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you can order your copy and every purchase helps support the nonprofit operation. press sec. psaki: -- host: rebecca joins us about the hearing that took place on capitol hill which took place. good morning. good morning. host: can you tell us why these heads were appearing in who appeared before congress? guest: yesterday, we had the ceo of facebook, mark zuckerberg, the ceo of twitter, jack dorsey, and the ceo of google, -- alphabets google, they were all brought before the house energy and commerce to join subcommittees to discuss the growing amount of misinformation and disinformation being spread on their platforms and contributing to the violent attack on the capitol on january 6th.

host: what were members of congress hoping to learn from these heads? guest: they wanted to get them to admit some culpability in the spread of this misinformation about the november 2020 election. that a lot of individuals, pro-trump supporters believed and were spurred to go to the capitol to basically stop the final confirmation of the election results. they asked a lot of yes or no questions, whether zuckerberg, dorsey, agreed that they played a role. each ceo did not want to answer just yes or no. the one that went the furthest in taking some accountability for the stop the steal group that claimed the election was stolen, a lot of that propaganda

being spread, the one ceo was jack dorsey, who said that that was bright on his platform, he took some response ability for that being there although he did say it was a broader issue and that they were labeling this as misinformation on their platform . i do not know if the lawmakers -- yes we played a direct role answer they were seeking. host: let's watch a bit of the exchange as chairman mike doyle of pennsylvania asking to heads of the companies about the january six nomadic attack and the role social media played. here are some of the exchange. >> i want to ask all three of you if your platform bear some responsibility for disseminating information related to the election and the stop the steal a movement that led to the capitol. just a yes or no answer. mr. zuckerberg.

>> our response ability is to build systems -- >> i want a yes or no answer. do you bear some responsibility for what happened? >> our response ability is to make sure that we build effective systems -- >> mr. butch i, yes or no? >> i think we worked hard, this election effort was one of our most expensive efforts. >> is that a yes or no? >> it is a complex question. >> ok, we will move on. mr. dorsey. >> yes, but you have to take into consideration a broader ecosystem. it is not the technology platforms only. >> thank you. i agree with that. host: rebecca kern on all three fronts, they wanted to go beyond the yes or no and all talking about bigger issues at play when it comes to -- elaborate from

there. guest: there are a lot of issues at play here and what we did see was like i was mentioning, they are labeling these tweets going into the election as misinformation and providing links to elections -- election centers for accurate information and news websites to redirect, to correct factual information, but facebook and twitter actively did that. they are dealing with billions of posts a day on their platforms and that gets through and it gets viewed widely even before they even label it and then we had former president trump who was spreading the information from his account directly and they labeled it, but they did not remove a good deal of his tweets, they were still up there. his followers took that as truth

and we really did not see the platforms act to take trump down, remove his platform on facebook, twitter, and youtube until after the january six -- six nomadic riot and they claimed they had the authority to do that because of fear of further incitement of violence. in these lawmakers eyes, it rang too late. too late to take response ability until after this horrific event that day. but, he is still suspended from all three accounts. host: our guest to talk about this topic of social media, disinformation, in light of the hearing which you can see on c-span and if you want to ask questions about it, (202) 748-8000 for democrats, (202) 748-8001 for republicans and independents, (202) 748-8002. if you want to text the questions, (202) 748-8003 is how you do that.

you can post the question on twitter, facebook as well. one of the things that has been part of this discussion, rebecca kern, is something called section 230 of the communications decency act. show our viewers about what it says, it says, no provider or user of an interactive computer service should be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information divided by the -- by another information content provider. that is the technical law. talk about it in the context of what they were talking about yesterday. guest: yesterday, it is a 25-year-old law and it basically -- a lot of people referred to it as tech companies immunities shield. a liabilities shield. they are not held accountable and cannot be sued for that majority of third-party content on their platform. -- for that majority of third-party content on their platform. this is what lawmakers have bipartisan agreement on. this law is outdated and we have

not updated it in decades and we need to change it there and republicans and democrats. where there is not agreement is how to change it. and do so without hurting small startup companies who do not have a large, legal department. many do not have any legal departments when you're starting out and it can run them out of business, or if you take away their shield, they will not want to remove content so the internet will become a pretty terrible place and so, the shield also gives them the sword. it gives them the shield and a sword is the phrase. the sword allows them to remove content if they find it violates their terms and conditions. and so they do remove hate speech and violent speech and

other content, extremist content, it just is not all get through all the time, it is not all get removed. lawmakers want to peel back that law. we have seen a few proposal, mainly from democrats, basically holding them accountable for violating state civil rights laws and international terrorist laws if they do so on the platform that if content violates that, they have to remove it or be held liable for that continent. edit -- for that content. republicans tend to -- we have not seen any detailed proposals. they mainly complained that when content is removed, it goes after conservatives, so they claim there is conservative bias, conservative censorship of speech. we saw them than former president trump, rudy giuliani, individuals from the previous administration. we have not seen a lot of

detailed proposals on how they want to change the law yet. host: and concern for new regulation coming to the tech companies, have they made an effort to sell the police themselves despite -- have they expanded on that? guest: of the three ceos yesterday, the one who came out at the start was mark zuckerberg saying that he is open to changing section 230. if you go on any website, you will hear advertisements, they are printing that narrative right now. the one recommendation that he would say is that he thinks tech companies should be providing the transparency reports. facebook already does that, quarterly of their takedown, the content they takedown, they categorize it, how much of certain types of speech they remove that violates their terms

and conditions. they want to see it as an industry standard and all of their competitors do that good beyond that, -- that. beyond that, we did not see him say much more about how he wants the law to be changed. if content gets by that is inappropriate speech and they do not want to have be held liable. he claimed that they cannot always remove everything. they are not perfect. that was the common refrain. we did not hear jack dorsey agree to space thicker changes either. -- specific changes either. host: l.a. in ohio, democrats line, you are on -- ellie in ohio, democrats line. caller: i was calling to say that in my opinion, all three of them are -- their bottom line is

money, now the content of the hate speech or anything else that their company let's fly on the internet. -- lets fly on the internet. all three of their platforms are there to make money. not to worry about what is being said on the platforms. it is just about money, the almighty dollar. the fact that they do not take this crop down -- crap down before stuff hits the fan is the bottom line. host: that is ellie in ohio. guest: that was a common refrain among democrats and republicans yesterday, that the only care about making money and a lot of this incendiary speech and content gets shared widely, a lot of people use the refrain

that a light travels faster than truth and that is true on these platforms and like i said, even if misinformation gets caught out there by some content moderators at the platforms, it already has been shared thousands or millions of times. so, it is difficult to control the speech, but i agree with what the caller was saying, there is a lot of contempt for these platforms that they do not take more response ability, that they do just care about their bottom line and more incendiary content drives more viewers and subscribers even though it is free. these platforms take a lot of your data and it is used and nothing is free per se. so, i think that is a real concern i think -- and i think it will be a quandary on how these lawmakers look to change the law and how the companies

react to the feedback yesterday and there was a lot of yelling. but, i do not know what more will happen after it. host: carla, wayne city, illinois, republican line. caller: yes, i have two questions. the first one is, i agree that the platforms on social media, they censor a lot, but i noticed they do not censor near as much on the blm, but they censor more people that are speaking their mind about how they feel. and not focusing on other things besides donald trump or things like that. but then my second question is, is what is the difference between social media and the regular news media, not giving the full truth and not being

responsible for their actions. guest: those are good questions. i think it is interesting, i do not know if you watched yesterday, a lot of the complaints and -- in previous hearings, they were on capitol hill before the election, were about moving conservative leaning speech and censorship. the platforms claim not to be biased and to remove conservative leaning speech. i do not have the stats myself as to the right down there, but that is certainly a perception shared by republicans on capitol hill. i do think also that it is going to be interacting -- interesting to see where the platforms go from here. remind me, what was the second question? host: i apologize, i did not

jotted down. i apologize. let's hear from robert, new jersey, democrats line. caller: hi, how are you doing? this is coming from a progressive point of view. i hate the former president. but, i am not comfortable in living in a society where a source of information for billions of people is being censored the way it is and i guess it is a private company and they have their own terms and conditions, but you are still taking information away, information that they want to hear from millions of people. i would like to hear your thoughts on that. guest: it is a good question and a position that they are put in where they are controlling speech and what information people receive. i do not know if you saw bernie sanders and the interview this week raising the same concerns

-- in the interview this week raising the same concerns. a big company can takedown a former president, who said they cannot take on other world leaders or progressive leaders or democrats. if they are very powerful in the moves they take and they are private companies and they are not subject of first amendment requirements, -- subject to first amendment requirements. they can do what they want on their platforms, but they are still widely read around the world, so one action -- what we did hear when it comes to world leaders on the platforms as jack dorsey from twitter said, they are doing a survey in hundreds of languages around the world on their platform to determine whether to change their world leader policy. the supreme leader of iran, other world leaders who do share

pretty incendiary content on their twitter feed, sometimes they do remain. so, they are looking at how to approach this issue, how to evenly, or fairly, as fair as you can do it, moderate speech from world leaders and it is a question they are having to address and i really think it is what the platforms will have to do because as we have seen, congress cannot act fast enough to really punish or moderate these companies right now until they come to some agreement, so we willie -- really have to rely on self-regulation from companies at the time. host: here is a bit of that exchange with the ceo of twitter, jack dorsey, he was going back and forth with the health minority leader steve scalise talking about bias when it talks about censoring speech. this is the new york -- >> this is the new york post, founded by alexander hamilton,

and for weeks, this source article before an election about hunter biden was banned by twitter and when you contrast that, you have this washington post article that was designed to mis-portray a conversation between president trump and the georgia's secretary of state since been -- parts of this has been debugged -- debunked and this article can still be tweeted out. i want to ask mr. dorsey, do you recognize that there is a real concern that if there is an anti-conservative bias on twitter's to help, do you recognize that this has to stop? this -- twitter will be viewed by both sides as a place where everyone will get fair treatment. >> we made a mistake with the new york press, we corrected that within 24 hours. it had to do with the -- we do

not write policy according to any particular political leaning. if we find any of it, we write it out. we will make mistakes and our goal is to correct them as quickly as possible and in that case, we did. >> to the larger issue of the topic of when these tech companies involve themselves and content and what to let through and what is not, is this done by people with eyeballs, is it done by algorithms, is it a combination of both, how does it work? guest: they are not very transparent with all of that. they do have content moderators for sure. facebook says that there are 80 around the world that look at this content. it definitely goes through algorithms, computer models before and i am sure they tag keywords that are not allowed on their platform to stop these posts before they are widely spread and then they have the

human element and they did share some stats between october and december of last year, they removed 1.3 billion, this is facebook, fake accounts. so, they also have to deal with that as well. fraud on the platforms. it is a really highly evolved problem and coming at them from all directions i think every ceo uses the phrase whack a mole. they are just trying to cap -- keep up. it is hard. if it was an easy solution on content moderation, i think we would have a change in the law and we would not see this as a problem. it is a really multifaceted, difficult problem. host: robert in new jersey, democrats line, you are on with our guest, rebecca kern. caller: i asked a question, i do

not have any more questions. host: thank you for letting us know that. florida, independence line, hi. -- independents line, hi. caller: is she familiar with the election integrity partnership report on how social media was used to influence the narrative of a stolen election? and if you think this report, which was quite detailed, will be brought up during the hearings. guest: i am not as familiar with that, i do not know who put that report out. you are saying that they spread information that it was not stolen? host: if i may interrupt, the color, who put out the report -- the caller, who put out the report? see to it was an

election integrity partnership of stanford university, university of stanford and the university of washington, plus many partners, i'd have to guess -- some of the takeaways were that misleading and false claim narratives coalesce into a made a narrative -- meta-narrative into a stolen election which led to the insurrection. guest: that is certainly an issue that was brought up. that is why they were brought to capitol hill, to interrogate them on their role of the misinformation, on their platforms. as i mentioned at the top, they were pretty contrite -- dorsey want the furthest in saying that he had some responsibility in the widely spread, stop the

steal messaging on the platform although i would say facebook had a lot of that on their platform too. and a lot of groups that were formed related to the stop the steal movement. he put a lot of the individuals and donald trump and therefore, we saw them stop donald trump. you have to the question, what platform were they using to spread that information? it was their platform. i would say there is more there that i do not know what just happened -- what will happen next, if it is a lawsuit against the company, but coming back to the issue we talked about earlier, section 230 wherein they cannot get sued for third-party content on their platforms. it is a real problem. it is really a problem congress created through that law as well. host: the website for the report that the caller brought up, it

is stanford.edu if you want to reference that report on taking a look at january six nomadic. -- january 6th. guest: i wish they did that at the top of the hearing. misinformation is spreading false information. without the intent of malice. maybe you did not realize it was now true and you reach we did it anyways. disinformation is the intent, malicious intent, of spreading false information. i would go as far as saying after the november election and we had an accurate count of the outcome and now president biden was the winner, trump was spreading disinformation saying he had won the election.

it would be an example of disinformation. knowing it is not sure even if you do not want to agree with that, but that was false information and it was spread as if it was truth. i do have to give the company's credit that they labeled these tweets, but they did not take them down because of their world leader policy, which i mentioned dorsey is reevaluating, but they keep on tweets from world leaders because they are newsworthy. at the end they take tweets down because we had the final election count and they were just wrong. host: can i ask, how prepared do you think the legislators themselves were asking these types of questions when it comes to technology positive -- positive -- policy? guest: i had a lot of frustration that they cannot pronounce the franchise name.

the lack of education was disappointing. he has been on capitol hill multiple times. he is the ceo of a major company. it was an annoyance and frustration. they were pretty well educated, obviously the younger members understood the platforms better. it happens all the time. i think we had new narratives coming from -- we have a new republican leader of the health energy committee, the first female in that role. she is a mother of three and she really took the narrative -- all the republicans were talking about the impact that social media has on mental health and the well-being of children.

it was really compelling, the arguments she was making about massive increases in suicide rates, especially in her state of washington alone, she was citing increases due to a lot of loneliness and self judgment and negativity that teens know that young people face when they look on these platforms continuously all the time and compare themselves to others. also talked about the growth of child predators on these platforms and it is a really serious problem and facebook and twitter and google are well aware of it. they do report this to the national center for exploiting of children. they tracked these individuals down, but as i said, it is hard to catch everything.

-- they did not have any answers on taking accountability for the impact, the mental health impact on children. i do not think she prepared them for those kind of questions. she came on strong, so i think they were really unified in that messaging and if we see legislation to hold these count -- companies accountable, for these mental health issues, maybe that will be the outcome of this hearing. we will have to wait and see. host: cleveland, tennessee, democrats line. caller: i was just wondering, he promised that we would get $1300 more per month. is he going to do something about it because --

host: i will stop you there because this goes to the previous segment, which is not our topic. david, grand rapids, michigan, last call. caller: i cannot stand when skill easy comes up there and throws the lies. i want the internet to tell the truth -- when scalise comes up there and throws the lies. i want the internet to tell the truth. fox to a certain extent, the thing about fox, they do not tell the whole truth, they do not tell the whole story. at least with msnbc and cnn, they are willing to say things that fox says is wrong whereas fox flat out says we are right and you are wrong. my thing is, the internet -- the mainstream media is not allowed to lie to you, i do not care what anyone says, they are not allowed to lie to you.

we can do that by passing the correct laws. host: let's leave it there and let our guests respond to that. guest: i think that is fair. i think media, mass media, like a lot of these publications and tv sites you are talking about are held to different standards, they are held liable and conveys definition -- and conveys defamation lawsuits. that is the crux of the issue they were talking about yesterday. this morning, fox did get sued by dominion voting system because of the lies they spread about their systems being faulty and not counting up all the votes. they are reliable and can get sued. i sent first -- i sense frustration from the listener and from lawmakers but here's the thing, they have the power to change the law.

maybe this growing public anger from their constituents will push them to act, but the thing is, we are in -- we are not in a divided congress, we have democrat-controlled boats -- votes, but we need democrats and republicans to join together in the senate to pass any bill, and to pass any bill, you need 60 votes unless you change the filibuster. you'll need democrats and republicans to work together to pass any change. you could technically get a bill through the house without any republicans, but you will need more republicans in the senate. host: you hear from many different sectors and reporting on this when it comes to the internet, people are concerned about a chilling effect, especially when you put in more recordation, that is a major push back as far as pushing more laws in. guest: i do not know what will happen. i do think this law is outdated, i think 25 years ago, the internet was a very different

place. i do think you can put forward some narrowly focused reforms that can tackle some of the real, serious, terrible content on these platforms. we did see it happen, in 2018, congress jointly passed a law that basically made it illegal for sex workers to be -- any of that content to be shared on those platforms because there was a lot of sex trafficking happening and they took out -- they made an exemption in section 230 saying that you are held liable in any content related to sex trafficking occurs on your platform, so they can get sued. that was bipartisan. i do have some hope that if the issue gets bad enough, you can get both republicans and democrats to agree on a narrow provision to take some accountability, and have them be

liable for certain content on the platforms, they make it narrowly focused. there is one bipartisan bill to date in the senate it is the pact act, republicans from south dakota and they are trying to update section 230, narrowly reform it and they will require these transparency reports that facebook is calling for that would report how much of this speech is taking online and they would also have to remove content within 4 days of a court order if a court of use that it is illegal content. it would put more response ability on the tech platforms. host: republic out rebecca covers -- you can see her work at bgov.com.

thank >> we will leave this to complete our commitment to congressional coverage. now we take your life to the floor of the u.s. house for brief pro forma session. [captioning made possible by the national captioning institute, inc., in cooperation with the united states house of representatives. any use of the closed-captioned coverage of the house proceedings for political or commercial purposes is expressly prohibited by the u.s. house of representatives.]