Vote for based on that. We learned a few new numbers of facebook, 146 million users of facebook and instagram, which facebook opens, saw content that came out of the russian, linked adds. We heard some new things from twitter and google as well, and lawmaker have had some tough questions for the general counsels of the companies which had to sit through a pretty rough two dives grilling from lawmakers. You said we didnt learn a lot about specific things at the beginning there. We basically dont know yet what happened do we . We have an idea what happened. We know of a number of ads that were purchase. Its possible there were more. We know of fake accounts that purchased adds on twitter and we know about some action on google. What we dont yet know is whether there was any collusion with the Trump Campaign in coordination with buying the ad on social media, and we dont really know if it swayed the election one way or another. David mccabe, what did you learn. Beyond the number wes got from thes and i the clearer picture or enter phoenix issue picked up some on wider ranging concerns of lawmakers about the breadth of these companies and a lack of accountability in the law for them. For example, you had john kennedy, a senator from louisiana, not particularly active on tech issues, grilling them about data privacy. Its not something that has a huge bearing on the russia investigation but was clearly something that was worrying him and a lot americans worry about when you look at polling data. We understood that while russia was the focus of hearings and the urgent matter, theres a broader set of concerns that may be fueling distrust of big tech platforms. Politically were these companies maybe spiesed the amount of animosity they were receiving. Be the time they got there probably werent. Theyre experienced for the lawyers, brought their top aide with them. I think its clear theyve been caught offguard by the russia issue and took heat from the lawmaked about that. Mark warner, the top democrat on the Senate Intelligence committee, said we came to you earlier this year and you basically brushed us off, he actually you frankly blew us off. Visited facebook in the spring. That was a sentiment i heard again and again from lawmakers. Why didnt you get to this earlier and why didnt you send your ceos . Another big concern. Well, the home state of these companies is represented by senator diane feinstein, who is on the intelligence committee. Heres a little bit of what she had to say. Ive been very proud and i know senator harris is as well, to represent this Tech Community from california. But i must say i dont think you get it. I think the fact that your general counsels you defend your companies, that what were talking about is a cataclysmic change. What were talking about is the beginning of cyber warfare. What were talking about is a major foreign power, with theosophies tick indication and ability to involve themselves in a president ial election and so con and sow conflict and discontent all over the country. Were nothing going to good away, gentlemen, and this is a very big deal. I went home last night with profound disappointment. I had pick questions, i got vague answers. And that just wont do. You have a huge problem on your hands, and United States is going to be the first of the countries to bring it to your attention, and others are going to follow, im sure, because you bear this responsibility. Youve created these platforms, and now they are being misused. You have to be the ones to do something about it. Or we will. Ashley gold, a strong statement from the home town senator. Definitely. Its a large source of pride that these Huge Companies that made hundreds of millions of dollars and have influenced all over the world so many users that rely on them every day. The senators are very proud these companies are from california, and they have enjoyed a really good working relationship with them for a number of years, many of the Tech Companies donate too these campaigns, especially the democrats, and some of the democrats are coming to the reckoning theyll have to regulate their fund. Goodbyele and facebook and twitter have gotten off scotfree in washington for years and years and havent debt with any real regulation. This is the moment theyre coming to heel and people are realizing that big tech is not its a great source of positivity in usefulness to the world but not all good. Absolutely. I think that gets us to the next question, which is where do thy go from here . And i think a lot of people dont know. There are ideas floats around for what lawmakers could do in a concrete way. The honest ads act which requires add disclosure,s a bill that deals with online sex trafficking that might be an outlet for resentment of big tech. Nobody knows where this goes in concrete terms. That almost doesnt matter, because this is about how we talk about these companies, and many, many policyies have been predicated on the golden hey flow washington. What happens when that goes away . Thats a a question a lot of us have. The end of her statement she issued a threat, or we will. Take care of this for you. Right. Think that gets to the fact that lawmakers get fed up when they feel Like Companies are not responding, when they feel like there isnt an attempt to fill in the gone. Which is why you see companies attempting selfregulation, the question is, is it too late . Announced changes, facebook, twitter, google, more ad transparency, political ads and election ad but it was right before the clearing so it was a clear attempt to get ahead of the grilling and for some lawmakers that will not be enough, especially the sponsors of the bill. Too little too late. Theyre doing this now and theres just a question, why didnt you this earlier and now the damage has been done. Our election was messed with, and this kind of nothing that can be done now. We senator al franken was especially angry yesterday, asking the Tech Companies general counsels if they were aware that foreign money was not allowed to good to elections. Really grilling them, like yes or no answers. Did you know that . And asking them to pledge they would not allow foreign money in purchasing ads and not all of them could stay, yes, because a lot of their ad practices are done automated and dont have people reviewing when theyre purchasing ads. Sometime if someone is buying something in foreign currency they dont know that. So, ashley gold, diane feinstein, al franken, both democrats, democrats and Tech Companies have traditionally been on the same side. They have been in longstep a lot of time the companies have donated to the the democrat counties and on social issues you almost always see the Tech Companies on the side of liberals and democrats whether its immigration or lgbt rights and as these Tech Companies keep growing and getting huge in their market share and power and monopoly is massive, some democrats are concerned about antitrust and the companies are too big and cant control themselves anymore, and it is definitely kind of a change in that longterm relationship that has been positive. Also from the it couldee, senator richard burr, the chairman. Lets show what he had to say. This subject is complicated. Theres whole new vocabulary that comes with this stuff. Impressions are different than views. Views are different than clicks. But theres one thing im certain of and its this, given the complexity of what we have seen, if anyone tells you theyve got this all figured out, theyre kidding themselves. We cant afford to kid yourselves busy what happened last year. And continues to happen today. That complexity, ill note, is exactly why we depend on you for expert insight and reliable information, 60 of the u. S. Population use facebook. A foreign power using that platform to influence how americans see and think about one another is as much a Public Policy issue as it is a National Security concern. Crafting an elegant policy solution that is effective but not overly burdensome demands good faith and partnership between companies and this committee. Just recently, on the basis of a more complete and sophisticated analysis, the only estimate that 10 million americans were exposed to russian origin content on facebook was increased to 126 million. That tells me that your companies are just beginning to come to grips with the scale and the depth of the problem. Whats the learning curve for the senate . Its very high. We heard this again and again and again. We had lawmaker ask one witness, what is the difference between a bot and a troll, an out submitted account and a person who sows chaos on the internet. They asked about the word impressions, the number of times an ad is served to a user, and gets the steep learning curve when it comes to the complexity of the digital ad market. This whole system has powered a lot of growth that most people who are party to is users and regulators, dont understand. Its a huge learning curve. Lawmakers are forced to rely on what the companies say. What we saw yesterday its not going to stop them from pushing the companies on the issues, even if they have questions that the technical specifities of us if, theyre still going to keep pushing. David mccabe, want to go back to something you both referenced, which is the size and power or these company. The New York Times has been writing about the collective power of the big fire and their control over how we communicate today. Is that going to be an issue that Congress Addresses . Well see. I think he has written eloquently about this and the difficulties in regulating these companies in a big way. What we see is that theyre concern about the size and reach of these companies on different tracts. Theres sort of the big element entirely abstract questions of, antitrust and market power and portray fill so is fall question and then theres more concrete things, how to regulate political ads. We regulate them on television so we know how to do that. I think to assume there will be whole seale regulation of companies, our reporting suspects thats not where this is head, and the same is true of the Big Questions like antitrust, but i think on the smaller issues, you could absolutely see our reporting suggests there is some momentum for these kind of Regulatory Solutions but a question of what is used on what issue. I agree with that. Theres momentum around the honest ads act which is the most concrete thing legislatively out of the whole social media, russian met eling thing, the lead author, amy klobuchar, and senator mark warner didnt want to introduce the bill until they had a republican onboard. They want to frame this an National Security issue. This is an issue that affects or democracy, and something they think everybody can come together on, everybody wants our elections to have integrate. So, if they rally support around that bill, we could see that going somewhere, but of course, Something Else that people are getting into yesterday, some of the republicans were throwing cold water on the idea that automatic this social media meddling threw the election for trump. They say it affected the whole election, cant say it made trump win and senator marco rubio said the trolls impacted his own president ial campaign and meant to hurt him and sow chaos in his campaign as well so theres a partisan divide there as well. Did either of you say any of these ads during the campaign . Do you remember seeing any of these ads . I dont know. I mean, thats the thing. They looked so similar to regular ads that its possible you saw one and thought it was real. Im not sure. Depended if we were in groups that were targeted in certain statements and having liked certain things on facebook, thats how they were able to target people. Looking at the ads released yesterday, none of them stuck out and i remember seeing that during the election. But i do thing its important to remember the scale these ads were released into. Facebook has 2 billion roughly global users. So it gets to the fact theres something people wont see even if theyre pervasive in other social metworks. In the news feed is curated because you see things you like and your friends like. If you were in a facebook circumstancell your friends were seeing these pages you would see these pages. But if you liked this thing yours news feed would look different. They talk about 126 million or 146 Million People being exposed to these ads, does that mean it showed up in your news feed or that you literally clicked on it or did something with it . Actually read it . Well, the content that came out these ads about nodoesnt bust advertisements. You could click on an advertisement and then be linked to an event or a post or a news article, which is referred to as organic content, separate from an ad. Out of these ads came organic content, which is what many people saw. The value premise is you can build an oddent four your page with a relatively small amount of money. High return on investment so it was all that feeding into the organic content. Representative terry sewell, a democrat, of alabama, on the House Intelligence Committee, had something to say about this as well. How diverse are these vetters . The reason i ask is because if you look at your organic postings, an example of that is blacktivist, also, turns out to be a fake Facebook Page done with a russian troll farm, and that is trying to incite racial animosity, and so my point is this, sir. With all due respect, i know yall are good corporate citizens and you consider yourself to be such, but i think that it is paramount to our National Security that we have a more transparency and more accountability on all of your platforms. I know im talking to facebook but im really broadly talking to everyone, and i want to know, what you see as your responsibility to make sure that you are not that you are actually vetting the content, and we know you have a fine youre walking a fine line because of free speech and that is the paramount foundation of our democracy. So, how who are your vetters and are they a Diverse Group of people . Our vetters the people who work on ad review, they are around the globe so we have a number of languages and regions we cover and we have people around the globe, like every aspect of our work force, we are committed to building a work force as diverse as the community we serve. I have to stop you. This stood on aim a member of the Congressional Black Caucus and last week during our work period, several of my colleagues went to facebook, to meet with your executives to talk about your diversity initiative, and i dont know if you know exactly how many racially diverse work force you have, how many what the personal is, but i can tell you if you dont know. Its very low. Ashley gold. She was touching on a few things there. The fact that were not sure who these content reviewers are, and im not even sure at what point during the ad process the content reviewers even look at the ad. After their purchased, before theyre purchased . Thats not clear to me. Then she was talking about the general racial makeup of the people who work at facebook, and they received a lot of flak about not being diverse at all. The Congressional Black Caucus recent my went on a trip to Silicon Valley to speak to them about their attempts at die verity diversity. That ha been there two years ago and had hoped there we would be progress in diverse toy work force, especially the board. The two law miker were very, very not have with what they saw. Said the Companies Made no progress at all. A huge lack of die diversity and lack of black board members. The companies were scrambling and apologizes, sheryl was on the hill and she said they would pledge to add a black board member. So theres frustration the companies north employing people that look like the makeup of america. I would just add i thing the question of who is reviewing the content when it going a human beings, rather than a. L. Al algorithm. We had a poll that showed the majority of people would prefer these ad be vetted through human review rather than algorithmic review. Human review is more expensive. Facebook said they reported earlier in this story line that theyre going to apply human review to more types of controversial ads, with special issues and civil rights issues, but its an expensive proposition for them to review every ad by hand. So, i think that question is going to keep coming back, who is doing the review and where is it being applied . I thick read somewhere that theyre going to have up to 20,000 reviewer at facebook alone. The touched of that yesterday and said facebook wouldread more con at any time reviewer. Not sure when but this is another move theyre doing as theyre getting flak from the hill. Announcing new initiatives. Would this have happened had they not gotten in trouble and had to testify in front of three commit year inside were not sure. Before we leave facebook and talk about google and twitter, lets hear from senator john kennedy, republican from louisiana. How many advertiserses to facebook have . We have approximately five million advertisers on a monthly basis. Did china run ads in the last election cycle . That tried to impact our election . Not that im aware of, senator. Not that youre aware of. Did turkmistan. Not that im aware of. How about north korea . Im not aware of other foreign actors running the same how can you be aware . You have five million advertisers . And youre going to tell me that youre able to trace the origins of all of those advertisements . If i want to hire a lawyer, i wanted to hire you when you were in private practice and, and say late go through four shell corporations i want to run some ads and i want to use shell corporations because i wouldnt hide my identity. You have the ability to go to trace through all of these corporations and find the true eight of every one of your advertisers . Youre not telling me that, are you . Senator, the commitment we are making im just asking about your ability. Not commitment. Can you do it today . Were not able to see beyond the activity we see on the platform. David mccabe, what mass senator kennedys goal nat line of questioning . I think we saw several lawmakers trying to draw the point out that these platforms, particularly facebook, are so large that it might be really hard for them to meet the obligations theyre promising. I think we saw disbelief on the front of how could you be able to track this stuff . And on the other side we saw some people take a similar approach to the same point, which is how could you not see this . Al franken said, they paid for it in rubles. How could you know that was not a problem . The companys response was to essentially say its complicated. We saw said we havent found evidence of other foreign actors but the investigation is ongoing, more issue may surface. They said foreign currency is one signal of bad ads but its not a perfect signal. But those kind of technical complications i think were not satisfying to the a lot of lawmakers. Youre nodding your head, ashley gold. Yeah. Like david was saying, senator kennedy was expressing disbelief. Nicer no way you can trace every ad while senator franken thinks there must by a way to trace every ad. The truth is somewhere in the middle but theres not that he knows of at this time. Thats because facebook has not gone looking for north korean ads or chinese ads. Who knows white they would uncover if they were looking for. That. In the instance they knew to look for russian ads after the fact. They only can see the activity on the platform. Might be hard to see who is buying the ads. We only have three our four minutes left but we have not mentioned yet the Trump Campaign. These hearings have goneon that. Doesnt seem like that was the focus this week. Is that fair . Well, all the witnesses were asked in the house hearing, did you find overlap we between the Trump Campaign ads and the russian troll for adds and the said no, we havent. A question Sheryl Sandberg was asked and didnt have an answer so i imagine they came prepared with an answer. He said we havent seep that yet. Well get back to you. That gets at the message of collusion. We didnt see as much conversation about their relationship with the Trump Campaign, and i also note we havent talked about twitter or google, either. Did you want to add anything to what he had to say. The general theme of what was talk about was these people messed with our election, they wanted to confuse and divide people and that was the theme of yesterday. Didnt really have to do with the Trump Campaign was responsible for this. Twiter and goalle were also there what was their role and what was the direct the questioning of those two questions . So twitter, they recognize theyre about 25, 22 the number of twitter accounts they found were linked with the Internet ResearchAgency Purchasing advertisements on the platform, and also twitter has had a very strong working relationship with russia today, rt through the campaign, selling them ad and now theyve terminated their relationship in the wake of everything thats been going on. So, twitter had to kind of stand up there and say we kicked rt off our platform and also introducing ad transparency initiatives. You can see who is buying ads on twitter. They got some pretty tough lines of questioning as well do you wt to explain google. Going came in knowing their platform is not as exposed to these issues as facebook and twitter. So, they essentially said that. They put some distance right away between themselves and facebook and twitter, and i think that continues throughout. I even think rt was absolutely the point for twitter, where they got hit again and again and again if think a lot of people came away from the hearings having heard 80 about facebook. What one that was clear while this is a problem for all of the companies, its especially a problem for facebook. Did eitheroff you come away with the impression the ads were effective . I think the ads were effective. I think they may have reinforced by bias a few people already had and maybe made them feel better about things they were already feeling and made them feel there were people out there just like them, that felt the same way, and inflammed those tensions they were already touching on. I think one thing we saw was the ads they released the targeting data as well. A lot 0 ads were served a fair number of time. Some were seen by nobody or seen bay minuscule amount of people but some were seen a lot and they did focus on issues that during the campaign, any one of white house covered that in any way, know were hot button issues, whether it was immigration or police brutality, and so absolutely there was real exposure to these ads, and they focus on issues that were very active at the time. They showed an understanding what was going on in the american Political Climate at the time and they kind of seem to really understand that is not what was going on and making peep upset. Right after the election they trend away from trump and questioning the valid lit of validity of his election, which is telling. Whats next step, round of hearings, legislation . I think those who already supported the honest ads act will keep pushing for it. Senator klobuchar is certainly pushing for it, and there is a chance there could be more hearings. Some lawmakers wanted to see the ceo in the room could they get called into d. C. For a hearing witch dont know but thats a possibility. A lot more listening and learning to digest what all the Tech Companies divulged yet, and theres going to be a demand for more information, more research. I think ashley mentioned this earlier, the shade their agencies are young. Some things they havent look and with facebook we saw them upgrade the number of people who may have seen this content by 20 Million People in the span of 48 hours and that would seemed like information they had before the general counsel came in prepared with that but gets at the fact there may be more shoes to drop especially when we see the organic content or hear more about the organic content and those are the stories that could flare the issue up again. The House Intelligence Committee is going release all 3,000 russianlinked ad that facebook handed over and hopefully see ads from twitter and google as well. They said theyre okay with releasing them. Howdied the ceos not have to appear. Theyre really busy, Huge Companies to run, Mark Zuckerberg was in china. They wanted people who could speak to the technicalities or legalities. I think Committee Leadership on the intelligence committee, which was sort of pushing forward on this, they never kind of went out on that limb and said we need Mark Zuckerberg in the witness chair. We cant say what would have happened if they did that but i remember early on, richard burr, who we just watched, said i want someone with technical knowledge. Doesnt need to be the ceo. That may have been a factor and probably was a factor, but it was very clear that some lawmakers were not satisfied with the witnesses the company sent. To be continued. David mccabe, ashley gold. Thank you for being on commune commune. The communicators. Thank you for having us. Washington journal live every dave we policy issues that it impact you, tuesday morning, californian democratic congresswoman jackie spear talk beside her legs to strengthen laws preventing and reporting Sexual Harassment on capitol hill. And political trade recorder discusses president trumps trade policy goals during his trip to asia, and were live in baton rouge for the next stop on the cspan bus 50 capitols tour will the last secretary of state and the Louisiana Attorney general. Well talk about security of voting systems and Public Policy issues in the state. Be sure to watch washington journal live at 7 00 eastern on tuesday morning. Join the discussion. The house ways and Means Committee started work on the House Republican tax reform bill on monday at noon. The committee continues going through the bill tuesday and wednesday. Committee chair ken brady says substantive changes to the tax plan are still possible. Live coverage resumes tuesday and wednesday morning at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan3. Cspan. Org, or listen live using the cspan radio app. Next, Veterans Affairs secretary dr. David shulkin gives an update on efforts to improve and modernize the va department. He spoke at the National Press club about work regarding waiting times at the va facility, and national va i. D. Card program, benefits and the va appeals process and answered questions be it the tech shooter who was an air force veteran. This is an hour. Conversation [inaudible conversations]