about. we're also seeing the state department use our platform to share factual information for people. >> i'm talking about -- i'm talking about coyotes who are using your platform to spread this kind of information to assist in this illegal activity that is resulting in horrible conditions for these people who are trying to come across that border >> congressman, that's against our policies and we're taking a lot of steps to stop it. again, let me just say that i think the situation at the border is really serious and we're taking it very seriously. >> and i hope you'll look into this, these reports that your platform is being used by these traffickers. this is something we need your help with. i hope you feel a sense of responsibility, sir, to help us with this because we certainly need it. let me ask you something you dedicated a lot of your written testimony to election issues even today during this hearing

you've been very public in pushing back about the election claims in ovember, yet when facebook has been essentially silent on the attempted theft of the certified election in iowa of representative miller meeks why are you silent on that yet you are not silent on other elections? >> congressman, i think what we saw leading up to january 6th was unprecedented in american history where you had a sitting president trying to undermine the peaceful transfer of power. >> how do you determine which one is important and which one is not these people who elected this duly certified representative, this is the most important thing to them as well. >> congressman, i think part of what made the january 6th events extraordinary was not just that the election was contested but that you had folks -- >> okay, let meask you this. what is it that makes this particular issue irrelevant that

you're not even covering it. >> congressman, i didn't say it's irrelevant. but on january 6th we had insurrectionists storm the capitol leading to the death of multiple people. >> mr. zuckerberg, i'm aware of that, i was there, i understand what happened. but again, will you commit to treating this as a serious election concern >> congressman, i will commit to that and we apply our policies to all situations and i think that this is different from what happened on january 6th, but we apply our policies equally in these cases. >> mr. dorsey, you too have been very silent on this issue on your platform. will you commit to treating this as a serious concern, the attempted theft of the certified seat in iowa >> yes we're looking at all

opportunities that tries to take away from the integrity of elections. >> mr. dorsey, let me ask you, you've started a new program called the bird watch. it allows people to identify information in tweets that they believe is misleading and to write notes to provide context in an effort to stop misleading information from spreading we've seen mobs of twitter users cancel others even when the information they share is accurate why do you think bird watch is going to work given the culture that you've created on your platform >> well, it's an experiment. we wanted to experiment with more a crowdsource approach than us going around and doing all this work. >> don't you think that's kind of a dangerous experiment when you're taking off truthful information? >> no. it's an alternative. >> an alternative. >> i think we need to experiment as much as possible to get to the right answers. >> okay. well, that's fine as long as you're not the one being

experimented on. as long as you're not the one with information -- >> the gentleman's time has expired. the chair acknowledges that we are going to take a recess now for 15 minutes so the committee will stand in recess until 3:18 and then we will come back promptly i call the committee in recess 15-minute break here for the tech executives taking a lot of heat and a lot of questions from members of the house welcome to "closing bell," everyone you've just been watching the ceos of facebook, twitter and google answering to lawmakers, getting a lot of blame for everything, from the border crisis to the opioid sales to inflaming social tensions to harmful content for children, teen suicide the list goes on and on. let's bring in ylan mui in

washington who's been watching give us some of the highlights >> sara, that line of questioning around kids and teens, that has been one of the surprising turn of events here, the way that both republicans and democratsare going after these ceos over how kids use their platforms. the ranking republican, kathy mcmorris-rogers started off with a powerful opening statement claiming that social media is her biggest fear as a parent kathy caster went after facebook's plans to create i instagram for people younger than 13. >> are you saying that there are no kids on instagram under the age of 13 right now? >> congresswoman, children under the age of 13 are not allowed -- >> of course every parent knows that their kids under the aiming of 13 on instagram the problem is that you know it. >> the other main focus for lawmakers was the accusation that the platforms are

essentially exploiting misinformation and disinformation to drive engagement and eyeballs and, therefore, revenue of course the ceos vehemently deny that. this is all setting the case for legislation from washington. they say if the companies aren't able to effectively police their platforms, congress is going to have to do it for them. >> ylan, before we bring in julia and get the side from the ceos and how they performed, are we seeing more common threads, more bipartisan threads than recent hearings and recent debates that might then lead to legislation? >> i will say i was surprised by the lack of focus around 2020 and sort of the election claims surrounding the presidential election from the republican side i was surprised by the fact that they did focus on kids kids are a bipartisan issue on capitol hill, so perhaps there could be some unexpected movement there but there are still a lot of questions around how to change or even whether they should

change that essential piece of the law, section 230, which provides companies with those liability protection that are so important to their business model. let's bring in our senior media correspondent, julia boorstin lawmakers are getting more seasoned at this sort of thing and practice at these sorts of hearings, but i guess the ceos are too? >> that's absolutely right a number of times the lawmakers pushed for yes or no answers trying to squeeze in as many questions as possible to their allotted time. but i think there is some common threads that we heard from the three, stressing that they are making a range of efforts to help stop the spread of misinformation and help surface authoritative sources for things such as vaccines how they are combining ai and human moderation zuckerberg saying they are doing their best, they think they have the best system in place but even the best systems will make mistakes

wilf, i think it was interesting hearing their defenses, certainly acknowledging they are accountable, they want to do better but do think they are doing the best job possible. the key way zuckerberg differentiated is he's pushing for specific reforms to section 230, the liability shield that prevents them from being sued basically constantly for the content on their platform. zuckerberg thinks if big tech companies meet a certain standard in terms of the systems they have in place, then they should be liable that's something we'll hear more about as there's more discussion of reform of section 230, guys. >> that's what i was going to ask, julia ultimately, where is this going? there was a quote from jack dorsey that said we shouldn't be the arbiter of truth and neither should the government. where does that leave us, in terms of what could be done about this. >> the reform of section 230 is

also a bipartisan issue. i think we are likely to see something towards pushing these platforms to have certain standards that they are enforcing. but there was also something suggested by one of the congressmen, i believe it was representative welsh suggesting that there would be an agency that's put out there than sort of like an s.e.c., the way s.e.c. regulates financial services this would be an agency that would specifically be focused on these issues that are plaguing tech issues such as misinformation, disinformation, impact on children, et cetera. i think this idea of a tech specific agency is going to be another thing that comes out of this bipartisan support. >> ylan, you mentioned that the january assault on the capitol was not the focus necessarily of questions today, but when it did come up, what were the takeaways and conclusions? >> yeah, i think that the frustration among lawmakers is that even though the companies say that disinformation has been

taken down and even though they point to 150 million pieces of false posts, false information that was taken down from facebook alone surrounding the election, that the information is still there that the violent riot still happened that people still died i think one effective line of questioning that lawmakers were able to use was to really make this personal, whether it was around january 6 and their own personal experiences notable that all three ceos started off their testimony by acknowledging the tragedy that happened at the capitol, but also around, again, those kids asking them to comment specifically on personal situations, personal experiences that their constituents have had being cyberbullied or otherwise on the social media platforms. so we've gone over all of the big issues numerous times now. now they're trying to put a finer point on this and maybe throw the ceos off guard by asking them to focus on these specific incidents

>> thank you very much, ylan mui, julia boorstin. we'll turn you as we go back to the hearing. we are trading near session highs. the last six days the market has tumbled in the final hour. will today be different? well, the dow is up 125. we have recovered nicely from a more than 350-point drop nasdaq has gone positive as well twitter, facebook, by the way, are under pressure though not meaningfully and tech is underperforming. it's a lot of the cyclical groups leading us higher today materials, financials, utilities. turning to the other big event in washington this afternoon, president biden in his first formal news conference, just wrapped up last hour our kayla tausche has the big headlines. >> reporter: sara, 65 days into his term and after much preparation from aides, president biden fielded questions from a limited audience of socially distanced reporters that ran the gamut of

issues foreign and domestic. the bulk of the questions initially concerned immigration and a surge of migrants at the southern border with mexico, an immediate and mounting challenge for the administration biden described it as a seasonal surge and said that the u.s. is negotiating with mexico to take some of those refugees back which it so far had been unwilling had to he said that tactically it will be hard for the u.s. to remove troops from afghanistan by may 1st and north korea remains the biggest geopolitical risk. as for china, biden said he would hold the country accountable but had little detail how he planned to do that here in the u.s. biden's agenda or much of it will face a dead end unless he gets elusive buy-in from republicans or is able to remove the 60-vote threshold put in place by the filibuster

so far he has stopped just short of advocating to remove the filibuster, talking instead about reforming it, but he left the door ever so slightly open today to removing it altogether. >> if we have to, if there's complete lockdown and chaos as a consequence of the filibuster, then we'll have to go beyond what i'm talking about >> we'll see what complete lockdown and chaos means of course many of his agenda items, immigration, gun control, climate change as reporters referenced today would be impacted by that but biden said i have never been particularly poor at calculating how to get something done. he said the american people elected him to get things done >> kayla, to the point of electing him, he did say he would run again. let's not think about elections quite yet. on china, it's clear we're not in a new era of fresher and

easier relations with the change of administration. >> no, certainly not the administration is going to be taking its time to review which of the trump administration policies it wants to leave in place and which it feels could be open to negotiation. senior administration officials that i've spoken to have said they don't mind if beijing is stewing and stirring and left wondering what the u.s. is going to do on that front even for a number of months, that they want to approach that conversation from a position of strength. they want to get the domestic house in order and have a full-scale, comprehensive strategy that crosses different portfolios and agencies in place by the time they enter those conversations. but it's been very clear, wilf, that we should not expect a very quick decision or outcome from the review of the china relationship in the coming weeks and that it will be months at the very least. >> kayla, thanks so much we will bring you back to the tech hearing on capitol hill when it resumes in just a few minutes. up next, amazon just made a

big move surrounding vaccines for its workers. we'll tell you what that is after the break. and markets with, what, 45 minutes left are higher. quite a nice little rally in the last hour or so. s&p 500 now up half of 1%. you're watching "closing bell" on cnbc. sometimes, you want speedy but reliable. state-of-the-art but dependable. in other words, you want a hybrid. so do telcos. that's why they're going hybrid with ibm. a hybrid cloud approach with watson ai helps them roll out new innovations anywhere without losing speed.

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the dow is up 187 now with about 40 minutes left of trading. we've got some news now surrounding amazon and the coronavirus vaccine. bertha coombs with the story bertha. >> sara, amazon is launching its first work site vaccination at this hour at its st. louis fulfillment center though the company had appealed to the biden administration back in january for direct access to the vaccine supply, like every other employer, it's had to work with local health officials to get the doses. so far 1,000 workers have signed up for the shots in missouri this afternoon, and they say they're seeing strong demand with clinics set for nevada and kansas in the coming weeks >> we are really encouraged by

the early enrollments that we've seen for the on-site appointments i think with our large employee base that we have at our fulfillment centers, we're able to get a large number of people vaccinated pretty quickly. >> with more vaccine supply coming on, half of the states in the country are now allowing working -- and working with employers on work site clinics to make it easier for their employees in manufacturing and food production and other areas to get the shot. in areas like detroit and will county, illinois, they have starred to open up it to any employer with 100 workers or more to try to get those shots in arms. wilf. markets are up half a percent. 40 minutes left. we're going to pivot back to the tech hearing which is resuming on capitol hill. let's listen in. >> against individuals, including the governor of my

state of michigan. racial and ethnic minorities, including muslims and recently asian americans are facing growing racist hate online and violence offline last year i sent you multiple letters about these issues so i know that you're aware of them in october of 2020 facebook temporarily decided to stop recommending groups on its platforms, a change you've made permanent. despite what you did in october, we had an insurrection that stormed the capitol on january 6. i seriously question facebook's commitment to stopping extremism. in a recent investigative report, a former facebook ai researcher said he and his team conducted study after study confirming the same basic idea models that maximize engagement increase polarization. you yourself have said that the more likely content is to violate standards, the more

engagement it generally receives engagement is the key to facebook's growth and success and the stock market has rewarded you for it even as you've been criticized for promoting extremism and racist content including a 2020 facebook civil rights audit. the two seem to go hand in hand as facebook was also the most cited social media site in charging documents that the justice department filed against the capitol insurrectionists mr. zuckerberg do you still maintain that the more likely user content is to violate facebook community standards, the more engagement it will receive, yes or no >> congresswoman, thanks for raising this because i think that there's been a bunch of inaccurate things about this shared today there seems to be -- >> can you answer yes or no? >> sorry, this is a nuanced to

topic. >> i'd like you to keep it short. >> people don't want to see misinformation or divisive content on our services. people don't want to see click bait and things like that. while it may be true people may be more likely to click on it in the short term, it's not good for our business or product or community for this content to be there. it's not what people want and we run the company in the long term with a view 10 to 20 years from now and we're highly aligned with our community in not show people content that's not meaningful to them. >> okay, mr. zuckerberg, i only have two minutes left. do you still agree with the statement that the first risk related to your product offerings is our ability to add and retain users and maintain levels of user engagement with

our products just yes or no, please. >> congresswoman, i think that's generally right. any product the ability to build something that people like and use is something that is risk if we can't do that. >> okay. so do you still agree with the statement of your cfo on a recent earnings call that the changes to group recommendations so far wouldn't affect your engagement, yes or no? >> congresswoman, there's so many different parts of the service that i think it's probably right na not recommending political or civic groups probably isn't going to meaningful decrease engagement but we've taken a lot of other steps including reducing viral videos by 50 million hours of watching a day which have had a meaningful impact on engagement but we do that because it helps make the service better and helps people like it more which i think will be better for our community and our business over the long time. >> i'm sorry to have to do this in five minutes but given your promises in the fall, the events

that transpired on january 6th and the true incentives that you yourself admit i find it really difficult that you take some of these assurances you're giving us today seriously i believe regulators and researchers should have access to facebook and other large social media platform algorithms for any relevant feature that can be exploited or exploit private user data to support extremism and i support legislation to do so mr. zuckerberg, given your inability to manage your algorithms or your unwillingness to, to reduce controversial content, are you opposed to a law enabling regulators to access social media algorithms or other information technology that result in the promotion of harmful disinformation and extremist content? >> congresswoman, while i don't necessarily agree with your characterization, i do think giving more transparency into the system is an important

thing. we have people working on figuring out how to do this. one of the nuances and complexity is that it is hard to separate out the algorithms versus people's data, which goes into that, to make decisions and the data is private and so it's tough to make that public and transparent but i do think this is an important area of study on how to audit and make algorithms more transparent. >> the gentle lady's time has expired. >> let me first say democrats repeating disinformation atlanta. the murder admitted that he was a sex addict while my thoughts and prayers go out to the families who were impacted by this hideous crime, it was not a hate crime. to say so is disinformation. mr. dorsey, is it okay for a white male to tweet a picture of a kkk klansman hood to a black

woman? >> no, that would go against our hateful conduct policy >> just this week black conservative commentator candice owens was sent a tweet from a white liberal depicting a kkk hood and your support center said that that racist harassment of a conservative didn't violate your terms of service. what do you have to say about that >> we removed that tweet >> okay, thank you for doing that also this year, syrian refugee, a biden supporting muslim murdered ten people in a grocery store in boulder, colorado your support center told "newsweek" calling him a white christian terrorist wasn't a violation of your policy what do you have to say about that >> i don't know that case but we can follow up. >> your promises from the last hearing that you'll work on this or make it better ring completely hollow sometimes so i ask that you do.

you've taken down accounts of conservatives, christian and pro-life groups. at the same time, liberals, tyrants and terrorists have unfettered access on twitter you're able to take down the account of a sitting united states president while he was still president but continue to allow state sponsors of terror to use twitter as a platform including ayatollah khamenei or even bashar al assad of syria. you act like judge and jury and continue to hide behind liability protection in section 230 of the communication decency act which congress set up to foster and free and open internet you think you're above the law because in a sense congress gave you that power, but they gave you that liability shield to one end, that was the protection of innocent children. katherine mcmorris rogers knocked it out of the park today hammering the point where children are vulnerable. but let's look at a john doe versus twitter case ongoing right now.

a teenage boy, victim of sex trafficking, had images of his abuse posted on twitter. one of those videos went viral and he became the target of bullying to the point of being suicidal he contacted you to alert you that his sex abuse images were on your platform you failed to take them down his mother contacted you to alert you and you failed to take them down. they called police and followed up with you with a police report your support center told the family after review the illegal video was not a violation of your terms of service. in the meantime that illegal video accrued over 167,000 views. it took a threat from a homeland security agent to get twitter to take down the video. you took no action against the accounts sharing it and continue to share sexually explicit videos of minors in clear violation of the law and clear violation of section 230 decency act. so in the eyes of twitter, it's better to be a pornographer, a

pedophile or state sponsor of terror than it is to be a conservative, even a conservative president you've abused section 230, the liability shield we gave you to protect children and used it to silence conservatives instead. as we've heard today, your abuses of your privilege are far too numerous to be explained away and far too serious to ignore so it's time for your liability shield to be removed your immunity shield and immunity of other rogue companies who choose to score political points with their immunity shields rather than protect children, my colleagues have been asking you if you deserve to continue to receive immunity under section 230 let me answer the question for you. no, you don't. y'all think you do, but you don't because you continue to do a disservice to that law and its intent the united states constitution has a first amendment and that should be your guide protecting the speech of users of your platform instead of treating them like hostages and

horsie forcing them through algorithms down a path the american people are tired of you abusing their rights one of the christian leaders that you banned, mr. dorsey, had as her last post a scripture verse that you took down i want to leave it with you here today. psalm 34:4 seek peace and pursue it rather than silence that wise advise, i strongly suggest that you follow it now, i've heard a lot of stuff on this hearing today about 230 protections. i challenge my colleagues to really get serious about doing something about this liability shield so that we do have a fair and free internet and people aren't censored. with that, mr. chairman, i yield back. >> the gentleman's time has expired. the chair recognizes miss kelly for five minutes >> thank you, mr. chair. thank you to the witnesses who are testifying today the business model for your platforms is quite simple, keep

users engaged. the more time people spend on social media, the more data harvested and targeted ads sold. to build that engagement, social media platforms amplify content that gets attention. that can be cat videos or vacation pictures but too often it means content that's incendiary, contains conspiracy theories or violence algorithms in your platforms can actively funnel users from the mainstream to the fringe, suggesting users to more extreme content all to maintain user engagement this is a fundamental flaw in your business model that merits suspension of accounts and content moderation cannot address. and your companies' desire to maintain user engagement will continue to give such contest a safe haven if doing so improves your bottom line my first question of all of the witnesses, do each of you

acknowledge that your company has profited off harmful misinformation, conspiracy theories and violent content on your platform? just a yes or no, starting with mr. dorsey yes or no? >> no. that's not our business. >> mr. zuckerberg? >> no, congresswoman, i don't think we profit from it. i think it hurts our service >> mr. pincai? >> certainly not our intent and we don't want such content. >> since you all said no, can you provide to me in writing how you managed to avoid from collecting revenue from ads targeted by or served on such content, so i will be expecting that there's a difference between a conversation in a living room and one being pumped out to millions of followers from discouraging voting and covid-19 misinformation to encouraging hate crimes and violence the harms are real and

disproportionate do you acknowledge that such content is having especially harmful effects on minority and communities of color, yes or no again? i don't have a lot of time so yes or no. mr. dorsey >> yes >> mr. pichai. >> yes. >> mr. zuckerberg? >> yes i think that's right >> thank you if your financialin sent i've is the human psychology lead to the creation of a system that promotes emotionally charged content that is often harmful, do you believe that you can address that or will you always need to play more of a whack-a-mole on different topics mr. zuckerberg >> congresswoman, i do think we can take systemic actions that help to reduce a large amount of

this but there will always be some content that gets through the systems that we will have to react to >> mr. dorsey? >> that's not our incentive but i agree with mark. we'll miss some things >> mr. pinchai >> i agree largely with what mark and jack said there are thousands of misleading election information. there are many involving threats and we are very vigilant. >> more transparency and research into the ai models you use is needed. i understand that they are constantly evolving and proprietary. however, those obstacles must not be insurmountable. would you agree to some type of

test to evaluate your procedures and technology for disparate impacts and would you welcome minimum standards set by the government i only have 44 seconds. >> yes, we're interested in opening this up. i don't think that should be government driven but it should be open and transparent that the government can look at it and see how it works. >> i agree this is an area where research would be helpful and some standards would be helpful guidance for the companies >> congresswoman, we work with many third parties i just mentioned the collaboration we had definitely would be open to conversations with minimum standards. it's an important area >> the gentle woman's time has

expired. the chair now recognizes mr. dunn for five minutes. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman many of the questions today deal with personal arms, but there are long-term economic and security harms to our country i'd like to keep in mind as well i represent florida's second congressional district which is proud to host a large presence of the u.s. military, including civilian support companies one of these is applied research associates which is doing great work with our military in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning i agree with our nation's top national security experts on the critical importance of the united states maintaining its edge on ai and eric schmidt warned of the grave consequences if we lose that edge to china. leader rogers had a bill last year to lay out clear ai strategy we all recognize that china is

not a good place to do business, evidenced by the fact that all of your respective main products and services are banned there. it's clear that the influence of the chinese communist party permeates the entire corporate structure in china xi jinping said his goal of integrating his party's leadership into all aspects of corporate governance let's be clear with each other it's impossible to do business in china without directly or indirectly aiding the chinese party. it's also important to state for the record that each of your business models involve collecting data from individuals who use your product and using that data for some other purpose. mr. pichai, i'm deeply concerned of google's pursuit of and investment in artificial intelligence in china widely reported over the last few years. first and foremost, can you ensure americans that their

personal data, regardless of how you think you have identified it, data you collect when they use google and which is central to your algorithms is not used in your artificial intelligence collaboration with the chinese government >> congressman, i want to correct any misperceptions here. we do not have an ai research center in china now. we have limited persons working on open source projects, primarily on open source projects and on k through 12 education. a handful of employees we don't have that anymore compared to our peers, we don't offer core services in china >> i'm going to have to reclaim my time because it's limited but i want your team to follow up with me because i'm honestly somewhat skeptical i think you had three centers there in china, and i want to know more about what they're doing and also what material they're using. i want to be clear, i'm not suggesting that simply doing

business in a country means that you endorse all their policies as a former businessman myself, i know the politics all too often get in the way of what we're trying to do however, google's own list says it will not collaborate on technologies to gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms or contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights, but we know that the chinese communist party is using artificial intelligence technology to spread misinformation and suppress the pro democracy movement in hong kong as well as using that technology in its genocidal crimes against the uighurs including organ harvesting once again, can you be sure that none of the work you're doing in collaboration with the chinese government is not aiding them in this ability >> congressman, happy to follow up and clarify the limited work on ai we undertake

it's primarily around open source projects and very happy to engage and very specifically follow up on what we do. >> i think that's great and i know i'm running out of time here, but i ask that we continue this dialogue. i think google would be very well served by promoting greater transparency in all of its actions regarding artificial intelligence in china. your customers have a right to know about this. in 2018, diane green, former ceo of google cloud noted we believe the uses of our cloud and artificial intelligence will prove to be overwhelmingly positive for the world but we also recognize we cannot control all downstream uses of our technology well, a good place to start would be to end this dangerous artificial intelligence research relationship with china. with that, mr. pichai, thank you to all members of the witness

p panel, and mr. chairman, i yield back. >> the gentleman yields back the chair recognizes mr. mckeechon for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman to you and the others for convening today's hearing and to our witnesses for joining us in july of last year i along with 30 colleagues had a letter to your companies asking what you are doing to halt the exchange of disinformation on your platforms as our colleagues expressed, climate change is a real and urgent threat and your platforming is undermining that fact climate change causes 150,000 deaths annually, a number that will only increase in the coming years. all of this begs a simple question why do your platforms not treat climate change disinformation with a sense of immediacy and

alarm? mr. zuckerberg, facebook recently implemented the climate change information center which directs users to a landing page with climate change facts. are you able to share data about how widespread a problem climate change disinformation is on your platform and how much the climate change information center has reduced it? >> thanks, congressman our approach to fighting misinformation, and climate change misinformation is a big issue so i agree with your point here we take a multi-pronged approach one is to try to show people authoritative information, which is what the climate center information center is. we also try to reduce the spread of misinformation around the rest of the service through this broad third-party fact checking program that we have in which one of the fact checkers is specifically focused on science

feedback and climate feedback type of issues overall i'd be happy to follow up and share more details on what we've seen across those, but this is certainly an area that i agree is extremely important and needs multiple tactics to address. >> well, thank you it's my understanding that this climate center was modeled after your covid-19 information center however, different standards still apply for the organic content and paid-for advertising for climate change versus covid-19 why does facebook not apply the same standards of fact checking on climate change that it does on covid-19 content? >> congressman, you're right that the climate information center was based off our work on the covid information center and election information center. in terms of how we treat misinformation overall, we divide the misinformation into things that could cause imminent physical harm, of which covid

misinformation that might lead someone to get sick or hurt or vaccine misinformation falls in the category of imminent critical harm and we take down that content other things that are false but may not lead to imminent harm we label, reduce their information but leave them up. that's what we do that explains some of the differences between some of the different issues and how we approach them >> mr. pichai, and i hope i'm pronouncing that correctly youtube links viewers to similar sources as facebook's climate center that being said, you restricted some users are you not concerned about restricting videos -- that by restricting videos and not

removing repeat offenders that people who are determined to find those videos to validate their views will indeed find them and share them with others? >> congressman, it's an incredibly important area. in general in their areas we rely on raising authoritative information both by showing information panels as well as sharing scientific content and so our algorithms rank that content higher, similar to election integrity and covid obviously it's an area where there is a range of opinions people can express we have clear policies if it's violated, we remove. if it is not violative but not deemed to be of high quality we don't recommend the content and that's how we approach it. as a company, we lead in sustainability we have committed to operating 24/7 on a carbon-free basis by 2030 and it's an area where we

are investing significantly. >> well, thank you i've run out of time mr. dorsey, i apologize to you perhaps we'll have an opportunity to have a conversation mr. chairman, i give you my two seconds. >> i thank the gentleman the gentleman yields back. the chair now recognizes mr. curtis for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman thanks too to our witnesses. my first comment is to point out in her 2019 presidential campaign, senator elizabeth warren, democrat, called for the breaking up of your companies. several weeks ago in a speech at cpac, senator josh hawley, republican, also said big tech companies should be broken up. i don't think i need to point out the irony of josh hawley validating elizabeth warren at cpac there seems to be a train wreck coming unfortunately, the very few tools that we have in our tool bag are regulation and breaking up mr. zuckerberg, i read through your terms of service, including

the dense community standards document in your terms of service you state that you cannot control and do not take responsibility for content posted on your platform the community standards document, which is frequently cited as why content is or is not censored says you sometimes make content modification decisions on what's considered best for the public interest or public discourse i know in your testimony you said that companies need to earn their liability protection that's great, but that doesn't address the concerns people understand about your past or current views on what is or is not acceptable how can you claim that you cannot take responsibility and should retain your liability protection for content posted on your site but at the same time state that your platform or monitored content is based on what's the public's best interests? that appears to be two-sided. >> congressman, thanks people use our services to share and send messages billions of times a day.

it would be impossible for us to scan or understand everything that was going on. and i don't think that our society would want us to take the steps that would be necessary to monitor every single thing i think we would think that would infringe on our freedoms so broadly i think it's impossible to ask companies to take responsibility for every single piece of content that someone posts and that i think is the wisdom of 230 at the same time, i do think that we should expect large platforms to have effective systems for being able to handle broadly speaking categories of content that are clearly illegal. so we've talked today about child expoloitation and i think it's okay for companies -- just like no police department is a

city is going to eliminate all crime. >> i would love to spend more time on that but auto. utah is known for silicon slopes, our start upcommunity. you called for government regulation but larger companies tend to deal with regulation much better than small companies. if you think back to your college days, the early startup phase of facebook, what challenges do you see for startups to compete and what cautions should congress consider as we look at regulations that potentially could be a barrier for companies that just might be your future competition? >> thanks. i think this is a really important point whenever we're talking about regulation i want to be clear that the recommendations that i'm making for section 230 i would only have apply to larger platforms i think it's really critical that a small platform, you know, the next student in a dorm room or in a garage needs to have a relatively low -- as low as possible regulatory burden in

order to be able to innovate and then get to the scale where they can afford to put those kind of systems in place i think that that's a really important point to make. but i think that that goes for the content discussions that we're having around 230, but probably also applies to the privacy law that i hope that congress will pass this year or next year to create a federal u.s. privacy standard. i also think that we should be exploring proactively requiring things like data portability that would make it easier for people to take data from one service to another. >> thank you i've got just a few seconds left mr. pichai, this is a little off topic so i'm simply going to ask this question and submit it for the record and not ask for a response almost a decade ago your company started google fiber you introduced gig speed and free internet to all the residents in provo, utah sadly it seems like your efforts

to do this across the country were slowed down or stopped by excessive government regulations. i'd love you to share off the record why it is so hard to expand it across the country thank you, mr. chairman, and i yield my time. >> the gentleman yields back the chair recognizes mr. soto for five minutes >> thank you, mr. chairman when television, radio, traditional newspapers, political blogs and even private citizens spread lies, they can be sued and held liable for damages or fcc fines but pursuant to 230, you all can't be sued, you have immunity but it ain't 1996 anymore, is it meanwhile lies are spreading like wildfire through platforms. americans are getting hurt or killed and the reason is your algorithms i want you to all know i was held captive in the gallery during the capitol insurrection. i was surrounded by domestic terrorists that killed a capitol

police officer, ransacked the capitol and almost disrupted a presidential election. many of these domestic terrorists plotted on your platforms. i think we all understand by now this violence is real. so this is why we're here today in the committee of jurisdiction with power to protect our fellow americans. mr. zuckerberg had mentioned effective moderation systems, so now we know you have systems that can prevent many of these harms. thank you for supporting accountability and championing actability so the question is what specific changes to section 230 do you support for more accountability. mr. zuckerberg mentioned categories of content. u.s. standards and data portability is three standards we should be looking at. mr. pichai, should we be creating these standards and holding platforms accountable if they violate them under 230? >> congressman, first of all,

there are many ways and there are many laws today which do hold us liable you know, ftc has oversight. we have fec, hippa, areas where there are privacy laws and we have called for federal privacy legislation. but in europe gdpr and in california we have privacy state legislation. we are both accountable and we are subject to private plaintiff action against these statutes. >> mr. pichai, do you agree with these categories that were just outlined by mr. zuckerberg, is that correct >> i definitely think what mark is talking about along the lines of transparency and accountability are good proposals to think through there are various legislative proposals -- >> reclaim my time mr. dorsey, do you think we should be establishing categories of content that are

clearly illegal, u.s. privacy standards and data portability as well as penalties for violation of those standards >> i believe as we look upon 230 and evolutions of it, i think we need more transparency around content moderation practices, not just policies. i think we need more robust appeals processes. and i think the real issue is algorithms and giving people more choice around algorithms, more transparency around algorithms so if there's any one i would pick, it would be that one it's a tough one, but it's the most impactful. >> thank you, mr. dorsey mr. zuckerberg, political misinformation spread rampantly, unfortunately, in spanish in florida's hispanic community on facebook in the 2020 presidential election. how do you think this happened, mr. zuckerberg >> congressman, it's -- i do

still think that there's too much misinformation across all of these media that we've talked about today. how did it happen? i think we've talked a lot today about algorithms i actually think a lot of this happens in what we refer to as deterministic products like messaging. someone sends a text message to someone else there's no algorithm determining if that gets delivered, people can just sending it to someone else a lot of this stuff was amplified on tv and in tra traditional news as well there was certainly some of this content on facebook and it's our responsibility to build effective systems that can reduce the spread of that. i think a lot of those systems performed well during this election cycle but it's an i iterative process. >> mr. zuckerberg, will you commit to boosting spanish

moderator systems on facebook especially during election time to help prevent this >> this is something we focus on we beefed up and added more capacity to spanish language fact checking and spanish language authoritative information resources. that's certainly something that we hope to build on in the future, so the answer to your question is yes. >> the gentleman's time has expired. the chair now recognizes miss lesko for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chair, and thank you to the witnesses i represent constituents in the great state of arizona most of my constituents just want to be treated fairly, equitably, impartially, and they want to make sure that their private information stays private. mr. pichai, does wikipedia influence google's search

results? >> we do index, and wikipedia is in our index for certain queries if the answer from wikipedia rises to the top of our ranking, yes, we do rely on it. >> thank you mr. dorsey, did you personally decide to ban president trump from your platform >> we have a process that we go through to get there and that came after a warning. >> and did you make the final decision >> ultimately i have final responsibility >> thank you and mr. pichai, in july 2018, "the wall street journal" reported that google let hundreds of outside developers scan the inboxes of millions of g-mail users mr. pichai, do google employees analyze users content?

>> congresswoman, we take privacy very seriously we don't use the data from g-mail for advertising and our employees generally do not access it. only in narrow cases, either to troubleshoot with the right consent and permissions. there are prohibitions in our checks and balances. >> i think what you're saying is occasionally your google employees do review and analyze. i have another question regarding that does google share g-mail users' emails or analysis of your emails with third parties? >> we do not sell any data i think what you're referring to is users could give api access to third-party developers. for example, there were applications which could give travel-related information so this is a user choice and it's an api on top of the platforms.

we have done numerous steps to make sure users have to go through multiple steps before they would give consent to a third party. >> so i've looked through your google privacy statements and user content -- >> google, facebook and twitter ceos facing some angry lawmakers over misinformation and extremism of their platforms we'll get you a recap of that in just a bit but did want to make a moment to hit the market close because stocks have been trading very strongly into the close the dow was down almost 350 points and now trading higher into the close if you look at what's working, boeing, home depot, american express and travelers. that's what's leading the dow higher at this hour. s&p 500 also markedly higher you've got every sector up except for communication services that's where twitter and facebook are found the dow is up 202 points, so we are looking at session highs into the close i would also note this is a big

reversal from what we've seen over the last six days it has been a tumble into the close every day. this is the opposite, as you can see. the nasdaq is also higher. i would say growth is lagging, value and cyclical groups, industrials the highest, the biggest winner on wall street. materials, utilities are up there as well. even the small caps are having a nice bounce-back today but are down 5% for the week they have been the hardest hit. >> but part of that massive intraday turn-around the russell 2000 was down 1.5% about a half an hour, hour into the session, ending up 2.3%. welcome to "the closing bell." sara eisen and wilfred frost here dow up 0.6%. nasdaq composite just positive nasdaq 100 just negative the ruz el 2000 up 2.3% but still down 4.5% for the week

a big bounce today for the russell and a big intraday rally for all of the major indices financials, industrials, materials up more than 1%. only two sectors negative, tech and communication services and only absolutely negative joining us is stephanie link and jason trenda jason, i'll come to you. was it important, a, and encouraging, b, to see a sort of strong final hour, strong close and strong intraday turn-around today? >> i think so. especially if you're positioned the way we are which is for a cyclical recovery and overweight value sectors. certainly you can't run a victory lap here, but it is nice to see after the last six days that some of the trends that have been in place for the better part of six months seem to be reasserting themselves >> steph, it's been growth -- it's a growth day, it's a value

day. today is a cyclical and value day, i would say technology and communication services lag they were the only sectors to close red. i think that's where you've been do you continue to add to positions there? >> yeah, it's good to see you guys look, i think consolidation that we've seen over the last eight to ten days is totally normal after the 80% we had from the lows in march of 2020. it's clear as a bell that the recovery and the economy is happening. the data even today with initial claims, we're back to pre-pandemic levels. we're still way too high, but we're making progress. and then the rest of this week, and we've gotten pretty good data today we got gdp revision. we got great regional manufacturing data uspi services and the future expectations within that component at all-time highs. the savings rate of 25.1% and that's why the cyclicals are

doing better because the economy is doing better. it's okay to pause on any given day but i think you want to stick with your process. i do believe, still, i'm really glad that rates have backed down a little bit but i still believe your going to see better growth, better rates, and that's why you want to be in the cyclicals. one of the new names i added is vail resorts >> jason, steph saying the economy is expected to bounce back significantly is there any part of you that thinks we've seen too much stimulus and too much talk of further stimulus given that down the line it's somehow going to have to be paid for? >> wilf, i do. i think it's very hard to stick the landing when you're going to be dropping about a trillion dollars in the economy in the next five months from the $1.9 trillion that was passed two weeks ago. president trump's tax cut was about $700 billion, but that was over ten years so this is kind of a quantum

leap order of magnitude difference it's hard to -- again, it's economics and the financial markets. it's not a hard science like chemistry or physics, it's a social science i think it's going to be very hard to finesse this in the end. i'm finding when i talk to my clients what people are really worried about or started to worry about this week are tax increases, especially associated with the infrastructure package that will come later in the year you're going to have to lift the debt ceiling and people are really wondering what that's going to look like it's one thing to dump a lot of money in the economy and, again, you might have higher inflation. but people are starting to wonder how much of this will be taken back in other ways and how much that might dampen some of the animal spirits in the economy in 2022. >> can we just pull up how gamestop closed.

steph, it closed up i think more than 53% yes, it fell a little more than 30 after earnings yesterday. and it was higher even before ryan cohen tweeted out a teddy bear taking a gong hit which also happened today. is that still a dynamic for you? do you see retail participation as a tailwind or when it's concentrated in just these meme stocks, it doesn't really do anything for the overall market? >> well, they're such a small piece of the overall market. you do have to wondering, the daily fluctuations, how sustainable these things really are. these are not trading on fundamentals you know me, sara, i'm totally all about fundamentals on any given day you can we up 20, 30, 50% with gamestop but if you want to play around in these names and i believe that's what it's called. you're playing around in these things and making bets if you want to do that, fine take a few but i would not put my entire portfolio in some of these names

because it's just so unpredictable. but i will say this. the quarter was a little bit better for gamestop than i was expecting, to be honest with you in terms of same-store sales i thought that was pretty good e-commerce up 175% that's 34% of their revenues now. so i think that the chewy.com influence will play through the company in a good way and they will do more online and they will figure it out but the valuation is impossible so that's why i just would never be involved in that name at this point. but let's watch it and see how it unfolds going forward. >> steph and jason, thank you both for joining us. great to see you a strong finish on wall street, up 199 points, 0.6% on the dow all three of the major averages higher at the close. the russell in particular up by 2.3% let's pivot now back to the hearing on capitol hill. >> you continue to increase

reviewer capacity. >> sure, congressman the biggest thing we've done is automated a lot of this by building ai tools to identify some this. now more than 95% of the hate speech that we take down is done by an ai and not by a person i think it's 98% or 99% of the terrorist content that we take down is identified by an ai and not a person you mentioned the suicide content as well, which i think a high 90s percent is identified by ai. >> mr. zuckerberg, i'm over my time i want to thank the chair and also say very briefly that you have a lot to do and you and your other cohorts on this panel. thank you. >> the gentleman's time is expired. the chair recognizes mr. pence for five minutes. >> thank you, chairs and ranking members for holding this joint subcommittee hearing thank you to the witnesses for appearing before us today. the extent to which your

platforms engulf our lives is reminiscent to the all-encompassing entities we've seen over the past century in the early 1900s, standard oil had a monopoly over 90% of our country's refining business. by the 1970s, if you used a telephone, it was going to be ma bell's system. in each instant you could choose not to use either product, but participation in society demanded that you use both in a similar sense, it is difficult, if not impossible, to participate in society today without coming across your platforms and using them we could choose not to use them, but like oil and telecommunications, it's considered essential and so many other people do use them even the government has become an equal contributor each member of congress and every senator is all but

required to use your platforms to communicate with their constituents while we're in washington, d.c. i know you understand that your platforms have a responsibility to act in good faith for all americans unfortunately, regularly, my facebook and twitter accounts, like many of my peers and other people i know are littered with hateful, nasty arguments between constituents that stand in complete opposition to the ideas of civil discourse that your platforms claim to hold and that you've referenced today. i'm sure you are aware that official government accounts have restrictions that significantly limit our ability to maintain a platform that is a productive resource of information to the public. they have essentially become a

mi microtown hall without a moderator on social media. i agree with all of your testimonies that a trust deficit has been growing over the past several years and as some of you have suggested, we need to do something about it now the way in which you manage your platforms in an inconsistent manner, however, has deepened this mistrust and involves the public conversation. my constituents in southeast indiana have told me they are increasingly mistrustful of your platforms given how you selectively enforce your policies there's just a few examples of how this has occurred. members of the chinese communist party have verified twitter accounts to regularly peddle false and misleading claims surrounding the human right violations we know are occurring in northern china. twitter gives the supreme leader of iran a megaphone to proclaim

derogatory statements endorsing violence against u.s. and western culture. twitter accounts associated with the supreme leader have called israel a cancerous tumor and call for the eradication of the zionist regime this happens as he also bans a service for his own people to restrict their free expression mr. dorsey, clearly you need to do more to address content that violates your policies i have two questions for you why is the chinese communist party allowed to continue the use of your platform after pushing propaganda to cover up human rights abuses against muslims in northern china? and two, why does the supreme leader of iran still have a platform to make threats against israel and america

>> so first append foremost, weo label those chinese accounts so people have context as to where they're coming from. that's on every single tweet so people understand this first we think that's important. we are reviewing our world leaders policy we're actually taking public comment review right now, so we're enabling anyone to give us feedback. >> if i may interrupt you quickly, mr. dorsey, on that very point, iran has been supporting hezbollah and it's not just sabre rattling, as you've made the statement or your company has made the statement. they have done serious damage to whole countries and people as i served in the military, they killed hundreds of marines many years ago so i don't know what you have to study about this mr. chairman, i yield back >> the gentleman yields back

the chair recognizes miss rice for five minutes >> thank you, mr. chairman mr. dorsey, what is winning, yes or no on your twitter account poll isn't. >> yes >> your multi-tasking skills are quite impressive in december of 2020, the house committee on veterans affairs released a report entitled hijacking our heroes, exploiting veterans through disinformation on social media. i ask unanimous consent, mr. chairman, that this report be submitted for the record. >> so ordered. >> thank you i bring up the report today because it's very disturb -- deeply disturbing the involvement of our veterans and military service members in the violence that took place on january 6th. it's estimated that one in five people charged in connection with the attack have served or are currently serving in the u.s. military. it should come as no surprise to those testifying today that for years, nefarious actors have learned how to harness the

algorithms on all of your platforms to introduce content to veterans and military service members that they did not actively seek out for themselves veterans and military service members are targeted by malicious actors nline in orde to misappropriate their voices, authority and credibility for the dissemination of political propaganda we have to do better for those who have served our country. mr. zuckerberg, do you believe that veterans hold a special status in our communities and have military training, making them prime targets for domestic terrorists and our adversaries seeking to foment insurrection >> i certainly believe veterans hold a special place in our society. >> thank you did you see on the national mall and at the capitol there were rioters who arrived in combat gear who were armed with tactical equipment did you see those images, yes or no >> yes >> have you personally talked to the iraq and afghanistan

veterans of america, iava about disinformation campaigns targeting veteran? >> no, i have not personally although our team is in contact with a number of these groups as we set up our policies. >> have you talked to the vietnam veterans of america about disinformation campaigns targeting veterans >> congresswoman, i can get back to you on whether our team has consulted with them specifically >> please do do you believe that veterans and military service members are just like other americans in that they are susceptible to the impulses in human psychology that facebook exploits to drive engagement do you believe that they are susceptible in that way, yes or no >> congresswoman, there's a lot in your characterization there that i disagree with. >> it's a question of do you think they're susceptible to that kind of information coming at them, yes or no >> congresswoman, i believe that --

>> so given your answers, i'm not convinced that you have the appropriate resources devoted to the problem of mitigating the real world effects of content that is designed to mislead and radicalize your users, especially those who are veterans and military service members. would you support legislation that would require you to create an office of veterans affairs that reports to the ceo and works with outside veterans service organizations to ensure our enemies don't gain ground trying to radicalize our brave men and women who serve in our military would you support that legislation? >> congresswoman, i think the details matter a lot so i would be happy to follow up with you or have our team follow up to discuss this but in general -- >> it's just a broad stroke do you believe that you could find your way to support legislation that would have as its goal the protection of our military

active duty and veterans >> i think in principle, i think something like that could certainly make sense >> so i wrote to you, mr. zuckerberg, last month requesting information about facebook's efforts to curb disinformation campaigns that specifically targeted american service members and veterans i'm just curious if you know how many public groups with the word veteran or public pages with the word veteran did you remove from your platform after january 6th in association with misinformation about the 2020 election or the attack on the capitol? >> congresswoman, i don't know the answer off the top of my head but i'd be happy to get back to you with that. >> thank you, thank you. we believe that you should be tracking that information. your platform was in fact a crime scene after january 6th. we need that information and data to understand how the attack happened. i want to thank all three of you for coming here today and spending so much time with us. i yield back, mr. chairman thank you. >> the gentle lady yields back

the chair recognizes mr. armstrong for five minutes is mr. armstrong here? you need to unmute. >> sorry about that. can you hear me? >> yes, we can hear you. >> all right thank you. no other industry received such bipartisan scrutiny. disinformation, content moderation, deplatforming, agent trust, privacy and the list continues to grow. we discuss these things too often in isolation but they are all related and it starts with the fact that your users aren't your customers they are the product more specifically, the data that you collect from your users is the product. you are incentivized to collect and monetize user data for behavior advertising this results in the collection of even more user data data is unique as a business

asset, it doesn't deplete. it's perpetual and reinforcing data begets more data. it expands your market share and haurmds competition. that's why censorship is so concerning to awfull of us your platforms have a strangle hold on the communication and i think we have to resist the urge of content moderation and censorship in 1927 justice brandeis wrote -- i think that is true today. your algorithms are designed to reinforce existing redispositions because you profit by keeping users locked into what they already enjoy this leads to information silos, misinformation, extremism on both sides and even more data collection which repeats the cycle. mr. pichai, you testified before the house judiciary committee last year. at that hearing i raised several

examples of google's consolidation of the ad tech stack. your answers largely reiterated the privacy justifications, which i understand and support however, my question was whether google's consolidation of both the buy and sell sides of digital advertising would further harm competition since then i have reviewed google's sand box and the proposal to replace third-party cookies. again, i understand and appreciate the privacy justification, and this is my question how will these actions not further entrench google's digital advertising market share and harm competition >> congressman, as you rightfully point out, privacy is really important and we are trying to get that correct users are giving clear feedback in terms of the data collection they would like to take. advertising alolows us to provie services to many people and we are trying to provide relevant

ads protecting their privacy that's what flock is working on. >> i'm going to move on because i understand the privacy and i understand the rationale of eliminating individual level tracking and the potential privacy benefits of user data in chrome at the device level but is still eliminating competitors access to user data at a time when you already control 60% of the browser market i have real concerns that flocks willin sent i'vize more first party data collection which will not benefit user privacy instead of spreading it mostly cloudy different-- among differt companies, it will all be with you. we need to ensure that the user privacy increases and that competition is not stiefld

fur further. i do have one question that i'm going to ask all three of you. when we're conducting competition analysis in the tech industry, should nonprice factors like privacy be considered i'll start with you, mr. pichai. >> i think so. privacy is very important. we've called for privacy legislation. google doesn't get any access to flock data it is protected and we will publish more papers on it. >> i understand completely, but you're forcing -- i mean you're forcing advertisers into the ad stack. i mean i don't discount that it increases privacy. i think this is a real problem because i think they're in conflict with each other but mr. dorsey, do you think when we're conducting competition analysis in the tech industry nonprice factors should be considered? >> not sure exactly what you

mean but open to further discussion on it >> how about you, mr. zuckerberg >> yes, congressman. my understanding is that the law already includes quality of products in addition to price. >> i would just say i appreciate you talking about the difference between big platforms and small platforms because i think in our history of trying to regulate big companies, congress has always done a really good job as harming the smaller companies worst. with my last six seconds, please all do a better job of making sure artists get paid for their work on your platforms with that i yield back. >> the gentleman yields back the chair recognizes mr. bisi for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman it's often been said that lies travel faster than truth we've seen that play out with devastating consequences on social media platforms today this concerns me greatly not just as a father or lawmaker but as someone ready to see the past

divisions that have dominated our country for the past several years and really decades really. but it's hard to see how this can change when the ceos of the largest social media platform repeatedly say they will fix their ways, only to keep spreading harmful lies and misinformation i want to give you an example. last august here in the dallas-ft. worth area, the north texas poison control center felt the need to warn people aga agaiagainst injesting bleach for covid-19. despite your companies from taking down such miss information or disinformation calls about disinfectant and rates were higher than usual and statewide calls about beach were up 70% the north texas poison center

pointed this out largely to misinformation online as the cause for these increases. as we know in the lead-up to the last elections, black communities were specifically targeted for disinformation campaigns designed to suppress the vote, especially in battleground states. right now there are sites up that are discouraging black people from getting the covid-19 vaccination. i know a lady that was put in facebook jail for 30 days because all she did was repost one of the faulty posts saying black folks aren't falling for this bs and she was put in facebook jail for 30 days. and now even if these posts were eventually taken down or otherwise labeled as false, again, lies travel a lot faster than truths. your companies have been largely flat-footed when it comes to getting out ahead of these issues and it's time for something to change.

that's why i'm exploring legislation that would establish an independent organization of researchers and computer scientists who could help identify and warn about misinformation trends before they become viral. this early warning system would help social media sites, the public and law enforcement so that when dangerous conspiracies or disinformation is spreading, they can be on alert and hopefully slow its effect. mr. zuckerberg, would you support legislation that would alert all facebook or instagram users of harmful disinformation and conspiracy theories spreading across your platforms? >> congressman, i think we need to look into that in more detail to understand the nuances. but in general i agree that it's our responsibility to build systems that can help slow the spread of this kind of misinformation and that's why we've taken all the steps that i've outlined today from building in unprecedented fact

checking program to the work in the covid information center and voting information center and the climate information center to promote authoritative information across our services. so i certainly think that there's a lot to do here. >> mr. dorsey, would you support lent legislation for an early warning system across twitter? >> i'd be open to reviewing the details. i just don't think it will be effective. it will be very much whack-a-mole i think the more important thing is as i said in my opening remarks get much more of an open standard and protocol that everyone can have access to and review >> and mr. pichai, for google and youtube, and i have a 14-year-old at home that watches youtube, what about you for those platforms? >> we already today in many of these areas show information panels for covid we showed a lot of

information from cdc and other experts and we had views over 400 billion. so conceptually showing information, including information panels i think makes sense to me. >> well, thank you i appreciate the time, mr. chairman i'm worried. i think that we need to act quickly and that we're running out of time and we need these companies to take affirmative action on addressing some of these issues i yield back my time thank you. >> thank you, the gentleman yields back. the chair now yields five minutes to miss craig. >> thank you so much, mr. chair. mr. zuckerberg, thank you so much for joining us today. as co-chair of the lgbtq equality caucus in the u.s. congress, i'd like to ask you a few questions about an incident that occurred several weeks ago now. i would appreciate a simple yes or no answer most of these have absolutely no

room for nuance. these aren't trick questions i'd just like to clarify a few facts. so on february the 25th, facebook took down a video posted by my colleague, representative marie newman, in which she places the transgender flag outside her office. is that correct to your knowledge? yes or no. >> congresswoman, i'm not aware of this. >> you're not aware of this? >> no. >> well, the answer is yes, facebook took her video down according to representative newman, the reason facebook gave for taking down the video was that it violated facebook's community standards on hate speech and inferiority does that seem right to you, that if someone put up a trans flag and took a video of it and posted it on your platform, that it should be put down >> congresswoman, no, that

doesn't seem right to me but i would need to understand the specifics of the case in more detail. >> yes, thank you. the answer is no, it's absolutely not right meanwhile across the hall, representative marjorie taylor green from georgia posted a video to facebook -- >> we've been watching the ceos of twitter, facebook and google testifying about misinformation on capitol hill. we'll continue to monitor the headlines. in the meantime we've got breaking news just crossing on the fed which steve liesman has for us steve. >> wilf, thank you the federal reserve announcing it will continue the bank payout restrictions for one more quarter until june 30th. they were set to expire march 31st when initially enacted back in the third quarter of last year they'll continue for most banks for one more quarter restrictions will lift for banks that have capital levels above those required by the stress test until june 30th they will remain until september 30th for banks that fail the

stress test. >> a little move to the upside on bank stocks nothing ground breaking. i think the expectation was this would roll off obviously at some point in the year ahead, perhaps by ending the end of the second quarter. that's a prakz ea fraction earl. the stocks have rallied so much we're not in a moment where they're going to increase buybacks anyway. if buybacks start to roll off, a lot of these stocks are at record highs it doesn't apply to all of the stocks the likes of citi and wells fargo still around book value. but others like jpmorgan around an all-time high and trading now at 1.9 times book so buybacks won't be unleashed in the same way as if these had been approved and banks were free to do what they want with their capital say, late last year or

middle of last year. >> i think those are great points i'll make two points quickly this shows the fed, they are pulling back at least in some respects from their emergency regulations and rules and restrictions earlier this week, i guess, it's been a long week, the exemption that they gave to banks for capital levels for treasuries and reserves. >> that was late last week on the slr. >> oh, last week, thank you. the other thing this kind of shows is the market is okay with stuff like this, i suspect it's kind of like the way they have traded stocks the entire pandemic it will get better, we're just not sure which quarter it will get better in. so i think you're right, the idea that this is maybe some people thought it might come off today. but the idea that it's going to come off for most banks in a quarter is just fine i suspect for most bank investors. >> steve, i wonder if the fed

will face any political scrutiny here for allowing banks to buy back stock i know that they're extending it here and so they're being more cautious on that front but there are more and more democrats that are getting vocal about buybacks, about giveaways to wall street, about the fed bailing out wall street in some of the critics' words with what they have done in terms of the emergency actions. i wonder if this plays in? >> i wonder if there's a senator who might bring that up. i'm sure you're watching the hearing yesterday, sara -- >> oh, yeah. >> -- when senator warren raked janet yellen over the coals on the issue of regulating blackrock. and that's an issue out there as well, which is what happens to these investment or asset managers i think so but remember it was yellen who at the hearing this week, i'm pretty sure i got that right, said she was okay with lifting these dividend and share

repurchase restrictions as well. so at least on the treasury side they're okay with it i think, wilf, you will know better than i would, but i think there's a point at which the government doesn't necessarily have the legal standing to stop these dividend and share repurchases because without some sort of regulatory nexus or systemic risk nexus. >> i would say that by not extending the relief they had on the slr, the supplementary leverage ratio, last week was the bigger point here. >> right. >> so the extension to relief they already had, this was not a punishment but a restriction and they are extending it until the end of june. but they're not kind of unleashing it immediately. more importantly going back to my first point, i don't think we will now see an announcement tomorrow or in june saying we're immediately buying back tens of billions of stock. that is what sometimes got

political headlines. in a weird kind of way if i'm right and we see a little increase in di dvidends, that h never seemed to anger politicians in the same way buybacks would although it's the same returning to shareholders with a different kind of tax structure. so i don't think, sara, this will lead to the same type of potential political backlash and again, it's also not leading to a massive jump in the share price. the big moment for the banks was late last year and sort of october had they been allowed to start doing buybacks when they were trading at book value or below. they're now trading above book value and have rallied really hard so buybacks wouldn't have quite the same effect and probably wouldn't bother with the same scale. you are seeing the likes of wells fargo jump a little more than others. why? that's still cheap

they might do more buybacks and have more effect. >> steve liesman, thank you. up next on the show, we will get reaction to today's tech hearing. how it could impact the future of the sector and potential regulation we are joined by bradley tusk, venture capitalist we'll be right back. ♪♪

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the ceos of twitter, google and facebook testifying on capitol hill outlining how their companies combat misinformation on their platforms here's what facebook ceo mark zuckerberg said about their approach. >> the system isn't perfect, but it's the best approach that we've found to address misinformation in line with our country's values it's not possible to catch every piece of harmful content without infringing on people's freedoms in a way that i don't think we'd be comfortable with as a society. >> let's get reaction to the hearing and how it could impact the tech sector. we're joined by tusk venture ceo bradley tusk >> thanks for having me. >> i guess the big question everyone is asking is are we nearing a point when we'll actually see legislation or action to sort of alter the state of play? >> yeah, i really do think so. even before the events of january 6th, both parties for different reasons were convinced that facebook and other platforms were out to get them

democrats felt like it creates much opportunity for trump to win in 2016. republicans feel like there's an anti-conservative bias no matter what your view is, you already see a problem. and then january 6th literally was the use of these platforms that put the lives of members of congress in danger and at risk and they felt that in a very real and tangible way. you put all that together and i think it's inevitable. so the question just becomes between section 230, privacy, anti-trust, you know, which is the one that can get the most bipartisan support. >> does it drastically force them to change their business models in a way that will hit the stock prices >> well, it depends what they do if you take the three big categories, they all very much threaten to do that. antitrust, let's use facebook as an example here. if instagram, whatsapp and facebook all become separate companies, that might change your view of how you see the overall entity maybe three separate companies

would be worth more money at the end of the day, i don't know, but it's a very structural fundamental change if it's privacy and facebook all of a sudden didn't have the ability to monetize user's data in the way they have now, that really changes their revenue because all of their money comes from their ability to tell advertisers things about you that they then use to try to sell things back to you. or third, if section 230 is appealed, what that does is protect facebook and the other platforms from legal liability from what people say on the platform if all of a sudden now they can be sued, you'll see lots and lots of class action suits, lots of litigation. that's going to cost a lot of money and will ultimately have to change the way they allow content on the platform. the less controversial the content, the less eyeballs you get. >> i just wonder how these platforms are going to look, brad, when this is all over. i don't know if you saw chrissy teigen left twitter, which to me was a big deal because she was an amazing tweeter

she had millions of followers. and she was sick of the harassment and the negativity. so is that something eliminating section 230 is going to deal with what's the engagement and the users when all this is done? >> it's going to cut both ways on one hand if you were to eliminate section 230, i think the internet becomes a nicer place. right now it is just a rough place and i think -- i have teenage kids, i think any parent with kids that aiminge can tell how concerned they are about it. that's the upside. the downside with it being nicer is it's kinder, gentler, less fighting and less criticism. ultimately whether we like this part of human nature or not, controversy and fighting drives attention, it drives eyeballs, it drives clicks and that's what ultimately makes advertisers want to pay a lot of money to reach facebook customers so i think it does have a really

material effect on the company and the share price. >> how likely do you think that is, a whole hog abolish 230? >> probably not entirely likely. but then if you wanted to be kind of bearish on facebook around this issue, their challenge is you've got congress who's really upset with them as we saw today, but also biden's agencies could do a lot on 230 without any sort of congressional approval so there's lots of different ways that this thing can change. as a result, i think if i were facebook or quite frankly anyone in the social media space, i'd be preparing for a world where those liability protections are no longer available. >> bradley tusk, good to get your thoughts on today thank you for joining us. >> thanks for having me, guys. up next, betting on wall street bets. meme stocks rallying sharply higher today following gamestop's earnings-fueled plunge we'll break down what was behind

the move over 50% for koss and gamestop, next ♪ ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ it's not "pretty good or nothing." it's not "acceptable or nothing." and it's definitely not "close enough or nothing."

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cryptocurrency market. this will be done through a subsidiary of fidelity this is one of many applications that has gone out recently, including one from vannic. last week, none so far have been approved the ceo, abigail johnson, is one of the big reasons why fidelity is doing this. she has been a massive bitcoin bull for the past couple of years. it launched a separate company for custody and trading and is partnered with coin base as well fidelity also lets people pay with crypto in its cafeteria it also started mining bitcoin in new hampshire back when it was trading around $180. guys, back to you. >> kate, thanks so much to that. meantime meme stops rallying today. gamestop finishing up more than 50% higher following yesterday's sell-off does this mean the retail trading frenzy is making a big return bob pisani has more. hey, bob. >> hello, wilf it was a very good day forric

wil -- for equities it was a good day for the retailers, great day for credit card companies caterpillar, 3m at a new high. good day for the banks and good day for the retailers. home depot hit a new high. lowe's also hit a new high not a good day for kathy wood and all the arkk holdings. down again not only today, but these stocks are now 30% to 40% off of their 52-week highs. most of them hit those highs right in the middle of february just as interest rates started going up, so the market is not looking kindly on high multiple stocks moe most of these stocks have multiples, some of them north of 50 as for the reddit favorites, so much for buy low, sell high. yesterday gamestop was down 30% and at the bottom couldn't find any buyers at all. today, look, a huge bounce,

essentially all the way back up and volume was very heavy. that's the same situation with koss and amc entertainment they seem to be more interested in buying them when prices are going up an when the prices are lower. the opposite of buy low, sell high but then again, that's the way it is these days with some of the reddit names guys, back to you. >> bob, thank you. up next, nike is facing some serious backlash in china. that's put pressure on its stock, closing down more than 3% today. all the detailwh "clins enosg bell" comes right back your br,. that's great, carl. but we need something better. that's easily adjustable has no penalties or advisory fee. and we can monitor to see that we're on track. like schwab intelligent income. schwab! introducing schwab intelligent income. a simple, modern way to pay yourself from your portfolio. oh, that's cool... i mean, we don't have that. schwab. a modern approach to wealth management.

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we've got you covered. so join the carrier rated #1 in customer satisfaction... ...and learn how much you can save at xfinitymobile.com/mysavings. we've got a news alert phil has the details >> check out shares of ford, the accompany announcing that the chip shortage is hitting two of its most productive and profitable plants, first off in kansas city where it builds the transit the company is going to be stopping production and tomorrow stopping production of the transit. it will resume on monday at the deer born truck plant where they build the f-150, no production tomorrow, saturday and sunday it'll resume again on monday ford does say that this shutdown, this one, others that they have announced, are all baked into the 1.5 to $2 billion

hit they forecast earlier this y year guys back to you >> phil, thanks for the update nike shares closing today in the red as the company finds itself embroiled in controversy of china calls to boycott the app are growing. nike is concerned about forced labor in the uighur autonomous region of china. some uighurs showed photos of themselves burning nike products nike released that statement last year. it hasn't been dwrapted since november so, why is this happening all of a sudden there is some important context here just days ago, u.s., europe and other western countries imposed sanctions on top chinese officials to punish beijing. also this week europe cancelled an important meeting to discuss

an eu-china investment deal after those sanctions took place. so, clearly china is trying to gain leverage and flexion its muscle geopolitically here nike isn't commenting but it is a huge deal. adidas, other western brands aren't commenting as well. china representing 22% of nike's sells, even bigger contribution to profits and has been a steady grower it is the growth engine for nike and a big part of the bug case so, any brand tarnishing for the chinese consumer could hurt nike keep in mind what i'm hearing from sources, nike products are still available in all channels online and offline in china right now. nike also doesn't appear to be singled out. among some of the other brands china has targeted here.

nike has been operating in this country for 40 years, so it has pretty deep roots and relationships with officials on the government side and partnerships as well we'll continue to watch it because clearly those sales are a huge deal for the company and the stock. the brand is getting hit remember nike is not a stranger to boycotts, especially that spread on social media with the betsy ross sneakers here in the u.s., and there's also been a source of controversy in china with sweatshops and hong kong last year. >> i think totally worth watching, as you're saying and nike and adidas down 4% or 5% or so it's not like tensions are easing up with china arguably getting worse with some of the sanctions from europe and the uk we'll have to keep an eye on it, even if the statement came out a while ago. one of former deal maks eris taking spak in public. we've got details next

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shaped by technology and human ingenuity, we can make it work for you and your business. ♪♪ . welcome back some spac news msd acquisition corp., the spac launched by msd. it announced the pricing of its

ipo at $500 million late last night. it will trade under the symbol msdau. it's going to be listing in just a few week's time, in fact less than that. a couple days less than that based on conversations with sources, they'll be targeting a deal size of 2.5 billion or higher, ideally quite a bit higher in fact and will be keen to invest more in the capital if the size and opportunity called for it they're looking for a tmt business, tackle media, ideally found one. michael dell will be an adviser. the board includes edith cooper, first black female on the goldman sachs management committee, barry mccarthy, former spotify/netflix ceo, and john freedman. they feel that that board and its range is fairly unique

and why they managed to get the spac away well priced last night, of course spacs have had a big pull back as of late that's really the story, sarah we'll see what they end up buying in the weeks ahead. >> yeah, i guess some in while it's still hot, although more scrutiny for sure. reportly regulators are looking into spacs and the spac ipo. >> we're out of time we've taken five seconds back. my apologies over to you. >> i'm melissa lee this is "fast money. tonight on "fast" we are monitoring that big tech hearing on capitol hill. it's entering its 1000000th hour just kidding it's 5th hour. nike under pressure call frs a boycott growing in china and later nadine is gearing up to head to the pitcher's mound, why she thinks the trave