This hearing will come to order, senator cantwell is going to join us in person but she joins us remotely at the beginning of the hearing, we have convened this morning to continue work of this committee to ensure the internet remains a free and open space and they are sufficiently uptodate, it is a Great American success story, thanks in large part to the regulatory and legal structure our government put in place, we cannot take that success for granted, the openness and freedom of the internet are under attack, soon we will hear from the ceos of three of the most prominent internet platforms, facebook, google and twitter, with this is include mr. Jack dorsey of twitter, of alphabet inc. And mr. Marx a burger facebook. On october 1 this committee voted on a bipartisan and unanimous basis to approve the issuance of subpoenas after discussions among representatives of the companies witnesses agreed to attend it voluntarily and remotely the stronger agreement on both sides of the aisle that hearing from these witnesses is important of deliberations before this committee including deliberations on what legislative reforms are necessary to ensure a free and open internet, 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 lifetouch Regulatory Framework and section 230 of the Communications Decency act otherwise referred to of the 26 words that created the internet. There is little dispute that section 230 played a Critical Role in the Early Development of online platforms. Section 230 gave content provider protection from liability to remove and moderate content that they or their users consider to be obscene, filthy, excessively violent, harassing or otherwise objectionable. This liability shield has been pivotal in protecting our platforms from endless and repenpotentially losses but ito given the internet platforms the ability to control and even sensor content in whatever manner in their respective standards, times come for the free pass. After 24 years of section 230v and the law of the land, 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 for a dorm room, they are now among the Worlds Largest corporations with an immense power in our economy culture and public discourse. Applications are connecting the world in unprecedented ways far beyond what lawmakers couldve imagined three decades ago, these companies are controlling the overwhelming flow of use of information that the public can share and access. One note it occurred two weeks ago after our subpoenas were unanimously approved, the New York Post, the countrys fourth largest newspaper ran a story revealing communications between hunter biden and the ukraine official, the report allege that hunter biden facilitated a meeting with his father joe biden who was then Vice President of the United States, almost immediately both twitter and facebook took steps to block access to the story. Facebook according to its policy communication manager began reducing its distribution on the platform. Sending a third party check, twitter went beyond that blocking all users including the house judiciary from sharing the article of the direct messages twitter even locked a New York Post account entirely claiming the story included hacked materials and was potentially harmful. It is worth noting that twitter and facebook subversion to hacked materials is not always been so stringent, for example when the president s tax returns were illegally leaked, the Company Restricted access to the information. Similarly to discredited steele dossier was widely shared without Fact Checking or disclaimers. This apparent double standard would be appalling under normal circumstances but the fact that the elective censorship is occurring in the midst of the 2020 election cycle dramatically amplifies the power wilted by facebook and twitter google generated some controversy when it was revealed that the own company threatened to cut off including the federalist from the app platform make no mistake that sites rely on advertising revenue for the bottom line being blocked from Google Services for d monetize can be a death sentence, according to google the defense of these websites was hosting user submitted comments sections that included objectionable contact. But googles own platform, youtube host user submitted comments sections for every video upload, it seems that google is far more zealous in policing conservative sites than its own youtube platform or the same types of offensive and outright rages language. It is ironic when the subject has met neutrality that Technology Companies including facebook, google and twitter have warned about walking the flow of information on the internet in the same companies are actively blocking entirely the distribution of content under all platforms and using protections under section 32 do it, is it any surprise that voices on the right are complaining about hypocrisy or even worse in our democratic election. These recent incidents are the latest among censorship and suppression of conservatives on the internet they are left to wonder whether big tech is obstructing the flow of information to benefit one political ideology or agenda. My concern that these platforms have become powerful armatures of what is true and what content users can access, the American Public gets little insight into the decisionmaking process when content is moderated, users have little force when they are restricted, i hope we can all agree that the committee will discuss today are right with thorough examination and action. And to clarify by building protections in the accountability of content, the online freedom would make important changes to the liability shield and make clear of what content moderation is protected this legislation would address the challenges while leaving fundamentals of section 230, although some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have characterized this as a partisan exercise where strong bipartisan support which we will review and section 230, both president ial candidates, Trump Inviting have proposed section 230 and its entirety, a position i have not yet erased, i hope we can post focus todays discussion on the issues that affect all americans protecting the true diversity of people and free discourse that is central, i look forward to hearing from todays witnesses about what they are doing to promote transparency, accountability and fairness in their content moderation process, then i think each of them with cooperating with us in the scheduling of this testimony and i turned to my friend and Ranking Member senator cantwell for her opening remarks. The beautiful state of washington in my Senate Office in washington, d. C. Shows the various ecosystems in the state of washington which we very much appreciate, i bring that up because just recently the seattle area was named the number one stem economy in the United States that did the most dim workforce in the United States of america. These issues about how we harvest the Information Age to work forest and not against us is something that we deal with every day of the week and we want to have discussion a discourse, i believe the discussion a discourse today should be broader than just 230, theres issues of privacy that our committee has addressed and issues on how to make sure there is a free and competitive new market, i noticed today we are not calling in the nab or the 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 diversity of voices and opinion and in my report recently released we show the true competition really does help perfect information for our economy and for the health of our democracy. 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 to health and Public Safety are allowed to remain on the internet, we all know what happened in 2016 and we had reports from the fbi, our intelligence agencies in a Bipartisan Committee that concluded in 2016 that russian operatives did emasculating as americans use targeting advertisement and potentially falsifies nude under news articles, social media platform tools to interact in attempt to deceive tens of millions of social media users in the United States. Director of National Intelligence then republican senator dan said in july 2018 the warning lights are blinking red that the Digital Infrastructure that serves our country is literally under attack, i take this issue very seriously and have for many years, and making sure that the special counter mueller indicated 12 russian Intelligence Officers hacked the d c and various information detailing phishing attacks into our state election board, online persona and stealing documents. When we have a subCommittee Hearing and former bush Homeland Security director michael testified, i asked him pointblank, there were some of her colleagues who said everybody does election interference, i asked him if election interference is something that we did or if we should be a and purging, interfering with infrastructure or election is completely offlimits is completely unacceptable, thats what i believe we should be working aggressively, internationally to sanction anybody that interferes in our election, 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 that they have taken off the book, it is no secret that there are various state actors who are doing all that they can to take a whack at democracy. To try to say that our way of government and our way of freedom of speech and information is somehow not as good as we have made it being the beacon of democracy around the globe, i am not going to let or tolerate people to continue to whack at our election process, or vote by mail system or the ability of tech platforms, security companies, Law Enforcement entities in the collective community to speak against misinformation and hate speech. We have to show that the United States of america stands behind their principles and that our principles do also transfer to the responsibility of communication online as my colleagues will know weve all been through this in the past, that is why you mr. Chairman and i and senator rosen and sponsor the hack act to increase the security and Cyber Security of our nation and create a workforce that can fight against that, that is why i joined the van hollen on the deter act especially establishing sanctions against russian interference and to continue to make sure that we build the infrastructure about tomorrow, 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 that are been active for a long time, they want to destabilize Eastern Europe and we became the second act when they tried to destabilize our democracy here by sowing this information, i want to show them that we in the United States do have fair elections, we do have a fair process, we are going to be the beacon of democracy i and to hear from the witnesses on the progress to make sure that this information is not allowed online and that we will also consider ways to help build and strengthen that. That is to say as some of those who are testifying today what can we do transparency, on recording on analysis and yes i think youre going to hear a lot about algorithms today in the kinds of oversight that we all want that we can continue to have a diversity of voices in the United States of america both online and offline. I do want to say mr. Chairman, i am concerned about the vertical nature of news and information, today i expect to ask the witnesses about the fact that i believe they created a chokepoint for local news, the local news media has lost 70 of the revenue over the last decade and we have lost thousands of journalistic jobs that are important, it was even amazing to me that the sequence of events yesterday had me being interviewed by someone at a newspaper who was funded by a joint group and probably facebook to interview me about the fact that the news media and broadcast has fallen on such a decline because lots of revenue because they made the transition to the digital age. Somehow we have to come together to show that the diversity of voices at local news represents need to be dealt with fairly when it comes to the Advertising Market and too much control on the Advertising Market put the foot on their ability to continue to move forward and grow in the digital age, just as other forms of media have made the transition and still making the transition, we want to have a very healthy and dynamic news media across the United States of america, i plan to ask the Witnesses Today about that, i wish we had time to go into depth on privacy and privacy issues but mr. Chairman, you know and so does senator and other colleagues of the committee on my side, how important it is that we protect American Consumers on privacy issues, we are not done with this work, there is much to do to bring consensus in the United States on this important issue and i hope as we do have time or in the followup to these questions that we can also witnesses about that today, make no mistake gentlemen, thank you for joining us, this is probably one of many, many conversations that we will have about all of these issues but again lets harness the information 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 informati information. Thank you, senator cantwell, you are correct that this will not be the last hearing with regard to the subject matter, i also appreciate you mentioning your concern which i share about local journalism at this point were about to receive testimony from her witnesses, before you begin that let me remind members that todays hearing will provide senators with seven minutes with a round of seven minute questioning rather than the usual five minutes that we have done in the past, at seven minutes the gavel, lets say a few seconds after seven minutes the gavel will go down, even so this hearing could last some three hours and 42 minutes at that rate, this will be an extensive and lengthy hearing, members revise that we will hear closely to the seven minute limit and also shortly before noon as the request of one of our witnesses we will take a short ten minute break. With that we welcome our panel of witnesses, thank you for the testimony and ask them to give their Opening Statements, summarizing them in a fiveminute and the entire statement will be added at this point in the record and we will begin with mr. Jack dorsey of twitter, sir do you hear us and we have contact with you . Yes can hear me. Yes. Thank you for being with us in your now recognized for five minutes. Thank you members of the Congress Committee for the opportunity to speak with the American People about twitter and section 230, ramie rocks will be brief so we can get to the questions, section 230 is the most important law protecting internet speech and removing section 230 will remove speech from the internet. Section 230 gave Internet Services to important tools the first provides immunity from liability from users content the second provides Good Samaritan protection for content moderation and removal even of constitutionally protected speech as long as its done in good faith. The concept of good faith is whats being challenged by many of you today. Some of you do not trust were acting in good faith, that is a problem i want to focus on solving. Other Services Like twitter earn your trust. We ensure more choice in the market if we dont. There are three solutions we would like to propose to address the concerns raised. All focused on services that decide to moderate content. It can be expansion to section 230, legislative framework or commitment to industrywide selfregulation best practices. The first is requiring a services moderation process to be published, how are cases reported and reviewed how are decisions made, what tools are used to enforc