iranian-backed terror groups including the houthis in yemen. >> senator, i need to make it very clear that pro-hamas content and hate speech is not allowed on our platform. >> why did he resign? why did he quit? >> senator, we also do not -- >> do you know why he quit? >> we do not allow this. we will investigate such -- >> my question is he quit. he gave up a good job because he thinks your platform is being used to help people who want to destroy the jewish state, and i'm not saying you want that. mr. zuckerberg, i'm not saying you want as an individual any of the harms. i am saying that the products you have created with all of the upside have a dark side. mr. citron, i am tired of talking, and i am tired of having discussions. we all know the answer here and here is the ultimate answer. stand behind your product. go to the american courtroom and defend your practices. open up the courthouse door.

until you do that nothing will change, until these people can be sued for the damage they're doing it is all talk. i am a republican who believes in free enterprise, but i also believe that every american who has been wronged has to have somebody to go to to complain. there's no commission to go to that can punish you. there's not one law in the book because you oppose everything we do, and you can't be sued. >> all right. we are listening to metaphor cal sirens blaring at this moment on two fronts. china is prepared to wreak havoc on the united states, what the fbi director is seeing that has him sounding this alarm. >> and also more from what you are hearing from that senator lindsay graham who said in the beginning, you have blood on your hands. you have a product that's killing people. that is what lindsay graham and other senators are saying to the faces of the leaders of some of the world's top social media companies right now on capitol

hill. that hearing happening as we speak. let's listen in. >> up this, chairman durbin and thank you, ranking member graham for those words. i couldn't agree more. for too long we have been seeing the social media companies turn a blind eye when kids have joined these platforms in record numbers. they have used algorithms that push harmful content because that content got popular. they provided a venue, maybe not knowingly at first, but for dealers to sell deadly drugs like fentanyl. our own head of our drug enforcement administration has said they basically have been captured by the cartels in mexico and in china. so i strongly support, first of

all, the top csam bill. i agree with senator graham that nothing will change unless we open up the courtroom doors. i think for all of this immunity is done because i think money talks even stronger than we talk up here. two of the five bills that are noted are my bills with senator cornyn. one was actually passed through the senate and is awaiting action in the house and the other is a shield act and i do appreciate the support of that bill. this is about revenge porn. the fbi director testified before this committee and there have been over 20 suicides of kids attributed to online revenge porn in just the last year. but for those parents out there and those families, this is for them and the child and this is about it not happening to other

children. i know, parents luke brigitte nooring in hastings, minnesota. brigitte lost her teenage son after he took a fentanyl-laced pill that he purchased on the internet. amy neville is also here. platform, got the pill. amy neville is also here. her son alexander was only 14 when he died after taking a pill he didn't know was actually fentanyl. we are starting a law enforcement campaign, one pill kills in minnesota going to the schools with the sheriffs and law enforcement, but the way to stop it is yes at the borders and the points of entry and we know that 30% of the people getting fentanyl are getting it off the platforms. meanwhile, social media generated $11 billion in revenue in 2022 from advertising for

children and teenagers including 2 billion in ad profit derived from users age 12 and under. when pay boeing plane lost a door in mid-flight several weeks ago nobody questioned the decision to ground a fleet of over 700 planes. so why are not we taking the same type of decisive action on the danger of these platforms when we know these kids are dying? we have bills that have passed through this incredibly diverse committee when it comes to our political views that have passed through this committee and they should go to the floor. we should do something finally about liability and then we should turn to some of the other issues that a number of us have worked on when it comes to the charges for app stores and when

it comes to the monopoly behavior and the preferencing, but i will stick with this today. packs, one-third of fentanyl cases investigated over five months had direct ties to social media. that's from the dea. facts, between 2012 and 2022 cyber tip line reports of online child sexual exploitation increased from 415,000 to more than 32 million. and as i noted, at least 20 victims committed suicide in sextortion cases. so i'll start with that with you, mr. citron. my bill with senator cornyn, the shield act includes a threat protection that would help protection and accountability for those threatened by these predators, young kids get a picture, send it in. think they got a new girlfriend or a new boyfriend and ruins their life or they think it will be ruined and they kill themselves. can you tell me why you're not supporting the shield act?

>> senator, we think it is very important that teens have a safe experience on our platforms. i think that the portions to strengthen law enforcement's ability to investigate crimes against children. >> you are holding open that you support it? >> we would very much like to have conversations with you. we are open to discussing further and we do welcome legislation and regulation. this is a very important issue for our country and we've been prioritizing safety for years. >> thank you. i am much more interested in you support it because there have been so much talk with the hearings and popcorn throwing and i just want to get this stuff done and it's been 20 years since the internet because everyone has double talked and double talked and the reason they haven't passed is because of the power of your company. so let's be very, very clear about that. what you say matters. your words matter.

mr. chew, i'm a co-sponsor of ch chair durbin's csam act and to empower victims to ask tech companies to remove the material and related imagery from their platforms. why would you not support this bill? >> senator, we largely support it. the spirit of it are in line with what we want to do and there are implementations that companies like ours have and we look forward to asking those and if this legislation is law, we will comply. >> mr. spiegel, i know we talked ahead of time. i do appreciate your company's support for the cooper davis act which will finally, it's a bill with senator shahin and marshall which will allow law enforcement to do more when it comes to fentanyl. i think you know what a problem this is. devin nooring, teenager from

hastings, i mentioned his mom here. suffered dental pain and bought what he thought was percocet over snap and instead he bought something with a lethal dose of fentanyl. as his mom here with us today said all of the hopes and dreams that we had for devin were erased in the blink of an eye and no mom should have to bury their kid. talk about why you support the cooper davis act. >> senator, we strongly support the cooper davis act and we believe it will help dea go after the cartels and get dealers off the streets to save more lives. >> okay. are there others who support that bill? no? okay. last, mr. zuckerberg, in 2021 "the wall street journal" reported on internal matter research documents asking why do we care about tweens. these were internal documents and i'm quoting documents and

answered its own question by citing meta internal e-mails, they are a valuable, but untapped audience. at a commerce hearing and i am also in that committee and i d asked meta's head, why are they so valuable to meta. we do not knowingly attempt to recruit people who aren't old enough to use our apps. well, when the 42 state attorneys general, democrat and republican, brought their case, they said this statement was inaccurate. a few examples, in 2021, she received an e-mail, miss davis, from instagram's research director saying that instagram is investing in experiencing targeting young age roughly 10 to 12. in a february 2021 instant message, one of your employees wrote that meta is working to recruit gen alpha before they reach teenage years. in a 2018 e-mail that circulated

inside meta saying that you were briefed that children under 13 would be critical for increasing the rate of acquisition when users turn 13. explain that with what i heard at that testimony at the commerce hearing that they weren't being targeted and i just ask again as the other witnesses were asked why your company does not support the stop csam act or the shield act? sure, senator. i'm happy to talk to both of those. we had discussions internally about whether we should build a kids version of instagram. >> i remember that. >> like youtube and other services. we haven't actually moved forward with that and currently have no plans to do so. i can't speak directly to the direct emails you cited, but it sounds like they were deliberations on a project that people in turn thought it wasn't important and we didn't end up

moving forward with. >> and the bills? what were you going to say about the two bills? >> overall, my position on the bills is i agree with the goal of all of them. there are most things that i agree with within them. there are specific things that i would probably do differently. we also have our own legislative proposal for what we think would be most effective in terms of helping the internet and the various companies give parents control over the experience. so i'm happy to go into the detail of every one of them. >> these parents will say that the stuff hasn't worked. they just give parents control. they don't know what to do. it's very, very hard and that's why we are coming up with other solutions that we think are much more helpful to law enforcement, but also this idea of finally getting something going on liability because i just believe with all of the resources you have that you actually would be able to do more than you're doing or these parents wouldn't be sitting behind you right now in this senate hearing room.

>> can i speak to that or do you want me to talk later? >> please, go ahead. >> i don't think that parents should have to upload and i.d. the proof that you're the parent of a child in every single app that their children use. the right place to do this in a place where it would be very easy for it to work is within the app stores themselves where my understanding is apple and google or at least apple already requires parental consent when a child does a payment with an app, so it should be pretty trivial to pass a law that requires them to make it so that parents have control any time a child downloads an app and offers consent of that, and the research that we have done shows that the vast majority of parents want that, and i think that's the type of legislation in addition to some of the other ideas that you all have that would make it a lot easier for parents. >> just to be clear, i remember one mom telling me that with all of the things that she can't

figure out is like a faucet overflowing in the sink and she's out there with a mop. fbi director christopher wray sounding the alarm over china. let's listen. >> threaten america's safety and prosperity. before i go on, i do want to make very clear that my comments today are not about the chinese people and certainly not about chinese-americans who contribute much to our country and are frankly, often the victims of chinese communist party themselves. rather, when i talk about the threat posed by china i mean the government of china in particular led by the ccp. the ccp's dangerous actions, china's multi-pronged assault on our national and economic security make it the defining threat of our generation. when i described the ccp as a threat to american safety a moment ago i meant that quite

literally. there has been far too little public focus on the fact that prc hackers are targeting our critical infrastructure. our water treatment plants, our electrical grid, our oil and natural gas pipelines, our transportation systems and the risk that poses to every american requires our attention now. china's hackers are positioning on american infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real world harm to american citizens and communities if and when china decides the time has come to strike. they're not focused just on political and military targets. we can see from where they position themselves across civilian infrastructure that low blows aren't just a possibility in a conflict and low blow

possibilities are part of china's plan, but the prc's cyber onslaught goes beyond pre-positioning for future c conflict. today and every day they're attacking our economic security engaging in wholesale theft of innovation with the personal and corporate data and the only prc threat we face. the prc cyber threat is made vastly more dangerous by the way they knit cyber into the whole of government campaign against us. they recruit human sources to target our businesses using insiders to steal the same kinds of innovation and data that their hackers are targeting while also engaging in corporate deception, hiding beijing's hand in transactions, joint ventures and investments to do the same and they don't just hit our security and economy. they target our freedoms

reaching inside our borders across america to silence, coerce and threaten some of our citizens and res kidents. i can assure you the fbi is laser focused on the threat made by beijing. we have cyber, counterintelligence, criminal and wmd experts just to name a few defending against it, and we're working in partnership, in partnership with the private sector and partnership with our allies abroad and in partnership with all levels of the u.s. government especially the nsa and cyber command and csa and oncd whose leaders i am honored to be with here today. in fact, just this morning, we announced an operation where we and our partners identified hundreds of routers that had been taken over by the prc state-sponsored hacking group

known as volt typhoon. the volt typhoon malware enabled china to hide, among other things, pre-operational reconnaissance and network exploitation against critical infrastructure like our communications, energy, transportation and water sectors, steps china was taking, in other words, to find and prepare to destroy or degrade the civilian critical infrastructure that keeps us safe and prosperous. and let's be clear, cyber threats to our critical infrastructure represent real world threats to our physical safety. so working with our partners, the fbi ran a court-authorized on-network operation to shut down volt typhoon and the access it enabled. this operation was an important step and there is a whole lot more to do and we need your help to do it, to quantify what we

are up against the prc has a bigger hacking program than that of every major nation combined. in fact, in fact, if you took every single one of the fbi's cyber agents and intelligence analysts and focused them exclusively on the china threat, china's hackers would still outnumber fbi cyber personnel by at least 50 to 1. so as we sit here, while important budget discussions are under way, i will note that this is a time to be keeping ahead of the threat by investing in our capabilities rather than cutting them. we need to ensure that we sustain and build on the gains that we've made that have enabled us to take actions like the volt typhoon operation i just mentioned. the budgets that emerge from discussions under way now will dictate what kind of resources

we have ready in 2027, a year that as this committee knows all too well the ccp has circled on its calendar and that year will be on us before you know it. as i've described, the prc is already today putting their pieces in place. i do not want those watching today to think we can't protect ourselves, but i do want the american people to know that we cannot afford to sleep on this danger. as a government and a society, we've got to remain vigilant and actively defend against the threat that beijing poses, otherwise china has shown it will make us pay. thank you. i look forward to today's discussion. >> thank you, sir. director coker, you are recognized for your opening statement. >> chairman gallagher.

that was fbi director christopher wray with a more stark and stern warning than i've ever heard from him. >> i agree. >> -- on china and the threat posed by china and specifically chinese hackers. he says that china is actively attacking our economic security now and he warned -- greater warnings of what they are preparing to do and they are calling for what he calls, low blows, low blows are part of china's plan, water treatment plants, electrical grid, internet routers and communications and in terms of how out matched the united states is. >> if you took every one of the fbi cyber agents and intelligence analysts and focused them exclusively on the threat from china, china's hackers would still outnumber fbi cyber personnel by at least 50 to 1. >> that gives you a sense of the warning being delivered at this moment. >> we'll be right back after a quick break.

now, democratic senator chris coons of delaware is leading the questioning with what has been clear so far is that the senators on a bipartisan basis seems to have no patience in the answers that they're getting from the tech ceos sitting before them. let's listen in. >> there is no proof about harm for mental health. while it may not be at the

population level, but i'm looking at a room full of hundreds of parents who have lost children and our challenge is to take the data and to make good decisions about protecting families and children from harm. so let me ask about what your companies do or don't report, and i'm going to particularly focus on your content policies around self-harm and suicide. i'm just going to ask a series of yes or no questions and what i'm getting at is do you disclose enough? mr. zuckerberg, from your policies prohibiting content about suicide or self-harm, do you report an estimate of the total amount of content, not a percentage of the overall, not a prevalence number, but the total amount of content on your platform that violates this policy and do you report the total number of views that self-harm or suicide-promoting content that violates this policy gets on your platform?

>> yes, senator. we pioneered a quarterly reporting on our community standards and enforcement across these categories of harmful content. we focus on prevalence which you mentioned because what we are focused on is what percent of the content that we take down -- >> mr. zuckerberg, you are very talented. i have very little time left. i'm trying to get an answer to a question, not as a percentage of the total because remember, it's a huge number so the percentage is small, but do you report the actual amount of content and the amount of views self-harm content received? >> no. i believe we focused on prevalence. >> correct, you don't. miss yaccarino, yes or no? you report it or you don't? >> senator, as a reminder we have less than 1% of our users that are between the ages of 13 and 17. >> do you report the absolute number of how many images and

how often -- >> -- the posts and accounts that we've taken down in 2023, we've taken almost a million posts down that in regards to mental health and self-harm. >> mr. chew, do you disclose the number of appearances of these types of content and how many are viewed before they're taken down? >> senator, we disclose the number we take down of violation and how many of that were taken down proactively before it was reported. >> mr. spiegel? >> yes, senator, we do disclose. >> mr. citron? >> yes, we do. >> so i've got three more questions i'd love to walk through if i had unlimited time. i will submit them for the re record. the larger point is that platforms need to hand over more content about how the algorithms work and what the content does and what the consequences are not at the aggregate and not at the population level, but the actual numbers of cases so we can understand the content. in closing, mr. chairman, i have

a bipartisan bill. the platform accountability and transparency act co-sponsored by senators cornyn, klobuchar, blumenthal on this committee, with senator cassidy and others and it's in front of the commerce committee and not this committee and set reasonable standards for disclosure and transparence transparency to make sure we have data, yes, there is a lot of emotion in this field, but if we're going to legislate responsibly about the management of the content on your platforms we need to have better data. is there any one of you willing to say now that you support this bill? mr. chairman, let the record reflection a yawning silence from leaders of the social media platforms. >> thank you, mr. coons. >> senator chris coons who had to say rarely expresses that type of cynicism or scorn. >> yeah. >> -- almost mocking the tech

ceos there refusing to endorse legislation that would help with oversight over these tech companies in regards to how they protect children online. these hearings have been quite contentious. more ahead. stay with us. to duckduckgo on all your devie

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right now leading the question is republican senator lee. >> what's odd and what i'm trying to understand is why it is that instagram is only restricting. it's restricting access to sexually explicit content. >> we don't allow sexually explicit content for people of any age. the -- >> how is that going? [ laughter ] >> our prevalence metrics suggests that it's 99% or so of the content that we remove are able to identify automatically using ai systems. i think that our efforts in this while not perfect are industry leading. the other thing that you asked about was self-harm content which is what we recently restricted and we made that

shift -- i think the state of the science is shifting a bit. previously, we believed that when people were thinking about self harm it was important for them to be able to express that and get support and now more of the thinking in the field is that it's just better to not show that content at all which is why we recently moved to restrict that from showing up for those teens at all. >> is there a way for parents to make a request on what their kid can see or not see on your sites? >> there are a lot of parental controls. i'm not sure if -- i don't think we currently have a control around topics, but we do allow parents to control the time that the children are on the site and also a lot of it is based on monitoring and understanding what the teen's experience is. and what they're interacting

with -- >> mr. citron, this allows porning pornography and 17%, and 10% have interactions with someone the minor believed to be an adult. do you restrict minors from accessing discord servers that host pornographic material on them? >> senator, yes, we do restrict minors from accessing content that is marked for adults. dis discord does not recommend content to people. we do not have an algorithm that boosts content. we allow adults to share with adults and we do not allow teens to access that content. >> i see my time has expired. >> welcome, everyone. we are here in this hearing

because it's a collective. your platforms really suck at policing themselves. we hear about it here in congress with fentanyl and other drug dealing facilitated across platforms. we see it and hear about it here in congress with harassment and bullying that takes place across your platforms. we see it and hear about it here in congress with respect to child pornography, sexploitation and blackmail and we are sick of it. it seems to me that there is a problem with accountability because these conditions continue to persist. in my view, section 230 which provides immunity from lawsuit

is a very significant part of that problem. if you look at where bullies have been brought to heel recently whether it's dominion finally getting justice against fox news after a long campaign to try to discredit the election equipment manufacturer or whether it's the moms and dads of the sandy hook victims finally getting justice against infowars and its campaign of trying to get people to believe that the massacre of their children was a fake put on by them or even now, more recently, with a writer getting a very significant judgment against

donald trump after years of bullying and defamation. an honest courtroom has proven to be the place where these things get sorted out. and i'll just describe one case, if i may, it's called doe versus twitter. the plaintiff in that case was was blackmailed in 2017 for sexually explicit photos and videos of himself then aged 13 to 14. a comp lilation video of multip csam videos surfaced on twitter in 2019. a concerned citizen reported that video on december 25th,

2019, christmas day. twitter took no action. the plaintiff, then a minor in high school in 2019, became aware of this video from his classmates in january of 2020. you're a high school kid and suddenly there's that. that's a day that h's hard to recover from. ultimately, he became suicidal. he and his parents contacted law enforcement and twitter to have these videos removed on january 21st and again on january 22nd of 2020 and twitter ultimately took down the video on january

30th 2020 once federal law enforcement got involved. that's a pretty foul set of facts, and when the family sued twitter for all those months of refusing to take down the explicit video of this child, twitter invoked section 230, and the district court ruled that the claim was barred. there is nothing about that set of facts that tells me that sections 230 performed any public service in that regard. i would like to see very substantial adjustments to section 230 so that the honest

courtroom, which brought relief and justice to e. jean carroll after months of defamation which brought silence, peace and justice to the parents of the sandy hook children after months of defamation and bullying, by infowars and alex jones and which brought significant justice and an end to the campaign or deaf famation by fo news to a little company that was busy just making election machines. so i would -- my time is running out. i'll turn to, i guess, senator cruz is next, but i would like to have -- >> so we've been listening in. this is senator whitehouse and

it seemed like we heard from every senator to lead the questioning in this tech hearing. he seemed to sum it up once again when he just said you guys really suck at policing yourselves and we're sick of it. that's what these tech ceos are facing. let's see how they answer the questions. much more to come in this hearing. we'll be right back.

we're going back to the house of representatives right now and listen to fbi director christopher wray has been sounding alarms about the threat that chinese hackers posed to the united states.

now, just a short time ago, he was asked about tiktok and comments he made about the security risks of that social media app. listen. >> well, the most important starting point is the role of the chinese government. the app's parent company is effectively bowled into the chinese government and that is what creates a security of national security concerns into the prc's government ability to leverage that access, or that authority. so, first, the data gives them the ability to control data collection on millions of users, which could be used for all sorts of intelligence operations or influence operations. second, the recommendation algorithm which could be used for all sorts of influence operations or to sow divisive innocence, discord. and again, that's something that we wouldn't redeadily detect whh makes it more of a pernicious

threat. and a.i. enhances all of that the ability to collect data and feed into the operations makes it exponentially more dangerous to all americans. and third and finally, it gives the ability if they should choose to control software on millions of devices which means the opportunity to technically compromise millions of devices. as you put all of those things together, it is a threat that i think is very, very significant. and again, it all starts back with the starting point which the chinese government itself in their role and their ability to control these different aspects of it. >> that's happening on one side of the capitol right now. talking about one threat posed by tiktok, the social media company. on the other side of the capitol, the ceo of tiktok is among the tech ceos that are facing grilling by the senate over what -- what they allow on their platforms. listen to this, senator ted

cruz, he's asking questions now. >> -- national intelligence efforts in accordance with the law and shall protect national intelligence work secrets they are aware of? >> yes, i'm familiar with this. >> tiktok is owned by bytedance, is bytedance subject to the law? >> there are chinese businesses, yes, they will be subject to this, but tiktok is not available in mainland china, senator, as we talked about in your office, the project put us out of reach. >> so bytedance is subject to the law, now under this law which says shall protect work secrets that they're aware of, it compelling people subject to the law to lie, to protect those secrets. is that correct? >> i cannot comment on that. what i said, again is that -- >> do you have to protect those secrets? >> no, senator, tiktok is not available in mainland china, we have moved the data into --

>> but tiktok is controlled by bytedance, which is subject to this law. you said earlier, and i wrote this down, we've not been asked for any data by the chinese government and we have never provided it. i'm going to tell you and you and i met in my office last week, i do not believe you. and i'll tell you, the american people don't either. if you look at what is on tiktok, in china, you're promoting to kids science and math videos, and educational videos and you limit the amount of time kids can be on tiktok. in united states, you're promoting to kids self-harm videos. and anti-israel propaganda. why is there such a dramatic difference? >> senator, that is just not accurate -- >> there's not a difference between what kids see in china and kids see in here? >> senator, tiktok is not in china. it's a separate experience.

>> you have a company that is essentially the same, accept it promotes beneficial materials instead of harmful materials. >> that is not true, we have a lot of science content here on tiktok. there's so many of it. >> let me point to this, mr. chew. there was a report recently that compared hashtags on instagram to hashtags on tiktok and what trended. and the differences were striking. so something like hash tag taylor swift or #trump, researchers found two posts on tiktok. that's not a difference. the difference it jumps to hash uighur, and it jumps 30 one to 1 hsh #death and it jumps to #tiananmen square and 174 to

1 for the #hong kong protest. why is it that on instagram, people can put up a hashtag, hong kong protest, 174 times compared to tiktok? what censorship is tiktok doing at the request of the chinese government? >> none. that analysis has been debunked by outside resources. not all videos carry hashtags, that's the first thing. the second thing you cannot select the features -- >> why the difference between taylor swift and tiananmen square? what happened in tiananmen square? >> senator there was a massive protest during that time. what i'm trying to say -- >> why would there be no difference on taylor swift, or a minimal difference, and a massive difference on tiananmen square hong kong? >> senator, could you wrap up? >> senator, the algorithm does not suppress any content. >> that is the question, why is

there a difference? >> like i said, i think the analysis is flawed. >> there's an obvious difference. 1 174 to 1 compared to taylor swift is dramatic. >> senator ted cruz wrapping up his line of questioning focusing with the ceo of tiktok. that's who is answering the questions. look, this is going to continue but the bottom line, this is a brutal hearing, like disdain from senators on a bipartisan basis. >> yeah. much more coming up "inside politics" stis next.

you may know adam schiff's work to protect the rule of law, or to build affordable housing, or write california's patients bill of rights. but i know adam through the big brother program. we've been brothers since i was seven. he stood by my side as i graduated from yale,

and i stood by his side when he married eve, the love of his life. i'm a little biased, but take it from adam's little brother. he'll make us all proud as california senator. i'm adam schiff and i approve this message. ♪