I request as a member of this committee that you generate such a list and provide it to me. Witc thank you very much, mr. Chairman. H, thank you, mr. Chairman. Man. Facebook and twitter and google have massive power. Y on i will say its dismaying listening to the questions from my democrat colleagues, becauseo they wantr them to sensor more to silence voices that Senate Democrats disagree with more. That is dangerous if we want to maintain free and fair democracy and fair speech. D d there was a time when democrats. Defended free speech and there was a time when democrats defended the principles of a free press. The yet theres an absolute silences from democrats speaking up for the press outlet censored by big tech. Theres a a silence from democrs speaking out for the scitizens silenced by big tech. At the same time that big tech exercises massive power, it also enjoys massive corporate welfare, through the effect of section 230, a special immunitys from liability that nobody elsey gets. Congress has for Given Big Tech effect a subsidy while theyve become some of the wealthiest corporations on the face of the planet. The f i want to focus on twitter and u ask you initially, is twitter a publisher . . You is twitter a publisher . Yes. No, we are not. We distribute information. So what is a publisher . R . An entity that is publishingp under editorial guidelines and n decisions. Well, your answer happens be contrary to the text of the federal statute, section 230, h which defines information ontent content provider is any person or entity responsible in whole e or in part for the creation or T Development of information provided through any interactive computer service. A was twitter being a publisher n when it censored the new york o post . No. We have clear policies on the ho conduct we enable on the platform. Except your policies are applied in a partisan and selective manner. Exc you claim it was hacked materials, yet you didnt clock the distribution of the New York Times story that alleged to talk about president trumps tax returns, even though a federal statute makes it a crima to distribute someones tax his returns without their consent. Sv you didnt block any of that discussion, did you . Our our policy was focused on distribution of the hacked id materials. Did you block the discussion of the president s hacked tax material . In the New York Times case, wewe we did you block Edward Snowden when he illegally released material . I dont haveer the answer to that. Answer is no. Ial . You havent used this in a a selective manner let me ask n you, were you being a publisher when you forced politico to take down their tweets on a poppic you deemed impermissible . No. Out we were enforcing our policy and our terms of service. On october 15th, jake sherman tweeted the following, i tweetea a link to the New York Post story and reached out to the Biden Campaign to see if think had any answer. I wish i had given the story a closer read. Twitter suspended me. So you have a reporter reporting ohhen a story asking the other side for comment. Twitter says, your account has been locked for violating he twitter rules. The reporter tweets after that, my goal was not to spread information. Well, thats a little worrisome in and of itself. My goal was to raise questions about the story. Oh, my overlords in silicon my r valley, i was attacking the New York Post, you dont understand. As i did in subsequent tweets i and see how the biden scam pain was going to respond. They later did respond. And not long after, jake shermap comes back with, my account is clearly no longer suspended. I deleted the tweet. When twitter is silencing the New York Post, the newspaper with the fourth highest circulation in the country and politico, one of the leading newspapers in the country, is twitter behaving as a publisher when it allows what stories the want to write and not . No. Th and that account was not suspended. Wewepubl realized that there wa error in the policy, and the em. Enforcement hold on. Im looking a twe the cor with g twitter that says your account has been locked. Your youre telling me this is not s accurate . Thats a lock and can be an e unlocked when you delete i understand you have the ve star chamber power. S your answer is, once we silencen you, we can choose to allow you. To speak. Engag but you are engaged in to publishing decisions. Mr. Mr. Dorsey, does voter fraud exist . I dont know for certain. Are you an expert in voter d . Fraud . No,no, im not. Well, why then is twitter right now putting purported warnings on virtually any statement about voter fraud . D . Were simply linking to a broader conversation so that cor people have more information. No, youre not. You put up a page that says voter fraud of any kind is up exceedingly rare in the united states. A that aud o thats not linking to a broaderu conversation, thats taking a disputed policy position, and youre a publisher when youre doing that. Ponse a youre entitled ed td to take t position, but you dont get to l pretend youre not a publisher and get special benefits. K thats pointing to a broader conversation of tweets from publishers and people all around the country. Would the following statement violate twitters policies . Absentee ballots remain the ntil largest source of voter fraud . I imagine that we would labed it so that people can have more context. How about this quote. Third party organizations, dats candidates and political activists, voter fraud is e, possible where third party arty organizations, candidates and political activists are involved in handling absentee ballots. Would you flag that as lly potentially misleading . I dont know the specifics of how we might enforce that. Dont but i imagine a lot of these hab would have a label, pointing o people to af bigger conversatiou youre right. You would label them, because l you have takenab the political position right now that voter fraud doesnt exist. I would note both of those quote come from the Carter Baker Commission on federal election r reform, that is former president jimmy carter and james baker. But twitters position is voters fraud does not exhaust. Are you aware in the state of te texas, a woman was charged withd 134 counts of election fraud, are you aware ofco that aware im not. If i tweeted that statement with a link to the indictment, would you put a warning on it that says the Democratic Party position right now is voter fraud doesnt exist . On it i dont think its useful to get into hypotheticals, but i dont believe so. Ex were going to test that, because im going to tweet that and well see what you put on it. Yesterday you said youon the wao embrace transparency. So i want to ask you, ive asked twitter and facebook multiple me times, how many times have you blocked must be candidates for office, their tweets or posts in 2016 and 2018 and 2020 . How many times have you blocked . Candidates . How many time have you blocked Republican Office holders . Twitter has refused to answer ih that question with hard data and cataloging the examples. In the interest of transparency which you said youou want to ilu embrace, will you commit in this hearing right now to answer u those questionsesti in writing . N thats exactly what we want to do. Thats what were pushing for as we thinkable building upon 230. U is that a yes, youll answer those in writing . Transparency about our process, as well. Esti is thaton a yes youll answe those in writing . Into well see what we can do. And answer them and not giveg double speak why youre not going to give specifics. Will youou commit to this you c committee you will answer thoses questions . Were goingon tos . Work to t answering broader transparency around thats a no. Mr. Zuckerberg, will you commit that facebook will answer those specific questions cataloging io thens, instances which democratn 16, 18, and 20 have been silenced versus republicans beingng silenced on facebook . W senator, im not sure if we have that data available, but if will follow up with you or your team. At okay. Im going to take that as a yes and twitter, well see if its a yes or transparency is bongus ae we dont intend to provide it. Senator durbin . Thank you, mr. Chairman. We live in a dangerous world. Issues of national security. The worst pandemic public healtl crisis in modern times in america. A. America and were being challenged as tw whether theres going to be a peaceful transition of power in america with the presidency. Of 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. Qun we have a recount underway in georgia. We have allegations made by the Election Officials there, where the republican allegations, republican Election Officials, where they have faced literally death threats. G we are trying to determine er o whether or not the social media instruments of america are fair to the republican party. Ts of im trying to struggle with this issue because i want to put it in context, maybe i cant, maybe this is unique. And m we certainly know what the tion constitution says when it comes to free speech. Sa and we know what it meant over the years, the New York Times versus sullivan and other publications. Weainly certainly didnt suggest anyone who used a telephone line for nefarious, illegal band activity immplicated the telephone company. And then came radio and tv and we had to come one new rules in terms of at one time equal time, fair content and so forth. And now we have this new relatively new mechanism of communicating information and were trying to determine what d to do with it, whether to treat it like a Newspaper Publishing or treat it like some sort of Aa Communications network alone. Section 230 is an attempt to do that. And im sure everybody finds sei fault with it. Nd i would like to ask two witnesses if they would commentu on thelt wi historical aspects this particular debate, if they have any thoughts. Asp mr. Zuckerberg . Senator, one of the points in the discussion that i find interesting is people ask if thy regulatory models should be more like the news industry or telecos. T but from my perspective, these platforms are a new industry and should have a different regulatory model that is nt distinct from either of those rl other atwo. Inct f i think it is not the case thata weret like a telecoand that there are clearly some t categories of content, whether its terrorism or Child Exploitation that peopleorism et us toat moderate and address. But were also clearly not likee a news publisher in that we dont create the content, and we dont choose up front what we publish. We give people a voice to t publish things. I do think that we have responsibilities and it may make sense for there to be liabilityw for some ofe the content that i on the platform. But i dont think the analogiese to these other industries that have been created previously will ever be kind of fully the right way to look at this. To i think it deserves and needs its own Regulatory Framework to get built here. Thank you. Regou. Would the other witness care to respond . From a historical perspective, 230 has created so much goodness and innovation, and if we didnt have those protections when we started if twitter 14 years ago, we could e not start. Thats what were most concerned with is making sure that we re continue and enable new companies to contribute to the internet, to contribute to conversation. Et, we do have to be very careful and thoughtful about changes to 230, because going one directiog night box out new competitors and new startups. Direc going another might create a gi demand for impossible resources to handle it. Mor and going in another may encourage blocking of voices ord whats being raised here, which is censorship of voices. Vo and changing the internet dramatically. Dramat so i believe that we can build upon 230. I th i think we can make sure that e were earning Peoples Trust by encouraging more transparency around content moderation and our process of it. Of i think we need much more straightforward appeals, and i think the biggest point to f really focus on Going Forward ii algorithms, and how theyre t managing and creating these experiences and being able to have choice how to use those on platforms like ours. Like let me get into a specific, mr. Zuckerberg. October 10, 13 men charged to i kidnap the governor of michigan and used facebook to plot their attack. The use of facebook spans almost a full year. A members began to use the o platform as a recruitment tool in november 2019, according to an affidavit by bryon russell, Michigan State police. Once recruited, members communicated via secured michi encrypting message platform. According to news reports, they facebook alerted the fbi about a the michigan kidnappers online conspiracy several months e before. After the shooting of jacob blake, a site was flagged over 450 times, but it was deemed nonviolating and left up. More than 4,000 people responded to that event. Hundreds of armed militia showeo up. A member ofs this group, a teenager from illinois, later k shot and killed two people on thet streets of kenosha. Mr. Zuckerberg, you describe facebooks handling of this thie militia page as an operational x mistake. Can you explain why the kenosha militia page was not taken down . Senator, yes. Ge first, what happened in kenoshan was obviously terrible. D what happened here was we rolled out a strengthened policy around militia pages in general. In whereas before that, we would have allowed a group that was al militia, as long as it wasnt planning or organizing violences directly. In the leadup tot the election, we strengthened the policy to disallow more of those groups py because we t were on high alert and were treating the situatio as very volatile around potential civil unrest around theeac hielection. We just put that policy into ust place, and for a number of reasons, it had not yet been fully rolled out and all of thee content reviewers across the company hadnt been fully trained on that. We ma so we made mistakes in assessing whether that group should be g taken down. Down. But upon appeal, when it was escalated to a more senior level of content review folks who had more specific expertise in thesi areas, we recognized it violated the policy and took it down. It was a mistake. It wa it was certainly an issue, and d were debriefing and figuring out how we can do better. Would one other piece i would add is s the person who carried out the g shootings was not in any way ed connected to that page or linkea to any of the content there fro anything that we or others can tell. Mr. Chairman, if i can ask one more question. Yesterday, the fbi released its annual hate crime report, finding more people were killede in hatepo motivated violence in 2019 than any year since 1990. Ae the report found that race based hate crimes remain the most common type of hate crimes last year. Data i and documented increase in religion based hate trimcrimes crimes based on gender identity. Given this, its more important for social Media Companies to combat hate on their platforms. And i might add to one of my com colleagues, this is not antifa. But these are documented hate crimes from fbi. Muslim advocates, muslims have m reacheds out to you many times,o mr. Zuckerberg, about thisut issue, relating to published content that reflects on certait religious groups, and you said r at ata hearing you do not allowu hate crimes on facebook. Yet in may 2020, the tech transparency project found more than 100 american white white supremacist groups, many of them explicitly antimuslim, active on the platform on their own group pages, as well as autogenerated content. Gro are you looking the other way, mr. Zuckerberg, in a potentially dangerous situation . No, senator. This is incredibly important, and we take hate speech as well as incitement of violence extremely seriously. Ha we banned more than 250 white supremist organizations and te treat them the same as terrorisr organizations around the world anddor rampedgan up our capacitf identifyy hate speech and to incitement of violence before n people even see it on the platforms. Our a. I. And human review teamst you can track our results in our transparency reports that we issue, now take down 94 of thed hate speech that we find on ouro platforms before even hasrt to a report it to us, which is a dramatic amount of progress from where we were a few years ago, e where when were were just startg to ramp up on this, were takino about 20 of it down before eope people had to report it to us. So theres still more progress to make. In were very invested in this, and you have my commitment that we view this as an issue of the xin highest severity and one we are very focused on. Ou thank you very much. W thank you, mr. Chair. Mr. Zuckerberg and mr. Dorsey, thank you both for being here w with us today virtually. And for improving your platforms serving people across the t country. There has been a lot of talk b today, many of us have been listening from our offices or online about the censorship of ideas, and news on y