connections tween what policymakers do and what happens in school. how do we draw that line a little more nearly? >> if we want to pay our teachers better and make college more affordable, we have to get there by challenging and holding accountable our officials. watch afterwards on c-span2 book tv. this is nancy scola. she is here to talk about social media executives. there is a picture of two people appearing at the hearings. about whor viewers was on capitol hill and why they were there. nancy: yesterday morning, the chief operator testified for an

intelligence security. joined by the ceo of twitter, jack dorsey. by the ceo of twitter, jack dorsey. jack then travel to the other side of capitol hill to the house for the energy and commerce committee where he testified so low on the idea that twitter may be biased. host: what is the significance that you had the ceos of these platforms to talk about these issues? guest: it has been a long time coming. the companies are in the spotlight for they didn't do enough in the election by russia. in their own definition they were slow to take action in that. a lot of their testimony was acknowledging they were slow to act. so it is significant to have them with push and pull. jack dorsey's first testimony

and he has been the ceo for quite some time. so to have him up there answering questions was significant. google was also invited. the decline to send a representative. which lawmakers did not enjoy. host: what did they resolve to do because of that? is a rolling process by their own admission. one of the things they have done is to hire humans and work on technology to determine fraudulent accounts. i have figured out ways to detect signs that accounts are not coming from people they want to have on the platform and thwarting them when they try to register to use the platform.

they put a lot of attention into that. and they have also done more for transparency. one of the complaints was that ads would be placed on the sites pay for theng who add. those are additional steps they've taken. they have resisted the idea of having regulation around that sort of transparency but they are eager to take those steps voluntarily. so they don't have to be regulated. what is their thinking on that currently? guest: we are in a push and pull phase that washington goes through. police yourself or we will step in. and we are seeing conservatives theyepublicans say that will not take a hands-off approach.

host: calling in to join us on of discussion on the ceos facebook and twitter. if you would like to ask a ,uestion, it is (202) 748-8000 democrats. (202) 748-8001, republicans. (202) 748-8002, independent voters. you could also post a comment on our facebook page. interference piece done, jack dorsey went to the house to talk about another issue? guest: there has been a complaint raised by conservatives with the the last month which has ramped up in recent weeks because trump has embraced the issue. an idea that social media platforms are making decisions about what content to allow and what advertisements to allow. that they are biased against conservatives. there is a debate about whether there -- about whether this is intentional or not intentional.

in some ways, companies operate in a black box. they wanted to bring folks into testify. response?what was the adamant that the company is not intentionally biased. that the i got -- that the ideology and no way relates to the platform. as theyacknowledge that process huge quantities of tweets and advertisements every day that some of the decisions they might make might have the using the platform. one of the examples that has come up recently is the idea that there was a search function on twitter that when you typed in members of congress' name, some of them didn't auto populate. to more dramatically affect by conservatives.

and jack dorsey testified that they had been experiment in with using a new signal to determine how to break people in the function. it was based on the quality of the followers of the users. unintentionally discriminate against conservative voices. he testified that when things are brought to our attention, with the unintentional effects, they addressed quickly. companies are pretty on that they don't want to lose the conservative users. so they are pretty adamant that intentionally.s host: did they sway critics on the panel? guest: i think so. it was only jack dorsey testified alone. i think he handled himself well. and members seemed pretty responsive to him personally. think he has proven that he

has no intention of discriminating godless of what personal ideology would be -- informationng regardless of what his personal ideology would be. some said that it would not spare -- that it was not fair for him to be there without other platforms. the committee argued that twitter has become such a platform -- the first argument is that we are open to having all the companies testify. but twitter is assumed such a central role in the political conversations for the country, because the president uses it frequently to profess his opinion, so that there is a need to focus on the platform and how it is operating. host: one of the topics that came up with the idea of shadow accounts. what are they?

guest: it is a term for some of the decisions made about how the , taking is interactive a step back that there is so much content so they cannot promote everyone. the very meant is that in those decisions, like the search functionality -- it can make it harder to find accounts. shadow banning includes that and that if you click on a hashtag, in some cases, accounts aren't appearing so there is that conversation that their argument is that they have to manage the content in some way. i can'ttives say that know that you are not seeing my tweets. that i'm hidden. host: (202) 748-8000, democrats. (202) 748-8001, republicans. (202) 748-8002 independent

voters. it was during that conversation went jack dorsey had a conversation with greg walden. here's the exchange. >> in one example of many, important conservatives representatives have come to us and say they were not shown in the automatically populated drop-down searches on twitter. correct? than 300 the more active twitter users, why did this only happened to certain accounts? in other words, what did the algorithm take into account that led to prominent conservatives including members of the u.s. house of representatives not being included in auto search populations? >> thank you for the question. we use hundreds of signals to determine and decide what to show and what to down break or potentially, what to filter.

in this particular case, we were using a signal of the behavior of the people following accounts. , upon didn't believe further consideration and seeing the impact -- which was about 600,000 accounts, a pretty broad base, that it was ultimately fair so we did decide to correct that. wasn't decided that it fair to use this signal for filtering in general. so we decided to correct that within the search as well. one, important for us to, able to experiment freely with these signals. and to have the freedom to be able to inject them and remove them. we going tonly way learn. we will make mistakes along the way. and the way we want to be judged is by making sure we recognize those and then we correct them. responsek about his

and his style in approaching the legislators? guest: he is very deliberate and very thoughtful. came by the political world headquarters for an interview at to sit down with our editorial team before his interview. thought aboutly these issues. he presents himself in that way and he speaks of very deliberately. has been some commentary about his appearance. fair or not. scraggly beard. one of the members of the committee said, i don't know what the ceo of twitter should look like but it is not that. and he said, yes, i agree. host: they have staffers that handle the legislature and what happened on capitol hill

directly. guest: yes. and it is different in the ways the different companies approach washington. a d.c. officeave that is loosely tethered to the main headquarters. twitter has operated in that way recently toe worked integrate their washington team more into the corporate leadership team which seems to be coming across in the successful way they have approach washington in recent months. host: nancy scola joins us. we start with alan. go ahead. caller: how are you? callingis alan and i'm partly because the lady had the claim by conservatives that the media discriminates against them. make theted to

following statement. vidal made a comment that to me has always been most constructive and helpful. in it, the comment went like this. he said, in europe, what we in america called a liberal, in europe is called a conservative. america's what we at word in europe recalled a fascist. and i have long thought this was helpful. contextualizes the difference. in i think a lot of the old america called themselves conservatives are really crypto fascist swell a lot of the people who call themselves liberals are really pretty moderately conservative. host: how does that direct

itself to social media use? way it i think the directs itself to social media that it has unfortunately been lost sight of my a lot of people on social media. i think it all was one of the most instructive people who could teach us a lot. the most recent complaints -- trump has picked up this idea that social media and online forms are biased against conservatives and him. one of the arguments he points to recently is that when he searches google news for stories about trump, they are largely negative. google's response and the response of many others say they are pulling from mainstream media sources that run headlines that are negative. the read on the president is often very negative.

and the president argues, you should be pulling from sources that are not mainstream but are more supportive of me. past, google has never had to wrestle with that. because they said that if we take a snapshot of the mainstream media, we take a snapshot of what people are saying online. we are at the point where more broadly in the country, we are not agreeing on sets of facts or thinking about the world. so google newly has to wrestle with that. now there's a debate about whether this impacts the world at large. new jersey, days is next. caller: when twitter and facebook -- when they offered the initial public offering, i think they traded at $42 and then they dropped down to $20 and now they have gone up to wherever they are now and they

are little bit less. yesterday i pulled about $250,000 out of twitter and facebook. i don't like the politics. that is all there is to it. guest: jack dorsey was careful to say he is a registered the employeeut base is more left-leaning. that is something companies have to wrestle with. and whether that matters to americans. twitter and facebook, they have said they need to take steps to clean up platforms. because it may well affect their stock prices. wall street has not responded to this overwhelmingly positively it is a have said that hit they are willing to take in the short term.

host: from virginia beach, julia is next. caller: my question is that these people in congress think are -- the millennials -- naive about algorithms. but they know a lot more about what is going on than we do. so if twitter was to go up there and tell politicians what is millennials like the freedom and everything they do. and the gentleman who just called about europe never grew up in europe. he has no idea how the communist and socialist were. i remember being in school and we had to shut our schools down because they burned the school buses. so the gentleman has no idea. guest: one of the things -- again, maybe this is a superficial observation but jack dorsey is now 42-year-old.

even mark zuckerberg is now a full grown adult. the caller mentioned millennials. in a way, there was a handoff approach because they were young people figuring things out. now they fully entered the era when they are expected to be responsible for the decisions they make and that is some of the treatment they are seeing for them now is that a chance to experiment and innovate and people do need a little bit of freedom to experiment but now your health accountable. so i think the approach that the company is have has shifted. ok, we need to grow up a little bit and engage with this political process. host: so the question that legislators pose, do you get a sense that they get the nuance did thel media -- how nature of the questions reflect that? at least a subtle knowledge of what is going on?

guest: the immediate feedback on twitter is -- oh my gosh, these questions are rudimentary. they don't reflect the fact that understand.ongress yesterday, we didn't hear that. we are now seeing members of congress refine questions on that. that have been questions where we see committees get deeply involved in this that maybe have more expertise. the senate committee has done a lot of work on the social media front so they have developed a way of talking about these positions that we didn't see previously. the: there was a story in alice news recently about a group of conservatives inside facebook complaining to their leadership about the diversity of voices that facebook expresses. guest: you certainly hear this.

there's a push to diversify the companies. they have been overly ail and overly white. companies do have a response to that. there hasn't been a follow-up response that ok, the companies are also overly liberal and left-leaning. so there is a push to include ideological diversity. the criteria they used to think about holding their employee base. it hasn't gained a ton of traction but you do hear people who in washington may be thought of as moderates, they don't feel free expressing their opinion. it is certainly a sentiment that is building. host: nancy scola is joining us for this discussion. indiana is next on the republican line. go ahead. caller: they were filtering by followers, of the

what is the quality follower? guest: i would like to know as well. they don't divulge many details. that jack dorsey did testify on that yesterday. that they were using follower folksy to determine the -- it is on my to do list to dig into that. host: matt from virginia. hello. i am a teacher. part of my job is to teach our students information literacy and sources and what are legitimate sources. and i feel like if you look at younger generations understand about information literacy, they are able to navigate social media and use it and understand what is information and what is entertainment. 2006, i started to notice that a lot of my elder family

were starting to share things on you to or social media that were completely false and i would have to constantly send on articles and that ways to show them they were just passing on false information from social media and i feel like we have to do a better job of giving people who didn't get the opportunity to get information literacy because they were born well after -- born well before it was presented -- we have to give them ways to understand what is true and false on the internet. guest: that is something that has come up. i think there is an idea that -- i am risking getting in trouble here -- but some generations when they got on facebook or social media -- they felt free to share things, not necessarily knowing if it was true.

because was true. because with a playground, not real life. what i think some of the debates around social media and the 2016 election and the use of russian adversaries, it was very easy to spread information on the platform because americans were pretty willing to share it. these book in particular has taken steps to address what people say is fake news or disinformation. early on in the efforts, they tried to label things using third-party fact checkers, saying that this isn't true but they found that people were then more willing to share. so they have switched up the approach of it now. dissentingtach views. so if there is an article that isn't true, they provide a fact check or third-party information says hey, this is another way of thinking about this. host: let's hear from sheryl

sandberg yesterday. again, the whole hearing is available online at c-span.org but she talked about platform members on fighting foreign interference. >> we are focused on the upcoming u.s. midterms and collections around the world. our efforts in recent elections from germany to italy and mexico , to the alabama senate elections show us that the investments we make our yielding results. that we cannot stop interference by ourselves. we are working with outside experts in the industry and partners and government -- including law enforcement -- to share information about threats. we are getting better at finding and stopping opponents. from financially motivated troll intellectually led attacks.

we don't always know the motive so we will continue working closely with law enforcement. host: can you reflect on that last point. working with law enforcement? guest: yes. they were slow in paying attention but one of the quieter arguments they made is, why is facebook supposed to be the one controlling the platforms for foreign interference? then the something that national security world needs to put more effort into and take response ability for? it is been almost two years since the election day and a lot of effort has been put into building security efforts worldwide. so they can share information about threats. he could share information about what they see on their platforms with intelligence to be shared back to other companies. so companies made the point that they need more help. and it shouldn't be up to

facebook to determine whether it as a threat.iran they shouldn't be responsible for figuring out how to canter -- how to counter that. from this is mary pennsylvania. caller: thank you for taking my call. i have a a sick question. it isn't conspiracy. i am republican. i do believe there was for influence. i guess i am an older guy and i'm not big into social media but i do good on there. i've never been able to see examples are the actual verbiage for what was actually taking place on these websites so i would know how i was influenced or what was given to me that was false or -- i've never seen it presented on the news anywhere. is there somewhere we could vote to actually see that? where was posted that -- these are the fake news.

the postingsl of by russia or whomever? so we could see them? to actually look at them? guest: the good news is that if you didn't get a news email from twitter saying you were influenced to folks that you weren't. they said, these are things you may have looked at that were planted by russians. facebook is also presented opportunities to login if you think you having gauged with any kind of russian place content in any way. it is probably an unsatisfying answer but the senate intelligence community posted a number of examples of the advertisements. and politico, we did as well that were released by the company showing the information on the platform. host: jeff sessions inserted himself into the larger discussion on social media. what is his interest?

guest: that the department of justice released a short statement saying that after watching the initial senate hearing on election interference that they watch the hearing closely and that they were announcing that jeff sessions was going to be meeting with a number of state attorney general's to discuss social media companies. for issues raised about competition in the sector and the idea that they might the stifling free speech. that sent us scrambling to figure out what they meant. clear how thatly may apply to these companies and how it could be used to answer speech questions. so we are still trying to figure out what that meeting means, scheduled for september 25. the cynical reporters take is

that this is an issue that trump has embraced this. and that the department of justice may be interested in looking into it for that reason. to thehis question justice department and they said that no, jeff sessions has had a and interest in this topic they are following through on that. the timing of releasing this in between the two hearings, referencing the first hearing, it certainly made it feel like there was a strategic approach to getting the highest profile for this announcement that we are digging into that. host: here is matthew from tennessee. it seems like somewhat of a farce because these are social media platforms. they are not news agencies. there are not held to the same accountability. and they should be because it is a to the user to do their own research and verify information they're getting.

the company has targeted algorithms for advertising. for service material that better enrich the in user experience. that is the purpose and goal. it's how they run their business. it is really the platforms responsibility to constantly monitor everything that each individual user is doing. it is the viewer themselves that is responsible to research material. something seems off with the need to expand the viewing platform in order to get correct answers. here: one of the dynamics is that part of the reason the company don't have responsibility, for policing what happens on the platform proactively as a function of u.s. law. it is delivered. the communications decency act. section 230 creates a limited .iability for companies

the idea would be that companies like facebook couldn't grow in the way that they did if they had to review every single piece of content that went up there. some steps that companies have onen now to put their hand what appears on the platform raises concerns among advocates in the tech industry that it might open them up to the possibility of rescinding some of the limited liability. so they would be more responsible. and that is something that the tech industry is worried about. because they can't operate the companies they operate if they don't have the limited liability. it was raised yesterday that twitter has a section raised called moments. a curated set of tweets around particular events. you not actinge as a news publisher if you have for use in to what is happening on the platform and curating curated content because that is one of the

functions in the news industry performs. host: with this round of hearing, will it satisfy members of congress? or do they want your more from each platform about the issues that were raised yesterday on the content side or the influence side? guest: this seems to be the end of the senate intelligence committee. there has been talk that we need flu -- we need new legislation. we may have a social media component. and the other question of bias on the platform, i think sessions inserting himself into the debate yesterday said that this is a going anywhere anytime soon. caller: i am jimmy. i believe that social media censorship could be a slippery slope.

i believe that people should be a lot to say what they want. and thern in woodstock air was thick with hepatitis flying around. i swear. host: michael. why does she think every thing is so biased with social media leaning towards democrats and millennials? and what is the real data versus what is actually in the demographics? only 20% of millennials actually vote? data?t is the real world is there a big payoff at the end of this? guest: you raise and adjusting point. the idea of data. we don't know. we don't know the volume of tweets on the platform, if they lead any particular way or if

there discriminated against by companies. we just don't know. and that was a little bit of the frustration yesterday. of shadow banning of accounts and the search functionality. the question was raised, how many democratic members were affected and they didn't have the information at hand because it is very difficult to know the answers to those questions. because we don't have the data. host: we saw protesters being escorted all day out of the kavanaugh hearing. protests in the house hearings. can you give us an idea? guest: i don't entirely known the attention of them. but it was a day of yelling in capitol hill. the biggest excitement on that front in the house and senate was that alex young -- from info wars -- branded as a right-wing

extremist and conspiracy theory minded -- he put himself in to both of these hearings and got attention for that. he has been removed from twitter recently in a temporary ban and he wanted to confront jack dorsey. he didn't get the confrontation. he did have a little run-in with marco rubio in the hallway. host: there was also excitement when a protester appeared in the house hearing. here is a bit of that. -- ecognizes that >> [indiscernible] >> order in the hearing room or you will be asked to leave. ma'am. please take a seat or we will have to have you -- we will have to. >> please help us mr. president before it is too late because

jack dorsey is trying to influence the election and sway the election. >> i can't understand her. $20, five have. , 40. have 45, the cap. up to it have now 75. $80, 95, 90. two and a quarter. to have, 300, 3 and a quarter. three-and-a-half, 375, 400. four and a half, by the have. i yield back. [applause] long has a past as a professional auctioneer.

those it is one instances. what you think the public as far as those attending, what you think we got out of those hearings? guest: some new information they put on record about how these platforms work. what the things that was for twitter, the nomination hearing for judge kavanaugh was happening in the same time so that brought attention away. we have a time to gauge the reaction to these so we will be picking up on some of that today. host: zach from pennsylvania, democrat line. the thing i'm worried about is a lot of these social media companies are showing so many ads to the point where some people could see them as ad companies disguise is also media platforms. what i'm wondering is should we make it so they have to regulate the ads they put on more or not? tost: that has been a push

make the advertisers more clearly labeled as advertising, more clearly labeled where they are coming from. the companies have been resistant to actually regulating on that front. .hat's one of the areas what must us voluntarily's is to add disclaimers entry ads in a serious and systematic fashion than they have in the past and the reason for that is there try to stave of regulation. they think if they do enough on their own they won't get regulated by congress and the reason they are nervous about being regulated is is a number of reasons. death as they make their their reluctant to let dog's mother hands in a particular part of the platform very host: california, republican line you are the last call. caller: good morning. it's funny i'm always lately the last call. i would like to talk about russian influence on her elections.

oversight andhad chuck schumer had oversight on the iranian one -- uranium one deal. we are not talking about that at all. alex jones, that's who i learned that he had oversight. god bless alex jones and god bless the first amendment. people of the united states are being a sham. you heard this guy auctioning off during this last thing because he is so used to being influence by all the from social media and stuff. we need to get sessions out of there. guest: one of the complications that these companies find themselves in, you said god bless alex jones, people obviously have a very strong opinion on the other side thinking is pretty troubling. the companies are in a position of making decisions. should he be allowed on the platform.

dozens if not hundreds of thousands of other voices the allowed on the platform. jack dorsey said i think it's dangerous for twitter and him to be the arbiter of truth on the internet. some of the challenges we are wrestling with his anytime you make decisions about content, they are pretty likely to anger some folks in this country. certainly not something they want to get into too deeply but they are seeing a lot of pressure to take control in managing. host: nancy is the senior technology reporter for politico. politico.c from billings, montana, president trump will be speaking at a rally for republican senate candidate matt rosendale. he is facing democratic incumbent jon tester. this is live 2018 coverage on c-span. ♪

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