its similar to ones that i have experience with, has a lot of logging, has a lot of data, where maybe you could do yourself a service by saying, you know, i hear whats been suggested here. But in analyzing interactions between groups of people, seeing aberrations and some people more active or geared towards one outcome or another. It could actually help aleve some of our concerns with the way the platforms are being manipulated. Im not going to have time to drill down into the specific questions. Im glad youre all open on a regulatory outcome. I will tell you, if you listen to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle today, i fully expect that congress is going to act in the next congress, that were going to produce an outcome. And some people think that thats not possible because maybe the republicans and democrats are far apart. But if you listen to what theyre asking you, theyre concerned with the kind of outcome that they didnt like on social media in equal measure. So, i do believe that you would be well served to come to the table as an industry and identify things, mr. Zuckerberg, like what you said about transparency. And mr. Dorsey, i do think that the algorithms, when you talk about the sheer scale, are probably the most Sustainable Way to go. But were still going to have to have some confidence. I like your concept on choice as well. But were going to have to have more visibility in whats occurred and whats produced certain outcomes. Like a veterans day post that i did after the election. It was actually after my opponent had conceded. I just posted a picture, thanking veterans. And for a period of time, i think it was suspended and then directing people towards Election Results. I would like to think, if that was the result of an algorithmic decision that my opponent who almost certainly posted a veterans ad and every other person up for election got a similar treatment. Because if they didnt, it would seem to me there was some other factor in play if these algorithms are being applied to the base. In that case, political commentary from elected officials or candidates. So, i view this hearing as an opportunity to speak your commitment on two things. One, i mentioned to you yesterday. Ive got an intellectual property subCommittee Hearing in the middle of december. I would like to have a facebook and twitter representative there. I know that youre very different platforms. But i think you play very prominently in a hearing that senator coons sitting across from me now would like to have you represented. I think i can speak to senator coons that would be helpful, wed like to get your commitment to have witnesses for that hearing in the middle of december. Mr. Zuckerberg, can i get that commitment . Senator, yes, we will make sure that we have the right subject Matter Expert to join your hearing. Thank you. Mr. Dorsey . Well follow up with determining the best course of action. Thank you. And then well be following up on a series of questions that id like to ask. Let me get my head around some of the analytics information that i think you almost certainly have and hopefully willing to share. But well do that in a collaborative way in my office. Thank you for being here today. Thank you, were going to take a fiveminute break. I think our witnesses have requested a break. And they certainly have earned it. If thats okay with you, senator coons, well come back in about five minutes. Thank you. Monday, live on cspan2, barack obama interviewed by opinions post. Former president barack obama live monday at 11 30 a eastern on book tv on cspan2. Ahead of the general election. We have multiple factcheckers in the last four years we have seen unprecedented attacks on Democratic Institutions, social norms, the ways in which we conduct ourselves and many would say on truth itself. In todays society, you cannot talk about the truth without considering the impact of social media and social media platforms. If i might, mr. Zuckerberg and mr. Dorsey, Free Expression and open debate are the core values of our society. Whether you wish for it or not, the inescapable fact is your algorithms, policies and whatess decisions shape billions of people across the world understand to be truth. That is the case for Election Integrity, potential covid19 vaccine, Climate Change, hateful and dangerous stereotypes and many other critical issues. In no to recognize that small part was the hard work of many led by your ingenuity and resolve that build these impressive American Companies and revolutionized the way the world communicates. We need that same resolve to reckon today was what must be done to win our societys battle for truth. Mr. Zuckerberg yesterday i sent you along with 15 14 of my colleagues, a total of 15 senators, a letter urging facebook to do more to address hate speech and calls to violence on the platform. Biascused on antimuslim on an issue that warrants specific attention given the tragic consequences of antimuslim hate speech in sri lanka and new zealand and right here in the United States. I appreciate that facebook has taken action in response to these issues, but this points out why we need better metrics and transparency to evaluate your actions. My colleagues and i urge better enforcement in particular of your calls to arms policy which couldve made a difference in a recent tragedy in kenosha, wisconsin. You and i spoke last week, i appreciated our conversation. Can i count on you to provide specific and written responses to each of the questions in this letter and can we discuss them again . Yes, i read your letter and i commit to getting tok in detail with our team address the important topics that you have raised. One of your questions that i can answer right now, i think it was your second question about reporting in our quarterly reports about the prevalence of hate speech we find on our platforms, we will be adding that metric into our transparency reports this thursday when we announce our transparency report. Thank you, mr. Zuckerberg. Let me make sure i hear you right. That is one of my areas of concern is the absence of the report of prevalence as hate content. You mean you will be reporting not just what percentage of health hate sweet on the platform you are actively removing, but the total line . Senator, that is my understanding, the prevalence of that content is a percentage of content on the platform. Over time our goal is to be getting to more detail which is the subject of some of the questions you have asked here as well as we have already committed to an independent audit of the Community Standards and reports that way people can have full confidence in the numbers we are putting out. We have been doing these reports for less than a few years now and we will continue to flesh them out and add more details that way people can apply the appropriate oversight and scrutiny to the work. Thank you. I want to move on for a moment about your caught arms policy. You said earlier that facebook made a mistake in not taking down an event page that called for people to bring weapons to a public park in kenosha. As i think we all know, there was a tragic incident in kenosha where young man brought his ar 15 from illinois to kenosha and ended up with two protesters dead and one injured. You indicated this was because this mistake was because facebook had just adopted its militia policy a week earlier and contractors without specialized training did not pick up the violation. I appreciate your frankness in your answers to questions earlier today from senator durbin. But your response to senator durbin did not mention that the event page also violated a separate caught arms policy that contractors are not taxed to enforce so i have to ask as a followup, why didnt you before and also today reference the call to arms policy when reviewing what went wrong in kenosha . Senator, my understanding is did not post necessarily violate that called arms policy at the time. Prohibity does not anyone from saying lets go get our guns and do something. Trip, thatnizing a is not going to be something against the policies. What we do on some of these policies which im glad to get the opportunity to address this, some of these are context specific and require a higher level of context and expertise in the area to enforce so we do not necessarily have all of the 35,000 reviewers assessed everything a one of these policies. I can followup in more detail on the call to policy specifically. On how wes also operationalize these policies. Thank you for that answer. It seemed like it was a violation of your own call to arms policy. I look for to that conversation. I look forward to that conversation. Mr. Dorsey, you committed to something i was discussing with mr. Zuckerberg, an independent civil rights audit of twitter and the audit released by facebook in july has proven invaluable to bringing some light to some key areas in which facebook does need to improve. Will you follow through on your commitment in commission to this independent audit of twitter . Mr. Dorsey we work with civil Rights Groups all over the country and around the world to give feedback going into the constant conversation with them. We do believe we can be more transparent and making our transparency report more robust. We still have some gaps. It is important for any entity to audit independently of us. We believe that is important because an audit like that could take away from the work that we need to do. We would rather provide the information so that people can do that work. If i heard you right, you are not going to pursue an independent civil rights audit, but you are going to release data and consult with civil Rights Groups. I welcome a more thorough answer anto in which way having independent outside audit would harm your transparency efforts. Mr. Dorsey i dont mean it would harm it. We want to provide enough information so that people can do this work independently of us on their own timelines. That is where we need to make our transparency report more robust. We have had regular conversations with these groups and take feedback regularly. You do, mr. Dorsey, have policies against deepfakes or minute related media, covid19 misinformation, things that violate civic integrity but you did not have a standalone Climate Change misinformation policy. Why not . Mr. Dorsey misleading information is a large problem. It is hard to define cohesively. Approach to scope our to focus on the high severity. We focus on three areas, manipulated media, civic integrity around the election specifically, and Public Health specifically around covid. We want to make sure our have the that we have greatest impact on where we believe the greatest severity of harm is going to be. Our policies are living documents. They will evolve, we will add to them. It is important we focus our energies and prioritize the work is much as we can. I will close with this, i cannot think of a greater harm than Climate Change which is transforming our planet and causing harm to an entire world. I think we are experiencing significant harm as we speak. I recognize the pandemic and misinformation that covid19 and manipulate immediate also cause harm. I urge you to reconsider that because helping to disseminate furtherdenial is him accelerates one of the greatest existential threats to our world. Thank you to both of our witnesses. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Chair. Mr. Zuckerberg and mr. Dorsey, yankee both for being here with us today virtually thank you both for being here and for your commitment to constantly improving the way your platforms are serving people across the country. There has been a lot of talk today, many of us have been listening from our offices or online about the censorship of ideas and news on your platforms and these are the things that have been at the forefront of americans minds in the lead up to the election as well as the week since our 2020 general election. Week since our 2020 general election. And, you know, the people that i hear from, of course, believe that conservatives were wrongfully being silenced while those on the left were given basically free rein of your platforms. And one of the points. Contention that is often brought up is that you do recruit heavily from california which leads to your Employee Base skewing quite heavily to the left. So, my first question is for both of you. Do you have concerns about your ability to monitor disinformation on both sides of the political aisle, equally, given that the majority of your employees typically do lean towards the more Progressive Side . And, again, to both of you, how have you taken any steps then at all to make your Employee Base more representative of the country as a whole, when it comes to political affiliation . And mr. Zuckerberg, if we could start with you, please. Thank you, senator. I dont know if this is those are both really important topics. In terms of assessing what is misinformation, i think its important that we dont become the deciders on everything that is true or false ourselves, which is why weve tried to build a program, an independent factcheckers that we can work with on this. And those factcheckers are accredited not by us, but by the independent Pointer Institute for journalism that is part of the international factchecking network. And it includes factcheckers that, i think, span the political spectrum, as well as, i think the majority of them who would call themselves apolitical. So, weve tried to address the issue of making sure that there isnt a bias in our actions, by actually having us not be the deciders on that type of content ourselves. And to your second question about taking steps to diversify the Employee Base, we this is a sensitive area in that i dont think it would be appropriate for us to ask people, on the way in, as theyre interviewing, what their political affiliation is which, of course, makes it hard to know what the actual breakdown of the company is on this. But one of the area where is im more optimistic over time is i think were going to see more people working remotely around the country. And also around the world, which will mean that fewer people in smaller percent of our employees will have to come to, you know, the cities and areas like the bay area, where our headquarters is. And well be able to employ an increasing number of people across all of the different geographies across the country. Very good. Thank you. And, mr. Dorsey . First and foremost, the most important thing is that we build systems and frameworks independent of any one particular employee or individual in our company. And inclusive included in that system, are checkpoints. Checkpoints to make sure that we are removing any bias that we find. Checkpoints to do q and a and monitoring and all of the decisions that we make. Having an appeals process which is an external checkpoint, whether we make correct action or not. We want to do something independent of the people we hire so that is our focus. Second, like mark, im really excited that we are at a stage where we can decentralize our company even more. That we do not need people to move to san francisco. We can hire people all over the country. They can stay wherever they want to be, wherever they feel most creative. Thats not just in this country, thats around the world. And i think the tools are in a state where we can do that more easily. Weve obviously been forced to do it with covid. And i dont think its a state that well return from. The days of having one centralized massive corporate headquarter in one particular city are certainly over for us. And i think many other entrepreneur and starting Companies Feel that. Really good. I really appreciate that. I think that covid has taught us all an important lesson. For those able to work remotely, i think you will find greater diversity and thought which is very important i think for the types of platforms that you both represent. Now, id like to move on to an entirely different topic. And since i began my career here in the senate, i have been committed to, of course, protecting those who need it most, and folks, our children are the most in need and its our job as lawmakers to respond to the ongoing threats against them. And social media has created a whole new world for all of us. And it can help us share that information. And resources, with the public, about human trafficking. And Child Exploitation. And it can also help us keep track of sexual predators and ensure that our children are safe from those known threats. And, in fact, ive been working on legislation that would help update what information sexual predators have to provide about their online identities. And as we all know, however, social media can also be incredibly harmful. Child sexual abuse material, csa mch csam is present on nearly every single social media platform that exists. And in such polarized times, i am grateful that it is the subject that we do find it doesnt matter if youre on the left or the right, we can come together to find solutions for this issue. And, mr. Zuckerberg, i know all that and iwhen we spoke over th phone. And mr. Dorsey, i hope you find initiatives to fight these. And mr. Zuckerberg, i do understand that facebook is planning to outfit Facebook Messenger with endtoend encryption. And how dowel ho you hope to pra dissemination of child information if neither you or facebook can access that messenger data . Is there some sort of apparatus that you have in place to help with those situations . And then, mr. Dorsey, well go to you next as well. Senator, thank you for this. I think youre right on every count in what you just said, both that child Sexual Exploitation is one of the gravest threats that we focus the most on. And it is also an area that will face new challenges as we move endi endtoend encryption across the messenger systems. The reason were moving to encryption, people warrant greater privacy and security in their messenger systems. And to move to systems that are providing more security and thats why it makes sense to offer encryption broadly is good. But it is going to mean that were going to need to find and develop new tactics. A lot of what weve found around the best ways to identify bad actors on our system is not actually by looking at the specific content itself. But by looking at patterns of activity, and where is it that a group or person is not behaving in the way that a normal person would, so you can flag and review that. And weve grown increasingly sophisticated at that. That goes across the foreign interference preferenvention wo that we do that. And it also will be a factor here. And ill be happy to follow up on more detail on what we have planned. Overall, this is snis something were very focused on. And i agree with your concern. Thank you very much. And, mr. Dorsey, you as well, for those on twitter making sure that Law Enforcement would have access, if at all possible, if you could give me an overview of that, please. Child exploitation is absolutely terrible, and we dont tolerate it on our service at all. We regularly work with Law Enforcement to address anything that we see, inclusive of the patterns that mark just mentioned. The majority of twitter is public. So, we dont have as much activity in private channels, so, its a different approach. But its still, you know, we still see the same activity. And its one of our highest priorities in terms of severity. Thank you both for being accessible to us today. I truly appreciate your input. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Thank you, mr. Zuckerberg, i really want to appreciate what facebook has the area of Sexual Exploitation of children. You all have done a very good job helping Law Enforcement in that area. For the second time in three weeks, youve been called before the Senate Committee over claims that your platforms are supposedly biased against conservatives. The fact of the matter is, these allegations are completely baseless. Everyone who has systemly looked at the content on social media, from media matters to the Cato Institute to john kyle has found absolutely no evidence of anticonservative bias and they show far right content from the likes of fox news, the most engaged pages on facebook. All of your employees are left of center is relevant of nothing. Certainly not relevant of some sort of anticonservative bias in terms of your moderation. The way i see it, this hearing is a transparent effort by my republican colleagues to work the and in my view it is working. Two weeks ago the Washington Post reported that facebook has bent over backwards to avoid claims that it was biased against conservatives and it removed a strike against donald trump jr. s instagram account. One of several strikes removed from the accounts of trump family americans. The american first action was allowed to post material rated false by facebooks thirdparty factcheckers without penalty and these are just a few examples. And they are nothing new. In 2019, facebook included breitbart, a website described by its cofounder as a platform for the altright, as one of its trusted news sources. Facebook selected the daily caller, another site with White Nationalist ties, and the wall street journal has reported how joe kaplan stopped changes designed to make facebooks algorithms less divisive because the changes would have disproportionately affected conservative users according to kaplan. Mr. Zuckerberg, you founded facebook, a company with a market capitalization of approximately 80 billion and you control the majority share of the companys voting stock. Mr. Zuckerberg, im wondering at what point you will stop giving in to baseless claims of anticonservative bias and start exercising your control over facebook to stop driving division and actually, to quote you, build community and bring the world closer together, end quote, as you claim as facebooks mission. A recent study found that President Trump was the single biggest source of votingrelated misinformation in the runup to the president ial election. Since the election, President Trump has only continued the lies on twitter and facebook. Also claiming that he won reelection and that the election is being stolen from him. But the truth is, joe biden won the election as Major News Network and is the Associated Press have confirmed. In response to President Trumps lies, you have, at most, added a warning label. While still allowing the president s misinformation to remain online. You defended the labels claiming they point people to a broader conversation around the election. I have serious questions about the effectiveness of these labels since President Trump and his allies continue to spread lies. What evidence do you have that these labels are effective in addressing President Trumps lies . Response, please. And i think mark mentioned this earlier as well, were doing a retrospective on the effectiveness of all of our actions to the election. We believe the labels point to a broader conversation that people can see whats happening with the election and with the results. We dont want to put ourselves in a position of calling an electi election, that is not our job. Were pointing to sources and pillars that have traditionally done this in the past. And that is the intention of the policy, thats the intention of the labeling system. Mr. Zuckerberg . We view the additional context that we put on posts as part of an overall response and effort to make sure that people have reliable information about the election. So we dont expect that its just going to be when people are seeing a post that maybe casting doubt on a legitimate form of voting or may have misinformation that we can correct and help people understand how they could really vote, for example. Thats why we put the Voter Information Center predominantly on the top of facebook and instagram for months leading up to the election and kept it up afterwards so people can see reporting on the results. As i mentioned in my Opening Statement, 140 million americans visited that. I think this was the largest voting Information Campaign in the history of our country. So i think when taken together, these actions are were quite strong of an effort to communicate accurate and reliable information to people at the times when they needed it about how they can vote in the election, encouraging them to vote, having confidence in the election system, knowing who and when the election had been called. Thats just part of an overall system. My time is running out. All of the information the actual information, voter information you provide, that is good. But were talking about all of these misinformation actually, lies that are put out by the president and you have these labels. I really have questions about whether or not this kind of labeling and im glad mrmr. Mr. Dorsey is determining whether these labels do anything to create a larger framework for discussion. I will seriously consider whether that is actually happening. Since im running out of time, i just wanted to get to donald trump as president , a lot of his posts get on whether they contain misinformation, especially whether he won the election and covid. You name it, the fraudulent elections that he alleges, et cetera. What are both of you prepared to do regarding Donald Trumps use of your platforms after he stops being president . Will he still be deemed news wor worthy and use your platforms to spread his misinformation. Senator, let me clarify, my last answer, we are also have academic study to the effective of all of our election measures and theyll be publishing those results publicly. In terms of President Trump and moving forward, there are a small number of policies where we have exceptions for politicians under the principle that people should be able to hear what their elected officials are saying and candidates for office. So if the president or anyone else is spreading hate speech or inciting violence or posting content that delegitimizes the election or valid forms of voting, those will receive the same treatment as anyone else saying those things. And that will continue to be the case. Remains to be seen. Mr. Dorsey. We do have a policy around Public Interest where for Global Leaders we do make exceptions in terms of whether if a tweet violates the terms of service, we leave it up. We leave it up behind and people are not allowed to share that more broadly. A lot of the sharing is disabled with the exception of quoting it so you can add your own conversation on top of it. If an account is not a world leader anymore, that particular policy goes away. Thank you i am running out of time. I have mr. Chairman, i would like to enter into the record a number of studies particularly november 1st, 2020, article in the Washington Post. May 26, 2020 article in the wall street journal entitled facebook executive shut down efforts to make the site less divisive, three studies from media matters finding no anticonservative bias, and an article titled, no, bit tech isnt silencing conservativism. I would like to enter these into the record. Without objection. Senator kennedy. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, each of you has founded an extraordinarily successful company. And theyre both American Companies. And i think i would be remiss if i didnt say congratulations. Im very proud of the fact that it was American Ingenuity that did this. I think we can also both agree that both twitter and facebook have enormous power as a result of your success. Youre not companies. Youre countries. At least in terms of power. I want to test a point of view here. Im not sure i subscribe to it. But i want to get your thoughts on it. Mr. Dorsey, do you believe everything you read . No. Why not . I think its healthy to have skepticism about everything and have a mind set of verifying it and using as much information as possible to do so. Do you have somebody on your staff who protects you from reading things that they think you shouldnt . No. Mr. Zuckerberg, do you believe everything you read . No, senator. W why not . Because a lot of things are incomplete or incorrect. So you exercise your own judgment . Yes, senator. All right. Do you have somebody on your staff whose job is to filter things that they think you should not be reading . Senator, not not externally. Although i would hope that the teams that i work with internally do their best to make sure that the information that theyre presenting me with are always accurate. Okay. I want to here is a point of view. Im not sure i subscribe to it. But it is a legitimate point of view, i think. And i would like to know your thoughts on it. You have both and this is directed to each of you you have both democrats and republicans upset with you. The democrats are upset with you, this point of view holds, because they want you to publish im not using that word as a term of art or science here with any special meanings. The democrats want you to publish stuff on your platforms that they agree with but they dont want you to publish stuff that they disagree with. And this point of view also holds that the republicans are upset with you because they want you to publish things on your platforms that they agree with, but they dont want you to publish stuff on their platforms that they disagree with. What if we had a rule, what if your companies had a rule, this is a question, not a suggestion. What if your companies had a rule that said, okay, people arent morons. I would like to treat people as they treat me. That is that i can read what i want to read and exercise my own good judgment about whether i choose to believe it. So heres the rule were adopting. If you go on twitter or facebook, you cant bully people. You cant threaten people. Maybe this is a subset of both of those. But you cant commit a crime with your words. And you cant incite violence. But other than that, you can print any damn thing you want to. And well let our users judge. Give me your thoughts on that. Those are generally the rules we have. Our focus on these policies no, you dont, mr. Dorsey. Excuse me for interrupting. But youre censoring right and left, trying to make both sides happy. And youre making neither side happen. Thats not the intention i know its not the intention. But its the result. I can see why you might say that and might perceive that and thats why we do think its important that we add more transparency to how we moderate content, that we give more control to individuals to moderate their own content and focus on algorithms. But a lot of our policies are focused on making sure that people feel that they can express themselves in the first place and not driven away. Everything you mentioned about bullying, harassment, illegal content or violence, thats what our policies are i know. And excuse me for interrupting but my time is limited. Youre starting to censer content. Why not have both mr. Biden and mr. Trump able to see whatever they want to often your platform, so long as they dont threaten, bully, incite violence and commit a crime. Im not justifying the use of either twitter or facebook to hurt the row rohingas. Whats your thoughts on censorship . In principle i agree with what you are saying, although i think there are more categories of harm than just the ones that youve mentioned. But i think the basic principle behind what youre saying is a definition of Free Expression that says that people should be able to share their opinions broadly, except if its going to cause imminent or irreparable harm to another person. Even the most ardent First Amendment supporters agree that you shouldnt be able to yell fire in a crowded theater if theres not a fire because that could put people at risk of imminent hard. You mentioned terrorism and Child Exploitation and bullying as forms of harm. I think the debate is, what are other forms of harm. Were in the middle of a pandemic and weve assessed that misinformation about covid and treatments that could put people in additional risk of getting the disease or not seeking the right treatment if they have it, that those are also things that could cause imminent harm. Weve taken the position that mr. Zuckerberg, let me interce interrupt. Im not saying youre wrong by doing what you just described. But that makes you a publisher. And that creates problems with section 230. And i just think one point of view it is, at some point weve got to trust people to use their own good judgment to decide what they choose to believe and not believe. And not try to assume that were smart and theyre stupid and that we can discern believable information and information that shouldnt be believed but everybody else is too stupid to do it. Okay. Im done, thank you, mr. Chairman. I think you put your finger on a really maybe the central issue, senator kennedy, how do we let people make up their own minds without what theyre saying, creating violence or threats to others, very complicated endeavor. Senator booker. Chairman, can you hear me . Yes, and to our witnesses, we have two more senators and well be done and i appreciate your patience. Senator booker. I appreciate that, mr. Chairman. I appreciate listening to this hearing. I really want to bring just focus back to what i think is why were here which is the 2020 election. And ive been saying . This committee for many months now about the tragic consequences of us normalizing things that should express considerable outreach. Theres not a person on this committee that doesnt know who the next president of the United States will be. President elect joe biden and Kamala Harris will be the president and Vice President of the United States come january 20th. But what is going on right now is dangerous. And it is a threat to our democracy. For the first time in american history, we are seeing a sitting president of the United States make wild and baseless accusations that undermine the democratic process. That dont just delegitimize it. What the president of the United States is doing is trying to thwart our democracy. Donald trump is waging an allout war on the truth and our democratic systems. And one of his weapons of choice in this disinformation war is social media and specifically the two gentlemen here, their platforms, twitter and facebook. You have the tools to prevent him from weaponizing these platforms, to degrade our democracy and our Democratic Institutions and to cause such damage that even after january 20th, it could one of the first times that millions of americans think and believe that this election was baselessly being charged by donald trump. And so lets be clear on whats happened. Donald trumps shameful and shameless lies that are persisting about voter fraud and the outcome of this election were some of the most engaged content on social media in the days after the election. By one measure, during the week after the election, his posts on facebook made up all, every single one, of the topmost top ten most engaged posts in the United States and 22 out of 25 of the topmost engaged posts in our country. And his number one post, the top of them all, was a false declaration of victory. On twitter, his tweet on falsely claiming victory was viewed by millions of users. This was and is not just a disInformation Campaign by the president of the United States, but literally the most powerful person in our country doing an allout assault on the constitutional ideal of a democracy that he was sworn to protect. So lets take a step back because i think this would be bipartisan if we looked at what was happening in another country. If we saw im on the Foreign Relations committee and i know how we come together on issues like this, if a strongman leader of a democracy has denied his loss of a democratic election, made consistent and constant baseless claims about fraud, if he fired military leaders while his foreign minister talked about a smooth transition of the defeated leaders next term, even in jest, we would be putting out statements urging calm and calling for the peaceful transfer of power. And so were seeing concrete consequences right now of President Trumps rhetoric. We are actually in the midst of the fourth largest mass causality event in american history. This is not just something that should not be treated with calm and normalcy. But we all, people, who believe in country should be standing up and talking abiliout the consequences. We have his political appointee, the General Service administrator, refusing to say joe biden is the president elect. It was not that long ago that the 9 11 Commission Said that one of the things that undermined our ability to meet the terroristic threats to our company happened because of a treason sigs that was undermined or excuse me, a transition that did not happen in the normal course. President trumps actions should shock all of us, all of us who care about the welfare of our democracy, who care about our norms. And i hope the platforms here can maintain the highest levels of vigilance. To the gentlemen before us today, i would like to ask specifically, have you taken any steps to modify your platforms algorithms to ensure that blatantly false election disinformation posted by election official and is specifically the most powerful person in the United States, donald trump, isnt amplifying that his posts that might get a lot of interactions that are dead wrong dont somehow get boosted by your algorithms. If you could both respond to that as quickly as possible. Senators, ill go first. I share your concern on this. And i think its unfortunate that we had to put in place a policy around premature or false declarations of victory. But we had to do that and we anticipated this back in september when we put the policy in place. A lot of what were trying to do is help distribute reliable information which we attach both to posts on the topic by President Trump or any of the other candidates or elected officials who are talking on the subject. But more importantly we put that reliable information, including about Election Results at the top of facebook and instagram for everyone to see and that supersedes what the algorithm i appreciate that. I would like to get this is information i know. Jack, if you want to respond on the algorithm, if you want to respond about the algorithms too. Do you have specific measures that youre taking to prevent your algorithms from boosting false content . Yes, sir. Many of the labels did change how the algorithms amplified content. And then, you know, President Trump right now is spreading dangerous misinformation about our electoral process. Its going on right now. And maybe if you guys gentlemen would cogently through this process, this ongoing process right now, are there steps you will be taking that you have not already delineated as we are going into what could be unprecedented waters in this country. Are there any additional steps that you will be taking right now in the coming days or weeks to stop the further amplification and undermining of our democracy, we are heading, potentially, depending upon the behavior of a president who has shown himself to be erratic, are there steps that you are prepared to take in the coming days and weeks to address this misinformation that were seeing as coming in an unrelenting manner . Were this is, unfortunately, an eventual yalty that we planned for. And weve taken a number of steps not just including the factchecking program that we have set up broadly, but we stopped recommending all civic and political groups as an example because of risk of misinformation or harm growing there. We have temporarily paused all political ads because of a risk of potential abuse or inflaming tension or potential unrest or violence. And there are a number of other steps that weve taken like this as well. That weve done in other countries when there are risks of civil unrest that weve shown have worked. Ill be happy to follow up on the details. Thank you, your team has been helpful. Mr. Dorsey, any new steps that you want to give me . Im treading on the indulgence of the chairman if you could be really cogent. New steps. Were going to continue to remain vigilant around our enforcement of civic integrity. I think its important that we stay agile and we need to learn. We need to learn about the effectiveness of this work and how to carry it forward. If the chairman would indulge me one more question to mr. Zuckerberg, i was really pleased that the group stop the steal, a group formed on facebook trying to delegitimize the election, i was grateful that you all suspended that account after 24 hours. But im concerned about what lessons youve learned. Because clearly outside groups like the center for encountering digital hate flagged that groups posts hours before facebook did. And im wondering what you all have learned about speed, theres an old saying that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its pants on. What does facebook factor in in terms of speed, in trying to combat surges of disinformation about this group. And maybe another example additional sort of addendum to that question, mr. Zuckerberg, mr. Bannon, twitter, for example, permanently suspended mr. Bannons twitter account after he made horrendous steps about acts of violence against dr. Fauci and fbi director wray. But you but not only i guess im just simply asking, why would facebook not take the similar steps and similar stand . Mr. Zuckerberg, very cogently, could you talk about the speed issue, and when your platforms diverge, im really wondering why one platform in twitter saw that as a standard to remove but you all have left did not follow in that decision. Thanks, senator. Im happy to address both of those. On speed, youre certainly right that thats important and part of what we focus on is figuring out which types of messages are things that are going to go viral quickest. Because you its not just about trying to get to everything within, you know, five hours, for example, its actually much more important to get to the harms that are going viral quickly within an hour, even if some things that are probably not going to get much distribution at all might be deprioritized for a little bit longer. And so i think making sure that we stay on top of what are the hashtags, what are the groups, what are the messages, who are the bad actors who are trying to spread this content and as we see the threat evolving, we are typically able to evolve and move faster as well. So were very focused on that. Thank you very much. Anything else i just want to give you an amen, chairman. The second part of that question, i would love to get on the record. But i want to say to you, you mentioned earlier and i know that you said chairman graham will be chairman again. But i think you said something about the effects of social media on our kids. I can cite many studies who said kids are on social media twice the rates of eating disorders and image concerns. I know that the two gentlemen would welcome the opportunity to discuss this with other experts. But theres something really going on in terms of the selfesteem, wellbeing and flourishing of our children who are deeply affected by these platforms. Theres enough evidence that these platforms and childrens engagement on them is causing heightened levels of a deleterious effect on them. Thank you very much. Last but certainly not least. That is correct, and i appreciate that. Even though my colleague from new jersey went twice his time, i am going to begin these are senate minutes. Yes, theyre senate minutes. I will agree with my colleagues who have talked about the impact on children. The distribution of information that damages women and children that leads to violence against women and children, human trafficking, the utilization of these platforms by pedophiles, this is something that were going to continue to work on. When i was in the house, we passed legislation to put more tools in the hands of local Law Enforcement to fight this, but you all at these social media platforms are going to have to do your part to work with us on this, to protect our children. I will also say that were keeping an eye with each of a you yesterday, i talked about your financial components, square their for mr. Dorsey, and libra with mr. Zuckerberg and the application of these components to your sites. Were talking about 2020 elections but were also looking ahead to how we clean up some of what transpired in the before the 2022 elections. I think its fair to say too, that you all probably are now fully aware that theres great frustration with americans and with this committee, with the way you act invensable, the way your employees act as if youre the invincible gods of the silicon valley. Even youre beginning to conduct yourself as news publishers and distributors, my colleagues and i have asked you all repeatedly through the years for Greater Transparency and to accept responsibility. Youve chosen to do neither. So it is going to be up to us to change existing law and to hold you to account on behalf of the American People. Section 230, the reforms that were going to put in place will take away this liability shield that youve turned into an opaque wall that you and your content m content moderators are hiding behind. And the online freedom and Viewpoint Diversity act, i thank chairman graham and wicker for working with me on this. This is set up for a markup in this committee on thursday. Mr. Zuckerberg, you were stating earlier that we needed to put some definition in place. Were going to do that. Were going to take away language, inciting personal harm, inciting terrorism, were going to do that and clear that up for you. Mr. Zuckerberg, facebook is more like a government than a Traditional Company is a statement that you have made. Theres a lot of power in that for you. Yes or no on a couple of questions here. Does facebook routinely censer a users account at the behest of a Foreign Government, yes or no . Senator, im not sure if theres anything in particular youre referring to. But in general, we well, there is some in particular that im referring to and ill answer it, yes, youve done that. You have 60 million users in vietnam. Of course, this is a communist regime. Under the orders of the vietnamese government, did facebook shut down and ban the account of a vietnamese dissident because he criticized the governments land policy, yes or no . Senator, im not familiar with all of the details of that. But i believe that we that we may have done that. And that in general we try to follow the local law yes, you did. And you kept him off for three months. In turkey, does facebook have an antiblasphemy policy where it will take down photos of the prophet mohamed if asked to. We follow local laws. The answer is yes. In russia, under pressure from the russian government, did facebook take down a post advertising the rally and support of the dissident alexei navalny. The answer is yes. Do you believe its facebooks duty to comply with statesponsored censorship so it can keep operating, doing business, and selling ads in that country . Senator, in general, we try to comply with the laws in every country where we operate and do business. Okay. And i think that you prioritize profit over principle. When you look at these countries and also in communist china, they have banned their citizens from you. You cant operate there. And in china, twitter, you have an opponent there, youve got a knockoff, webo that is a Chinese Communist partyowned company. But your companies, youre still trying to do business in those countries. Mr. Dorsey, does twitter do business with huawei . I dont believe so but i can follow up. You helped launch huaweis 5g and its on their marketing page website. How about alibaba. Do you do business with jack mas company with their links to t Chinese Communist party. Are you aware that they agreed to pay for the peoples daily and they did this so they could advertise and promote china to the American People on facebook. The point of all of this and the answer to that, mr. Zuckerberg, you know that what theyre doing is gaining access to this market. This is why were going to keep a real close watch over what you all are doing with libra and what you are doing with square because we see what has happened. Its important for us to protect people and to protect human rights. And your election let me move to election content. And that monitoring because we do have concerns ability some of the things that happened there. Have you heard of the trump accountability project . Senator, im not familiar with that. Okay. That is a project that is an attempt to blacklist americans who have served in the Trump Administration and to prohibit them from gaining future employment. Now, in communist china, in putins russia, in totalitarian states, the government regularly will issue a blacklist on their enemies. Enemies of the state are banned from getting a job. If their names fall on the blacklist, theyre out. Now this seems disturbing that it would be happening here in this country. So mr. Zuckerberg, do you agree with me there is seriously something wrong with an unamerican blacklist tarring people from future employment simply because they belong to a different Political Party . Senator, i generally agree that people should not be discriminated gae discriminated against because of a political belief. Okay, that is a positive step. Now, on facebook i wrote in a post, and im quoting, the trump accountability project is the epitome of the cancel culture. Our nation has long benefitted from robust political debate and this effort to silence those who support our president is vile. As you can tell from this statement, nothing was said about the election or the results either directly or indirectly. But somehow i got slapped with your elections flag sticker. Which each of you need to realize, you say you dont keep lists. Obviously, you have lists. Because there are some of us who are regularly censored and called down by your content moderators. Do we want to see these lists . Yes. How have you built these lists . We want to know. I would remind each of you, you are a title i service. You are an information service. You are to be the new public square. But what you are doing with your power that you have derived because federal law gave you the ability to stand up and grow without being hit by lawsuits, you have used this power to run amuck. You have used it to silence conservatives. You have used it to build your list. You have used this power to act like you hold all the power, that you can make these decisions, you have driven this cancel culture because you have not called to account your moderators. You have refused to take responsibility for your employees and their actions so thereby reining you in on the issues of privacy, data security, content moderation, Liability Protections, defining who is a publisher in the virtual space. That is up to us because you have proven you do not have the will, the strength, the ability and you will not accept the responsibility to do it for yourselves. I yield my time. Thank you very much, senator blackburn. To the two witnesses, you made it through. Thank you hopefully well understand a little bit better about where the committee is at and our concerns. Thank you for appearing. I wish we could do it in person, but i could understand why we had to do it remotely. We will have more hearings coming up in the next congress, im sure, to try to find ways to modify 230 to deal with some of the issues that were brought before the committee. I just want to thank you both and just say that you have been hugely successful in ways probably beyond your own imagination and weve got problems around your platforms that have to be dealt with and we will do it hopefully collaboratively. The bot litom line is, we want make the platforms better, we want to continue to grow this part of our society responsibly, without regulation and lawsuit, its pretty much becoming the wild, wild west and i appreciate both of you for being willing to try to find ways to come up with systems that will ensure more transparent, more choice, and more confidence. Mr. Chairman . Yes, sir. If i may just add my thanks to the witnesses and also to you for having this hearing. I think theres one certainty here which is that mr. Zuckerberg and mr. Dorsey will be back, they will be back in the next session of congress. I hope that joining them will be google and amazon and others who should be held similarly accountable. I agree and to these two companies, thanks for stepping up to the plate and the other Companies Need to be here also. And i thank them and we need to have greater accountability by reducing the shield thats now nearly complete, and i want to thank you, senator graham, for working on me on the act a number of our colleagues have raised the problem of child sexual abuse material. The best way to counter it is to act. Sure. When you really are serious about all of this rhetoric, lets begin the journey with a single step. We can do it through the act. Its on the floor of the United States senate having been reported unanimously out of this committee. Lets have a vote. I agree. Change is going to come. Thank you, the hearing is adjourned. Politico is reporting that the president ial twitter handle will transfer to president elect biden when he is sworn in, whether not President Trump has conceded. The hanover requires no information sharing between the Outgoing Team and the incoming team according to the company. All existing tweets on those accounts will be archived and twitter will transfer the accounts. The same applies for the Vice President and the first lady. This is video from earlier of the president leaving the white golf clubgoing to the in northern virginia, the third consecutive saturday that the president played golf since the election. Supporters and demonstrators gathered at the entrance as the motorcade arrived. Before leaving the white house, the president treated big voter fraud information coming out concerning georgia, stay tuned. In addition to golfing the white house as the president is attending a Virtual Summit today and tomorrow. This is a