telehealth for cut furry animals. >> we have red ink all across the board. i will leave you with this, the dow is down just under 700 points. the nasdaq is down 31points. thatthat 318 points. that is significant selloff. chewy, a winner. my time is up. neil. it yours. neil: my dogs love chewy. they order themselves but kind of tough with the paws. they're in the break, as stuart was telling you in the senate commerce committee with richest guys on the planet. jack dorsey from twitter, suck mark zuckerberg from facebook and sundar pichai, about $125 billion in wealth. mostly mr. zuckerberg with his 111 billion-dollar fortune.

most republicans say they're not fair to conservative speech, for that matter, conservative stories. they're more inclined to go after more liberal content. it went way beyond that to talk about the business model themself. whether they need the protections of this 230, section 230 here you know a good deal about. this is part of the 1996 telecommunications act that would shield them from liability for third party speech, speech that seems to be offensive or just wrong but they're calling into question whether that protection should be allowed to them or they should be treated like regular publishers of content. they're obviously dead-set against that. to varying degrees their business depends on it. it is a reminder here that they are being called in. democrats were questioning the timing of all of this. you know, right now, just days ahead of the election. but the fact of the matter is, they're not done. they're in the lunch break.

gillian turner where this all stands, how long this could go. jillian? >> neil i don't think the hearing will wrap up before two two or 3:00 p.m. they still have to take a lunch break. we'll get you updated on timing as we get more. interesting you point out, mark zuckerberg one of the richest people in the room, he is not immune from internet problems. he was late before he got on board. he apologized to the committee that he had connection activity issues. that tells you all you need to know about the hearing this. talking to tech ceos about section 230, that little-known legislative provision. section 230 is really powerful. they govern how the internet platforms can operate. what they can do. who is responsible for when things ultimately go wrong. senator cruise cruise a few moments ago got into it with twitter ceo jack dorsey.

take a listen. >> but today, i want to focus my questioning on mr. dorsey and on twitter because of the three players before us i think twitter's conduct has by far been the most egregious. mr. dorsey, does twitter have the ability to influence elections? >> no. >> you don't believe twitter has any ability to influence elections? >> no. we are one part of a spectrum of communications channels people have. >> so you're testifying to this committee right now that twitter when it silences people, when it censors people, when it blocks political speech, that has no impact on elections? >> so everyone of the big three tech execs here this morning so far pleaded with the senate commerce committee to not get rid of section 230. it would essentially destroy the internet as we know it today. take a listen to jack dorsey.

>> section 230 is the most important law protecting internet speech and removing section 230 will remove speech from the internet. >> now mark zuckerberg is taking an interesting tact today. he is making the case over the years facebook really evolved to the point it is indispensable to american democracy. listen to what he had to say. >> we estimate that we have helped more than 4.4 million people register to vote and 100,000 people volunteer to be poll workers. candidates on both sides continue to use our platforms to reach voters. >> the big picture takeaway so far this morning, neil, is from these big tech execs is that they don't want to be held accountable for the content their users post on their platforms but statement they want to retain the ability to remove that content when they feel it violates their rules. so it is quite a bit of wanting their cake and wanting to eat it at the same time. neil?

neil: yeah. because obviously conservatives, you're more inclined to do that with conservative views or thoughts or stories than you are the other way around. we'll see how it goes. jillian, thank you very much for that update. i want to go to brendan carr, sec commissioner. very good to have you back with us, sir. is it your sense we're looking at the very least revisiting section 230 and the rules around it and how it is policed? ad a minimum it seemed like some changes are afoot. maybe depends on the election but your thought? >> i think we're in a watershed moment. if you look at the progress we made over the last few weeks in terms of building momentum for reforming section 230, we've never seen so many republicans and conservatives standing up for free speech. look i watched a lot of the testimony this morning. jack dorsey made a number of claims that if they had been statements on his own website it would have been flagged as

potential misinformation. he is trying to scare off those trying to reform 230, claiming any efforts to change that law will result in more censorship, not less. he has it backwards. as reporter just indicated if other people's speech is on their website, they don't need to be liable for that, that's fine but there is a second piece of the law which is when they take down speech. courts have read that provision giving them carte blanche to remove any speech they want. the purpose of reforming 230 to put them through the higher statutory test before they take down any speech. the up shot of that is going to be less censorship. that is great for our democracy. neil: so let me, that is the point i wanted to follow up on, commissioner. what if their solution to this, all right we won't take down anything, no matter how suspicious, no matter how crazy. we won't take it down, let the reader user beware? >> i think that is a better path forward than where we are right now. one of the solutions they're

offering is these ideas around quote, unquote transparency. that is fine. we need more transparency. that is fleas off the vest, that is not the fundamental reforms for 230. 230 right now to your point lays out specific categories in the speech if speech falls into the category we tan take it down with statutory rights but with their bonus section 230 seconds. i'm comfortable with the regime we bring much more clarity when you take speech down. if the up shot is more speech i think we're better for that. let's let the american people make their own decisions. we don't need people in silicon valley being the arbiters of truth. one of the reason internet speech is so powerful people went there to get around the traditional gatekeepers we had in mainstream media. now the lack of gatekeepers that made the internet so attractive as a platform is ending. now silicon valley is stepping into the role of those

gatekeepers. i think we're moving in the wrong direction. why 230 reform is so necessary. neil: what do you think if you don't know where the speech, offensive or otherwise where the speech is coming from? wasn't that part of the 2016 election, a lot was coming from abroad, hacking effort on part of the russians, we're told made it hard to discern what was real and what wasn't? what are social media companies responsibilities with something like that. forget about the tone, tenor or even whether it is conservative or liberal stories? >> yeah. the challenge there is there is no arbiter of truth when it comes to this. right now you have the "new york post" story. you send democrats coming out labeling it misinformation coming straight from the crem kremlin. we don't need people like this labeling this type of speech. let people make their own minds up. increasingly we're seeing concept of misinformation, concept of disnothings is being

abused with gatekeeper authority to shut down political speech they don't agree with. neil: what if it is coming from the kremlin. i get your rationale and thinking here. you can't pick and choose your battles, but what if the stories themselves are fake? that they're coming from another venue? they're coming from a foreign entity just trying to screw things up in an election year? >> to your point you have to weigh the risk of misinformation with the risk of capturing in your misinformation efforts legitimate critical speech. where i have come down with that, more speech is better f something truly is foreign government misinformation or disinformation, let's have people identify it themselves but there is too much of a risk factor, particularly that we're seeing right now. i think the bottom line here too, facebook, twitter, these entities act like a publisher every single day. when they run the fact checks. when twitter has trending news section, these are publisher activities that twitter is engaging in. as we reform 230, we should be

very clear about that because that publisher conduct falls outside protections of 230. neil: all right. commissioner, thank you, very, very much. i believe the hearings have resumed. is that right? what i'm looking at is in fact live? let's go back. >> senator, i don't know the answer to that off the top of my head but i can get back to you. >> thank you. >> senator, we -- legal lawsuits but not sure what of it applies to content-related issues but happen to follow up. >> thank you. >> i don't have those numbers. >> let me use your answers to highlight something that i want to be a top pick of our conversation as we debate this legislation. whatever the numbers are you indicate that they are significant. it is a, enormous amount of money and enormous amount of employee time, contract labor time in dealing with modification of content.

these, these efforts are expensive and i would highlight for my colleagues on the committee that they will not be any less expensive, perhaps less in scale but not less in cost for startups and small businesses. and, as we develop our policies in regard to this topic i want to make certain that entrepreneurship, startup businesses and, small business are considered in what it would cost in their efforts to meet the kind of standards that, that to operate in the sphere. let me quickly turn to federal privacy. i chair the consumer data privacy security act. we tried for months, senator blumenthal and i, to develop a bipartisan piece of legislation. we were close but unsuccessful in doing so. let me ask mr. zuckerberg, facebook entered into a consent order with the ftc in july of

2012 for violations of the ftc act and later agreed to pay a five billion dollar penalty along with a robust settlement order in 2018 following the cambria analytica incident, following the 2012 order. my legislation would have first time civil penalty authority. do you think this type of tool from the ftc would better deter unfair tee deceptive practices than the current enforcement regime? >> senator, i would need to understand it in more detail before weighing in on this but i think the settlement we have with the ftc, we're going to be setting up an industry leading privacy program. we have, i think more than 1000 engineers working on privacy program and now we're basically implementing a program which is

sort of the equivalent of sarbanes-oxley's financial regulation around internal auditing and controls around privacy and protecting people's data as well. so i think that settlement will be quite effective in, in insuring that people's data and privacy are protected. >> mr. pichai, google, youtube's 170 million-dollar settlement with the ftc in the state of new york for alleged violations of copa involve persistent identifiers. how should federal legislation persistent identifiers for consumers over the age of 13? >> senator, we today have been listed, we've done two things as a company. we invested in one-of-a-kind special product called youtube kids. their content can be safe for kids. obviously on the youtube main

product, the internet gets used, families to view content and part of our settlement was adapting so that they can accommodate for those use cases as well. you know, privacy is one of the most important area we invested in as a company. have thousands of engineers working on it. we believe in giving users, control, choice, transparency and anytime we associate data with users we are transparently both see what data is there. we give them complete controls. we give data portability options and just last year we announced a important change for all new users. we delete the data automatically without them needing to do anything. and the -- go through privacy checkup where a billion people have gone through their privacy checkups. it is an area where we are -- [inaudible]. >> thank you. mr. chairman. i don't see the time clock. do you have time for one more? >> i really don't. your time just expired. thank you very much.

>> mr. chairman, thank you so much. >> thank you. senator markey. >> thank you, mr. chairman, very much. today from his republican allies in congress and his propaganda parrots on fox news are pedaling a myth and today my republican colleagues on the senate commerce committee are simply doing the president's bidding. let's be clear. republicans can and should join us in addressing the real problems posed by big tech but instead my republican colleagues are determined to be feed a false narrative about anti-conservative bias meant to intimidate big tech so it will stand idly by and allow interference in our election again. here's the truth. violence and hate speech online are real problems.

anti--- bias -- a problem. our foreign attempts to influence our election with disinformation are real problems. anti-conservative bias is not a problem. the big tech business model puts profits ahead of people is a real problem. anti-conservative bias is not a problem. the issue is not the companies before us today are taking too many posts down, the issue is they're leaving too many dangerous posts up. in fact, they're amplifying harmful content so that it spreads like wildfire and torches our democracy. mr. zuckerberg, when president trump posted on facebook that when the looting starts, the shooting starts, you fail to take down that post. within a day the post had hundreds of thousands of shares and likes on facebook.

since then the president has gone on national television and told a hate group to quote, stand by. he has repeatedly refused to commit that he will accept the election results. mr. zuckerberg, can you commit that if the president goes on facebook and encourages violence after election results are announced, that you will make sure your company's algorithms don't spread that content and you will immediately remove those messages? >> senator, yes, incitement of violence is against our policy and there are not exceptions to that including for politicians. >> there are exceptions did you say? >> there are not exceptions. >> there are no exceptions. which is very important because obviously there could be a message that, messages that are sent that could throw our

democracy into chaos and a lot of it can be and will be created if social media sites do not police what president says. mr. zuckerberg, if president trump shares russian or iranian disinformation, lying about the outcome of the election, can you commit that you will make sure that your algorithms do not amplify that content and that you will immediately take that content down? >> senator, we have a policy in place that prevents any candidate or campaign from prematurely declaring victory or trying to delegitimatize the result of the election. what we will do in that case we will append some factual information to any post that is trying to do that. so if someone says they won the election when the result isn't in, for example, we will append a piece of information saying

that official election results are not in yet. so that way anyone who sees that post will see that context in line. and also, if one of the candidates tries to prematurely declare victory or cite an incorrect result, we have a precaution that we have built in to put at the top of the facebook app for everyone who signs in the u.s., information about the accurate u.s. election voting results. this is a very important issue to make sure that people can get accurate information about the results of the election. >> it cannot be stated as being anything less than critically important. democracy could be seriously challenged beginning next tuesday evening and for several days afterwards, maybe longer and a lot of responsibility is going to be on the shoulders of facebook and our other witnesses today. mr. zuckerberg, if president trump uses his facebook account to call for armed private

citizens to patrol the polls on election day, which would constitute illegal, illegal voter intimidation and violation of the voting rights act, will you commit that your algorithms will not spread that content and you will immediately take that content down? >> senator, my understanding is that content like what you're saying would violate our voter suppression policies and would come down. >> stakes are very high. we'll take that as as a commitment that you will do that. obviously we would otherwise have a serious question mark placed over our elections. we know facebook cares about one thing, keeping users glued to its platform. one of the ways you do that is with facebook groups. mr. zuckerberg, in 2017. you announced a goal of one

billion users joining facebook groups. unfortunately these foreign pages have become breeding grounds for hate, echo chambers of misinformation an venues for coordination of violence. facebook is not only failing to take the pages down, it is actively spreading these pages and helping these groups recruitment efforts. facebook's own internal research found 64% of all extremist groups joined are due to facebook's recommendation tools. mr. zuckerberg, will you commit to stopping all group recommendations on your platform until you u.s. election results are certified, yes or no? >> senator, we have taken the step of stopping recommendations and groups for, for all political content or social issue groups as a precaution for this. >> just to chairfy one thing, the vast, vast majority of groups and communities people

are a part of are not extremist organizations or even political. they're interest based and communities i think are quite helpful and healthy for people to be a part of. i do think we need to make sure that our recommendation algorithm doesn't encourage people to join extremist groups. that is something that we have already taken a number of steps on. i agree with you it is very important we continue to make progress on. >> your algorithm are promoting online spaces promoting political violence. at very least you should -- groups that during most sensitive period of our democracy. >> thank you, senator markey. mr. zuckerberg, let me ask you this, in these scenarios that senator markey was posing, the action of facebook would not be a function of algorithms in those cases, would it? >> senator, i think that's,

you're right, that is a good clarification. a lot of this is more about enforcement of content policies. some of the questions were about algorithms. i think group ranking is an algorithm but broadly i think a lot of it is content enforcement. >> thank you for clarifying that. senator blackburn, you are recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman and i want to thank each of you for coming to us voluntarily. we appreciate that. there are undoubter he hadly benefits to using your platform as you heard everyone mention today. there are also concerns which we're also hearing. privacy, free speech, politics, religion and, i have kind of chuckled as i sat her listening to you all, valley of the gods. it reminds me that you all are kind of in control of what people are going to hear, what they're going to see, and

therefore you have the ability to dictate what is coming in, what information is coming in to them. i think it is important to realize you know, that you're set up as an information source, not as a news media. and so therefore censoring things that you all think are unseemly may be something that is not unseemly to people in other parts of the country but let me ask each of you very quickly, do any of you have any content moderators who are conservative? mr. dorsey, first, yes or no? >> we don't ask political ideology. >> you don't. mr. zuckerberg? >> senator, we don't ask for their ideology but just -- 35,000 of them, in cities, places all across the country and world. so i would imagine, yes. >> mr. pichai?

>> the answer would be yes because we hire them to through the united states. >> okay. all right. and looking at some of your censoring, mr. dorsey, you all have censored joe biden zero times? you have censored donald trump 65 times. so i want to go back to senator gardiner's questions. you claimed earlier that the holocaust denial and threats of jewish genocide by iran's ayatollah don't violate your so-called rules and it is important for world leaders like iran's terrorist leader to have a platform on twitter. so let me ask you this. who elects the ayatollah? >> i don't know. >> you don't know? i think, this is called a dictatorship. so are people in iran allowed to

use twitter? or does the country whose leader you claim deserves a platform ban them from doing so? >> i -- dearly love for the people of iran to use twitter. >> iran bans twitter. and mr. zuckerberg you are aware they ban facebook also. so, mr. dorsey, is donald trump a world leader? >> yes. >> okay. so it would be important for world leaders to have access to your platform, correct? >> correct. >> and so, why did you deny that platform via censorship to the u.s. president? >> we haven't censored the u.s. president. >> yes, you have. how many posts from iran's terrorist ayatollah have you censored? how many posts from vladmir putin have you censored? >> we have labeled tweets of world leaders. we have policy around not taking down the content but simply

adding more context around it. >> okay. and the u.s. president you have censored 65 times. you testified that you're worried about disinformation and election interference. that is something we all worry about. and of course for about 100 years foreign sources have been trying to influence u.s. policy and u.s. elections. now they're on to your platform. they see this as a way to get access to the american people. so given your refusal to censor ban foreign dictators while regularly censoring the president, are you at this moment personally responsible for flooding the nation with foreign disinformation? >> just to be clear we have not censored the president. we have not taken the tweets down that you're referencing. they have more context and a label applied to them.

we do the same for leaders around the world. >> okay. let me ask you this, do you share any of your data mining, this is to each of the three of you, do you share any of your data mining with the democrat national committee? >> i'm not sure what you mean by the question but we have a, we have a data platform we have a number of customers, i'm not sure of the customer list. >> okay. and you said, you don't keep lists, i made that note. >> keep lists of accounts that we watch. we don't keep a list of accounts that we watch. >> all right. mr. pichai, is blake lamoin one of your engineers still working with you? >> senator, i believe, that is a name, i'm not sure if he is currently an employee. >> okay. well, he has had very unkind

things to say about me and i was just wondering if you all had still kept him working there. also, i want to mention with you, mr. pichai, that the way you all have censored some things. google searches for joe biden generated approximately 30,000 impressions. for "breitbart" links. this was on may 1. and after may 5th, both the impressions and the clicks went to zero. i hope that what you all realize from this hearing is, that there is a pattern. you may not believe it exists but there is a pattern of subjective manipulation of the information that is available to people from your platforms. what has driven additional attention to this is the fact that more of a family's

functional life is now being conducted online. because of this, more people have realizing that you are picking winners and losers. you're trying to, mr. zuckerberg, years ago you said, facebook functions more like a government than a company and you're beginning to, to insert yourself into these issues of free speech. mr. zuckerberg, was my time that is left, let me ask you this. you mentioned early in your remarks that you saw some things as competing equities. is the first amendment, a given right or is that a competing equity? >> [inaudible] i believe strongly in free

expression. sorry if i was on mute there. but i do think that like all equities it needs to, it is balanced against other equities like safety and privacy. even, the people who believe in the strongest possible interpretation of the first amendment still believe that there should be some limits on speech when it could cause imminent risk of physical harm. famous example is used that you can't shout fire in a crowded theater. so getting those equities and balance right are challenges that we face. >> the time has expired. perhaps we can -- >> we believe in the first amendment and we are going to, yes, we have will have questions to follow up. thank you, mr. chairman. i can't see the clock. >> thank you. senator udall. >> mr. chairman, thank you and senator cantwell really appreciate this hearing. i want to start by laying out

three facts. the u.s. intelligence community has found that the russian government is intent on election interference in the united states. they did it in 2016. they're doing it in 2020. the intelligence also says that they want to help president trump. they did so in 2016. president doesn't like this to be said but it is a fact. we also know that the russian strategy this time around is going after hunter biden. so i recognize that the details of how to handle misinformation on the internet are tough but i think the companies like twitter and facebook that took action not to be a part of a suspected russian election interference operation were doing the right thing. and let me be clear, no one believes these companies represent the law or represent the public. when we say work the refs, the

u.s. government is the referee. the fcc, the congress, the presidency and the supreme court are the referees. it is very dangerous for president trump, justice thomas and republicans in congress and at the fcc to threaten new federal laws in order to force social media companies to amplify false claims to conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns and my question to all three of you, do the, do the russian government and other foreign nations continue to attempt to use your company's platforms to spread disinformation and influence the 2020 election? can you briefly describe what you are seeing. please start, mr. dorsey around then mr. pichai and mr. zuckerberg. you gave an answer partially on this i would like you to expand on that answer.

thank you. >> yes. so we do continue to see interference. we recently disclosed actions we took on both russia and actions originating out of iran. we made those disclosures public. we can you know, share those with your team. but this remains, as you heard from others on the panel, as mark has detailed, one of our highest priorities, something we want to make sure that we are focused on, eliminating as much mat form manipulation as possible. >> senator. we do continue to secord nated influence operation items. we've been very vigilant. we appreciate the calls we get from agencies and companies. we are sharing information, to give you an example and to publish transparency reports.

in june we identified efforts, one from iran, group targeting the trump campaign, one from china, targeting the biden campaign. most of these are phishing attempts, our spam filters were able to remove most of the emails from reaching users but we notified intelligence agencies. that is an example of the kind of activity we see. you know i think it is an area where we would need strong cooperation with government agencies moving forward. >> mr. zuckerberg. >> senator, like jack and sundar we also see continued attempts by russia and other countries, especially iran and china, to run these kind of information operations. we also see an increase in kind of domestic operations around

the world. fortunately we have been able to build partnerships across the industry. both the companies and law enforcement intelligence communities to share signals to identify these threats sooner. and along the lines of what you mentioned earlier, you know, one of the threats that the fbi has alerted our companies and the public to was the possibility of the hack and leak operation in days or weeks leading up to this election. so you had both public testimony from the fbi and in private meetings, alerts that were given to, at least our company, i assume the others as well, that suggested that we be on high alert and sensitivity, that if a trove of documents appeared, that we should view that with suspicion, that it might be part of a foreign manipulation attempt. so that is what we're seeing.

i'm happy to go into more detail as well if that is helpful. >> thank you very much. this one is really a simple question, i think a yes or no. will you continue to push back against this kind of foreign interference even if powerful republicans threaten to take official action against your companies? mr. zuckerberg, why don't we start with you and work the other way back? >> senator, absolutely. this is incredibly important for our democracy. we're committed to doing this work. >> senator, absolutely. protecting our civic and democratic process is fundamental to what we do and we'll do everything we can. >> yes, we will continue to work and push back on any manipulation of the plat form. >> thank you for those answers. mr. zuckerberg, do facebook and other social media networks have an obligation to prevent disinformation and malicious actors spreading conspiracy

theories, dangerous health disinformation and hate speech, even if preventing its spread means less traffic and potentially less advertising revenue for facebook? >> senator, in general, yes. i think that for foreign countries trying to inter fear in democracy that is a relatively clear-cut question where i would hope that no one disagrees we don't want foreign countries or governments trying to interfere in our elections, whether through disinformation or fake accounts or anything like that. around health misinformation, we're in the middle of a pandemic. it's a health emergency. i certainly think this is a high sensitivity time. so we're treating with extra sensitivity any misinformation that could lead to harm around covid. that would lead people to not get the right treatments or to not take the right security

precautions. we do draw distinct between harmful misinformation and information that is just wrong and we take a harder line and more enforcement against harmful misinformation. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, senator udall. senator capito. >> thank you, mr. chairman and thank all of you for being with us today. i would say that anytime that we can get the three of you in front of the american people, whether it is several days before an election or several days after is extremely useful and can be very productive. i appreciate the three of you coming and the committee holding this hearing. as we heard americans turn every day to your platted forms for a lot of information. i would like to get a shoutout to mr. zuckerberg. last time he was part of our committee i had asked him to share the plenty of facebook into rural america and help us with our fiber deployment into

rural america. what we see in the covid environment we see how important that is. and he follows through with that. i would like to thank him and his company for helping partner with us in west virginia to get more people connected. i would make a suggestion, when we get to the end, when we talk about fines, what i think we could do with millions and billion dollar fines some of your companies have been penalized on, we could make a great jump to get to the last household but the topic today is on objectionable content and how you make those judgments. so quickly each one of you i know in section 230, it says the term is objectionable content or otherwise objectionable. would you be in favor of redefining that more specifically? that is awful broad. and that is where i think some of these questions become very difficult to answer. we'll start with mr. dorsey on

the, how do you define otherwise objectionable and objectionable and how can we improve that definition so it is easier to follow. >> our interpretation of objectionable is anything that is potentially limiting the speech of others. a lot of our policies are focused that people feel safe to express themselves and when we see abuse or harrassment, misleading information, these are all threats against us. that makes people want to leave the internet. makes people want to leave these conversations online. so that is what we're trying to protect is making sure that people feel safe enough and free enough to express themselves in whatever way they wish. >> this is follow-up to that. much has been talked about the blocking of "new york post." do you have a instance or for instance where you blocked somebody would be considered politically liberal on the other

side in the political realm in this country? do you have an offset where the "new york post" criticism has come from? >> well we don't have an understanding of the ideology of any one particular account. that is also not how our policies are written or our enforcement taken. i'm sure there are a number of examples but that is not, that is not our focus. we're looking purely at the violations of our policies, taking action against that. >> mr. zuckerberg how would you define otherwise objectionable or objectionable, but how would you define the definition of that to make it more, more objective than subjective? >> senator, thank you. when i look at the written language in section 230 and the content that we think shouldn't be allowed on our services, some of the things that we bucket in otherwise objectionable content include general bullying, harrassment of people on the

platform. somewhat similar to what jack was talking about a minute ago. now i would worry some of the proposals that suggest getting rid of the phrase, otherwise objectionable from section 230 would limit our ability to remove bullying and harassing content from our platforms which would make them worse places for people. so i think we need to be very careful in how we think through that? >> thank you. mr. pichai? >> senator, maybe i would add that the content is so dynamic, 500 hours per minute media floated on average of any day, queries we've never seen before. to give you an example a few years ago there was an issue around teenagers consumeing -- bots. it was kind of issue causing real harm. -- tide pods. when we run into the situation we're able to act with certainty

and protect our users. the christ church shooting, it was learning moment for all the platforms. we were able to intervene again with certainty. that is what otherwise objectionable allows. i think that flexibility is what allows us to focus. we always state with clear policies what we are doing but i think it gives platforms of all sizes flexibilities to protect our users. >> thank you. i think, i'm hearing from all three of you, that the definition is fairly acceptable to you. in my view sometimes i think it can go too much to the eyes of the beholder, the beholder, you all or your reviewers or a.i., gets into a region that becomes very subjective. i want to go to a different topic. in my personal conversations

with two of you expressed the need to have the 230 protections because of the protections it gives to the small innovators. you sit in front of us and i think all of us are wondering who, how many small innovators and what kind of market share could they possibly have when we see the dominance of of the three of you. how, i understand you started as small innovators when you started i get that. how can a small innovator really break through? what does 230 really have to do with the ability, i'm skeptical on the argument quite frankly. whoever wants to answer that, mr. zuckerberg you want to start? >> sure, senator. i do think when we getting started with building facebook if we were subject to a larger number of content lawsuits because 230 didn't exist, that would have likely made it prohibitive for me as a college student in a dorm room to get

started with this enterprise. i think that, it may make sense to modify 230 at this point to make sure it is still working as intended but i think it is extremely important that we make sure that, that for smaller companies that are getting started the cost of having to comply with any regulation is either waived until a certain scale or at a minimum taken into account as a serious factor to make sure we're not preventing the next set of ideas from getting built. >> thank you, mr. senator. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> senator baldwin. >> thank you. i would like to begin by making two points. i believe the republicans have called this hearing in order to support a false narrative fabricated by the president to help his re-election prospects. and number two, i believe that the tech companies here today

need to take more action, not less to combat misinformation including misinformation on the election, misinformation on the covid-19 pandemic and misinformation and posts meant to incite violence. and that should include misinformation spread by president trump on their platforms. so i want to start with asking the committee clerk to bring up my first slide. mr. dorsey i appreciate the work twitter has done to flag or even take downfalls or misleading information about covid-19. such as this october 11th tweet by the president claiming he has immunity to the virus after contracting it,

recovering, contrary to what the medical community tells us. just yesterday morning the president tweeted this. that the media is incorrectly focused on the pandemic and that our nation is quote rounding the turn on covid-19. in fact, according to johns hopkins university in the past week, the seven-day national average of new cases reached its highest level ever and in my home state of wisconsin, case counts continue to reach record levels. yesterday wisconsin set a new record with 64 deaths and 5462 new confirmed cases of covid-19. that is not rounding the turn but it is also not a tweet that was flagged or taken down m dorsey, given the volume of misleading posts about covid-19 out there, do you prioritize removal based on something like, the reach or audience of a

particular user of twitter? >> i could be mistaken but it looks like the tweet that you showed actually did have a label pointing to both of them. >> pointing to our covid resource hub in our interface. so we, in regards to misleading information we have policies against manipulating media in support of public health and in covid information. and, we, and election interference and -- integrity. we take action on it. in some cases it is labeling. in some cases it is removal. >> what additional steps are you planning to take to address dangerously misleading tweets like the president rounding the turn tweet? >> we, we want to make sure we are giving people as much information as possible.

and ultimately we're connecting the dots. when we see information like that, that they have an easy way to get, you know, an official resource or, you know, many more viewpoints on what they're seeing. so we'll continue to refine our policy. we'll continue to refine our enforcement around misleading information and we're looking into deeply how we can evolve our products to do the same. >> mr. zuckerberg, i want to turn to you to talk about the ongoing issue of right-wing militias using facebook as a platform to organize and promote violence. could the committee clerk please bring up my second slide? on august 25th, a self-described militia group called, kenosha guard created a

facebook event page entitled, armed citizens to protect our lives and property. encouraged, encouraging armed individuals to go to kenosha and quote, defend the city during a period of civil unrest following the police shooting of jacob blake. that evening a 17-year-old from illinois did just that and ended up killing two protesters and seriously injuring a third. come menners in this group -- commenters in this group wrote they wanted to kill looters and rioters and switch to real bullets to put a stop to these rioting impetuous children. while facebook has already had a policy in place banning militia groups this page remained in place. according to press reports facebook received more than 450 complaints about this page but your content moderators did not remove it.

something you subsequently called an operational mistake. recently, as you heard earlier in questions, the alleged plot to kidnap michigan governor gretchen whitmer and the potential for intimidation or even violence at voting locations showed that the proliferation of the threat of violence on facebook remains a very real and urgent problem. mr. zuckerberg, in light of the operational mistake around kenosha, what steps has facebook taken to insure that your platform is not being used to promote of more of this type of violence? >> thank you, senator. this is, this is a big area of concern for me personally and for the company. we've have strengthened our policies to prohibit any militarized social movements. any kind of militia like this,

we also banned conspiracy networks. so qanon being the largest example of that. that is completely prohibited on facebook at this point. which you know, in the period we're i'm personally, i'm worried about the potential of increased civil unrest, making sure that those groups can't organize on facebook, may cut off some legitimate uses but i think that they will also preclude greater potential for organizing any harm. by making the policy simpler. we will also make it so that there are fewer mistakes in content moderation. so, i feel like we're in a much stronger place on the policies on this at this point. >> thank you, senator baldwin. senator lee. >> thank you, very much, mr. chairman. i want to read a few quotes from each of you, each of our three witnesses and from your

companies. and then i would may ask for a response. so, mr. zuckerberg, this one is from you. you said, quote, we built facebook to be a platform for all ideas. our community's success depends on everyone feeling comfortable sharing what they want. it doesn't make sense for our mission or for our business to suppress political content or prevent anyone from seeing what matters most to them. you said that i believe on may 1th, 2016. mr. dorsey, on september 5th, 2018, you said let me be clear about one important and foundational fact, twitter does not use political ideology to make any decisions. mr. pichai, on october 28th, 2020, you said let me be clear, we approach our work without political bias, full stop. now these quotes make me think there is a good case to be made

that you're engaging in unfair or deceptive trade practices in federal law. i've seen the quotes where each of you tell consumers and the public, about your business practices. but then you seem to do the opposite and take censorship recommended actions against the president, against members of his administration, against the "new york post," the babylon bee, federalist, pro-life in fact, i think the trend is clear, that you almost always censor, meaning, when i use the word censor here, i mean block content, fact-check or label content or de-monetize websites of conservative, republican or pro-life individuals or groups or companies, contradicting your commercial [ inaudible ] but i

don't see this suppression of high profile liberal commentators. for example, have you ever censored a democratic senator? how about president obama? how about a democratic presidential candidate? how about planned parenthood or emily's list? mr. zuckerberg, mr. dorsey and mr. pichapichai, can any of you for me one high profile person or entity from a liberal ideology who you have censored and what particular action you took? >> senator, i can get you a list of some but there are certainly many examples that your democratic colleagues object to when a fact-checker might label something as false they disagree with or they are not able to --

>> i get that. i get that. i just want to be clear. i'm asking if you can name for me one high profile liberal person or company who you have censored. i understand you are saying there are complaints on both sides. i just want one name of one person or one entity. >> senator, i need to think about it and get you more of a list, but there are certainly many, many issues on both sides of the aisle where people think we are making content moderation decisions they disagree with. >> i got that. i think everybody on this call could agree they could identify at least five, maybe 10, maybe more examples. what about you, mr. dorsey? >> we can give a more exhaustive list but again, we don't have an understanding of political ideology of our accounts. >> i'm not asking for an

exhaustive list. i'm asking for a single example. one individual, one entity. >> we have taken action on tweets from members of the house for election -- >> can you identify an example? >> yes. two democratic congresspeople -- >> what are their names? >> i will get those names to you. >> great. mr. pichai, how about you? >> senator, i can give specific exams but let me step back. we don't censor. we have moderation policies which we apply equally. to give you an example -- >> i get that. i use the word censor as a term of art and i defined that term. again, i'm not asking for a comprehensive list. i want a name. >> we have turned down ads from priorities usa, from vice president biden's campaign. we have had compliance issues with the word socialist which is a left-leaning publication. we can give you several

examples. for example, we have a graphic content policy. we don't allow for ads that show graphic violent content in those ads. we have taken down ads on both sides of the campaign. i gave you a couple examples. >> okay. at least with respect to mr. zuckerberg and mr. dorsey, i would point out with respect to mr. pichai, those are not nearly as high profile. i don't know if i can identify anyone picked at random from the public, even picked at random from the public as far as members of the political active community in either political party who could identify those right off the top. look, there is a disparity between the censorship and again, i'm using that as a term of art as i defined it a moment ago between the censorship of conservative and liberal points of view. enormous disparity. you have the right, i want to be very clear about this, you have every single right to set your own terms of service and to

interpret them and to make decisions about violations. but given the disparate impact of who gets censored on your platforms, it seems you are either one, not enforcing your terms of service equally, or alternatively, two, you are writing your standards to target conservative viewpoints. you certainly have the right to operate your own platform. but you also have to be transparent about your actions at least in the sense that you can't promise certain corporate behavior and then deceive customers through contradictory actions that just blatantly contradict what you stated as your corporate business model or as your policy. mr. zuckerberg and mr. dorsey, if facebook is still a platform for all ideas and if twitter does not use political ideology to make decisions, then do you state before this committee that

for the record that you always apply your terms of service equally to all of your users? >> senator, our principle is to stand for free expression and to be a platform for all ideas. i certainly don't think we have any intentional examples where we're trying to enforce our policies in a way that is anything other than fair and consistent. but it's also a big company. i get that there are probably mistakes that are made from time to time. but our north star and what we intend to do is to be a platform for all ideas and to give everyone a voice. >> i appreciate that. i understand what you're saying. big company. but again, there is a disparate impact as evidenced by the fact neither you nor jack can identify a single example. mr. dorsey, how do you answer that question? >> brief answer, please. >> yes. we operate our enforcement and

our policy without an understanding of political ideology. any time we find examples of bias in how people operate our systems or algorithms we remove it. as mark mentioned, there are checkpoints in these companies, in these frameworks and we do need more transparency around them and how they work. we do need much more straightforward, quick and efficient appeals process to give us a further checkpoint from the public. >> thank you, senator lee. senator duckworth. >> thank you, mr. chairman. you know, i devoted my life to public service, to upholding a sacred oath to support and defend the constitution of the united states against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and i have to be honest, it makes my blood boil and it also breaks my heart a little as i watch my republican colleagues just days before an election, sink down to the level of donald trump.

by placing the selfish wants of donald trump ahead of our democracy, republican senators whether they realize it or not are weakening us. as congressman cummings often reminded us, we are better than this. look, our democracy is under attack right now. every american, every member of congress, should be committed to defending the integrity of our elections from hostile foreign interference. just li despite all the recent talk of great power competition, our adversaries know they still cannot defeat us on a conventional battlefield. meanwhile, the members of the united states military and our dedicated civil servants are working around the clock in the cyber domain to counter hostile actors such as iran, china and russia. they do this while the commander in chief cowers in fear of russia and stubbornly refuses to take any action to criticize or warn russia against endangering our troops. i have confidence in the united states armed forces,

intelligence community and civil servants. their effective performance explains why our foreign adversaries have sought alternative avenues to attacking our nation. afraid to face a conventional military in diplomatic ways, they look for ways to weaken our democracy and they realize that social media could be the soft core of our democracy. social media is so pervasive in the daily lives of americans and traditional media outlets that it can be weaponized to manipulate the public discourse and destabilize our institutions. you know, after russia was successful in disrupting our democracy four years ago, all of our adversaries learned a chilling lesson. social media companies cannot be trusted to put patriotism above profit. facebook and twitter, utterly fail to stem russia's sweeping interference in our 2016 election which used the platforms to infiltrate our communities, spread

disinformation and turn americans against one another. of course, the situation has grown far worse today, as evidenced by today's partisan sham hearing. while corporations may plead ignorance prior to the 2016 election, president trump and his republican enablers in the senate have no such excuse. senate republicans cut a deal to become the party of trump and now they find themselves playing a very dangerous game. by encouraging russia's illegal hacking, by serving as the spreaders and promoters of disinformation cooked up by foreign intelligence services and by falsely claiming censorship when responsible actors attempt to prevent hostile foreign adversaries from interfering in our elections, senate republicans insult the effort of true patriots working to counter malign interference and weaken our security. this committee is playing politics at a time when responsible public officials should be doing everything to

preserve confidence in our system of election and system of government. the reckless actions of donald trump and senate republicans do not let technology companies off the hook. unless the companies testifying before our committee today are helpless in the face of threats to our democracy, small "d" democracy. federal law provides respective companies, your respective companies, with authority to counter foreign disinformation and counterintelligence propaganda and i want to be absolutely clear, gentlemen, that i fully expect each of you to do so. each of you will be attacked by the president, senate republicans and right wing media for countering hostile foreign interference in our election, but you have a duty to do the right thing, because facts still exist. facts still matter. facts save lives. there's no both sides when one side has chosen to reject truth and embrace poisonous false information. so closing, i would like each witness to provide a personal

commitment that your respective companies will proactively counter domestic disinformation that spreads the dangerous lies such as masks don't work, while aggressively identifying and removing disinformation that is part of foreign adversaries' efforts to interfere in our election or undermine our democracy. do i have that commitment from each of you gentlemen? >> okay. we will take dorsey, pichai, then zuckerberg. >> we made that commitment. >> senator, absolutely yes. >> mr. zuckerberg? >> yes, senator. i agree with that. >> thank you. your industry's success or failure in achieving this goal will have far-reaching, life or death consequences for the american people and the future of our democracy. thank you. i yield back, mr. chairman. >> the senator yields back. senator johnson? >> i would like to start with a question for all three of the

witnesses. you have different chat forums in all of your companies and also where the few conservatives that might work for your companies have just certainly been harassed on those types of forums. i don't expect you to have taken a poll of your employees but i just want to get kind of a sense because i think it's pretty obvious, but would you say the political ideology of the employees of your company is 50/50, conservative versus liberal progressive or do you think it's closer to 90% liberal, 10% conservative? start with mr. dorsey. >> as you mentioned, i don't know the makeup of our employees because it's not something we ask or focus on. >> just what do you think off the top of your head based on your chat rooms and kind of the people you talk to? >> not something i look for. >> mr. pichai? >> senator, we have over 100,000

employees. we have hired 50% of our work force outside california. it does tend to be proportionate to the area we are in. but we do have a million message boards, we have groups of republicans and liberals and conservative side and so on. we have definitely made an effort to make sure people of all viewpoints are welcome. >> again, mr. zuckerberg, will you answer the question honestly? is it 90/10 or 50/50? which is it closer to? >> senator, i don't know the exact number. i would guess that our employee base skews [ inaudible ]. >> thank you for that honesty. mr. dorsey, you started your opening comments that, you know, you think people don't trust you. i agree with that. we don't trust you. you all say you are fair and consistent, neutral, unbiased. mr. dorsey, i think the most incredible answer i have seen so far in this hearing is senator

cruz asked does twitter have the ability to influence elections. again, does twitter have the ability to influence elections. you said no. do you stick with that answer that you don't even believe, let's face it, you all believe russia has the ability to influence elections or interfere by using your social platforms. mr. dorsey, do you still deny you don't have the ability to influence and interfere in our elections? >> yeah, i mean, my answer was around people's choice around other communication channels. >> your answer was -- the question was does twitter have the ability to influence the elections. you said no. do you still stand by that answer? >> twitter as a company, no. no. >> you don't think you have the ability by moderation policies, by senator lee and i would call it censoring, you don't think that censorship, that moderation policy, you don't think that

influences the election by withholding what i believe is true information from the republic? >> not our current moderation policies. our current moderation policies are to protect the conversation and integrity of the conversation around the elections. >> for mr. zuckerberg and dorsey, who censored, censored "new york post" stories or throttled them back, do either one of you have any evidence that the "new york post" story is part of russian disinformation or that those e-mails aren't authentic? do any of you have any information whatsoever they are not authentic or they are russian disinformation? >> we don't. >> so why would you censor it? why did you prevent that from being dem senaisseminated on yo platform which is supposed to be for the true expression of ideas, particularly true ideas? >> we are believe first of all

it -- >> what do you think was hacked? >> we judged it looked like hacked materials surfacing and we updated our policy and our enforcement within 24 hours. >> mr. zuckerberg? >> senator, as i testified before, we relied heavily on the fbi's intelligence and alerts both through their public testimony and private briefing -- >> did the fbi contact you, said the "new york post" story was false? >> senator, not about that story specifically. [ speaking simultaneously ] >> why did you throttle it back? >> they alerted us to be on heightened alert around a risk of hack and leak operations around release of disinformation. just to be clear on this, we didn't censor the content. we flagged it for fact-checkers to review and pending that review, we temporarily constrained its distribution to

make sure it didn't spread wildly while it was being reviewed. but it's not up to us either to determine whether it's russian interference nor whether it's true. we rely on the intelligence. >> mr. dorsey, you talked about your policies toward misinformation and that you will block misinformation if it's about civic integrity, election interference or voter suppression. let me give you a tweet that was put up on twitter. it says senator ron johnson is my neighbor and strangled our dog buttons right in front of my 4-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter. the police refused to investigate. this is a complete lie but important to retreat and note there are more of my lies to come. now, we contacted twitter and we asked them to take it down. here's the response. thanks for reaching out.

we escalated this to our support team for their review and they have determined that this is not a violation of our policies. so mr. dorsey, how could a complete lie, it's a lie, how does that not affect civic integrity, how could you view that as not being a matter of election interference? that could definitely impact my ability to get reelected? how could that not be a matter of voter suppression? obviously if people think i'm strangling my neighbor's dog they may not show up at the polls. that would be voter suppression. by the way, that tweet was retweeted 17,000 times and viewed by -- and loved, commented, appreciated by over 50,000 people. how is that not voter suppression, how is that not election interference, how is that not affecting civic integri integrity? >> well, we'll have to look into

our enforcement or non-enforcement in this case and get back to you. >> mr. zuckerberg, in that same june hearing, you referred to that june hearing, had all kinds of good ideas. that was 16 months ago. why haven't you implemented any of those transparency ideas you thought were pretty good 16 months ago? >> he was talking about algorithmic choice. we have implemented one. we have allowed people to turn off the ranking of a comment. the rest is work and it's going to take some time. >> i would get to it if i were you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> let me just make sure i understood the answer. mr. dorsey and mr. zuckerberg, mr. dorsey, did i understand you to say you have no information indicating that the "new york post" story about hunter biden is -- has a russian source? did i understand correctly?

>> yes, not that i'm aware of. >> is that also your answer, mr. zuckerberg, you have no information at all to indicate that russia was the source of this "new york post" article? >> senator, i would rely on the fbi to make that assessment. >> you don't have any such information, do you? >> d >> i do not myself. >> thank you very much. senator tester, you are next, sir. >> i want to thank you, mr. chairman. i want to thank sundar, jack and mark for being in front of this committee. there is no doubt there are major issues with google, facebook and twitter that congress needs to address. quite frankly, i think jack has the unregulated wild west that needs to be held accountable. we do need to hear from all three of you about a range of critical issues that americans deserve answers on like data privacy and i trust the proliferation of miss

information on yoinfor misinformation on your platforms. i will ask you to commit to return to this hearing room next year to have a hearing on these important issues but the point is my republican colleagues arranged this hearing less than a week from election day for one specific reason. to make a last ditch case based on shoddy evidence that these companies are censoring conservative voices. it is a stunt. it is a cheap stunt, at that. it is crystal clear that this hearing is designed to cast doubt on the fairness of the upcoming election and to work with the platforms to allow that information to stay up as november 3rd approaches. it is also crystal clear that the directive to hold this political hearing comes straight from the white house and it is a sad day when the united states senate, an equal part of an independent branch of government, allows the senate halls to be used for political

stunts. there is a national election in six days, mr. chairman. you had nearly two years to hold this hearing. it is happening six days before the election. the idea that we should have a sober hearing about putting the reins on big tech six days before the election quite frankly doesn't pass the smell test. today, this hearing is about electoral politics. i know it, you know it, everybody in this room knows it. i know the american people are smart enough to figure that out. i'm going to talk a little more about that in a second. first i want to thank the panel once again for being here. and i will start by asking a question about making a more sincere effort to discuss the issues that surround big tech down the road. so the question for the panel, this is a yes or no answer, will you commit to returning to testify again in the new congress? start with you, jack.

>> yes, we are always happy, myself or our team, always happy to talk to the american people. >> sundar? >> senator, yes. we have engaged many times and we are happy to continue this engagement with congress. >> how about you, mark? >> senator, yes. i hope we can continue to have this conversation and hopefully not just through the ceos of the companies but also with experts who work on these issues every day as part of their jobs. >> absolutely. i think the more information, the better. but not based on politics, based on reality. i want to thank you for that. because we in very unreal times when it comes to politics. quite frankly, we are at a time when fake news is real and real news is fake, and you guys try to shut down the fake news, whether it comes from joe biden's mouth or whether it comes from donald trump's mouth. the fact is, if joe biden said

some of the offensive, crazy stuff then president has said, e would get fact-checked in the same way? wouldn't you agree? you can nod your head to that. wouldn't you agree if joe biden said the same stuff that trump said, you would do the same sort of fact checking on him? >> mr. dorsey, mr. pichai and mr. zuckerberg. >> if we found violations of our policy, we would do the appropriate enforcement action. >> thank you. >> go ahead, mr. pichai. >> senator, we would apply our policies without regard to who it is. they are applied neutrally. >> thank you. mark? >> senator, i agree with what jack and sundar said. we would also apply our policies

to everyone and in fact, when joe biden tweets or posts and cross-posts to facebook about the election, we put the same label adding context about voting on his post as we do for other candidates. >> thank you for that. in 2016, russia built a network of bots and fake accounts to spread disinformation. this years it seems they are seeding networks with disinformation and relying on americans, including some folks in congress, to amplify and distribute it. what tools do you have to fight this disinformation on your platform when it's spread by americans? jack? >> we are looking at -- our policies are against platform manipulation, period. no matter where it comes from. whether that's foreign or domestic, we see patterns of

people or organizations that attempt to manipulate the platform and the conversation or officially amplify information. >> mark? >> senator, the efforts are a combination of ai systems that look for anomalous behavior, a large human effort where we have 35,000 employees that work on security and content review and partnerships we made with the other tech companies here as well as law enforcement and intelligence community and election officials across the world to make sure we have all the appropriate input signals and can share signals on what we are seeing with the other platforms as well. >> two things to add to give different examples. we partner with over 5,000 civic entities, campaign organizations at the federal and state level to protect their campaign's digital [ inaudible ] protection

program and training and there's been enormous increase in cooperation between the tech companies. as companies we are sharing a lot of information and do more together than ever before. >> i just want to close with one thing. we heard a lot of information here today. when you hire somebody, you are supposed to ask them their political affiliation. you are supposed to ask them who they have donated to. there is supposed to be a political litmus test. if you hire a biden person you are supposed to hire a trump person. why not hire a tester person? and it's about let's talk about business. we want to regulate business and if that business is run by a liberal, we will regulate them different than if they're run by a conservative outfit. that reminds me a lot of the supreme court where you have two sets of rules, one for a democratic president, one for a republican. this is baloney, folks. get off the political garbage. let's have the congress do its job. thank you very much. >> thank you, senator tester. senator scott? >> thank you, chairman, for

hosting this. i think first off, you would come to the conclusion if you are republican, you believe they censor and democrats think it's pretty good what you're doing. we are blessed to live in the united states, a democracy, where we are granted individual liberties by the constitution. this isn't the case around the world. we can look at what's happening in communist china right now. xi is committing horrible human rights abuses against china's minority community and anyone that speaks out about their oppression. the chinese communist party surveils their citizens and uses state-run media to push propaganda, control information their citizens consume and [ inaudible ] human rights abuses. twitter and facebook are banned in communist china. you can understand why it's concerning we discuss this issue that technology companies are interfering with free speech. the american people entrust your companies with their information.

they believe that you will protect their information and allow them to use your platforms to express themselves freely. i don't think any one person has signed up for any of your platforms and expects to be blocked or kicked off because of their political views. but it's becoming obvious that your companies are unfairly targeting conservatives. that's clearly the perception today. facebook is actively targeting ads by conservative groups, either removing the ads completely or adding a disclosure they claim they didn't pass their fact check system. but the fact check is based on reports from known liberal media groups politifact which is clearly a liberal group. twitter censored mitch mcconnell and the president's tweets and until recently they completely blocked the american people from sharing the "new york post" story about hunter biden. the "new york post" is one of

the most circulated papers in the united states. yet you allow murderous dictators around the world to freely use your platform. let me give you a few examples. on twitter, the ayatollah called for the elimination of the zionist regime. he said it does not mean [ inaudible ] of the jewish people. the people of palestine should hold a referendum. any political system [ inaudible ] the only remedy of the removal of the zionist regime is armed existence. i would like to know why twitter let that stay up and why the ayatollah has not been blocked. in 2019, maduro tweeted after three people were killed and 130 injured during protests in his country.

the tweet describes the march as a clear demonstration of the moral strength and integrity of our glorious armed forces which is always prepared to defend peace and sovereignty. i would say it glorified violence so twitter let that stand. xi's communist regime [ inaudible ] against the uighurs, forcing millions in internment camps because of their religion. on september 1, china's government posted on twit ter, more fake news, what the chinese government has done has created [ inaudible ] to lead better lives but the truth, it simply goes against [ inaudible ] will not be reported by some biased media. clear line. there have been reports that this claim by the chinese government is false but twitter took no action. your companies are

inconsistently applied the rules. they are censoring free speech. you target the president, the white house press secretary, senator mitch mcconnell, the susan b. anthony pro-life group while giving dictators a free unfetterred platform. it is our responsibility to hold your companies accountable and protect americans' ability to speak truly on their platforms regardless of their political views or the information they choose to share. you can't just pick and choose which viewpoints are allowed on your platform, expect to keep immunity granted by section 230. mr. dorsey, you allow dangerous dictators on your platform. tell me why conservatives in america like president trump and leader mcconnell are flagged for potential misinformation while allowing dictators to spew their propaganda on your platform. >> we have taken actions around leaders around the world and certainly with some dictators as well. we look at the tweets, we review

them and figure out if they violate our policy or not. >> can you tell me one you did against iran? can you tell me about one you have ever done against the ayatollah or maduro? >> i think we did more than one. i can send you that. we have a global leader policy that we believe it's important that people can see what these leaders are saying and those tweets remain up but they are labeled that they violated our principles, to show the integrity of our policy. >> when communist china which has put one million people, uighurs, in camps, you did nothing about the tweet where they say they are helping them lead a better life. everybody knows what's happening

to the uighurs. it's genocide. >> we don't have a general policy around misleading information and misinformation. we don't. we rely upon people calling that speech out, calling those reports out and those ideas and that's part of the conversation. if there is something found to be in contest, people reply to it. people retweet it and say this is wrong, this is obviously wrong. you would be able to say this is absolutely wrong. we benefit from more of those voices calling that out. >> but you block mitch mcconnell and trump's tweets and you just say, right? i mean, here's what -- you guys have set a policy that you done enforce consistently and what's the recourse to a user?

i talked to a lady this week, she's got her facebook account eliminated and there's no recourse, nothing she can do about it. every one of you have these policies that you don't enforce consistently. what should be the recourse? >> as i said, in my opening remarks, it's critical we have more transparency around our process. we have clear, straightforward, efficient appeals so the woman you talked to could actually appeal the decision that we made. then we focus on algorithms and figuring out how to give people more [ inaudible ]. >> thank you. senator rosen? >> thank you, mr. chairman. i appreciate the witnesses for being here today. i want to focus a little bit, thank you, mr. dorsey, on algorithms because my colleagues on the majority have called this hearing in order to argue you are doing too much to stop the spread of disinformation,

conspiracy theories and hate speech on your platform. i'm here to tell you that you are not doing enough. your platform's recommendation algorithms drive people who show an interest in conspiracy theories far deeper into hate and only you have the ability to change this. what i really want to say is on these platforms, what i would like to tell my colleagues, the important factor to realize is that people or users are the initiators of this content and the algorithms are the potentiators. now, i must was doing a little cleaning in my garage. i'm a former computer programmer. i found my old hexadecimal calculator and radio shack, my little owner's manual here, so i know a little bit about the power of algorithms and what they can and can't do, having done that myself. i know that you have the ability

to remove bigoted, hateful, incendiary content that will lead and has led to violence. so i want to be clear. it's really not about what you can or cannot do. it's really about what you will or will not do. so we have adversaries like russia, they continue to amplify propaganda, everything from the election to coronavirus. we know what they're doing. anti-semitic conspiracy theories. they do it on your platforms, weaponizing division and hate to destroy our democracy and our communities. the u.s. intelligence community warned us earlier this year that russia is now actively inciting white supremacist violence which the fbi and department of homeland security say poses the most lethal threat to america. in recent years we have seen white supremacy and anti-semitism on the rise, much of it spreading online. what enables these bad actors to disseminate their hateful

messaging to the american public are the algorithms on your platforms. effectively rewarding efforts by foreign powers to exploit divisions in our country. to be sure, i want to acknowledge the work you are already doing in this space. i'm relieved to see that facebook has really taken that long overdue action that banning holocaust denial content, but while you made some policy changes, we have seen time and time again, what starts online doesn't end online. hateful words morph into deadly actions which are then amplified again and again. it's a vicious cycle. just yesterday, we commemorated the two-year anniversary of the tree of life shooting in pittsburgh, the deadliest targeted attack on the jewish community in american history. the shooter had a long -- the shooter in this case had a long history of posting anti-semitic content on social media sites and what started online became very real for the families who

will now never again see their loved ones. so there has to be accountabili accountability. when algorithms actively contribute to radicalism and hate. so when you implement a policy banning hate or disinformation content, how quickly can you adjust your algorithms to reduce this content and perhaps, what i want to ask even more importantly, to reduce or remove the recommendation algorithm of hate and disinformation so it doesn't continue to spread? we know those recommendation algorithms continue to drive more specifically, specifically and specifically. great when you want to buy a new sweater. it's going to be cold out here. not so great when it's driving them towards hate. can you talk about that, please? mr. dorsey, you can go first. >> as you know, algorithms, machine learning and deep

learning are complex, they are complicated. they require testing and training. so as we learn about their effectiveness, we can iterate them. it does require experience and does require a little bit of time. the most important thing that we need to build into the organization is fast learning mindset and that agility around updating these algorithms. we do try to focus the urgency of our updates on any severity of harm. as you mentioned specifically, anything that leads to offline harm or dangerous speech that goes into them. >> mr. zuckerberg, i will ask you to answer that. i have some more questions about how the nimbleness of your algorithms. go ahead. >> i think you are focused on exactly the right thing in terms of how many people see the

harmful content. as we talk about putting in place regulations, reforming section 230 in terms of what we want to hold companies accountable for, i think what we should be judging the companies on is how many people see harmful content before the companies act on it. i think being able to act on it quickly and being able to act on content that is potentially going viral or going to be seen by more people before it does get seen by a lot of people is critical. this is what we report in our quarterly transparency reports, what percent of the content that a person sees is harmful and the categories of harm that we track, and we try to hold ourselves accountable for basically driving the prevalence of that harmful content down. i think good content regulation here would create a standard like that across the whole

industry. >> i like what you said, your recommendation algorithms need to learn to drive the prevalence of this harmful content down. i have some other questions, i'm going to ask those, but i would like to see some of the information how nimble you are on dropping down that prevalence when you do see it trending, when you do see an uptick, whether it's by bots, by human beings, whatever that is. we need to drive that prevalence down. can you talk a little maybe more specifically on things you might be doing for anti-semitism? we know that is white supremacy, the biggest domestic terror thre threat, the homeland security committee, they have testified to this largest threat to our nation. i want to be sure this violence is not celebrated and amplified on your platforms. >> brief answer to that.

to whom are you addressing the question? >> mr. zuckerberg. we only have just a few seconds. >> sure, senator. thank you. there's a lot of nuance here. but in general, for each category of harmful content, whether it's terrorist propaganda or incitement of violence and hate speech, we have to build specific systems and specific ai systems and one of the benefits of having transparency and transparency reports into how these companies are doing is we have to report on a quarterly basis how effectively we are doing at finding those types of content. you can hold us accountable for how nimble we are. hate speech is one of the hardest things to train an ai system to get good at identifying because it is nuanced. we operate in 150 languages

around the world. what our transparency reports show is over the last few years, we have gone from proactively identifying and taking down about 20% of the hate speech on the service to now, we are proactively identifying i think about 94% of the hate speech we end up taking down and the vast majority of that, people have reported to us. by having this kind of transparency requirement which is part of what i'm advocating for in the section 230 reform, i think we will be able to have a broader sense across the industry of how all the companies are improving in each of these areas. >> thank you for that answer. >> i look forward to working with everyone on this. thank you, mr. chairman. >> as do i, senator rosen. thank you very much. when this hearing convened, i estimated that it would last three hours and 42 minutes.

it's now been three hours and 41 minutes. four of our members have been unable to join us and that's the only reason that my prediction was the least bit accurate. so thank you all, thank you very much. i thank our witnesses. during my first question to the panelists, i referred to a document that i had entered into the record during our committee meeting, i believe on october 1st, entitled social media companies censoring prominent conservative voices. that document has been updated and without objection, it will be added to the record. at this point, i believe we are

now at the point of closing the hearing. the hearing record will remain open for two weeks. during this time, senators are asked to submit any questions for the record. upon receipt, the witnesses are requested to submit their written answers to the committee as soon as possible but by no later than wednesday, november 25th, 2020. i want to thank our witnesses for their cooperation and for bearing with us during a very lengthy hearing, and i want to thank each member of the committee for their cooperation in the conduct of this hearing. with that, the hearing is concluded and the witnesses are thanked. this hearing is now adjourned. neil: all right. four of the senators were supposed to be part of this process and never showed up or couldn't reach them, but it was sort of like a high tech

beat-down, mainly led by republicans who argued that the stewards of some of the biggest social media companies on the planet including google and alphabet, twitter, facebook, have not done enough to be fair and balanced about the material they either include or reject coming under particularly scrutiny was jack dorsey of twitter. and that he has a cavalier attitude. he seemed also to be the most dismissive of some of the criticisms he was getting but it is interesting to note that democrats had their own separate issues. they called this a political charade but we should also point out they have problems with their own cavalier attitude that these tech giants have about any government oversight when it comes to policing any of the material given to them, not just those of the conservative dint. where this goes is anyone's guess. a commitment on all three billionaires' parts, and that's

what they are, to reappear to a new congress. we don't know the makeup of that congress or -- keep in mind this was the senate commerce committee, where republicans are in charge. whether that changes if democrats take over the senate in the election and whether they would comply with that, either way, all these gentlemen said they would meet with this committee again. you might recall separately, the judiciary committee wants to hear at least from the heads of twitter and facebook, not necessarily google, to look at policing of thought. that's a separate issue, and whether that goes a little too far. they have overlapping jurisdictions to put it mildly. as that was going on, we wanted to keep you abreast of the markets right now. they are down about 827 points. we were almost down 1,000 points but we want to stress here, a lot of this has to do with a spike in cases across the country and across the world.

many are arguing that these spikes in cases are not coming with a corresponding spike in hospitalizations and god forbid, deaths, but that a better way of looking at this is those who diaperdie per 100,000 citizens and the u.s. has fallen off that top ten list. it's now 11. we used to lead the world in that regard. there's all sorts of ways to interpret this data. worrisome what's going on abroad. far more worrisome abroad if you consider what we are just learning german chancellor angela merkel just outlined new lockdown measures that are supposed to take effect november 2nd. shops will stay open but are essentially going to double their distancing provision to the u.s. metric equivalent of about 12 feet from 6 feet. the shops can stay open. separately, they are looking right now at providing small and medium sized businesses that have been hit by these developments including these new lockdowns that the government will help provide up to 75% of

their income. i don't know what small and medium means compared to obviously large like deutsche bank or mercedes-benz, but the fact of the matter is it's the first time we have seen a western government commit this type of serious dough to addressing what they are now saying is a serious spike in cases. also remember, germany was among those countries considered to do everything by the book, keeping a close eye on the virus, the mafshg thi mask thing, distancing provisions. germany was doing what no one was doing, as is france, which is right now dealing separately with curfews and promises of lockdown measures to come. not country-wide, mainly around the paris area where they have seen a noticeable increase in cases. so these would not be nationwide lockdowns in either case, germany or france. they've got limited lockdowns in effect right now, for example, in italy. restaurants can remain open but they have to close by 6:00 p.m.

their time. so again, you are seeing more and more of this. the market obviously sells on that. an indication boeing is in a world of hurt right now, indicating plane orders are way down, 55% from what they were on this latest earnings report. big question marks about future revenues and talk right now that boeing is looking at tapping its number of shares, its stock, to fund its employee pension program rather than cash on hand. the first serious sign maybe it doesn't have enough cash on hand. sorry to sort of ramble through all these latest developments but i wanted to give you context for what's behind this selloff and whether it lasts. we know separately the president in las vegas now, who is going on to a number of other stops in arizona, is looking to address the press on some other matters. i don't know if it will have to do with pandemic related issues. when he speaks, we will go to you. meantime, i want to go to

our guest right now. susan li following all of this, mike murphy of rosecliff, founder, managing partner. who else? i forget. let me go to susan first. susan, the markets, it's really wild. when it rains, it pours. the pandemic has always been an issue. i'm not minimizing it. but it seems to have accelerated more notably on what's happening abroad. incidents are happening here, i'm not minimizing them, but these measures abroad are pretty sweeping. what do you think? >> yeah. that's right. you saw that, the markets tick lower when the german headline crossed the tape, 16 premiers in germany agree to shut down restaurants, bars and fitness centers for all of november. we started off this morning with five-month lows over on the european side being dragged down by germany, leading it all lower. that's exactly what we are trading off of today. also the fact we don't have any stimulus and it looks like hopes of any stimulus package before the election is done and the

fact you have election uncertainty. we heard from one of the top hedge fund guys in the world and he says a blue wave would be bad for stocks, it would be an overhang in three to five years. i think that's probably playing into the markets as well since we are six days away from the election. neil: you know, mike, i'm wondering how any of this is now beginning to reflect anxiety and maybe angst ahead of the election. what do you think? >> neil, great to see you. you know, there's a lot of anxiety out there and i think selling begets more selling. as anxiety picks up, it starts to snowball. i think as susan was just saying, when you see the headlines coming from germany, where they are going into lockdown mode again, people remember what that was like and no one wants to go back there. but i think there's a floor under the market because remember, back in march when we were dealing with this for the very first time, we had a swift,

steep drop, then we recovered very quickly. so the downside here is going to be a lot less than it was back in march, in my opinion. i see these steep selloffs although they are not fun, and there's going to be a lot of volatility into next tuesday, but it's an opportunity to own quality companies like microsoft that came out with great earnings. if you can get a discount of 5% or 10% on a great company with great growth, that's what you want to buy. neil: so you are not in the camp that says all right, this is stress building in the markets, that might have held out hope that donald trump would be re-elected. i always hasten to add wall street's not red or blue, it's green. they made a lot of money under this president. maybe they always sort of had hope in their back pocket he would, you know, beat the polls as he beat them four years ago but maybe growing concern this go-round that he might not be able to, that things are escalating between the cases and some of these worries going forward that it's looking like

he might not pull a rabbit out of his hat and that is being partly reflected here. do you buy that? >> i really don't, neil, because i think the people that are managing the large amounts of money on wall street, they are not rooting for one or the other but i think they are smart enough to see what happened four years ago with the polls. i think you can take a look at what's happening across europe and as president trump said, use that as a point of how well the united states and the trump administration has handled covid-19. so you can look at it either way for certain but i think most importantly when you look at where we are right now, we are in a much better position than -- cases are going up but deaths aren't going up. we are in a better position today than where we were back in march and april when we started dealing with this, and again, i will argue that you have to give the trump administration a lot of credit for the handling of where we are so far, but you are going to get a lot of bad information leading up to the polls, leading up to the

election. neil: it is interesting, without playing the political game here, susan, germany was always held out as sort of a global example how you handle a pandemic. one of the first nations to even consider lockdowns and some of these other provisions, the first in europe to demand masks and the rest. so as they're having problems, you got to wonder, this is something bigger than the president or this country, how we're handling things, but it could also feed this narrative wait a minute, regardless of what we're doing, growing worries whether it's just reigniting, the virus itself is sort of morphing into something more worrisome. what are people telling you? >> you know lockdowns come with cost. germany's economy obviously paid with that. they have also seen their own protests from their own citizens that were protesting the lockdowns. we will get third quarter gdp numbers tomorrow. it's going to be huge for the u.s., up above 30% which will be the biggest one quarter jump

since the great depression. that's recovering from the steepest drop that we have seen since the great depression as well in the second quarter. i think we have learned from that time that there are economic costs, there are livelihoods that are affected by lockdowns. you heard from president trump on our network on fox business saying there will be no more lockdowns coming. i think investors were a bit encouraged by that. >> very good point. we will take a quick break. susan has a very important distinction there. even in germany, in italy and france, where they are having rolling lockdowns, even ireland, where half the country is in some sort of shutdown or limited activity movement, they are afraid to even call it lockdown, they are not nationwide type lockdowns akin to what the world was experiencing and we were dealing with a little more than a few months ago. so there is that. for now, wall street doesn't like the uncertainty around any of this. more after this.

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or go to loveshriners.org to give and join with thousands of other generous people who change lives with their gifts every day. - i think that's about it buddy, good job. - my pleasure captain. please call now. if operators are busy with all the other caring people, please wait patiently, or you can go to loveshriners.org to give right away. - [alec] big or small, your gift helps us all. - [both] thank you. (giggling) neil: if it is virus stupid, not the economy. reports more cases ignite worries this thing could get pretty bad. we have a board certified cardiologist of mount sinai school of medicine. very good to have you back with us. do we have something to worry

about, doctor. >> we have record 400,000 cases reported, with 29 states reaching record highs. and 40 out of 50 states being red. good news mortality is lower. we know better how to treat the disease. if you really want to do accurate assessment of the magnitude of 9 damage done, here are three indicators we need to crunch. one is seven days average. that has seen a jump of 55%. we are currently at 73,000 cases average daily in the last week. two, it is rate of hospitalization and that has jumped 40% with some states reaching maximum capacity like wisconsin. and number three, we're looking at mortality per capita. if we compare the united states with the rest of the world when

it comes to mortality per million people, we're number five in the world. also last week, cdc has released a report showing that we have actually in reality reported excess 300,000 deaths, which some of them are indirectly related to covid but have to do with the pandemic. and so the numbers are definitely pointing in the wrong direction but we can turn things around. we just have to go back and revisit the public health measures and remain vigilant. neil: doctor, i thank you very much. apologize for truncated time at end of the show. we'll follow it very closely. the president due to speak on this. he is in las vegas. he has a couple stops in arizona today. he might address the pandemic concerns. we'll be monitoring that. one ever the things i should add, with the increasing cases we should also posit hospitalizations have ticked up.

i might have said they are actually down, percentage of those cases people ending up in hospitals that is what is done. not reflective the uptick in cases you're automatically going to the hospital, or for that matter to intensive care, or for that matter dying. i do want to distinguish from that. it still is spiking enough in europe to give markets jitters. here is charles payne. charles: neil, thank you very much. i'm charles payne. this is making money. stocks are falling sharply, and becoming more defensive with strong earnings and guidance. i think it has potential to election outcome upsets financial media narrative. heads of twitter, facebook, google just now wrapping up testimony in the senate. we'll have the latest what becomes a fight over free speech. what it means ahead for your portfolio ahead of a big spate of earnings tomorrow. president trump shifting his focus to the west, he visits arizona and nevada, two very