Can what i am fall with and can share today. Always amazing to me, mr. Chairman, how many people before this committee suddenly develop amnesia. Maybe it is something about the air in the room. Let me ask you this. When a facebook employee accesses a users private information is unlike their private messages or their personally identifiable data is a record made of that, mr. Zuckerberg . Sorry, senator, could you repeat that . Is a record made of any time a facebook employee accesses a users private information, personal identifiable information for example messages is a record made any time 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 audits. Can you give me a list . Senator, we follow up on that to see what would would be useful here. Im almost finished, mr. Chairman, will you commit to giving us a list of the number of Times Facebook employees have accessed users personal account information without their knowledge, yes or no . Senator, we should follow up on what would be useful here. It is, of course in the operations of the company if someone reports something, sometimes necessary, for people at the company to go review and understand the context around what is happening when somebody reports something. So, this is fairly frequent. And it is a matter of course. We do have Security Systems that can detect anomalous patterns to flag. But, we should follow up in more detail on what youre interested in. Mr. Chairman, i will just say in closing that what we have here is clear evidence of coordination between twitter, google, and facebook, mr. Zuckerberg knows he has the tools to track this but he either doesnt remember or wont commit to letting us see it. We have evidence of facebook tracking its own users all across the web. Mr. Zuckerberg wont answer questions about it, cant remember the name. Isnt sure if the tool is deployed in this way and wont commit to basic information. I submit to you this is both totally unacceptable and totally predictable because it is exactly what these Tech Companies have done to the American People and to congress for years now which is why it is time we took action against these modern day robber barrons, thank you, mr. Chairman. Senator klobuchar. I thank you very much, mr. Chairman. Im, as you know, the lead democrat on the antitrust subcommittee. And im going to take a little different approach here than mro competition policy. Because i understand why they might be coordinating when it comes to security. What i want to focus on is what i think we are seeing all over this country not just in tech. We are seeing a startup slump. We are seeing more and more consolidation. And throughout history we have seen that 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. Pick could i md me google was happy to take feedback. My response was the Justice Department already provided feedback in the form of a federal antitrust complaint. 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 interoperating with the facebook platform. The investigation that we saul in the house recently gave us a number of examples of companies excluded Companies Including vine, stack, glum, message me and arc. My view is this conduct exclusionary conduct not only damaged the ability of these smaller businesses to compete but deprived customers of convenient access. You are one of the most successful companies, Biggest Companies in the world, mr. Zuckerberg. Facebook. Do you think that this is fair competition or not . With regard to the interprabilityd and how have you conducted yourself with these other companies . Senator, im generally in favor of interoperating and Building Platform and access for companies to be able to access thats why we built the facebook platform in 2007. Some of the policies that you mention i think came about because what we were seeing was not necessarily start ups but larger competitors is unlike google and some of our chinese rivals from trying to access our systems in order to use their scale to compete with us better and it felt to us is unlike at the time that that wasnt the intent of what we were trying to enable. Okay. 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 is that once facebook recognized vine as a competitor after twitter acquired it in 2013 it cut off vines ability to interoperate with facebook so they couldnt upload their videos to facebook. And i think that twitter shut down vine in 2016. Mr. Dorsey, could you tell me about the actual impact of facebooks actions on vines business on vines ability to compete and on your decision to shut down the service . And i know you are 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 decided that the ball moved past us and we shut it down. Again, i dont know the specifics and the 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 whats app. We have some released internal facebook emails in which you, mr. Zuckerberg, wrote that instagram was if they grow to a large scale they could be very disruptive to us. And in a later email you confirmed that one of the purposes of facebook acquiring instagram would be to neutralize the competitor. You wrote those emails that were mentioned in that house report; is that right, mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, i believe so. And i have 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 acquire something that they viewed as the primary lay camera and photo sharing app. At the time. We dont know how it would have done and when we look at your emails, it kind of leads us down this road as well as with whats app. That part of the purchase of these nay isnt a competitors is to i will use the word of fec joe simon who said last week a rrlg squash a competitor by buying it not just with targeting it anticompetitive activity. I know this is the subject of investigation. Maybe we will be hearing something soon. Something the Committee Members may be aware of not just facebook but whats going on with these deals that have gone through and how it has led to more and more consolidation and how we as the senate and i just talked to chairman graham about this last week could do having about this making standard in our laws to bring these cases not just soling tech mr. Zuckerberg you said that facebook had made over 2 billion on political ads, 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 spent on ads. This is a bill i actually had with senator graham and yet we have seen these political ads that keep creeping through despite your efforts to police them on your own. This is why i would so badly is unlike to pass the honest ads act. One ad that went through it says in three Battle Ground states ballots marked for donald trump had been disbarred. Poll, will voter fraud only increase closer to november . It stated in three battleground states paid ad ballots marked for donald trump have been discarded. This played between september 29th and october 7th, 2020. Had up to 200,000 impressions. Does this ad violate facebooks policy . Sorry, can you repeat what the ad was . The ad was an American Action news ad. They have advertised a lot of on your platform. And it said in three Battle Ground states ballots marked for donald trump had been discarded. This walls preelection. Senator i dont know if that particular ad violates our policy i would be happy to follow up afterwards on that. Could you commit to a policy to where actual peoples eyes people could review these ads instead of just being hit with algorithm review. Senator, we do have review before they can advertise. Does every ad go through a human being is unlike tvs do . I think every our policy is that we want to verify the you a then at this time of nittany lion is doing politic or social issue advertising and i think always more accurate than the technical system does some. Does some human being review every ad thats just a yes or a no. I dont know. I dont think so. We will follow up in the written. You brought this cease as and desist order nyu publishing a report noting over the last two years facebook has not labeled approximately 37 million in political ads. Why would you bring a cease and desist against them . Senator, is that the project that was scraping the data in a way that might have been. Your definition. Consent decree that we have. The reason it is happening is we havent passed the honest ads act. They are trying. They are not violating privacy. They are trying to get the ads so people can see the ads other campaigns, journalists, everyone. Senator,. Senator you know i support the honest ads act and agree we should have that passed and even before that that we have implemented it across our systems but i think in the case that you are referring to, that project was scraping data in a way that we agreed in our ftc concept 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. Last, mr. Dorsey. Do you think there should be more transparency were algorithms. Im off the ads now. Im on just generically. Part of this is people dont know how this data is going across across the systems and across the platforms and people are basically buying access has been my impression so that even if you say is unlike what is the news in the last 24 hours, old stuff comes up. Something has 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 to provide more choice to turn off the algorithms or choose a different algorithms so people can see how it effects ones experience. Thank you. I ask that both of you look at the bill that senator kennedy and i have that the journalism competition and preservation act. To help the content providers negotiate with digital platforms. Thank you. Thank you. Senator tillis . Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen, for joining mr. Chairman i know you have asked whether these platforms can be addictive. I think they probably can be ways based on what i have read. It could be the nature of the personality and engagement in a tool that can that they can somehow relate to. But i also think there is 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 forming an opinion or an outcome buying something you didnt even think about 30 minutes before you started going down that path. I think there are things that we have got to look at and i do agree with mr. Zuckerberg and mr. Dorsey. Its not conclusive but common sense would tell you its a problem already and it could become a bigger problem. Mr. Zuckerberg, i would is unlike to go back to the task platform for a minute. When i looked at the screen shot senator hawley put up it looked a lot is unlike a Work Management tool. Can you tell me a little bit about that and how many people are actually engaged as users on that plot form 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 impactly what the name sounds is unlike, its used by companies, by people across our company thousands of times a day to 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 full time employees are actually users of the task platform . I think probably the majority of facebook employees and people we work with have some interaction with the task system as part of some part of their work. Its basically just a company wide to do list. Other platform that senator hahawley mentioned was the senta platform. You said you werent familiar with that one that may be helpful as a follow up to understand the nature of that platform. I wont pressure 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. I mean, even the Smallest Companies use these tools. We use a tool called tier up. I was involved in implementing these in my time in Technology Sector so i could see why you have these platforms mru didnt think there was systematic between going and twitter but you could conceive as people at google and similar provisions may havprofessions hp or talk about it over a beer. Could you see how the sceptic 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 bent. They get together. They share notes and then they go back and make decisions that could make it appear is unlike its a Corporate Initiative could be by misguided staff. Could you at least conceive of that being 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 you are saying. Which is why i really wanted to make sure that it was clear that what we do is share signals around potential harm that we are seeing whether its, you know, specific content in the aftermath of a terrorist attack that people are trying to share virally so that way if one platform is seeing it, another platform can be prepared. That it will probably see that content soon, too. Signals around foreign interference in elections. I think its important that each company deals with those signals in a way that is in line with their own policies. And that, i think, is very different from saying that the companies are kind of coordinating to kind of figure out what the policy should be. I understand what the concern would be around that. Thats why i wanted to be clear about what we do and dont do there. I agree with that i would find it horribly irresponsible to think that this was some sort of a systematic approach across the platforms but just with the shear numbers of people that you all employ now. I could see how some of what happened in the hearing could occur people trying to manipulate certain outcomes. I dont want to get into the details except to know that the task platform if its similar to ones that i have experience with, has a lot of logging, a lot of data to where maybe you could do yourself a service by saying you know, i hear whats been suggested here, but, in analyzing the interactions between groups of people and seeing some aberrations, some people more active and geared toward one outcome or another, it could actually help you aleve some of our concerns with the way these platforms are being manipulated. Im not going to have time to drill down into some of the specific questions and im glad to hear that you all are open on some 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. Some people think that that is not possible because maybe the republicans and democrats are far apart. But if you listen to what theyre asking you. They are concerned with the kind of outcome they didnt is unlike on social media in equal measure. I do believe that you would be wellserved to come to the table as an industry and identify things, mr. Zuckerberg, i is unlike what you have said about transparency. And mr. Dorsey, i do think that the algorithms when you talk about the shear scale are probably the most Sustainable Way to go. But we are still going to have to have some confidence. I is unlike your concept on choice as well. Were going to have more visibility whats occurred is unlike a veterans day post that i did after the election was actually after my opponent had conceded, i just posted a picture think thanking veterans. And for period of time i think it was suspended and directing people towards election results. I would is unlike to think if that was the result of an algorithmic my opponent who posted veterans ad and every other person up for election got similar treatment. If it didnt it would seem to me there was some other factor in play if these algorithms are being apply you had to the base in that case political commentary from elected officials or candidates. So, i view this hearing as an opportunity to seek your commitment on two things. One, i mentioned to you all yesterday, i have got an intellectual property subcommittee hearing in the middle of december. I would is unlike to have a facebook and twitter representative there. I know you are very different platforms but i think you play very prominentfully a hearing that senator coons is sitting across from me now would is unlike to have you represented. I think i can speak for senator coons that would be helpful and we would is unlike to get your commitment to have witnesses for that hearing in the middle of december. Mr. Zuckerberg, can i get that commitment . , senator, yes, yes, we will make sure we have the right subject Matter Expert to join your hearing. Thank you. And mr. Dorsey . We will follow up with determining the best course of action. Thank you. And then we will be following up on a series of questions that i would is unlike to ask that let me get my head around some of the analytics information that i think you almost certainly have and hopefully be willing to share it. We will do that in a collaborative way in my office. Thank you for being here today. Thank you. We are going to take a fiveminute break. I think our witnesses have requested a break and they certainly have earned it. And if thats okay with you, senator coons, we will cock back in about five minutes. Thank you. Harris all right. We are going to step away from this hearing for just a moment here as you heard they are taking a 5minute break. Our Gillian Turner has been following this as well as we are here on the east coast from washington, d. C. Gillian, we had hoped to bring senator rand paul into the conversation. If this break is long enough, we will do that but for now catch us up because it has been spicy, my friend. It has been a whirlwind of a hearing, harris. So far a lot of fireworks flying all around. But this is the second time in three weeks that they have dragged ceos in front of them. They are going all in on a new claim is that the whole problem with social media and its role in this president ial election has really been democrats. Take a listen. 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 a free press. And, yet, there is an absolute silence from democrats speaking up for the press outlets censored by big tech. Now, the broader arguments republicans on this panel are making today is that the social media platforms have a broad and very deep rooted anticonservative bias that is now infecting everything they do. And resulting in tons of conservative posts being flagged including dozens from President Trump himself senator cornyn said ban on new york reporting about Hunter Bidens business dealings. Ended up highlight ago story that twitter was trying to suppress. Listen. You do realize that by taking down that story you probably gave it more prominence and more visibility than it ever would have gotten had you lef left it alone. We realize and it recognize that as a mistake. Well, democrats on the other hand say its actually republicans who are getting away with murder on social media. How many times has steve bannon allowed the call for the murder of government officials will you commit to taking down that account, Steve Bannons account . Senator, no. That is not what our policies would suggest that we should do. Harris, talking to sources on capitol hill today. A lot of them on both sides of the aisle democrats and republicans are saying the big question is whether senators are really going to do anything now. Moving forward from this hearing today we get we have heard these ceos testifying multiple times now. We have heard senators all across the board make these sort of toothless threats did b. Regulating them and then we go home and nobody ever does anything. The ball is really in lawmakers court to start reigning in these companies, harris. Harris yeah, real quickly before i let you go and i dont want to misinterpret what i have seen. We are all listening pretty closely and i have known Amy Klobuchar for many years. I was a News Reporter in her home state of minnesota. When i heard the handoff and then looked up at the screen, she said im going to take a slightly different tact from senator josh hawley republican of missouri. She didnt lean out on it. I mean, big tech is not getting a pass today. And when i see that it makes me think, gillian, that something needs to change. Thats a good point. Moving into post president ial election time in 2020 now, i think we are requesting to see, see going to see that big tech two sides can agree on. They might exactly agree on what is the problem. They do both agree that these companies are too big and too powerful and that somebody needs to do something. We just hope they realize that they are the ones that need to do something. Harris all right. Gillian turner, thank you very much for joining me in this short break. Appreciate it. We will come back as the news warrants. Joe concha is up next with me now. Fox news contributor and media reporter for the hill. Joe, i love talking with you about these topics on big days is unlike today. So, you know, as you see this play out you see two different ceos with jack dorsey and twitter there is a lot of heat on him right now. The president of the United States spends time up on twitter. Senators wanted to know how do you make those decisions about what you flag on a sitting president and what you dont . And what you flag on certain people across the political aisle from one another and josh hawley was getting at it and mike lee was getting at it. Senator from utah. Conservatives so so much more of that than it would appear democrats do. What do you say as you watch . Oh, well, i wanted to echo what gillian just said first because she kind of stole my thunder permission to speak freelfreely speaking to you, has from a military hearing. Im tired of these tech hearings. Its deja vu all over again. Every couple of months Mark Zuckerberg and jack dorsey going to be great castaway two in will hanks stunt double that beard is something. They get grilled every time they go up there one word everybody used grilled. You have a senator cruz. You have a senator graham. You are a senator hawley they have some sort of gatt that question or zuckerberg or dorsey looks is unlike hostage video they are being contradicted at that point or at least their actions are being contradicted by what they do or say and it gets played and get a lot of soundbites out of it and then nothing happens. Section 230 doesnt get repealed or modified in anyway. These tech giants you dont hear anything resembling serious proposals about actually breaking up these tech giants. I think a lot of americans are frustrated at this point. They see these Senate Hearings and all the attention they get and see these folks up there doing the soapbox thing and then nothing hans. So hopefully in the next Congress Something does but for now it seems to be status quo. Just a lot of talk. Harris all right. We are going to scoot back to the hearing. Thank you very much, joe con challenge. And you heard josh hawley of missouri pressing for a change going forward. He wants to see materials. He wants zuckerberg and dorsey to come forth with materials that are asked for by this committee. Lets watch together. The hearing has resumed. For Climate Change for hateful and dangerous stereotypes and other critical issues. I also want to recognize that in no small part was the hard work of many led by your ingenuity and resolved that built these Impressive Companies and the way the world communicates. We need that same resolve to rok coreckon with what must be doneo wisocietys for truth. Mr. Zuckerberg yesterday i sent you along with 14 of my colleague as total of 15 senators. We sent you a letter urging facebook to do more to address hate speech and calls to violence on the platform. We focus particularly on antimuslim bias on an issue that warrants specific attention given the tragic consequences of antimuslim hate speech and myanmar and sri lanka and new zealand and right here in the United States. I appreciate that facebook has taken actions in response to these issues but this letter points out why we need better metrics and transparency to actually evaluate your action. My colleagues and i urge better enforcement in particular of your call to arms policy which could have made a difference in a recent tragedy in kenosha, wisconsin. You and i spoke last week. I appreciated our conversation. Can i count on to you provide specification and written responses to each of the questions in this letter and then can we discuss them again . Senator, yes. I read your letter and commit to getting back in detail with our team to address the important topics that you have raised one of your questions that i can actually answer right now, i think it was your second question about reporting in our quarterly transparency report about the prevalence of hate speech that we find on our platforms, we will actually be lading that metric in to our transparency reports this thursday when we announce our latest round of our latest transparency router. Well, thank you, mr. Zuckerberg. Let me just make sure i hear you right about prevalence. Because thats one of my areas of concern is the absence from the report of the prevalence of hate content. You mean you will be reporting not just not just percentage you but the total volume . Thats my understanding is the prevalence of that content is a percentage of content on the platform. And over time our goal is going to be to get into more detail which is the subject of some of the questions that you have asked mere as well as we have already complicitted to an independent audit of the Community Standards enforcement report so that people can have full confidence in all of the numbers that were putting out. We have been doing these reports for less than a few years now and we will continue to flush them out and add more detail and that way people can apply the appropriate oversight and scrutiny to the work. Thank you. I want to move for a moment about your call to arms policy. You said earlier today that facebook made an operational 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 of vigilantism in kenosha where a young man brought his ar15 from illinois to kenosha and ended up with two protesters dead and one injured you indicated this was because this operational mistake was because facebook had jus just adopted its michigan policy a week earlier and contractors without specialized training didnt pick up the violation. I appreciate your frankness as to that in your answers to questions earlier today from senator burr continue. But your response to senator durbin didnt mention that the event page also violated a separate calltoarms policy in place for over a year that contractors arent tasked to enforce. I just have to ask as a followup. Why didnt you before and also today reference the calltoarms policy when reviewing what went wrong in kobe . Senator, my understanding is that that that post did not violate that call to arms policy at the time. Thethe call to arms does not prohibit anyone from saying lets go get our guns and do something for example people organize ago hunting trip thats not going to be something thats against the policies. But, what we do on some of these policies, which i think im glad to get the opportunity to address this is some of these are context specific and just require a higher level context and equities per tease in the area to enforce. So we dont necessarily have all of the 35,000 reviewers asession every single one of these policies. I can follow up in more detail if you is unlike on the call to arms policy and the nuances there specifically thats also a bit on how we operationalize these policies. Thank you for that answer. I do want to follow up. Because just facially it seemed to me that this was a violation of your own calltoarms policy. But i look forward to that conversation. Mr. Dorsey, if i might, at a House Energy Committee hearing, i think it was two years ago, you committed to something that i was just discussing with mr. Zuckerberg a an independent civil rights audit but in your case of twitter. The audit released by facebook in july has proven invaluable to bringing sunlight to some key areas in which facebook does need to improve. Will you follow through on your commitment and commission to this independent audit of twitter . So we work with civil Rights Groups all over the country and around the world to get feedback. Were in constant conversation with them. And we do believe that being more transparent and making our transparency report a lot more robust which today we still have some gaps is important for any entity to audit independently of us we believe thats important because an audited could take away from the work that we do. We would rather provide information in format so people could do that work. If i heard you right you arent going to pursue a independent civil rights audit but you will continue to release data and consult with civil Rights Groups. I would welcome a more thorough answer as to in which way having an independent outside audit would actually harm your transparency efforts. I dont mean it would harm it i mean that we want to provide enough information so that people can do this work independently of us on their own timelines and thats where we need to make our transparency report more robust and as i said we have regular conversations can with these groups and take feedback regularly. You do, mr. Dorsey, have policies against deep fakes or manipulated media, against covid19 misinformation. Against things that violate civic integrity but you dont have a stand alone Climate Change misinformation policy. Why not . Well, misleading information, as you are aware, is a large problem. Its hard to define it. Completely and cohesively. We wanted to scope our approach to start to focus on the high severity of harm. We focused on three areas manipulated media which you mentioned, integrity around the election. And Public Health specifically around covid. You know, we wanted to make sure that our resources that we have have the 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. But we thought it important that we focus our energies and prioritize the work as much as we could. Well, mr. Dorsey, and i will close with this. I can not think of a greater harm than Climate Change, which is transforming literally our planet and causing harm to our entire world. I think we are experiencing significant harm as we speak. I recognize the pandemic and misinformation about covid19, manipulated media also cause harm. But i would urge to you reconsider that because helping to disseminate climate denialism in my view further facilitates and accelerates one of the greatest existential threats to our world. Thank you to both of our witnesses. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Senator ernst . Thank you, mr. Chair. And mr. Zuckerberg and mr. Dorsey, thank you both for being here with us today virtually and for your commitment to constantly improving the way your platforms are serving people across the country. There have been a lot of talk today, many of us have been listening from our offices or jakub linonline about the censop ideas or news on your platforms. These are the things that have been at the forefront of americans plindz in the leadup to the election as well as the 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 that were given basically free rain of your platforms and one of the points of contention that is often brought up is that you do recruit heavily from california, which leads to your Employee Based 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, 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 think 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 we have tried to build a program of independent Fact Checkers that we can work on on this. Those Fact Checkers accredited not by us but by the independent Pointer Institute on journalism part of the International Factchecking Network and it includes Fact Checkers that i think span the political spectrum as well as i think the majority of them who would call themselves apolitical. We have 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 if they were interviewing what their political affiliation is which of course makes it hard to know what the actual breakdown of the company is on this. One of the areas where im more optimistic over time is i think we are going to see more people working remotely around the country and also around the world which will mean that fewer people in smaller percentage of our employees will have to come to the cities and areas is unlike the baz area where our headquarters is and will be able to employ an increasing number of people across all of the different geographies in the country. Very good. Thank you. And mr. Dorsey . Most important thing is that he built symptoms and frame works independent of any one particular employee or individual at our company. And inclusive in included in that system are checkpoints. Checkpoints to make sure that we are removing any bias that we find, checkpoints to do qa and monitoring of all the decisions that we make. Having an appeals process which is an external check point on whether we have made the correct enforcement action or not. So we want to building is thats independent of the people that we hire and that is our focus building a system. Second, is unlike 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. That we can higher people all over th hire people all acrose country and stay wherever they feel most creative. Thats not just in this country. Its around of the world. Of the tools are in a state where we can do that more easily. We have been forced to do it with covid. And i dont think its a state that we will return from. The days of having one centralized massive corporate headquarter in any one particular city are certainly over for us at least. And i think many other entrepreneur starting companies today. Very good. I really appreciate that and i think that covid has taught us all a very important lesson and for those to be able to work remotely i think you will find greater diversity in thought which is very important, i think, for the types of platforms that you both represent. Now, i would is unlike 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. 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 resource it with the public about Human Trafficking and child exploitation. And it can also help us keep track of sexual predators and ensure our children are safe from those known threats. And, in fact, i have been working on legislation that would help update what information sexual predators have to provide about online id tis. As we all know, however, social media can also be incredibly harmful. Child sexual abuse materials cfam is present on nearly every single social media platform that exists at such polarized times im grateful that it is the subject that we do find that it doesnt matter if you are on the left or the right we can come together to find solutions for this issue. And, mr. Zuckerberg, i know that you and i touched upon this briefly last week when we spoke over the phone. And i do hope mr. Dorsey that you also share mr. Zuckerbergs commitment to fighting these types of issues on your platforms. So, just very briefly here, as im running out of time, mr. Zuckerberg, i do understand that facebook is planning to outfit Facebook Messenger with endtoend encryption and how do you hope to prevent a dissemination of child sexual abuse material if neither Law Enforcement nor you can access that messenger data . Is there some sort of apparatus that you will have in place that will help Law Enforcement with those situations and then mr. Dorsey we will go to you next as well. Senator, thank you for. This. I think you are 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 is it it is also an area that well face new challenges as we move to intending encryption across our messaging systems of course the reason why we are moving to encryption is because people want greater privacy and security in their messaging systems and over time are choosing systems that can provide them more privacy and security and thats something that i think makes sense for us to offer. Encryption broadly is good. It is going to mean that we are going to need to find an develop some new tactics. A lot of what we have 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 a person is not behaving in the way that a normal person would to flag and review that . We have grown increasingly sophisticated at that that goes across foreign interference prevention work that we do and it also will be a factor here. And i would be happy to follow up in more detail on what we have planned but overall i would say that this is something we are very focused on and i agree with your concern. Okay. Thank you very much. And mr. Dorsey you as well. 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 being inclusive of the patterns that that mark has mentioned. The majority of twitter is public. So we dont have as much activity in private channels. Its a different approach. But its still we still see the same activity and its one of our highest priority in terms of severity of harm. Thank you both very much for being accessible to us today. It truly appreciate your input, mr. Chairman. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Zuckerberg i really want to appreciate what facebook has done in the area of Sexual Exploitation of children. Yall have done a very good job of trying to help Law Enforcement in that area. Senator hirono. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Zuckerberg for the second time in three weeks you have been called before the senate committee. [broken audio] beat you up over claims that your platforms are supposedly biased against conservatives. The fact of the matter is that these allegations are completely baseless. Everyone who has systematically looked at the content of social media from media matters to the Cato Institute to former republican senator joh jon kyl s found no evidence of anticonservative bias. And data from crowd tangle show that far right content from the is unlikes of fox news, ben shapiro, David Bongino dominates the daily top ten most engage you had pages on facebook. So all of these allegations about the fact that you hire or all of your employees are left of center is relevant of nothing. Certainly not relevant of anticonservative bias in terms of your content moderation. So the way i see it, this hearing is a transparent effort by my republican colleagues to work [inaudible] and unfortunately in my view is working. Two weeks ago the Washington Post reported that facebook has bent over backwards to avoid that it was biased against conservatives. And it removed a strike against donald trump jr. s Instagram Account that would have penalized him as a repeat offender. Apparently one of several strikes moved against the account of trump family members. American first action was allowed to post material rated false by facebooks third party factcheckers without penalty. And these are just a few examples. They are nothing new. In 2019, facebook included breitbart, a website described by cofounder as a platform for the alt right as one of its trusted news sources. In 2019 facebook selected the daily caller, another site with White Nationalist ties to be one of a third party Fact Checkers. And the wall street journal has reported joel chapman former deputy chief of staff to george w. Bush changes designed to make facebook algorithms less divisive because the changes would have disproportionately affected conservative users and publishers 5rd cogging to [inaudible]. Mr. Zuckerberg you founded facebook a company with a market capitalization of approximately 80 billion. And you control a majority share of the companys voting stock. Im really wondering at what points 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 world closer together end quote as you claim facebook mission. My question is to both of you. A recent harvard study found that President Trump was the single biggest source of voter related 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. The truth is joe biden won the election as Major News Networks and the Associated Press have confirmed. In response to President Trumps lies have you at most added a warning label while still allowing the president s misinformation to remain online. A responsive question from senator feinstein they appoint people to a broader conversation around the election. I have serious questions about the effectiveness of these labels. Particularly since President Trump and his allies continue to spread their lies. For both of you, what evidence do you have that these labels are effective in addressing President Trumps lies . Response, please. So, and i think mark mentioned this earlier as well, we are doing a retrospective on the effectiveness of all of our actions to the election. We believe the labels point to, as you said, 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 election that is not our job. So we are pointing to sources and pillars that are traditionally done this in the past. And that is the intention of the policy. Thats the intention of the labeling system. Mr. Zuckerberg . Senator, 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 voted. For example, so thats why we put the Voter Information Center prominently on the top of Facebook 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 these actions were a strong effort to communicate accurate and reliable information to have confidence in the election system and knowing who and when the election had been called. Just part of an overall system. My time is running out. All of the actual voter information, thats good. We are talking about all of the missed information. You have these labels. I have questions as to whether or not this kind of labelling and i am glad that dorsey is determining whether these labels do anything to create a larger framework for discussion. [muffled audio]. Since i am running out of time. Donald trump [inaudible]. [muffled audio]. Contained misinformation especially whether he won the election and covid. You name it. I wonder what are both of you prepared to do with Donald Trumps use of your flat platform after he stops being president . Will he still get to use your platform to spread disinformation . Let me clarify my last answer. We are having Academic Studies of our election measures and they will publish those publicly. President trump moving forward, we have policies as to what people should hear about candidates. But we have no news worthiness so if the president is spreading hate speech or posting content to delegitimize the election he will receive the same treatment as anyone else spreading those posts. We have around Public Interest for global leaders, if a tweet violate our terms of service we live it up but people are not allowed to share that. The sharing is disabled with the exception of quoting it to have your own conversation on top of it. If someone is not a world leader anymore, that particular policy goes away. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, i would like to enter into the record a number of studies [muffled audio]. An article in the wall street journal titled facebook executive shut down efforts. Finding no anticonservative bias on facebook in an article entitled [inaudible]. [muffled audio]. Without objection. Senator kennedy . Thank you, mr. Chairman. Gentleman, each of you has founded an extraordinarily successful company. And they are both american companies. And i think i would be remiss if i didnt say congratulations. I am very
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