Said this hearing will her were turned to order and we understand that senator moran is next so sir you are recognized. Chairman wicker thank you very much and thank you for you and senator cantwell hosting this hearing. Let me address initially this topic that seems to be primary today and then that is of data privacy. Let me ask all three witnesses how much money does your company stand annually on content moderation . How many people work in general in the area of content moderation including by private contract . Let me start with those two questions and ultimately want to ask you how much money does your company spend independently on lawsuits for content. See that mr. Zuckerberg do you want to go first . Senator we have more than 35,000 people who work on content and safety review and i believe our budget is multiple billions of dollars a year, upwards of three or maybe even more billion dollars a year which is a greater amount in revenue in the sense that we are spending more on the whole revenue of our company was the year before we filed in 2012. Senator we used a combination of ai moderation systems. We have a little overt 10,000 the thing they are significantly and i would again, im not sure the exact numbers but i would say around 4 billion we have spent on these things. Thank you. Mr. Dorsey. A dont have the specific numbers but we maintain agility between the people we have working on this building Better Technology to audit its our goal is flexibility. Let me asked the question again about how much would you estimate your company is currently spending on lawsuits related to user content . In the same order. Senator i dont know the answer to that off the top of my head but i can get back to you. Thank you. Senator we are not sure applies to issues and i will follow. Thank you. I dont have those numbers. Let me is your answers to highlight something that i want to be a topic of our conversation so we can base this legislation. Whatever the numbers are you indicate they are significant and effective enormous amount of money an enormous amount of employee time and dealing with modification of content. These companies these efforts are expensive but i would highlight for my colleagues on the committee that they will not be any less expensive perhaps less in scale but not lessen cost than startups and Small Businesses. As we develop our policies in regards to this topic i want to make certain entrepreneurship startups and Small Businesses are considered and what it would cost in their effort to make the kind of standards to operate in that sphere. Let me quickly talk to the federal privacy. I chair the consumer at data privacy consumer act senator blumenthal and i tried to develop a bipartisan piece of legislation. We were close but unsuccessful in doing so. Let me ask mr. Zuckerberg facebook entered into an in order with the ftc in july of 2012 and violations of the ftc act and ordered to pay a 5 milliondollar penalty along with the local government ordering 2018 following the Cambria Analytica incident by way of the 2012 order. My legislation would replied the ftc with civil authority. You think its an important tool for ftc and would better deter unfair practices than the current regime . I would understand it in a little more detail before weighing in on this but the settlement that we have with the ftc we are going to be setting up an industry leading a Privacy Program. We have more than 1000 working on the Privacy Program now and we are basically implementing a program which is sort of the equivalent of starting a Financial Regulation around an internal controls around privacy and protecting people stayed as well. I think that settlement will be quite effective in ensuring that peoples data and privacy are protected. Mr. Pichai Google Youtube 170 million settlement with the ftc and the state of new york for alleged violations of conduct involved persistent identifiers. How should federal legislation address identifiers of consumers over the age of 13. Senator today we have done two things. As if the company we have invested in oneofakind special youtube kipp that can be said for kids and also on the year two product families can view content and part of our settlement was adapt thing is we can operate for those cases as well. Privacy is one of the most important areas with thousands of engineers working on it for choice and transparency in any time you associate data with users we can both see what data is there. We can then give data the option and for all new users. We delete the data automatically without them needing to do anything and 1 billion people have gone through privacy checkups. Thank you. Mr. Chairman thank you. Mr. Marquis. Thank you mr. Chairman very much. Today republican allies in congress and propaganda parents on fox news are peddling and today my republican colleagues on the Senate Commerce committee are simply doing the president s bidding. They should join us in addressing the real problems posed but instead my republican colleagues are determined to push a false narrative about anticonservative bias meant to intimidate standing ably by and allow interference in our election again. Heres the truth violence and hate speech on line are real problems. As is the bias a problem. It attempts to influence our election with this information is a real problem. Anticonservative why is is not a problem. A big tech Business Model which puts profits ahead of people is a real problem. Antibias is not a problem. The issue is not that the company has taken too many posts down. The issue is that they are leaving too many dangers posed up and in fact its amplifying content so it spreads bike like wildfire and destroys our democracy. Mr. Zuckerberg went President Trump posted this on facebook that when the looting starch the shooting starts. He failed to take down that post. Its had hundreds of thousands of shares and likes on facebook instance and the president has gone on National Television and told a hate group to quote standby and he is repeatedly refused to commit that he will accept the Election Results. Mr. Zuckerberg can you commit that if the president goes on facebook and encourages violence after Election Results are announced that he will make sure your companys algorithms dont spread that content and you will immediately remove those messages . Senator yes. Violence is against our policy and their exceptions no exceptions for that including politicians. Said there are exceptions you say . Naeher not the exceptions. There are no exceptions which is very important because obviously this is a message sent that could throw our democracy into chaos and a lot of it can be and will be created by social media sites. Mr. Zuckerberg if President Trump shares disinformation lying about the outcome of the election can you commit that you will make sure your algorithms do not amplify that content and you will immediately take that content down . Senator we have a policy in place that prevents any candidate or campaign from prematurely declaring victory or trying to delegitimize the results of the election and what we will do in that case is we will send factual information to any poster that is trying to do that. If someone says they won the election when the results arent in for example we will tell that person Election Results are not in yet and anyone who sees that post will see that context in line and if a candidate tries to prematurely declare victory or side and incorrect results we have up are cautioned that we have elton to put the top of the facebook added out with information about the accurate u. S. Election results. I know this is a very important issue to make sure that people can get Accurate Information about the results of the election. You cannot we stated as being anything less than critically important. Democracy could be seriously challenged beginning next tuesday evening and for several days afterwards and maybe longer and a lot of responsibility is going to be on the shoulders of facebook and their other witnesses today. Mr. Zuckerberg if President Trump uses the Facebook Accounts to call for armed private citizens to control the polls on election day which would constitute illegal voter intimidation violation of the Voting Rights act will you commit that your algorithms will not spread that content and you will immediately take that content down . Senator my understanding is content like what you are saying would violate our fighter suppression view and would come down. Again the stakes are going to be very high and we are going to take that as a commitment that you will do that because obviously you would otherwise have a series of question marks placed over our elections. Face but cares about one thing keeping users glued to its platform and one of the ways you do that is with facebook groups. Mr. Zuckerberg and 2017 announced a goal of 1 billion users joining facebook groups. Unfortunately these have become breeding grounds for hate echo chambers of disinformation. Again facebook is not only failing to take these pages down its actively spreading these pages and helping the groups recruitment efforts. Facebooks own internal Research Found 64 of all extremists groups join due to facebooks recommendations tools, mr. Zuckerberg we commit to stopping all recommendations on their platform and tell u. S. Election results are certified, yes or no . Senator we have taken the step of stopping recommendations and groups for all political content or social groups as a precaution for this. And just to clarify the vast majority of committees that people are part of our not extremist organizations or even political. They are interfaith communities and are quite helpful and healthy for people to be a part of it i do think we need to make sure that our recommendation and algorithm doesnt encourage people to join extremist groups. We have taken a number of steps and i agree with you its very important that we continue to make her address on it. Your algorithms are promoting on line spaces for Political Violence in the very least you should stable those algorithms. Thank you mr. Chairman. Thank you senator markey. Mr. Zuckerberg let me ask you this in the scenarios that senator markey was posing the action of facebook would not deal function of algorithms in those cases would it . Senator i thank you are right and then clarification a lot of this is more about enforcement of content policies but the questions were about algorithms and the Group Ranking is an algorithm but broadband a lot of it is content enforcement. Senator blackburn you are recognized. Thank you mr. Chairman and i want to thank you for coming here voluntarily. We up reshape that. They are undoubtedly benefits to using your platforms and is everyone mentioned today there are also some concerns which are also serious. Free speech politics religion and i chuckled as i sat here listening to you all it reminds me that you all are kind of in control of what people are going to hear, what they are going to see and therefore you have the ability to dictate what is coming in and what information is coming in. I think its important to realize you were set up as an information source not as a news media so therefore censoring things that you all think of singly may be something thats not unseemly to other parts of the country but let me ask each of you do any of you have content moderators who are conservative . Mr. Dorsey first, yes or no. We dont ask political ideology. That mr. Zuckerberg . Senator we dont ask for their ideology. They are at 35 in cities and places all across the country. Mr. Pichai . We hire them. United states. Okay, all right and looking at some of your censoring mr. Dorsey you all have censored joe biden and donald trump 65 times. I want to go back to senator gardners question. He claims earlier the denial and to genocide by a brand terrorist dont violate socalled rules and thats important for terrorist leaders that the platform and twitter so let me ask you this i dont know. I think this is called a dictatorship. Are people in iran allowed to use twitter or does the country whose leader you claim banned them from doing so . Ideally we would love iran to use twitter. Iran banned twitter and mr. Zuckerberg im sure you were that they have banned facebook as well. If donald trump her world leader . Yes. It would be important for World Leaders to have access to your platform, correct . Correct. So why did you deny that platform and give censorship to the u. S. . We havent censored u. S. President. Oh yes you have. How many posts from Vladimir Putin have you censored . We have labeled tweets of World Leaders and we have a policy of not taking down the content. The u. S. President you censored 65 times. You testify that you are worried about disinformation and election interference. Thats something we all worry about and of course or 100 years foreign sources have been trying to influence u. S. Policy and u. S. Elections. They see this as a way to get access to the American People so given your refusal to censor foreign dictators while regularly censoring the president are you at this very moment personally responsible for flooding the nation with foreign disinformation . Just to be clear we have not censored the president and we have not taken the tweets down that you are referencing. They have a label applied to them and we do the same for leaders around the world. With a the ask you this. You share any of your data each of the three b. Do you share any for data mining with the Democratic National committee . Im not sure what you mean by the question but we have a Data Platform and we have a number of customers. Not sure of the customer lists. Okay and you said you dont keep lists. Ill make that no. Keep lists of the accounts that we watch. All right. Are right mr. Pichai is mike lemoine one of your engineer still working with you . Senator im not sure but he is currently an employee. Okay. He had very unkind things to say about me and i was wondering if you kept him working there. Also i want to mention with you mr. Pichai the way you all have censored some things. Google searches for joe biden generated approximately 30,000 impressions for breitbart links as of may 1 and after may 5 the impressions went to zero. I hope that what you all realize from this hearing is that there is a pattern. You may not leave that it exists but there is a pattern of subjective manipulation of the information that is available to people from your platform. What has driven additional attention to this is the fact that more families functional lives are now being conducted on line. Because of those more people are realizing that you are picking winners and losers. You are trying to, mr. Zuckerberg you said facebook functions more like a government that accompany. You are beginning to insert yourself into these issues of free speech. Mr. Zuckerberg with my time that is left let me ask you this. You mentioned early in your remarks you saw some things as competing equity. Is the First Amendment to a given right or competing entity . I believe strongly in Free Expression. Sorry if i was on mute there. They too think like all equities it is balanced against other equities like safety and privacy and even the people who believe in the strongest possible interpretation of the First Amendment still believe that there should the some limits on speech when it could cause imminent risk of physical harm and the famous example is that you cant shout fire in a crowded theater. So getting those equities in the balance right is the challenge we face. We believe in the First Amendment and we will have questions to follow up. Thank you mr. Chairman. I can see the clock. Thank you. Senator udall. Seemed mr. Chairman thank you and senator cantwell i appreciate this hearing. I want to start by laying out three facts. The Intelligence Community has found the russian government is intent on election interference in its face. They did in 2016 and they are doing it in 2020. Intelligence says they want to help President Trump and they did so in 2016. The president doesnt like this to be said that its a fact. We also know the russian strategy this time around is going after hunter biden so i recognize the details of how they handle misinformation from the internet. I think Companies Like twitter and facebook that take action to not via part of a suspected Russian Election interference operation were doing the right thing. Let me be clear no one believes these companies represent the law or represent the public. The u. S. Government is the referee. The ftc, the congress the presidency and the Supreme Court are the referees. Its very dangerous for President Trump and republicans in congress and at the fcc to laws to force social Media Companies to amplify false claims to conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns. My question to all three of you is the russian government and other foreign nations continue to attempt to usurp Companies Platforms to spread disinformation and influence a at 2020 elections. Can you briefly describe what you are seeing . Please start mr. Dorsey and then mr. Pichai and mr. Zuckerberg you gave an answer partially on this. I like you expand on that answer. Thank you. We do continue to see interference. We recently disclosed actions we took on both russia and factions originating out of iran. We made those disclosures public.