For almost 25 years, the preservation of Internet Freedom has been the hallmark of a thriving Digital Economy in the United States. The success has largely been attributed to a light touch Regulatory Framework and to section 230 of the communications decisions the act, the 26 words they created the internet. There is little dispute that section 230 played an early role ofthe Critical DevelopmentOnline Platforms. It provides protection from liability to remove and moderate content that take what their users consider to be obscene, filthy,cinius, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable. This shield has been pivotal in protecting Online Platforms from but it has also given these internet platforms the ability to control, cycle, and even censor content in whatever manner. The time has come for that free pass to end. 230, 24 years of section much has changed. The internet is no longer in emerging technology. Companies before us today are no longer scrappy startups operating out of a garage or a dorm room. They have in this our economy culture in Public Discourse. The applications they have created are connecting the world in unprecedented ways far beyond what lawmakers could have imagined three decades ago. These companies are controlling the overwhelming flow of news and information that the public can share and access. One noteworthy example occurred just two weeks ago after subpoenas were unanimously approved. , the countrysst fourthlargest newspaper ran a story reviewing communications between hunter biden and a ukrainian official. That hunterlleged biden facilitated a meeting with his father, joe biden, who was then Vice President of the United States. Most immediately, both twitter and facebook took steps to drop access to the story. Facebook, according to its policy communications manager, began using its distribution of pending arm thirdparty check fact check. Twitter went beyond that, blocking all users including the House Judiciary Committee from sharing the article. Twitter even locked the New York Post account entirely, claiming the story included hacked materials and was potentially harmful. It is worth noting that both twitter and facebooks a version materials has not always been so stringent. For example, when the president s tax returns were illegally leaked, Neither Company acted to restrict access to that information. Similarly, the now discredited dossier was widely shared without Fact Checking or disclaimers. This apparent double standard would be appalling under normal circumstances but the fact that selective censorship is occurring in the midst of the 24 election cycle dramatically amplifies the powers wielded by facebook and twitter. Recently generated its own controversy when it was revealed that the company threatened to cut off several conservative websites including the federalist from their ad platform. Relyno mistake, for sites heavily on advertising revenue for their bottom line, being blocked from Google Services were being the monetized can be a death sentence demonetized according to google. , the offense was posting user submitted comment sections that included objectionable content. Googles own platform, submittedhosts user comment sections for every video uploaded. It seems that google is far more zealous in policing conservative sites than its own youtube for the same types of offensive and outrageous claims. It is ironic that when the subject of Net Neutrality arises, Technology Companies have warned about the grave threat of blocking or throttling the flow of information on the internet. Meanwhile, these same companies are actively blocking and throttling the distribution of content on their own platforms and are using protections under section 32. Is it any surprise that voices on the right are complaining about hypocrisy or even worse, antidemocratic election interference . These recent incidents are only the latest in a long trail of censorship and suppression of conservative voices on the internet. Reasonable observers are left to wonder whether these firms are obstructing the flow of information to benefit one political ideology or agenda. Concern is that these platforms have become powerful arbiters of what is true and what content users can access. The American Public gets little insight into the decisionmaking process when content is moderated and users have little recourse when they are censor or restricted. I hope we can all agree that the issues we will discuss today are ripe for examination and action. Ive introduced legislation to clarify the Liability Protections and increase the accountability of companies who engage in content moderation. The act would make important shield,to the liability make clear what type of content moderation is protected. This legislation would address the challenges we have discussed while still leaving fundamentals 230. Ction although some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would characterize this as a truly partisan exercise, there is strong bipartisan support for reviewing section 230. In fact, both president ial candidates, trump and biden have proposed repealing section 230 in its entirety, a position i have not yet embraced. I hope we can focus todays discussion on the issues that affect all americans, protecting a true diversity of viewpoints and free discourse central to our way of life. I look forward to hearing from todays witnesses about what they are doing to promote transparency, accountability, and fairness in their content moderation process. I cannot thank each of them for with each of them enough in the scheduling of his testimony. I have turned to my friend senator cantwell for her opening remarks. Well the state of washington in my Senate Office here in washington, d. C. , the various ecosystems of the state of washington which we very much appreciate. I bring that up because just recently, the seattle area was named the number one economy in the United States, the most stem workforce in the United States of economy. The issue about how we use the Information Age to work for us and not against us is something that we deal with everyday of the week and we want to have discussion and discourse. I believe that discussion and discourse today should be broader than just issues of privacy that our committee has addressed, the issue of how to make sure there is a free and competitive new market. I know that today we are not calling in the nad publishers association, asking them why they havent printed or reprinted information that you allude to in your testimony, that you wish was more broadly distributed. To have the competition in the news market is to have a diverse of voices a diversity of opinion and in my report just recently released, we showed that true competition really does help information both for our economy and for the health of our democracy. So i do look forward to discussing these issues today. What i do not want todays hearing to be is a Chilling Effect on the very important aspects of making sure that hate speech or misinformation related areealth and Public Safety allowed to remain on the internet. We all know what happened in 2016 and we had reports from the fbi, our intelligence agencies, and a Bipartisan Committee that concluded in 2016 that russian did, masquerading as americans, use targeted advertisements, intentionally falsify news articles, self generated content, social media platforms in order to attempt to feed tens of millions of social media users in the United States. The director of national intelligence, then former said then warning lights are blinking red, the infrastructure that serves our country is literally under attack. I take this issue very seriously and i have for many years. The is, making sure as special counsel mueller indicated, 12 russian Intelligence Officers hacked the dnc for various information hishing attacks. So when we have a Committee Hearing and former bush Homeland Security director decides, i asked him pointblank because there were some of our colleagues who were saying, you know what, everybody does election interference. So i asked him if election interference was something that we did for should be encouraging. That he agreed interfering with infrastructure or elections is completely offlimits and unacceptable. That is why i believe that we should be working aggressively internationally to sanction anybody that interferes in our election. So i hope today that we will get a report from the witnesses on exactly what they have been doing to clamp down on election interference. I hope that they will tell us what kind of hate speech and misinformation they have taken off the books. It is no secret that there are various state actors who are doing all they can to take a at democracy, to try to say that our way of government, that our way of life, that our way of freedom of speech and information is somehow not as being awe have made it beacon of democracy around the globe. I am not going to let or tolerate people who continue to our election process, vote by mail system, or the ability of tech platforms, security companies, our Law Enforcement, and the corrected community to speak against misinformation and hate speech. We have to show that the United States of america stands behind our principles and that our principles do also transfer to the responsibility of communication online. Note, weleagues will have all been through this in the past. That is why you, mr. Chairman, at,i sponsored the hacked to help increase the security and Cyber Security of our nation and create a workforce that can fight against that. That is why i joined on the deter act especially in establishing sanctions against Russian Election interference and continue to make sure that we build the infrastructure of tomorrow. So i know that some people think that these issues are out of sight and out of mind, i guarantee you they are not. There are actors who have been active for a long time. They wanted to destabilize Eastern Europe and we became the second when they tried to destabilize our democracy here. I want to show them that we, the United States, do have fair elections, we are going to be that the can of democracy. So i hope that as we talk about the witnesses and the progress they have made in making sure that this information is not allowed online, that we will also consider ways to help build and strengthen that. That is to say, and some of those were testifying today, what can we do about , reporting, analysis, and yes, i think youre going to hear a lot about algorithms today. And the constant oversight that we all want to make sure that we can continue to have the diversity of voices in the United States of america, both online and offline. Chairman,to say, mr. I am concerned about the vertical nature of news and information. Today i expect to ask the fact that iout the believe they create a chokepoint for local news. The local news media have lost 70 of their revenue over the last decade and we have lost thousands, thousands of journalistic jobs that are important. It was even amazing to me that the sequence of events yesterday had me being interviewed by who wasat a newspaper funded by a joint Group Foundation and probably facebook funds to interview me about the fact that the news media and such asts have fallen on decline because of the loss of revenue as they have made the transition to the digital age. Somehow, somehow we have to come together to show that the diversity of voices, that local donerepresents needs to be with fairly when it comes to the Advertising Market and that too much control in the advertising foott puts it f puts a on their ability to move forward and grow in the digital age. Just as other forms of media have made the transition, we want to have a very healthy and dynamic news media crop united they did america. So i plan to ask the Witnesses Today about that. Go intoe had time to depth on privacy and privacy issues but mr. Chairman, you know, and so do other copies of the committee, how important it is that we protect American Consumers on privacy issues. That we are not done with this work, that there is much to do to bring consensus in the United States on those important issues, and i hope that as we do have time or in the followup to these questions, that we could ask the witnesses about that today. Make no mistake, gentlemen, thank you for joining us, but this is probably one of many, many, many conversations that we will have about all of these harnessut again, lets the Information Age as you are doing, but lets also make sure that consumers are fairly treated and that we are making it work for all of us to guarantee our privacy, our diversity of voices, and upholding our democratic principles and the fact that we, the United States of america, stand for freedom of information and freedom of the press. Thank you. Sen. Wicker thank you, certainly you are correct that this will not be the last hearing with regard to this subject matter and i also appreciate you mentioning your concerns which i share about local journalism. Point, we are about to receive testimony from witnesses. Before we begin that, let me remind members that todays hearing will provide senators withseven minute rounds, a round of seven minute questioning rather than the usual five minutes. At seven minutes, the gavel will lets say a few seconds after seven minutes. So, this hearing could last some three hours 42 minutes at that rate. Extensive andn lengthy hearing. Members are advised that we will hear closely to that seven minute limit and also shortly before noon, at the request of water witnesses, we will take a short 10 minute break. With that, we welcome our panel of witnesses, thank them for their testimony and ask them to give their Opening Statements. Summarizing them in five minutes, the entire statement will be added at this point in the record and we will begin with mr. Jack dorsey of twitter. Us, and we have contact with you . Mr. Dorsey yes, can you hear me . Sen. Wicker yes, thank you for being with us. You are now recognized for five minutes. The dorsey thank you for opportunity to speak about twitter and section 230. My remarks will be free so we can get to questions. Section 230 is the most important law protecting internet speech. In removing section 230 we will remove speech from the internet. Eight Internet Services two important tools. The first provides immunity from liability for user content. The second provides Good Samaritan protections for content moderation and removal, even of constitutionally protected speech as long as it is done in good faith. Faith ispt of good what is being challenged by many of you today. Some of you dont trust we are acting in good faith. Thats the problem i want to focus on solving. , how do weke twitter ensure more choice in the market . Were are three solutions would like to propose to address the concerns raised. Thatocused on services moderate or remove content. , newcan be expansions legislative frameworks, or a commitment to industrywide selfregulation practices. Is requiring a services moderation process to be published. Other cases reported in reviewed. How are decisions made . What tools are used to enforce . Policy answers to questions like these will make our process more robust and accountable to the people we serve. The second is requiring a straightforward process to appeal decisions made by humans rather than algorithms. This ensures people can let us know when we dont get it right, so we can fix any mistakes and make our policies better in the future. Of the content people see today is determined by algorithms. Very little visibility into how they choose what they show. Which of the first step in making this more transparent by building a button to turn off her home timeline algorithm and to get started, we are inspired by the market approach suggested in 2019. Ephen wolfram enabling people to choose algorithms to rank and filter the content is an incredibly energizing idea that is in reach. Processg one moderation and practices to be published, two, a straightforward process to appeal decisions, and three, best efforts around algorithmic choice. They are all achievable in short order. As critical as we consider these solutions, we have minds for new set of an independent developers. That ensures a level Playing Field that increases probability of competing ideas to help solve problems. We must entrench the largest we must not entrench the Largest Companies any further. Thank you for your time and i look forward to a productive discussion to dig into these and other ideas. Sen. Wicker thank you very much, mr. Dorsey. Mr. Call on you are recognized for five minutes. A powerful force for good. Drastically improve information whether it is connecting americans to jobs, getting critical updates to people in times of crisis, or helping a parent find and answer questions like how can i get my baby to sleep for the night . At th