Minutes. Welcome to our continuing conversation about the big social media platform in response to the disinformation campaigns around the covid19 pandemic, very serious situation where lives are literally in the balance. Im the director of the George WashingtonUniversity School of Public Affairs affiliated with the institute of data and democracy and politics which is presenting this event together with the International Committee on this information. Ill be your moderator and your timekeeper and i will continue this conversation with her distinguished panel and guest. If you are journalist, please feel free to put your question into the q a field, make sure that is addressed to everybody so we can see that and i will try to incorporate some of the questions to our panel in a bit. Social media platforms as we know and discussed our allowing actors to sell on illegal and overpriced medical equipment during the pandemic. That is one of many issues that we see across a social media platform. This one is not a new problem, social media platforms continue to allow the dangerous disinformation during the covid19 pandemic and in so doing they expose how dangerous and how irresponsible this kind of behavior can be and the role that they play in continuing to allow it. Rampant conspiracy theories make the situation worse, confusing people, distracting people, social media platforms have the technological knowhow in the sources to fix it but they have little intent and incentive to do so. We have a distinguished panel to discuss these problems, people on the frontline who are dealing with these issues directly and legislators who are trained to do something about it from two countries. First a look at the issues in the states to launch the conversation. Advertise on facebook by Fake Companies how the masks can filter out 99 of harmful particles, heres what you pay for and heres what you get. Im a foster father out of Williamson County who have no place to live. We knew we needed masks because we are responsible for overseeing these children, the health and welfare of these children. We were warned about coronavirus scams. I noticed an ad for a mask on facebook and i saw facebook as a legitimate company, i ordered on april 3 and i got the confirmation that they were received my payment. Scams are on the rise for increasing need for protective supplies. After my initial auto reply to facebook, they went silent, i got nothing from them. I absolutely have thought about the fact that without these masks coming that input these children and their families in our organization at higher risk. U. S. Lawmakers who are joining us are charged with Consumer Protection. [inaudible] my apologies for the technological glitches that we have tried to connect the world. We are learning, this is a learning process so your intelligence is very appreciated. Let me try this again, we have two leading u. S. Lawmakers that are charged with Consumer Protection the United States congress, another from canada a leader in the International Green committee. Senator Richard Blumenthal joins us, his advocacy for crewmen sumer rights traces back to decades and let me just say senator blumenthal coming from connecticut, integrate pleasure and advocacy for Consumer Rights more than two decades as the state attorney general in his work on the senate on the condition or a committee. A recognized leader in the senate on the democratic caucus. Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky from the great state of illinois she shares the Consumer Protection subcommittee, the house energy and Commerce Committee and serves as a Senior Deputy in the house leadership as well. Thank you for joining us. Were joined by nathaniel, canadian member of parliament from the liberal party, he sits on the Standing Committee on industry science and technology, hes been demanding more from action for some time, i will ask her lawmakers if you bear with me and allow me the timekeeper role as a turn to our witnesses, people who are experiencing this information first hand. Randy smith is a mentor in round rock texas after corporate career and he followed to become a house parent as you saw in the video and foster home, hes a Community Leader that we would all like to have, thinking we celebrate you and appreciate everything youre doing. Doctor sandra is a professor at the Mount Sinai School of medicine and john hopkin for security and bio security, shes a Clinical Emergency Department treating patients in the mount sinai covid19 best practices committee. Lets get a sense of whats going on with you out there in the world and bring mentor elected representatives before the conversation. Randy smith lets start with you ensure your story we saw you in the video expressing your experiences and frustration and the stakes of whats is about. When the pandemic happened we became concerned about her ability to serve and support the teams that were in our program. We immediately started looking at the need of other teams in the logistics of complying with the social distancing guideline, we knew we would need to perform well but what we quickly realized we will be responsible for supplying food and other supplies to many families. When i found the masks i found some on amazon but they were only the desk max, the local stores were out so i followed a link that was advertise on facebook, knowing facebook is a legitimate company i assumed they only allow legitimate it advertisers i purchased the masks through facebook, shortly later i received an inaccurate order confirmation which let me know something was wrong in looking into the iphone to Facebook Group with a thousand members most of whom who ordered from there and hundreds had posted information regarding the dispute on facebook and paypal but it was very difficult to find anyone posting resolutions to those concerns. It was not just facemasks, hunters had ordered robotic vacuums, drones and have become victims of scams, it was apparent that facebook had been aware of this for several weeks, there was no secrets people getting ripped off and i would imagine every one person that reported there mightve been hundreds and did not speak up or say anything, i looked at it if i walk into home depot, they were responsibility to make sure i received what i was sold and also regulated to protect my electronic funds, the platform selling online needs to be held at a higher standard. The fact is there often representing a company that is not historic, there is a seller they may not that may be based outside the United States and consumers are powerless and we cannot walk in and speak to the counter. Its easier to get ripped off. Allowing the fraudulent practice to continue will only cause consumers to be more cautious about buying online and that will be a big expense, the smaller Reputable Companies that rely on that to promote and sell their products, and the grand scheme 200 may not seemed like a lot of money but regardless the amount it is another persons precious dollars and someone like me or a Nonprofit Organization who serves at the health risk youth on essential donated dollars, every dollar is absolutely vital. Let me say a couple things, you say 200 is not very much, multiply that by 100, thousand million youre talking serious dollars and major major fraud cast over a lot of people, your story is known and got told partly because of the incredible work that Craig Sullivan from buzz feed did along with her institute due to democracy and politics and are calling trevor davis as we look into some of these proliferation of social media and email, a billion emails wrapped around these things that they found, they found your story and i think what is so important of exposing these things, thank you for sharing your story with them so it can be reported and thank you for sharing your story with us right now. We will come back. Doctor, i want to turn over to you or your perspective. Thank you, as an emergency physician in new york city i managed more than 100 cases of covid19. But i lost count of how many people were exposed, not to the virus itself but medical misinformation about the virus on social media. It is hurting my patients, one of my first cases at the beginning of march was an elderly woman brought in by her adult son, she hugged fever and her heart rate was high and her oxygen was very low and when i told her son the news he did not believe me. He did not believe the virus existed. He showed me a facebook and there was a post that said Something Like covid19 is a hoax made up by drug companies, that same week another patient was brought in by her daughter, same symptoms, same diagnosis, but her daughter insisted to me that there was no way her mother could have the virus because she read on facebook that covid19 was presented by antibiotics, so she went to her neighborhood and got pills and she was taking those everyday, theres no way her mother could have covid19. I have had so many of these conversations since a beginning of the outbreak and after everything weve been through over the past few months, i am still having these conversations, most recently on my shifts just last week, when i account for patients and their families about the facts of covid19, they are understandably confused and scared because they already were exposed to so much conflicting information they dont know what is real and what is not. In the common reaction is for members to get angry and hat makes it how its possible for the patient to have covid19 and theyll say my mother never left the house, shes not been in contact with anyone except for the grandkids and were all healthy. At first they dont make the connection even though they themselves are healthy and have no symptoms. They could still have the virus and pass it on. Eventually after we talk is starts to sink in and one of the things ill never forget is the look on someones face when all of a sudden they realize that likely have the virus and likely passed on to the loved ones. Ive seen that look so many times and its something ill remember for the rest of my life, i have been told the waiter counter medical this information social media so fast, i cannot keep up in the middle of a pandemic, its not enough time, were fighting to keep her patients alive on the front line. We should not be fighting with more information at the same time, it is not possible. We are trained to handle mass casualty but not this. Thank you for listening. Thank you very much and not only are you not trained for this, you should not have to spend you should spend your time treating patients, not this information. I want to ask you one question, the stories that you tell are really disturbing and very shocking of patients who think the thinking get a pill or take a pill or in me and permit and the other examples that you gi give. This is not scientific, this is antidotal that im asking. Are these rare cases or are these coming from 10 , 20 , give us a sense from your lived experience, how prevalent is this misinformation a disinformation of what you hear from patients. I would soothe great confidence that overwhelm majority just to give you a sense of this, at the beginning of outbreak some of the people who were actually looking at this information and questioning it were actual doctors. One thing i do at mount sinai is look at the literature and make sure will follow best practices. You dont understand what it was like in the beginning in february and the beginning of march because we do not have enough information and so i hate to say it, i had colleagues of mine that could fall for the hoax on facebook and i think now its much more clear, and for having people from the medical community who were able to necessarily identify all information. What can we expect from patients, i dont know how its possible to put that on people to know how to discount information and make decisions based on the health on own good information. Thank you, doctor stokes. Senator blumenthal may turn to you. You had taken on Health Insurance industry, big tobacco, you have an outspoken advocate for Consumer Rights, in this case consumers as we hear from doctor stokes have huge amount about information across the social media platform, the scammers that are selling useless pills like this leaving people to think that they are immune in the Conspiracy Theory that drives people in different directions, i want to turn over to you and you can respond to what you heard from randy smith and doctor stokes. Thank you for joining us. Let me repeat my thanks even more enthusiastically. For those who have described so compellingly some of the real harm from done this information into my colleagues , thank you for being such a steadfast and energetic warrior on behalf of consumers so these stories from the real world i am outraged that when you hear 200 here 200 they are talking about real money and the classaction involving a lot less than the 200 per person but what is so compelling to human life and safety so this can be a big boon also and too often they are complicit to aid and a bed the spread of deceptive and misleading ads and i will give you one or two examples that crossed the line out of band on out of bounds we are writing a letter today with the effort that it should be taking action around the stimulus payments being issued by the federal government all too often in our we are discovering is that people that go to google encounter malware and fraudulent schemes and referrals that google does or should know and we are asking the ftc to take action not only with the advertisers and the con artist but also against google because it has taken action against advertisers to engage to enable for us to reach ordinary people we are asking the ftc to take action you mentioned exposing this fraud exposing them is very important that that is the ftc and the fcc all of thes agencies have a real responsibility affecting peoples lives. Absolutely astonishing by the way things that were doing today as a result of the transparency project but likewise 46 separate false peers. Dietary supplements, chemicals and there are no proven therapeutic treatments. And just to be clear, these cures are being promoted and represented as cures and the platforms are as saying nothing to pull them down and expose them . They did nothing on their own. Now they are down so to the key point the platforms are scaling and of course the ftc is limited but also in the past so we are going to the Largest Online marketplaces and ask them those are not are effective but potentially dangerous to people and then to encounter a lot of people saying it was the end 95 mask so you can go from pricefixing price gouging also this meets on misleading ads and pictures, all of them with the platform. Let me turn to you for a couple of minutes. You coauthored this letter what exactly are you to calling to be done . And as we are here now we are focusing on scams, fraud, ripping people off in the name of covid19 safety or health or cures. Tell us more about this letter and where this needs to go. Congressman you are muted. There are a number of tools that we can use the ftc really does have the authority not only the fraudulent adds to be taken down but at the ftc could use and at this point we are calling on google to take responsibility. This issue of the immunity of the platform is a dangerous situation. I along with senator blumenthal look at facebook because they are allowing the sale of these inclined sleepers that have killed 100 children already and the Consumer ProductSafety Commission says they should not be sold that they are selling them on their shop. I also want to think the people that are looking for information so they go to the internet and if they just look up who is selling the fraudulent items including the masks and then we have a terrible story it is because there may be some that are legitimate in some way have no way of knowing the differences if there is not a regulation i am very concerned about making sure that we act and the big of unity of thes platforms because of section 230 because of the communication decency act that they are just toasting and they have no responsibility whatsoever that i think that is something we clearly have to change and we have seen the democrats the energy and Commerce Commission they have sent a letter to say section 230 should not be included and Foreign Trade agreements and you heard a member of parliament and Speaker Pelosi was right about that. This is the plan a big tech that they wanted to protect themselves all over the world. I have heard them say in congressional testimony and elsewhere we want to be responsible. We will deny way you have said and they are just putting out whatever and they dont care about it or not interested in doing anything. One of the things the study of ppe that google was not even and living up to its own Community Standards. But we have hired people to make sure and these are popping up all the time so we are not liable we are just toasting we have nothing to do with that. Yes we have heard facebook i think apologize ten times for things during the years that they have done that has hurt consumers to put patients at risk for now its time to act definitively for those lines that cannot be crossed to require the ftc enforce thes lines to make sure they are acting appropriately and as you have said lifeanddeath that we are talking about. And to bring in a member of parliament and different considerations but what people are very outspoken about but not a different problem solidity are your perspective and then we will open it up and we will bring them back in. We have the same pr