[Senate Hearing 116-639]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]




                                                            
                                                         S. Hrg. 116-639
 
   DOES SECTION 230'S SWEEPING IMMUNITY ENABLE BIG TECH BAD BEHAVIOR?

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               before the

                         COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE,
                      SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                     ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               ----------                              

                            OCTOBER 28, 2020

                               ----------                              

    Printed for the use of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and 
                             Transportation
                             
                             
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                Available online: http://www.govinfo.gov
                
                
                
                
                
                
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             U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 
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   DOES SECTION 230'S SWEEPING IMMUNITY ENABLE BIG TECH BAD BEHAVIOR?




                                 ______



                                                        S. Hrg. 116-639

   DOES SECTION 230'S SWEEPING IMMUNITY ENABLE BIG TECH BAD BEHAVIOR?

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               before the

                         COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE,
                      SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                     ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                            OCTOBER 28, 2020

                               __________

    Printed for the use of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and 
                             Transportation


                Available online: http://www.govinfo.gov
       SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION

                     ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                  ROGER WICKER, Mississippi, Chairman
JOHN THUNE, South Dakota             MARIA CANTWELL, Washington, 
ROY BLUNT, Missouri                      Ranking
TED CRUZ, Texas                      AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota
DEB FISCHER, Nebraska                RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
JERRY MORAN, Kansas                  BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii
DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska                 EDWARD MARKEY, Massachusetts
CORY GARDNER, Colorado               TOM UDALL, New Mexico
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee          GARY PETERS, Michigan
SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia  TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
MIKE LEE, Utah                       TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin               JON TESTER, Montana
TODD YOUNG, Indiana                  KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona
RICK SCOTT, Florida                  JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
                       John Keast, Staff Director
                  Crystal Tully, Deputy Staff Director
                      Steven Wall, General Counsel
                 Kim Lipsky, Democratic Staff Director
              Chris Day, Democratic Deputy Staff Director
                      Renae Black, Senior Counsel
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page
Hearing held on October 28, 2020.................................     1
Statement of Senator Wicker......................................     1
    Document entitled ``Social Media Companies Censoring 
      Prominent Conservative Voices''............................    66
Statement of Senator Cantwell....................................     3
Statement of Senator Peters......................................    18
Statement of Senator Gardner.....................................    21
Statement of Senator Klobuchar...................................    23
Statement of Senator Thune.......................................    26
Statement of Senator Blumenthal..................................    29
Statement of Senator Cruz........................................    30
Statement of Senator Schatz......................................    33
Statement of Senator Fischer.....................................    35
Statement of Senator Moran.......................................    40
Statement of Senator Markey......................................    42
Statement of Senator Blackburn...................................    44
Statement of Senator Udall.......................................    46
Statement of Senator Capito......................................    48
Statement of Senator Baldwin.....................................    50
Statement of Senator Lee.........................................    52
Statement of Senator Duckworth...................................    54
Statement of Senator Johnson.....................................    56
Statement of Senator Tester......................................    59
Statement of Senator Scott.......................................    61
Statement of Senator Rosen.......................................    63

                               Witnesses

Jack Dorsey, Chief Executive Officer, Twitter, Inc...............     6
    Prepared statement...........................................     7
Sundar Pichai, Chief Executive Officer, Alphabet Inc.............     9
    Prepared statement...........................................    11
Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Executive Officer, Facebook, Inc..........    12
    Prepared statement...........................................    14

                                Appendix

Letter dated October 27, 2020 to Senator Roger Wicker and Senator 
  Maria Cantwell from Vanita Gupta, President and CEO, and 
  LaShawn Warren, Executive Vice President for Government 
  Affairs, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights...    81
Response to written questions submitted to Jack Dorsey by:
    Hon. Roger Wicker............................................    85
    Hon. John Thune..............................................    87
    Hon. Roy Blunt...............................................    92
    Hon. Jerry Moran.............................................    93
    Hon. Mike Lee................................................    96
    Hon. Ron Johnson.............................................    99
    Hon. Maria Cantwell..........................................   100
    Hon. Richard Blumenthal......................................   109
    Hon. Edward Markey...........................................   111
    Hon. Gary Peters.............................................   112
    Hon. Kyrsten Sinema..........................................   113
    Hon. Jacky Rosen.............................................   115
Response to written questions submitted to Sundar Pichai by:
    Hon. Roger Wicker............................................   118
    Hon. John Thune..............................................   125
    Hon. Jerry Moran.............................................   132
    Hon. Mike Lee................................................   137
    Hon. Ron Johnson.............................................   141
    Hon. Maria Cantwell..........................................   141
    Hon. Amy Klobuchar...........................................   159
    Hon. Richard Blumenthal......................................   159
    Hon. Edward Markey...........................................   163
    Hon. Gary Peters.............................................   164
    Hon. Kyrsten Sinema..........................................   167
    Hon. Jacky Rosen.............................................   170
Response to written questions submitted to Mark Zuckerberg by:
    Hon. Roger Wicker............................................   176
    Hon. John Thune..............................................   181
    Hon. Jerry Moran.............................................   188
    Hon. Mike Lee................................................   192
    Hon. Ron Johnson.............................................   198
    Hon. Maria Cantwell..........................................   202
    Hon. Amy Klobuchar...........................................   213
    Hon. Richard Blumenthal......................................   214
    Hon. Edward Markey...........................................   217
    Hon. Gary Peters.............................................   218
    Hon. Kyrsten Sinema..........................................   225
    Hon. Jacky Rosen.............................................   227
Publication dated July 8, 2020 entitled, ``Facebook's Civil 
  Rights Audit--Final Report''...................................   233
Joint Publication dated October 21, 2020 entitled, ``Complicit--
  The Human Cost of Facebook's Disregard for Muslim Life'' by 
  Muslim Advocates and the Global Project Against Hate and 
  Extremism (GPAHE)..............................................   292


   DOES SECTION 230'S SWEEPING IMMUNITY ENABLE BIG TECH BAD BEHAVIOR?

                              ----------                              


                      WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2020

                                       U.S. Senate,
        Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room 
SR-253, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. Roger Wicker, 
Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
    Present: Senators Wicker [presiding], Thune, Cruz, Fischer, 
Moran, Gardner, Blackburn, Capito, Lee, Johnson, Scott, 
Cantwell, Klobuchar, Blumenthal, Schatz, Markey, Udall, Peters, 
Baldwin, Duckworth, Tester, and Rosen.

            OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ROGER WICKER, 
                 U.S. SENATOR FROM MISSISSIPPI

    The Chairman. This hearing will come to order. Senator 
Cantwell is going to join us in person, but she joins us 
remotely at the beginning of the hearing. We have convened this 
morning to continue the work of this committee to ensure that 
the Internet remains a free and open space and that the laws 
that govern it are sufficiently up to date.
    The Internet is a great American success story, thanks in 
large part to the regulatory and legal structure our Government 
put in place. But we cannot take that success for granted. The 
openness and freedom of the Internet are under attack. Soon, we 
will hear from the CEOs of three of the most prominent Internet 
platforms Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Our witnesses include 
Mr. Jack Dorsey of Twitter, Mr. Sundar Pichai of Alphabet 
Incorporated and its subsidiary Google, and Mr. Mark Zuckerberg 
of Facebook. On October 1, this committee voted on a bipartisan 
and unanimous basis to approve the issuance of subpoenas. After 
discussions among representatives of the companies and the 
Committee, the witnesses agreed to attend the hearing 
voluntarily and remotely.
    There is strong agreement on both sides of the aisle that 
hearing from these witnesses is important to deliberations 
before this committee, including deliberations on what 
legislative reforms are necessary to ensure a free and open 
Internet. For almost 25 years, the preservation of Internet 
freedom has been the hallmark of a thriving digital economy in 
the United States. This success has largely been attributed to 
a light touch regulatory framework and to Section 230 of the 
Communications Decency Act, often referred to as the 26 words 
that created the Internet. There is little dispute that Section 
230 played a critical role in the early development and growth 
of online platforms. Section 230 gave content providers 
protection from liability to remove and moderate content that 
they or their users considered to be, ``obscene, lewd, 
lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing or otherwise 
objectionable.''
    This liability shield has been pivotal in protecting online 
platforms from endless and potentially ruinous lawsuits. But it 
has also given these Internet platforms the ability to control, 
stifle, and even censor content in whatever manner meets their 
respective standards. The time has come for that free pass to 
end. After 24 years of Section 230 being the law of the land, 
much has changed. The Internet is no longer an emerging 
technology. Companies before us today are no longer scrappy 
startups operating out of a garage or a dorm room. They are now 
among the world's largest corporations, wielding immense power 
in our economy, culture, and public discourse. Immense power. 
The applications they have created are connecting the world in 
unprecedented ways, far beyond what lawmakers could have 
imagined three decades ago.
    These companies are controlling the overwhelming flow of 
news and information that the public can share and access. One 
noteworthy example occurred just 2 weeks ago after our 
subpoenas were unanimously approved. The New York Post, the 
country's fourth largest newspaper ran a story revealing 
communications between Hunter Biden and a Ukrainian official. 
The report alleged that Hunter Biden facilitated a meeting with 
his father, Joe Biden, who was then Vice President of the 
United States. Almost immediately, both Twitter and Facebook 
took steps to block or limit access to the story. Facebook, 
according to its policy communications manager, began, 
``reducing its distribution on the platform,'' pending a third 
party fact check.
    Twitter went beyond that, blocking all users, including the 
House Judiciary Committee, from sharing the article on feeds 
and through direct messages. Twitter even locked the New York 
Post's account entirely claiming the story included hacked 
materials and was potentially harmful. It is worth noting that 
both Twitter and Facebook's aversion to hacked materials has 
not always been so stringent. For example, when the President's 
tax returns were illegally leaked, neither company acted to 
restrict access to that information. Similarly, the now 
discredited Steele dossier was widely shared without fact 
checking or disclaimers. This apparent double standard would be 
appalling under normal circumstances, but the fact that 
selective censorship is occurring in the midst of the 2020 
election cycle dramatically amplifies the power wielded by 
Facebook and Twitter. Google recently generated its own 
controversy when it was revealed that the company threatened to 
cutoff several conservative websites, including the Federalist, 
from their ad platform.
    Make no mistake, for sites that rely heavily on advertising 
revenue for their bottom line, being blocked from Google 
services or demonetized can be a death sentence. According to 
Google, the offense of these websites was posting user 
submitted comment sections that included objectionable content. 
But Google's own platform, YouTube hosts user submitted comment 
sections for every video uploaded. It seems that Google is far 
more zealous in policing conservative sites than its own 
YouTube platform for the same types of offensive and outrageous 
language. It is ironic that when the subject is net neutrality, 
technology companies, including Facebook, Google, and Twitter, 
have warned about the grave threat of blocking or throttling 
the flow of information on the Internet.is
    Meanwhile, these same companies are actively blocking and 
throttling the distribution of content on their own platforms 
and are using protections under Section 30 to do it. Is it any 
surprise that voices on the right are complaining about 
hypocrisy or even worse, anti-democratic election interference? 
These recent incidents are only the latest in a long trail of 
censorship and suppression of conservative voices on the 
Internet. Reasonable observers are left to wonder whether big 
tech firms are obstructing the flow of information to benefit 
one political ideology or agenda. My concern is that these 
platforms have become powerful arbiters of what is true and 
what content users can access. The American public gets little 
insight into the decisionmaking process when content is 
moderated and users have little recourse when they are censored 
or restricted. I hope we can all agree that the issues the 
Committee will discuss today are ripe for thorough examination 
and action.
    I have introduced legislation to clarify the intent of 
Section 230s liability protections and increase the 
accountability of companies who engage in content moderation. 
The Online Freedom and Viewpoint Diversity Act would make 
important changes to right size the liability shield and make 
clear what type of content moderation is protected. This 
legislation would address the challenges we have discussed 
while still leaving fundamentals of Section 230 in place. 
Although some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle 
have characterized this as a purely partisan exercise, there is 
strong bipartisan support for reviewing Section 230. In fact, 
both Presidential candidates, Trump and Biden, have proposed 
repealing Section 230 in its entirety, a position I have not 
yet embraced.
    I hope we can focus today's discussion on the issues that 
affect all Americans. Protecting a true diversity of viewpoints 
and free discourse is central to our way of life. I look 
forward to hearing from today's witnesses about what they are 
doing to promote transparency, accountability, and fairness in 
their content moderation processes.
    And I thank each of them for cooperating with us in the 
scheduling of this testimony. I now turn to my friend and 
Ranking Member, Senator Cantwell, for her opening remarks. 
Senator Cantwell.

               STATEMENT OF HON. MARIA CANTWELL, 
                  U.S. SENATOR FROM WASHINGTON

    Senator Cantwell. [No audio] . . . beautiful State of 
Washington in my Senate office here in Washington, D.C. that 
shows the various ecosystems of the State of Washington, which 
we very much appreciate. I bring that up because just recently 
the Seattle area was named the number one STEM economy in the 
United States. That is the largest STEM workforce in the United 
States of America. So, this issue about how we harness the 
information age to work for us and not against us is something 
that we deal with every day of the week, and we want to have 
discussion and discourse. I believe that discussion and 
discourse today should be broader than just 230.
    There are issues of privacy that our committee has 
addressed and issues of how to make sure there is a free and 
competitive news market. I noticed today we are not calling in 
the NAB or the Publishers Association, asking them why they 
haven't printed or reprinted information that you allude to in 
your testimony, that you wish was more broadly distributed. To 
have competition in the news market is to have a diversity of 
voices and a diversity of opinion. And in my report just 
recently released, we show that true competition really does 
help perfect information both for our economy and for the 
health of our democracy. So, I do look forward to discussing 
these issues today. I do not want today's hearing to have a 
chilling effect on the very important aspects of ensuring that 
hate speech or misinformation related to health and public 
safety are not allowed to remain on the Internet. We all know 
what happened in 2016, and we had reports from the FBI, our 
intelligence agencies, and a bipartisan Senate committee that 
concluded in 2016 that Russian operatives did, masquerading as 
Americans, use targeted advertisements, intentionally falsified 
news articles, self-generated content, and social media 
platform tools, to interact with and attempt to deceive tens of 
millions of social media users in the United States.
    Director of National Intelligence, and former Republican 
Senator Dan Coats said, in July 2018, that ``the warning lights 
are blinking red,'' that the digital infrastructure that serves 
our country is literally under attack. So, I take this issue 
very seriously, and I have for many years. As Special Counsel 
Mueller indicated, 12 Russian intelligence officers hacked the 
DNC and various information detailing phishing attacks into our 
state election boards, online personas, and stolen documents. 
So, when we had a subcommittee hearing and former Bush Homeland 
Security Director Michael Chertoff testified, I asked him point 
blank, because there were some of our colleagues who were 
saying that everybody participates in election interference, if 
election interference was something that we did encourage or 
should be encouraging. He responded that he agreed, 
``interfering with infrastructure or elections is completely 
off limits and unacceptable.'' That is why I believe that we 
should be working aggressively, internationally to sanction 
anybody that interferes in our elections.
    So, I hope today that we will get a report from the 
witnesses on exactly what they have been doing to clamp down on 
election interference. I hope that they will tell us what kind 
of hate speech and misinformation that they have taken off the 
books. It is no secret that there are various state actors who 
are doing all they can to take a whack at democracy, to try to 
say that our way of Government, that our way of life, that our 
way of freedom of speech and information is somehow not as good 
as we have made it, despite being the beacon of democracy 
around the globe. I am not going to tolerate people continuing 
to whack at our election process, our vote by mail system, or 
the ability of tech platforms, security companies, or law 
enforcement entities and the collective community to speak 
against misinformation and hate speech.
    We have to show that the United States of America stands 
behind our principles and that our principles also transfer to 
the responsibility of communication online. As my colleagues 
will note, we have all been through this in the past. That is 
why you, Mr. Chairman, and I and Senators Rosen and Thune 
sponsored the HACKED Act to help increase the security and 
cyber security of our Nation and create a workforce that can 
fight against that. That is why I joined with Senators Van 
Hollen and Rubio on the DETER Act, in establishing sanctions 
against Russian election interference and continuing to make 
sure that we build the infrastructure of tomorrow. So, I know 
that some people think that these issues are out of sight and 
out of mind. I guarantee you they are not. There are actors who 
have been at this for a long time. They wanted to destabilize 
Eastern Europe, and we became the second act when they tried to 
destabilize our democracy here by sowing disinformation. I want 
to show them that we, in the United States, do have fair 
elections and that we do have a fair process.
    We are going to be that beacon of democracy. So, I hope 
that as we talk about 230 today and we hear from the witnesses 
on the progress that they have made in making sure that 
disinformation is not allowed online, we will also consider 
ways to help build and strengthen that. As some witnesses are 
testifying today, we will consider what we can do on 
transparency, on reporting, and on analysis. And yes, I think 
you are going to hear a lot about algorithms today, and the 
kind of oversight that we all want, to make sure that we can 
continue to have a diversity of voices in the United States of 
America, both online and offline. I do want to say though, Mr. 
Chairman, I am concerned about the vertical nature of news and 
information. Today, I expect to ask the witnesses about the 
fact that I believe they create a choke point for local news. 
The local news media have lost 70 percent of their revenue over 
the last decade, and we have lost thousands and thousands of 
journalistic jobs that are important. It was even amazing to me 
that someone at a newspaper who was funded by a joint group of 
the Knight Foundation and probably Facebook interviewed me 
about the fact that the news media and broadcast are on such a 
decline because of loss of revenue as they have made the 
transition to the digital age.
    Somehow, we have to come together to show that the 
diversity of voices that local news represents needs to be 
dealt with fairly when it comes to the advertising market, and 
that too much control in the advertising market puts a foot on 
their ability to continue to move forward and grow in the 
digital age. Just as other forms of media have made the 
transition, and are still making the transition, we want to 
have a very healthy and dynamic news media across the United 
States of America. So, I plan to ask the witnesses today about 
that. I wish we had time to go into depth on privacy and 
privacy issues. But, Mr. Chairman, you know, and so does 
Senator Thune and other colleagues of the Committee on my side, 
how important it is that we protect American consumers on 
privacy issues. But we are not done with this work.
    There is much to do to bring consensus in the United States 
on this important issue, and I hope that if we do have time in 
the follow up to these questions, we can ask the witnesses 
about that today. But make no mistake, gentlemen, thank you for 
joining us, but this is probably one of many, many, many 
conversations that we will have about all of these issues. 
Let's harness the information age as you are doing, but let's 
also make sure that consumers are fairly treated and that we 
are making it work for all of us to guarantee our privacy, our 
diversity of voices, and our democratic principles. And 
solidify the fact that we, the United States of America, stand 
for freedom of information and freedom of the press. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Cantwell. And certainly 
you are correct that this will not be the last hearing with 
regard to this subject matter. And I also appreciate you 
mentioning your concerns, which I share, about local 
journalism. At this point, we are about to receive testimony 
from our witnesses. Before we begin that, let me remind members 
that today's hearing will provide Senators with a round of 7 
minute questioning rather than the usual 5 minutes that we have 
done in the past. At 7 minutes, the gavel will, let's say that 
a few seconds after 7 minutes the gavel will go down. Even so, 
this hearing could last some 3 hours and 42 minutes at that 
rate. So this will be an extensive and lengthy hearing. Members 
are advised that we will adhere closely to that 7 minute limit 
and also shortly before noon at the request of one of our 
witnesses, we will take a short 10 minute break. With that, we 
welcome our panel of witnesses, thank them for their testimony, 
and ask them to give their opening statements, summarizing them 
in some 5 minutes. The entire statement will be added at this 
point in the record. And we will begin with Mr. Jack Dorsey of 
Twitter. Sir, are you here? Do you hear us and do we have 
contact with you?
    Mr. Dorsey. Yes. Can you hear me?
    The Chairman. Yes, yes. So thank you for being with us. And 
you are now recognized for five minutes, sir.

  STATEMENT OF JACK DORSEY, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, TWITTER, 
                              INC.

    Mr. Dorsey. OK. Well thank you members of the Commerce 
committee for the opportunity to speak with the American people 
about Twitter and Section 230. My remarks will be brief so we 
can get to questions. Section 230 is the most important law 
protecting Internet speech, and removing Section 230 will 
remove speech from the Internet. Section 230 gave Internet 
services two important tools. The first, provides immunity from 
liability for users content.
    The second, provides Good Samaritan protections for content 
moderation and removal even of constitutionally protected 
speech as long as it is done in good faith. That concept of 
good faith is what is being challenged by many of you today. 
Some of you don't trust we are acting in good faith. That is 
the problem I want to focus on solving. Other services like 
Twitter earn your trust. How do we ensure more choice in the 
market if we don't? There are three solutions we would like to 
propose to address the concerns raised, all focused on services 
that decide to moderate or remove content. It could be 
expansions to Section 230, new legislative frameworks, or 
commitment to industry wide self-regulation best practices.
    The first is requiring a services moderation process to be 
published. How are cases reported and reviewed? How are 
decisions made? What tools are used to enforce? Publishing 
answers to questions like these will make our process more 
robust and accountable to the people we serve. The second is 
requiring a straightforward process to appeal decisions made by 
humans or by algorithms. This ensures people can let us know 
when we don't get it right so we can fix any mistakes and make 
our processes better in the future. And finally, much of the 
content people see today is determined by algorithms with very 
little visibility into how they choose what they show.
    We took a first step in making this more transparent by 
building a button to turn off our home timeline algorithms. It 
is a good start, but we are inspired by the market approach 
suggested by Dr. Stephen Wolfram before this committee in June 
2019, enabling people to choose algorithms created by third 
parties to rank and filter the content is an incredibly 
energizing idea that is in reach. Requiring one, moderation 
process and practices to be published, two, a straightforward 
process to appeal decisions, and three, best efforts around 
algorithmic choice, are suggestions to address the concerns we 
all have going forward.
    And they are all achievable in short order. It is critical 
as we consider these solutions, we optimize for new startups 
and independent developers. Doing so ensures a level playing 
field that increases the probability of competing ideas to help 
solve problems. We mustn't entrench the largest companies any 
further. Thank you for the time and I look forward to a 
productive discussion to dig into these and other ideas.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Dorsey follows:]

 Prepared Statement of Jack Dorsey, Chief Executive Officer, Twitter, 
                                  Inc.
    Chairman Wicker, Ranking Member Cantwell, and Members of the 
Committee: Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the Committee 
and speak with the American people. Section 230 is the Internet's most 
important law for free speech and safety. Weakening Section 230 
protections will remove critical speech from the Internet.
    Twitter's purpose is to serve the public conversation. People from 
around the world come together on Twitter in an open and free exchange 
of ideas. We want to make sure conversations on Twitter are healthy and 
that people feel safe to express their points of view. We do our work 
recognizing that free speech and safety are interconnected and can 
sometimes be at odds. We must ensure that all voices can be heard, and 
we continue to make improvements to our service so that everyone feels 
safe participating in the public conversation--whether they are 
speaking or simply listening. The protections offered by Section 230 
help us achieve this important objective.
    As we consider developing new legislative frameworks, or committing 
to self-regulation models for content moderation, we should remember 
that Section 230 has enabled new companies--small ones seeded with an 
idea--to build and compete with established companies globally. Eroding 
the foundation of Section 230 could collapse how we communicate on the 
Internet, leaving only a small number of giant and well-funded 
technology companies.
    We should also be mindful that undermining Section 230 will result 
in far more removal of online speech and impose severe limitations on 
our collective ability to address harmful content and protect people 
online. I do not think anyone in this room or the American people want 
less free speech or more abuse and harassment online. Instead, what I 
hear from people is that they want to be able to trust the services 
they are using.
    I want to focus on solving the problem of how services like Twitter 
earn trust. And I also want to discuss how we ensure more choice in the 
market if we do not. During my testimony, I want to share our approach 
to earn trust with people who use Twitter. We believe these principles 
can be applied broadly to our industry and build upon the foundational 
framework of Section 230 for how to moderate content online. We seek to 
earn trust in four critical ways: (1) transparency, (2) fair processes, 
(3) empowering algorithmic choice, and (4) protecting the privacy of 
the people who use our service. My testimony today will explain our 
approach to these principles.
I. ENSURING GREATER TRANSPARENCY
    We believe increased transparency is the foundation to promote 
healthy public conversation on Twitter and to earn trust. It is 
critical that people understand our processes and that we are 
transparent about what happens as a result. Content moderation rules 
and their potential effects, as well as the process used to enforce 
those rules, should be simply explained and understandable by anyone. 
We believe that companies like Twitter should publish their moderation 
process. We should be transparent about how cases are reported and 
reviewed, how decisions are made, and what tools are used to enforce. 
Publishing answers to questions like these will make our process more 
robust and accountable to the people we serve.
    At Twitter, we use a combination of machine learning and humans to 
review reports and determine whether they violate the Twitter Rules. We 
take a behavior-first approach, meaning we look at how accounts behave 
before we review the content they are posting. Twitter's open nature 
means our enforcement actions are plainly visible to the public, even 
when we cannot reveal the private details of individual accounts that 
have violated our Rules. We have worked to build better in-app notices 
where we have removed Tweets for breaking our Rules. We also 
communicate with both the account that reports a Tweet and the account 
that posted it with additional detail on our actions. That said, we 
know we can continue to improve to further earn the trust of the people 
using Twitter.
    In addition, regular reporting of outcomes in aggregate would help 
us all to increase accountability. We do this currently through the 
Twitter Transparency Center. This site provides aggregate content 
moderation data and other information for the individuals who use 
Twitter, academics, researchers, civil society groups, and others who 
study what we do to understand bigger societal issues. We believe it is 
now more important than ever to be transparent about our practices.
II. ADVANCING PROCEDURAL FAIRNESS
    As a company, Twitter is focused on advancing the principle of 
procedural fairness in our decision-making. We strive to give people an 
easy way to appeal decisions we make that they think are not right. 
Mistakes in enforcement, made either by a human or algorithm, are 
inevitable, and why we strive to make appeals easier. We believe that 
all companies should be required to provide a straightforward process 
to appeal decisions made by humans or algorithms. This makes certain 
people can let us know when we do not get it right, so that we can fix 
any mistakes and make our processes better in the future.
    Procedural fairness at Twitter also means we ensure that all 
decisions are made without using political viewpoints, party 
affiliation, or political ideology, whether related to automatically 
ranking content on our service or how we develop or enforce the Twitter 
Rules. Our Twitter Rules are not based on ideology or a particular set 
of beliefs. We believe strongly in being impartial, and we strive to 
enforce our Twitter Rules fairly.
III. EMPOWERING ALGORITHMIC CHOICE
    We believe that people should have choices about the key algorithms 
that affect their experience online. At Twitter, we want to provide a 
useful, relevant experience to all people using our service. With 
hundreds of millions of Tweets every day on Twitter, we have invested 
heavily in building systems that organize content to show individuals 
the most relevant information for that individual first. With 186 
million people last quarter using Twitter each day in dozens of 
languages and countless cultural contexts, we rely upon machine 
learning algorithms to help us organize content by relevance.
    In December 2018, Twitter introduced an icon located at the top of 
everyone's timelines that allows individuals using Twitter to easily 
switch to a reverse chronological order ranking of the Tweets from 
accounts or topics they follow. This improvement gives people more 
control over the content they see, and it also provides greater 
transparency into how our algorithms affect what they see. It is a good 
start. We believe this points to an exciting, market-driven approach 
where people can choose what algorithms filter their content so they 
can have the experience they want. We are inspired by the approach 
suggested by Dr. Stephen Wolfram, Founder and Chief Executive Officer 
of Wolfram Research, in his testimony before the Subcommittee on 
Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet in June 2019. 
Enabling people to choose algorithms created by third parties to rank 
and filter their content is an incredibly energizing idea that is in 
reach.
    We also recognize that we can do even more to improve our efforts 
to provide greater algorithmic transparency and fair machine learning. 
The machine learning teams at Twitter are studying these techniques and 
developing a roadmap to ensure our present and future machine learning 
models uphold a high standard when it comes to algorithmic transparency 
and fairness. We believe this is an important step in ensuring fairness 
in how we operate and we also know that it is critical that we be more 
transparent about our efforts in this space.
IV. PROTECTING THE PRIVACY OF PEOPLE ON TWITTER
    In addition to the principles I have outlined to address content 
moderation issues in order to better serve consumers, it is also 
critical to protect the privacy of the people who use online services. 
At Twitter, we believe privacy is a fundamental human right, not a 
privilege. We offer a range of ways for people to control their privacy 
experience on Twitter, from offering pseudonymous accounts to letting 
people control who sees their Tweets to providing a wide array of 
granular privacy controls. Our privacy efforts have enabled people 
around the world using Twitter to protect their own data.
    That same philosophy guides how we work to protect the data people 
share with Twitter. Twitter empowers the people who use our service to 
make informed decisions about the data they share with us. We believe 
individuals should know, and have meaningful control over, what data is 
being collected about them, how it is used, and when it is shared.
    Twitter is always working to improve transparency into what data is 
collected and how it is used. We believe that individuals should 
control the personal data that is shared with companies and provide 
them with the tools to help them control their data. Through the 
account settings on Twitter, we give people the ability to make a 
variety of choices about their data privacy, including limiting the 
data we collect, determining whether they see interest-based 
advertising, and controlling how we personalize their experience. In 
addition, we provide them the ability to access information about 
advertisers that have included them in tailored audiences to serve them 
ads, demographic and interest data about their account from ad 
partners, and information Twitter has inferred about them.
                                 * * *
    As you consider next steps, we urge your thoughtfulness and 
restraint when it comes to broad regulatory solutions to address 
content moderation issues. We must optimize for new startups and 
independent developers. In some circumstances, sweeping regulations can 
further entrench companies that have large market shares and can easily 
afford to scale up additional resources to comply. We are sensitive to 
these types of competition concerns because Twitter does not have the 
same breadth of interwoven products or market size as compared to our 
industry peers. We want to ensure that new and small companies, like we 
were in 2006, can still succeed today. Doing so ensures a level playing 
field that increases the probability of competing ideas to help solve 
problems going forward. We must not entrench the largest companies 
further.
    I believe the best way to address our mutually-held concerns is to 
require the publication of moderation processes and practices, a 
straightforward process to appeal decisions, and best efforts around 
algorithmic choice. These are achievable in short order. We also 
encourage Congress to enact a robust Federal privacy framework that 
protects consumers while fostering competition and innovation.
    We seek to earn trust from the people who use our service every 
day, and I hope the principles I describe and my responses to your 
questions can better inform your efforts. Thank you for the opportunity 
to appear. We look forward to continuing this dialogue with the 
Committee.

    The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Dorsey. We now call 
on Mr. Sundar Pichai. You are recognized for five minutes, sir.

 STATEMENT OF SUNDAR PICHAI, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, ALPHABET 
                              INC.

    Mr. Pichai. Chairman Wicker, Ranking Member Cantwell, and 
distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for the 
opportunity to appear before you today. The Internet has been a 
powerful force for good for the past three decades, has 
radically improved access to information, whether it is 
connecting Americans to jobs, getting critical updates to 
people in times of crisis, or helping a parent find answers to 
questions like how can I get my baby to sleep through the 
night? At the same time, people everywhere can use their voices 
to share new perspectives, express themselves, and reach 
broader audiences than ever before.
    Whether you are a barber in Mississippi or a home renovator 
in Indiana, you can share a video and build a global fanbase 
and a successful business right from your living room. In this 
way, the Internet has been one of the world's most important 
equalizers: information can be shared and knowledge can flow 
from anyone anywhere. The same low barriers to entry also make 
it possible for bad actors to cause harm. As a company whose 
mission is to organize the world's information and make it 
universally accessible and useful, Google is deeply conscious 
of both the opportunities and risks the Internet creates. I am 
proud that Google's information services like search, Gmail, 
maps, and photos provide thousands of dollars a year in value 
to the average American for free. We feel a deep responsibility 
to keep the people who use our products safe and secure and 
have long invested in innovative tools to prevent abuse of our 
services. When it comes to privacy, we are committed to keeping 
your information safe, treating it responsibly, and putting you 
in control.
    We continue to make privacy improvements like the changes I 
announced earlier this year to keep less data by default and 
support the creation of comprehensive Federal privacy laws. We 
are equally committed to protecting the quality and integrity 
of information on our platforms and supporting our democracy in 
a nonpartisan way. That is just one timely example. Our 
information panels on Google and YouTube inform users about 
right to vote and how to register. We have also taken many 
steps to raise up high quality journalism, from sending 24 
billion visits to news websites globally every month, to our 
recent $1 billion investment in partnerships with news 
publishers. Since our founding, we have been deeply committed 
to the freedom of expression.
    We also feel a responsibility to protect people who use our 
products from harmful content and to be transparent about how 
we do that. That is why we said and publicly disclose clear 
guidelines for our products and platforms which we enforce 
impartially. We recognize that people come to our services for 
the broad spectrum of perspectives, and we are dedicated to 
building products that are helpful to users of all backgrounds 
and viewpoints. Let me be clear, we approach our work without 
political bias, full stop. To do otherwise would be contrary to 
both our business interests and our mission, which compels us 
to make information accessible to every type of person, no 
matter where they live or what they believe. Of course, our 
ability to provide access to a wide range of information is 
only possible because of existing legal frameworks like Section 
230.
    The United States adopted Section 230 early in the 
Internet's history, and it has been foundational to U.S. 
leadership in the tech sector. It protects the freedom to 
create and share content while supporting the ability of 
platforms and services of all sizes to responsibly address 
harmful content. We appreciate that this committee has put 
great thought into how platforms should address content. We 
look forward to having these conversations.
    As you think about how to shape policy in this important 
area, I would urge the Committee to be very thoughtful about 
any changes to Section 230, and to be very aware of the 
consequences those changes might have on businesses and 
customers. At the end of the day, we all share the same goal, 
free access to information for everyone and responsible 
productions for people and their data. We support legal 
frameworks that achieve these goals. I look forward to engaging 
with you today about these important issues and answering your 
questions. Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Pichai follows:]

     Prepared Statement of Sundar Pichai, Chief Executive Officer, 
                             Alphabet Inc.
    Chairman Wicker, Ranking Member Cantwell, and distinguished members 
of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you 
today.
    The Internet has been a powerful force for good over the past three 
decades. It has radically improved access to information, whether it's 
connecting Americans to jobs, getting critical updates to people in 
times of crisis, or helping a parent find answers to questions like 
``How can I get my baby to sleep through the night?''
    At the same time, people everywhere can use their voices to share 
new perspectives, express themselves and reach broader audiences than 
ever before. Whether you're a barber in Mississippi or a home renovator 
in Indiana, you can share a video and build a global fanbase--and a 
successful business--right from your living room.
    In this way, the Internet has been one of the world's most 
important equalizers. Information can be shared--and knowledge can 
flow--from anyone, to anywhere. But the same low barriers to entry also 
make it possible for bad actors to cause harm.
    As a company whose mission is to organize the world's information 
and make it universally accessible and useful, Google is deeply 
conscious of both the opportunities and risks the Internet creates.
    I'm proud that Google's information services like Search, Gmail, 
Maps, and Photos provide thousands of dollars a year in value to the 
average American--for free. We feel a deep responsibility to keep the 
people who use our products safe and secure, and have long invested in 
innovative tools to prevent abuse of our services.
    When it comes to privacy we are committed to keeping your 
information safe, treating it responsibly, and putting you in control. 
We continue to make privacy improvements--like the changes I announced 
earlier this year to keep less data by default--and support the 
creation of comprehensive Federal privacy laws.
    We are equally committed to protecting the quality and integrity of 
information on our platforms, and supporting our democracy in a non-
partisan way.
    As just one timely example, our information panels on Google and 
YouTube inform users about where to vote and how to register. We've 
also taken many steps to raise up high-quality journalism, from sending 
24 billion visits to news websites globally every month, to our recent 
$1 billion investment in partnerships with news publishers.
    Since our founding, we have been deeply committed to the freedom of 
expression. We also feel a responsibility to protect people who use our 
products from harmful content and to be transparent about how we do 
that. That's why we set and publicly disclose clear guidelines for our 
products and platforms, which we enforce impartially.
    We recognize that people come to our services with a broad spectrum 
of perspectives, and we are dedicated to building products that are 
helpful to users of all backgrounds and viewpoints.
    Let me be clear: We approach our work without political bias, full 
stop. To do otherwise would be contrary to both our business interests 
and our mission, which compels us to make information accessible to 
every type of person, no matter where they live or what they believe.
    Of course, our ability to provide access to a wide range of 
information is only possible because of existing legal frameworks, like 
Section 230. The United States adopted Section 230 early in the 
internet's history, and it has been foundational to U.S. leadership in 
the tech sector. Section 230 protects the freedom to create and share 
content while supporting the ability of platforms and services of all 
sizes to responsibly address harmful content.
    We appreciate that this Committee has put great thought into how 
platforms should address content, and we look forward to having these 
conversations.
    As you think about how to shape policy in this important area, I 
would urge the Committee to be very thoughtful about any changes to 
Section 230 and to be very aware of the consequences those changes 
might have on businesses and consumers.
    At the end of the day, we all share the same goal: free access to 
information for everyone and responsible protections for people and 
their data. We support legal frameworks that achieve these goals, and I 
look forward to engaging with you today about these important issues, 
and answering your questions.

    The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Pichai. Members 
should be advised at this point that we are unable to make 
contact with Mr. Mark Zuckerberg. We are told by Facebook staff 
that he is alone and attempting to connect with this hearing, 
and that they are requesting a five-minute recess at this point 
to see if that connection can be made. I think this is a most 
interesting development. But we are going to accommodate the 
request of the Facebook employees and see if within five 
minutes we can make contact and proceed. So at this point, 
declare a five-minute recess.
    [Recess.]
    The Chairman. Call the hearing back into order, and we are 
told it that in less than 5 minutes we have success. So, Mr. 
Zuckerberg, I am told that we have both video and audio 
connection. Are you there, sir?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Yes, I am. Can you hear me?
    The Chairman. Can hear you fine. And you are now recognized 
for five minutes to summarize your testimony. Welcome.
    Mr. Zuckerberg. All right. Thank you, Chairman. I was able 
to hear the other opening statements. I was just having a hard 
time connecting myself. All right, so----
    The Chairman. I know the feeling. Mr. Zuckerberg.

    STATEMENT OF MARK ZUCKERBERG, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, 
                         FACEBOOK, INC.

    Mr. Zuckerberg. Chairman Wicker, Ranking Member Cantwell 
and members of the Committee, every day millions of Americans 
use the Internet to share their experiences and discuss issues 
that matter to them. Setting the rules for online discourse is 
an important challenge for our society, and there are 
principles at stake that go beyond any one platform. How do we 
balance free expression and safety? How do we define what is 
dangerous? Who should decide? I don't believe that private 
companies should be making so many decisions about these issues 
by themselves. And at Facebook, we often have to balance 
competing equities.
    Sometimes the best approach from a safety or security 
perspective isn't the best for privacy or free expression. So 
we work with experts across society to strike the right 
balance. We don't always get it right, but we try to be fair 
and consistent. The reality is that people have very different 
ideas and views about where the line should be. Democrats often 
say that we don't remove enough content. And Republicans often 
say we remove too much. I expect that we will hear some of 
those criticisms today. And the fact that both sides criticize 
us doesn't mean that we are getting this right. But it does 
mean that there are real disagreements about where the limits 
of online speech should be. And I think that is understandable.
    People can reasonably disagree about where to draw the 
lines. That is a hallmark of democratic societies, especially 
here in the U.S. with our strong First Amendment tradition. But 
it strengthens my belief that when a private company is making 
these calls, we need a more accountable process that people 
feel is legitimate and that gives platform certainty. At 
Facebook, we publish our standards and issue quarterly reports 
on the content that we take down. We launch an independent 
oversight board that can overturn our decisions, and we have 
committed to an audit of our content reports. But I believe 
Congress has a role to play too in order to give people 
confidence that the process is carried out in a way that 
balances society's deeply held values appropriately. And that 
is why I have called for regulation.
    Right now the discussion is focused on Section 230. Some 
say that ending 230 would solve all of the Internet's problems. 
Others say that would end the Internet as we know it. From our 
perspective, Section 230 does two basic things. First, it 
encourages free expression, which is fundamentally important. 
Without 230, platforms could potentially be held liable for 
everything that people say. They would face much greater 
pressure to take down more content to avoid legal risk. Second, 
it allows platforms to moderate content. Without 230, platforms 
could face liability for basic moderation, like removing 
harassment that impacts the safety of their communities. Now 
there is a reason why America leads in technology.
    Section 230 helped create the Internet as we know it. It 
has helped new ideas get built and our companies to spread 
American values around the world and we should maintain this 
advantage. But the Internet has also evolved. And I think that 
Congress should update the law to make sure that it is working 
as intended. One important place to start would be making 
content moderation systems more transparent. Another would be 
to separate good actors from bad actors by making sure that 
companies can't hide behind Section 230 to avoid responsibility 
for intentionally facilitating illegal activity on their 
platforms. We are open to working with Congress on these ideas 
and more. I hope the changes that you make will ring true to 
the spirit and intent of 230.
    There are consequential choices to make here, and it is 
important that we don't prevent the next generation of ideas 
from being built. Now, although this hearing is about content 
policy, I also want to cover our election preparedness work. 
Voting ends in 6 days. We are in the midst of a pandemic, and 
there are ongoing threats to the integrity of this election. 
Since 2016, Facebook has made major investments to stop foreign 
interference. We have hired more than 35,000 people to work on 
safety and security. We have disrupted more than 100 networks 
coming from Russia, Iran and China and more. They were 
misleading people about who they are and what they are doing, 
including three just this week. This is an extraordinary 
election and we have updated our policies to reflect that. We 
are showing people reliable information about voting and 
results, and we have strengthened our ads and misinformation 
policies.
    We are also running the largest voting information campaign 
in U.S. history. 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. People are rightly focused on the 
role that technology companies play in our elections. I am 
proud of the work that we have done to support our democracy. 
This is a difficult period, but I believe that America will 
emerge stronger than ever, and we are focused on doing our part 
to help.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Zuckerberg follows:]

    Prepared Statement of Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Executive Officer, 
                             Facebook, Inc.
I Introduction
    Chairman Wicker, Ranking Member Cantwell, and members of the 
Committee, thank you for the opportunity to be here today.
    Facebook's mission is to give people the power to build community 
and bring the world closer together. Our products enable more than 3 
billion people around the world to share ideas, offer support, and 
discuss important issues. We know we have a responsibility to make sure 
people using our products can do so safely, and we work hard to set and 
enforce policies that meet this goal.
II. CDA Section 230s Role in Giving People a Voice and Keeping Them 
        Safe
    Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is a foundational law 
that allows us to provide our products and services to users. At a high 
level, Section 230 does two things:

   First, it encourages free expression. Without Section 230, 
        platforms could potentially be held liable for everything 
        people say. Platforms would likely censor more content to avoid 
        legal risk and would be less likely to invest in technologies 
        that enable people to express themselves in new ways.

   Second, it allows platforms to moderate content. Without 
        Section 230, platforms could face liability for doing even 
        basic moderation, such as removing hate speech and harassment 
        that impacts the safety and security of their communities.

    Thanks to Section 230, people have the freedom to use the Internet 
to express themselves. At Facebook, this is one of our core principles. 
We believe in giving people a voice, even when that means defending the 
rights of people we disagree with. Free expression is central to how we 
move forward together as a society. We've seen this in the fight for 
democracy around the world, and in movements like Black Lives Matter 
and #MeToo. Section 230 allows us to empower people to engage on 
important issues like these--and to provide a space where non-profits, 
religious groups, news organizations, and businesses of all sizes can 
reach people.
    Section 230 also allows us to work to keep people safe. Facebook 
was built to enable people to express themselves and share, but we know 
that some people use their voice to cause harm by trying to organize 
violence, undermine elections, or otherwise hurt people. We have a 
responsibility to address these risks, and Section 230 enables us to do 
this more effectively by removing the threat of constant litigation we 
might otherwise face.
    We want Facebook to be a platform for ideas of all kinds, but there 
are specific types of harmful content that we don't allow. We publish 
our content policies in our Community Standards, and we update them 
regularly to address emerging threats. To address each type of harmful 
content, we've built specific systems that combine sophisticated 
technology and human judgment. These systems enabled us to take down 
over 250 million pieces of content that violated our policies on 
Facebook and Instagram in the first half of 2020, including almost 25 
million pieces of content relating to terrorism and organized hate, 
almost 20 million pieces of content involving child nudity or sexual 
exploitation, and about 8.5 million pieces of content identified as 
bullying or harassment. We report these numbers as part of our 
Transparency Reports, and we believe all other major platforms should 
do the same so that we can better understand the full picture of online 
harms.
    However, the debate about Section 230 shows that people of all 
political persuasions are unhappy with the status quo. People want to 
know that companies are taking responsibility for combatting harmful 
content--especially illegal activity--on their platforms. They want to 
know that when platforms remove content, they are doing so fairly and 
transparently. And they want to make sure that platforms are held 
accountable.
    Section 230 made it possible for every major Internet service to be 
built and ensured important values like free expression and openness 
were part of how platforms operate. Changing it is a significant 
decision. However, I believe Congress should update the law to make 
sure it's working as intended. We support the ideas around transparency 
and industry collaboration that are being discussed in some of the 
current bipartisan proposals, and I look forward to a meaningful 
dialogue about how we might update the law to deal with the problems we 
face today.
    At Facebook, we don't think tech companies should be making so many 
decisions about these important issues alone. I believe we need a more 
active role for governments and regulators, which is why in March last 
year I called for regulation on harmful content, privacy, elections, 
and data portability. We stand ready to work with Congress on what 
regulation could look like in these areas. By updating the rules for 
the internet, we can preserve what's best about it--the freedom for 
people to express themselves and for entrepreneurs to build new 
things--while also protecting society from broader harms. I would 
encourage this Committee and other stakeholders to make sure that any 
changes do not have unintended consequences that stifle expression or 
impede innovation.
III. Preparing for the 2020 Election and Beyond
    The issues of expression and safety are timely as we are days away 
from a presidential election in the midst of a pandemic. With COVID-19 
affecting communities around the country, people will face unusual 
challenges when voting. Facebook is committed to doing our part to help 
ensure everyone has the chance to make their voice heard. That means 
helping people register and vote, clearing up confusion about how this 
election will work, and taking steps to reduce the chances of election-
related violence and unrest.
    This election season, Facebook has run the largest voting 
information campaign in American history. Based on conversion rates we 
calculated from a few states we partnered with, we've helped an 
estimated 4.4 million people register to vote across Facebook, 
Instagram, and Messenger. We launched a Voting Information Center to 
connect people with reliable information on deadlines for registering 
and voting and details about how to vote by mail or vote early in 
person, and we're displaying links to the Voting Information Center 
when people post about voting on Facebook. We've directed more than 39 
million people so far to the Voting Information Center, and we estimate 
we've helped about 100,000 people sign up to be poll workers.
    We're also working to tackle misinformation and voter suppression. 
We've displayed warnings on more than 150 million pieces of content 
that have been debunked by our third-party fact-checkers. We're 
partnering with election officials to remove false claims about polling 
conditions, and we've put in place strong voter suppression policies 
that prohibit explicit or implicit misrepresentations about how or when 
to vote, as well as attempts to use threats related to COVID-19 to 
scare people into not voting. We're removing calls for people to engage 
in poll watching that use militarized language or suggest that the goal 
is to intimidate, exert control, or display power over election 
officials or voters. In addition, we're blocking new political and 
issue ads during the final week of the campaign, as well as all 
political and issue ads after the polls close on election night.
    Since many people will be voting by mail, and since some states may 
still be counting valid ballots after election day, many experts are 
predicting that we may not have a final result on election night. It's 
important that we prepare for this possibility in advance and 
understand that there could be a period of uncertainty as the final 
results are counted, so we've announced a variety of measures to help 
in the days and weeks after voting ends:

   We'll use the Voting Information Center to prepare people 
        for the possibility that it may take a while to get official 
        results. This information will help people understand that 
        there is nothing illegitimate about not having a result on 
        election night.

   We're partnering with Reuters and the National Election Pool 
        to provide reliable information about election results. We'll 
        show this in the Voting Information Center so it's easily 
        accessible, and we'll notify people proactively as results 
        become available. Importantly, if any candidate or campaign 
        tries to declare victory before the results are in, we'll add a 
        label to their post stating that official results are not yet 
        in and directing people to the official results.

   We'll attach an informational label to content that seeks to 
        delegitimize the outcome of the election or discuss the 
        legitimacy of voting methods, for example, by claiming that 
        lawful methods of voting will lead to fraud. This label will 
        provide basic reliable information about the integrity of the 
        election and voting methods.

   We'll enforce our violence and harm policies more broadly by 
        expanding our definition of high-risk targets to include 
        election officials in order to help prevent any attempts to 
        pressure or harm them, especially while they're fulfilling 
        their critical obligations to oversee the vote counting.

   We've strengthened our enforcement against militias, 
        conspiracy networks, and other groups that could be used to 
        organize violence or civil unrest in the period after the 
        election. We have already removed thousands of these groups 
        from our platform, and we will continue to ramp up enforcement 
        over the coming weeks.

    It's important to recognize that there may be legitimate concerns 
about the electoral process over the coming months. We want to make 
sure people can speak up if they encounter problems at the polls or 
have been prevented from voting, but that doesn't extend to spreading 
misinformation.
    Four years ago we encountered a new threat: coordinated online 
efforts by foreign governments and individuals to interfere in our 
elections. This threat hasn't gone away. We've invested heavily in our 
security systems and now have some of the most sophisticated teams and 
systems in the world to prevent these attacks, including the teams 
working in our dedicated Election Operations Center. Since 2017, we've 
removed more than 100 networks worldwide engaging in coordinated 
inauthentic behavior, including ahead of major democratic elections, 
and we've taken down 30 networks so far this year. We're also blocking 
ads from state-controlled media outlets in the U.S. to provide an extra 
layer of protection against various types of foreign influence in the 
public debate ahead of the election.
IV. Supporting a Healthy News Ecosystem
    Facebook also supports our democracy by supporting journalism--
particularly local journalism, which is vital for helping people be 
informed and engaged citizens. Facebook has invested hundreds of 
millions of dollars across a variety of initiatives to support a 
healthy news and journalism ecosystem. We launched Facebook News in 
October 2019, making a $300 million commitment to help publishers 
invest in building their readership and subscription models. We now 
have multi-year partnerships with ABC News, The New York Times, The 
Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, Fox News, The 
Dallas Morning News, and many more.
    Among other benefits, Facebook provides publishers with free 
organic distribution of news and other content, which grows audience 
and revenue for news publishers; customized tools and products to help 
publishers monetize their content; and initiatives to help them 
innovate with online news content. We've also built tools to help 
publishers increase their subscribers by driving people from Facebook 
links to publisher websites. Helping publishers reach new audiences has 
been one of our most important goals, and we have found that over 95 
percent of the traffic Facebook News now delivers to publishers is in 
addition to the traffic they already get from News Feed.
    The Facebook Journalism Project is another initiative to create 
stronger ties between Facebook and the news industry. Over the past 
three years, we've invested more than $425 million in this effort, 
including developing news products; providing grants, training, and 
tools for journalists; and working with publishers and educators to 
increase media literacy. Since launching the Facebook Journalism 
Project, we have met with more than 2,600 publishers around the world 
to understand how they use our products and how we can make 
improvements to better support their needs.
    This investment includes support for organizations like the 
Pulitzer Center, Report for America, the Knight-Lenfest Local News 
Transformation Fund, the Local Media Association and Local Media 
Consortium, the American Journalism Project, and the Community News 
Project. We've seen how important it is that people have information 
they can rely on, and we're proud to support organizations like these 
that play a critical role in our democracy.
V. Conclusion
    I'd like to close by thanking this Committee, and particularly 
Chairman Wicker and Ranking Member Cantwell, for your leadership on the 
issue of online privacy. Facebook has long supported a comprehensive 
Federal privacy law, and we have had many constructive conversations 
with you and your staffs as you have crafted your proposals. I 
understand that there are still difficult issues to be worked out, but 
I am optimistic that legislators from both parties, consumer advocates, 
and industry all agree on many of the fundamental pieces. I look 
forward to continuing to work with you and other stakeholders to ensure 
that we provide consumers with the transparency, control, and 
accountability they deserve.
    I know we will be judged by how we perform at this pivotal time, 
and we're going to continue doing everything we can to live up to the 
trust that people have placed in us by making our products a part of 
their lives.

    The Chairman. Well, thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. 
Zuckerberg, and thanks to all of our witnesses. We will now--I 
think we are supposed to set the clock to 7 minutes and I see 5 
minutes up there. But somehow we will keep time. So there we 
are. OK. Well, thank you all. Let me start then with Mr. 
Dorsey. Mr. Dorsey, the Committee has compiled dozens and 
dozens of examples of conservative content being censored and 
suppressed by your platforms over the last 4 years. I entered 
these examples into the record on October 1 when the Committee 
voted unanimously to issue the subpoenas. And thank you all 
three again for working with us on the scheduling, alleviating 
the necessity for actually exercising the subpoenas.
    Mr. Dorsey, your platform allows foreign dictators to post 
propaganda, typically without restriction, yet you routinely 
restrict the President of the United States. And here is an 
example. In March, a spokesman for the Chinese Communist Party 
falsely accused the U.S. Military of causing the coronavirus 
epidemic. He tweeted, ``CDC was caught on the spot. When did 
patient zero begin in the U.S.? How many people are infected? 
What are the names of the hospitals? It might be the U.S. Army 
who brought the epidemic to Wuhan.'' And on and on. After this 
tweet was up for some 2 months, Twitter added a fact check 
label to this tweet--after being up for 2 months.
    However, when President Trump tweeted about how mail-in 
ballots are vulnerable to fraud, a statement that I subscribe 
to and agree with, and a statement that is in fact true, 
Twitter immediately imposed a fact check label on that tweet. 
Mr. Dorsey, how does a claim by Chinese communists that the 
U.S. Military is to blame for COVID remain up for 2 months 
without a fact check and the President's tweet about security 
in mail-in ballots get labeled instantly?
    Mr. Dorsey. Well, first and foremost, we as you mentioned, 
we did label that tweet. As we think about enforcement, we 
consider severity of potential offline harm, and we act as 
quickly as we can. We have taken action against tweets from 
world leaders all around the world, including the President. 
And we did take action on that tweet because we saw it. We saw 
the confusion it might encourage and we labeled it accordingly. 
And the goal----
    The Chairman. You are speaking of the President's tweet?
    Mr. Dorsey. Yes.
    The Chairman. OK.
    Mr. Dorsey. The goal of our labeling is to provide more 
context, to connect the dots so that people can have 
information so they can make decisions for themselves. We, you 
know, we have created these policies recently. We are enforcing 
them. There are certainly things that we can do much faster. 
But generally, we believe that the policy was enforced in a 
timely manner and in the right regard.
    The Chairman. And yet you seem to have no objection to a 
tweet by the Chinese Communist Party saying the U.S. Army 
brought the epidemic to Wuhan?
    Mr. Dorsey. Well, we did, and we labeled that tweet----
    The Chairman. Too much to do so, is that correct?
    Mr. Dorsey. I am not sure of the exact timeframe, but we 
can get back to you on that.
    The Chairman. So you are going to get back to us as to how 
a tweet from the Chinese Communist Party falsely accusing the 
U.S. Military of causing the coronavirus epidemic was left up 
for 2 months with no comment from Twitter while the President 
of the United States making a statement about being careful 
about voter--about ballot security with the mail was labeled 
immediately. I have a tweet here from Mr. Ajit Pai. Mr. Ajit 
Pai is the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. 
And he recounts some four tweets by the Iranian dictator, 
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which Twitter did not place a public 
label on. All four of them glorify violence. The first tweet 
says this, and I quote each time, ``the Zionist regime is a 
deadly cancerous growth and a detriment to the region. It will 
undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed.'' That is the first 
tweet.
    The second tweet, ``the only remedy until the removal of 
the Zionist regime is firm, armed resistance.'' Again, left up 
without comment by Twitter. The third, ``the struggle to free 
Palestine is jihad in the way of God.'' I quote that in part 
for the sake of time. And number four, ``we will support and 
assist any Nation or any group anywhere who opposes and fights 
the Zionist regime.'' I would simply point out that these 
tweets are still up, Mr. Dorsey. And how is it that they are 
acceptable to be there? I will ask unanimous consent to enter 
this tweet from Ajit Pai in the record at this point. That will 
be done without objection. How is, Mr. Dorsey, is that 
acceptable based on your policies at Twitter?
    Mr. Dorsey. We believe it is important for everyone to hear 
from global leaders. And we have policies around world leaders. 
We want to make sure that we are respecting their right to 
speak and to publish what they need. But if there is a 
violation of our terms of service, we want to label it----
    The Chairman. They are still up. Do they violate your terms 
of service, Mr. Dorsey?
    Mr. Dorsey. We did not find those to violate our terms of 
service because we considered them saber rattling, which is 
part of the speech of world leaders in concert with other 
countries. Speech against our own people or a country's own 
citizens, we believe, is different and can cause more immediate 
harm.
    The Chairman. Very telling information, Mr. Dorsey. Thank 
you very much. Senator Cantwell, you are recognized.
    Senator Cantwell. I think I am deferring to our colleague, 
Senator Peters, just because of the timing and situation for 
him.
    The Chairman. All right, Senator Peters, are you there?

                STATEMENT OF HON. GARY PETERS, 
                   U.S. SENATOR FROM MICHIGAN

    Senator Peters. I am here. I am here.
    The Chairman. You are recognized for seven minutes.
    Senator Peters. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking 
Member Cantwell. I appreciate your deferral to me. I certainly 
appreciate that consideration a great deal. I also want to 
thank each of our panelists here today for coming forward and 
being a witness. And I appreciate all of you accommodating your 
schedules so that we can have this hearing. My first question 
is for Mr. Zuckerberg, as--and I want to start off by saying 
how much I appreciated our opportunity last night to speak at 
length on a number of issues. And as I told you last night, I 
appreciate Facebook's efforts to assist the law enforcement to 
disrupt a plot to kidnap and hold a sham trial and kill our 
Governor, Governor Whitmer. The individuals in that case 
apparently used the Facebook for a broad recruiting effort. But 
then they actually planned the specifics of that operation off 
of your platform.
    My question is, when users reach the level of 
radicalization that violates your community standards, you 
often will ban those groups and you will then drive them off to 
other platforms, those platforms tend to have less transparency 
and oversight. But the issue that I would like you to address 
is for those individuals that remain on your platform, they are 
often far down the path of radicalization, but they are 
definitely looking for an outlet.
    And I understand that Facebook has recently adopted a 
strategy to redirect users who are searching, for example, for 
election misinformation. But it doesn't seem that that policy 
applies to budding violent extremists. Mr. Zuckerberg, do 
believe that the platform is--your platform has a 
responsibility to offramp users who are on the path to 
radicalization by violent extremist groups?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, thanks for the question. I think 
this is a very important and my understanding is that we 
actually do a little of what you are talking about here. If 
people are searching for, and I think for example white 
supremacist organizations of which we ban those, we treat them 
as terrorist organizations, not only we are not going to show 
that content, but I think we try to where we can highlight 
information that would be helpful. And I think we try to work 
with experts on that. I can I can follow up and get you more 
information on the scope of those activities and when we invoke 
that. But I certainly agree with the spirit of the question 
that this is a good idea and something that we should continue 
pursuing and perhaps expand.
    Senator Peters. Well, I appreciate those comments. I am the 
Ranking Member on Senate Homeland Security committee, and what 
we are seeing is a rise of violent extremist groups, which is 
very troubling. And certainly we need to work very closely with 
you as to how do we disrupt this kind of radicalization 
especially from folks that are using your platform.
    So I appreciate the opportunity to work further. And as we 
talked about last night, you asserted that Facebook is 
proactively working with law enforcement now to disrupt some of 
these real world violent attempts that stem from some of that 
activity that originated in your platform. But could you tell 
me specifically how many threats that you have proactively 
referred to, local or state law enforcement, prior to being 
approached for a preservation request?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, I don't know the number off the 
top of my head, so I can follow up with you on that, but it is 
increasingly common that our systems are able to detect when 
there is potential issues. And over the last 4 years in 
particular, we have built closer partnerships with law 
enforcement and the intelligence community to be able to share 
those kind of signals. So what we are doing more of that, 
including in the case that you mentioned before, around the 
attempted kidnapping of Governor Witmer, we identified that as 
a signal to the FBI, I think was about 6 months ago when we 
started seeing some suspicious activity on our platform. And 
there certainly--that is part of our routine and how we 
operate.
    Senator Peters. Well, Mr. Zuckerberg, discovery tools and 
recommendation algorithms that your platforms use have served 
up potentially extremist content based on the user profiles of 
folks. As we seek to understand why membership in these 
extremist groups is rising, I would hope that your companies 
are right now engage again some forensic analysis of 
membership. Once you take down an extremist group, to take a 
look at how that happened on your platform is certainly going 
to better inform us as to how we can disrupt this type of 
recruitment into extremist groups. My question for you, though, 
is that in 2016, you said and this was apparently an internal 
Facebook, internal document that was reported by The Wall 
Street Journal that said that ``64 percent of members of 
violent groups became members because of your platform's 
recommendation.''
    And I will quote from that report that was reported in The 
Wall Street Journal that said, ``our recommendation systems 
grow the problem.'' That is clearly very concerning. And I know 
in response to that report in 2016, you had made changes to 
your policies. You made changes to some of the algorithms that 
existed at that time. Our question is, have you seen a 
reduction in your platform's facilitation of extremist group 
recruitment since those policies were changed?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, I am not familiar with that 
specific study, but I agree with the concern and making sure 
that our recommendation systems for what groups people are 
given the opportunity to join is certainly one important vector 
for addressing this issue. And we have taken a number of steps 
here, including disqualifying groups from being included in our 
recommendation system at all, if they routinely are being used 
to share misinformation or if they have content violations or a 
number of other criteria. So I am quite focused on this. I 
agree with where you are going with that question. I don't have 
any data today on the real world impact of that yet. But I 
think that addressing this upstream is very important.
    Senator Peters. So I appreciate you agreeing with that and 
that we need more data. Is it that you don't have the data just 
at the top of your head or that it doesn't exist?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Well, Senator, certainly the former and 
then potentially the latter as well. I think it probably takes 
some time before--after we make these changes to be able to 
measure the impact of it. And I am not aware of what studies 
are going on into this. This is--this seems like the type of 
thing that one would want not just internal Facebook 
researchers to work on, but also potentially a collaboration 
with independent academics as well.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Zuckerberg. And thank you, 
Senator Peters.
    Senator Peters. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Senator Gardner has also asked to go out of 
order and Senator Thune has graciously deferred to him. So, 
Senator Gardner, you are recognized for seven minutes, sir.

                STATEMENT OF HON. CORY GARDNER, 
                   U.S. SENATOR FROM COLORADO

    Senator Gardner. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank 
you, Senator Thune, for sharing your time or at least deferring 
your time to me. And thank you, Mr. Zuckerberg. Thank you very 
much. And, Mr. Dorsey, thank you for being here. Mr. Dorsey, I 
am going to direct these first questions to you. Mr. Dorsey, do 
you believe that the Holocaust really happened? Yes or no?
    Mr. Dorsey. Yes.
    Senator Gardner. So you would agree that someone who says 
the Holocaust may not have happened is spreading 
misinformation? Yes or no?
    Mr. Dorsey. Yes.
    Senator Gardner. I appreciate your answers on this but they 
surprise me and probably a lot of other Coloradoans and 
Americans. After all, Iran's Ayatollah has done exactly this, 
questioning the Holocaust. And yet his tweets remain unflagged 
on Twitter's platform. You and I agree that moderating your 
platform makes sense in certain respects. We don't want the 
next terrorist finding inspiration on Twitter or any platform 
for that matter. But you have also decided to moderate certain 
content from influential world leaders. And I would like to 
understand your decisions to do so a little bit better. Can you 
name any other instance of Twitter hiding or deleting a tweet 
from heads of state?
    Mr. Dorsey. Not none off the top of my head, but we have 
many examples across world leaders around the world.
    Senator Gardner. Would you be willing to provide a list of 
those?
    Mr. Dorsey. Absolutely.
    Senator Gardner. I know we have established many free 
content moderation can have certain upsides like combating 
terrorism but Twitter has chosen to approach content moderation 
from the standpoint of combating misinformation as well. So it 
is strange to me that you have flagged the tweets from the 
President, but haven't hidden the Ayatollah's tweets on 
Holocaust denial or calls to wipe Israel off the map and that 
you can't recall off the top of your head hidden or deleted 
tweets from other world leaders. I would appreciate that list. 
I think it is important that we all hear that. So that brings 
my next question to the front. Does Twitter maintain a formal 
list of certain accounts that you actively monitor for 
misinformation?
    Mr. Dorsey. No. And we don't have a policy against 
misinformation. We have a policy against misinformation in 
three categories which are manipulated media, public health, 
specifically COVID, and civic integrity, election interference 
and voter suppression. That is all we have policy on for 
misleading information. We do not have policy or enforcement 
for any other types of misleading information that you are 
mentioning.
    Senator Gardner. So somebody denying the murder of millions 
of people or instigating violence against a country as a head 
of state does not categorically fall in any of those three 
misinformation or other categories perhaps?
    Mr. Dorsey. Not misinformation. But we do have other 
policies around incitement to violence, which some of the 
tweets you mentioned of the examples that you are mentioning 
may follow, but for misleading information, we are focused on 
those three categories only.
    Senator Gardner. So somebody denies the Holocaust has 
happened, is not misinformation?
    Mr. Dorsey. It is misleading information, but we don't have 
a policy against that type of misleading information----
    Senator Gardner. Millions of people died. And that is not a 
violation of Twitter--again, I just don't understand how you 
can label a President of the United States--have you ever taken 
a tweet down from the Ayatollah?
    Mr. Dorsey. I believe we have but we can get back to you on 
that. We have certainly labeled tweets and I believe we have 
taken one down as well.
    Senator Gardner. You know, did you say you do not have a 
list, is that correct? Do you not maintain a list?
    Mr. Dorsey. We don't maintain a list of accounts we watch. 
We look for reports and issues brought to us, and then we weigh 
it against our policy and then force if needed.
    Senator Gardner. You look for reports from your employees 
or from the--.
    Mr. Dorsey. No, from the people using the service.
    Senator Gardner. Right. And then they turn that over to 
your Board of Review. Is that correct?
    Mr. Dorsey. Well, so in some cases algorithms take action. 
In other cases humans do. In some cases it is a pairing of the 
two.
    Senator Gardner. There are numerous examples of blue 
checkmarks that are spreading false information that aren't 
flagged. So, and Twitter must have some kind of list of 
priority accounts that it maintains. You have the blue 
checkmark list. How do you decide when to flag a tweet that we 
just--just got into that a little bit? Is there a formal 
threshold of tweets or likes that must be met before a tweet is 
flagged?
    Mr. Dorsey. No.
    Senator Gardner. Twitter can't claim that--I just with your 
answers on the Ayatollah and others, I just don't understand 
how Twitter can claim to want a world of less hate and 
misinformation while you simultaneously let the kind of content 
that the Ayatollah has tweeted out to flourish on the platform, 
including from other world leaders. I just--it is no wonder 
that Americans are concerned about politically motivated 
content moderation at Twitter given what we have just said. I 
don't like the idea of a group of unelected elites in San 
Francisco or Silicon Valley deciding whether my speech is 
permissible on their platforms, but I like even less the idea 
of unelected Washington, D.C. bureaucrats trying to enforce 
some kind of politically neutral content moderation. So just as 
we have heard from other panelists, as we have we are going to 
hear throughout the day, we have to be very careful and not 
rush to legislate in ways that stifle speech. You can delete 
Facebook, turn off Twitter or try to ditch Google, but you 
cannot unsubscribe from Government censors. Congress should be 
focused on encouraging speech, not restricting it.
    The Supreme Court has tried teaching us that lesson time 
and time again, and the Constitution demands that we remember 
it. I am running short on time. Something very quickly. I will 
go through another question. One of the core ideas of Section 
230s liability protections is this, you shouldn't be 
responsible for what someone else says on your platform. 
Conversely, you should be liable for what you say or do on your 
own platform. I think that is pretty common sense. But courts 
have not always agreed with this approach.
    Even Rep. Chris Cox opined in a recent Wall Street Journal 
op ed that Section 230 has sometimes been interpreted by courts 
more broadly than I expected, for example, allowing some 
websites to escape liability for content they helped create. 
Mr. Zuckerberg, I have a simple question for you and each of 
the panelists today. Quickly, to be clear, I am not talking 
about technical tools or operating the platform itself here. I 
am purely talking about content. Do you agree that Internet 
platforms should be held liable for the specific content that 
you yourself create on your own platforms, yes or no?
    The Chairman. Very quickly.
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, I think that that is reasonable.
    Senator Gardner. Yes or no, Mr. Dorsey, if Twitter creates 
specific content, should Twitter be liable for that content?
    Mr. Dorsey. Twitter does as well.
    Senator Gardner. Mr. Pichai, same question to you, yes or 
no, should Google be liable for the specific content that it 
creates?
    Mr. Pichai. If we are acting as a publisher, I would say 
yes.
    Senator Gardner. The specific content that you create on 
your own platform, yes.
    Mr. Pichai. That seems reasonable.
    Senator Gardner. Thank you. I think what the other side's 
liability questions in regard to the good faith removal 
provision in Section 230 and we will get into a little bit more 
on the private questions. I know I am out of time. So, Mr. 
Chairman, thank you for giving me this time. Senator Thune, 
thank you as well. Thanks to the witnesses.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Gardner. The Ranking 
Member has now deferred to Senator Klobuchar. So, Senator, you 
are now recognized.

               STATEMENT OF HON. AMY KLOBUCHAR, 
                  U.S. SENATOR FROM MINNESOTA

    Senator Klobuchar. Thank you, Chairman. I want to note 
first that this hearing comes 6 days before Election Day, and 
it makes, I believe, we are politicizing, and the Republican 
majority is politicizing, what should actually not be a 
partisan topic. And I do want to thank the witnesses here for 
appearing, but also for the work that they are doing to try to 
encourage voting and to put out that correct information when 
the President and others are undermining vote by mail, 
something we are doing in every state in the country right now. 
Second point, Republicans failed to pass the bipartisan Honest 
Ads Act and the White House blatantly blocked the bipartisan 
election security bill that I have with Senator Lankford, as 
well as several other Republicans.
    And it is one of the reasons I think we need a new 
President. Third, my Republican colleagues in the Senate, many 
of them I work with very well on this committee, but we have 
had 4 years to do something when it comes to antitrust, 
privacy, local news, a subject that briefly came up, and so 
many other things. So I am going to use my time to focus on 
what I consider in Justice Ginsburg's words to be a ``blueprint 
for the future.'' I will start with you, Mr. Zuckerberg. How 
many people log into Facebook every day?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, it is more than 2 billion.
    Senator Klobuchar. OK. And how much money have you made on 
political advertisements in the last two years?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, I do not know off the top of my 
head. It is a relatively small part of our revenue.
    Senator Klobuchar. OK. Small for you, but I think it is 
$2.2 billion, over ten 10,000 ads sold since May 2018. Those 
are your numbers and we can check them out later. Do you 
require Facebook employees to review the content of each of the 
political ads that you sell in order to ensure that they comply 
with the law and your own internal rules?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, we require all political 
advertisers to be verified before they could run ads. And I 
believe we do review advertising as well.
    Senator Klobuchar. But does a real person actually read the 
political ads that you are selling, yes or no?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, I imagine that a person does not 
look at every single ad. Our systems are a combination of 
artificial intelligence systems and people. We have 35,000 
people who do content and security review for us. But the 
massive amount----
    Senator Klobuchar. I really just had a straightforward 
question because I don't think they do. I think the algorithms 
hidden--because I think the ads instantly are placed. Is that 
correct?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, my understanding of the way the 
system works is we have computers and artificial intelligence 
scan everything, and if we think that there are potential 
violations, then either the AI system will act or it will flag 
it to the tens of thousands of people who do content review.
    Senator Klobuchar. With all the money you have, you could 
have a real person review like a lot of the other traditional 
media organizations do. So another question, when John McCain 
and I and Senator Warner introduced the Honest Ads Act, we got 
pushback from your company, others, and you were initially 
against it. But then we discussed this at a hearing. You are 
for it. I appreciate that. And have you spent any of the money? 
I know you spent the most money, Facebook spent the most money 
over lobbying last year. Have you spent any of the money trying 
to change or block the bill?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, no. In fact, I have endorsed it 
publicly and we have implemented it into our systems, even 
though it hasn't become law. I am a big supporter----
    Senator Klobuchar.--tried to change it. No, have you done 
anything to get it passed because we are at a roadblock on it? 
And I do appreciate that you voluntarily implemented some of 
it, but have you voluntarily implemented the part of the Honest 
Ads Act where you fully disclose which groups of people are 
being targeted by political ads?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, we have, I think, industry leading 
transparency around political ads, and part of that is showing 
which audiences in broad terms ended up seeing the ads. Of 
course, getting the right resolution on that is challenging 
without it becoming a privacy issue. But we have tried to do 
that and provide as much transparency as we can. I think we are 
currently leading in that area. And to your question about how 
we--.
    Senator Klobuchar. I still have concerns, and I don't mean 
to interrupt you, but I have such limited time. One of the 
things that I--last thing I want to ask you about is 
divisiveness on the platform. And I know there has been a 
recent--studies have shown that part of your algorithms that 
push people toward more polarized content, left, right, 
whatever. In fact, one of your researchers warned senior 
executives that our algorithms exploit the human brains 
attraction to divisiveness. The way I look at it, more 
divisiveness, more time in the platform, more time on the 
platform, the company makes more money. Does that bother you 
what it has done to our politics?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, I respectfully disagree with that 
characterization of how the systems work. We design our systems 
to show people the content that is going to be the most 
meaningful to them, which is not trying to be as divisive as 
possible. Most of the content on the systems is not political. 
It is things like making sure that you can see when your cousin 
had her baby or----
    Senator Klobuchar. OK. I am going to move on to a quick 
Google here and Mr. Pichai, but I am telling you right now that 
that is not what I am talking about, the cousins and the babies 
here. I am talking about conspiracy theories and all the things 
that I think the Senators on both sides of the aisle know what 
I am talking about. And I think it has been corrosive. Google, 
Mr. Pichai, I have not really liked your response to the 
lawsuit and what has been happening. I think we need a change 
in competition policy for this country. I hope, I believe to 
ask you more about it at the Judiciary committee. And I think 
your response isn't just defensive, it has been defiant to the 
Justice Department and suits all over the world. You control 
almost 90 percent of all general search engine queries, 70 
percent of the search advertising market. Don't you see these 
practices as anti-competitive?
    Mr. Pichai. Well, Senator, we are a popular general purpose 
search engine. We do see robust competition, many categories of 
information, and, you know, we invest significantly in R&D. We 
are innovating. We are lowering prices in all the markets we 
are operating in and happy to, you know, engage and discuss it 
further.
    Senator Klobuchar. Well, one of your employees testified 
before the antitrust subcommittee last month, and he suggested 
that Google wasn't dominant in ad tech, that it was only one of 
many companies in a highly competitive ad tech landscape. 
Google has 90 percent of the publisher ad server market, a 
product of its double click acquisition. Does the market sound 
highly competitive to you when you have 90 percent of it?
    The Chairman. Very brief--very brief answer.
    Mr. Pichai. Many publishers can use simultaneously made 
tools. Amazon created this alone of growing significantly in 
the last 2 years. You know, we, this is a market in which we 
share a majority of our revenue. Our margins are low. We are 
happy to take feedback here. We are trying to support the 
publishing industry, but definitely open to feedback and happy 
to engage in this.
    The Chairman. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Pichai. Thank you, 
Senator Klobuchar.
    Senator Klobuchar.--so I am looking forward to our next 
hearing to discuss it more. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Thank you very much. Senator Thune, you are 
now recognized.

                 STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN THUNE, 
                 U.S. SENATOR FROM SOUTH DAKOTA

    Senator Thune. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I appreciate 
you convening the hearing today, which is an important follow 
up to the Subcommittee hearing that we convened in July on 
Section 230. Many of us here today and many of those we 
represent are deeply concerned about the possibility of 
political bias and discrimination by large Internet social 
media platforms. Others are concerned that even if your actions 
aren't skewed, that they are hugely consequential for our 
public debate. Yet you operate with limited accountability. 
Such distrust is intensified by the fact that the moderation 
practices used to suppress or amplify content remain largely a 
black box to the public. Moreover, the public explanations 
given by the platforms for taking down or suppressing content 
too often seem like excuses that have to be walked back after 
scrutiny. And due to exceptional secrecy with which platforms 
protect their algorithms and content moderation practices, it 
has been impossible to prove one way or another whether 
political bias exists, so users are stuck with anecdotal 
information that frequently seems to confirm their worst fears. 
Which is why I have introduced two bipartisan bills the 
Platform Accountability and Consumer Transparency, or the PACT 
Act, and the Filter Bubble Transparency Act to give users, the 
regulators, and the general public meaningful insight into 
online content moderation decisions and how algorithms may be 
amplifying or suppressing information. And so I look forward to 
continuing that discussion today. My Democrat colleagues 
suggest that when we criticize the bias against conservatives, 
that we are somehow working the refs. But the analogy of 
working the refs assumes that it is legitimate even to think of 
you as refs. It assumes that you three Silicon Valley CEOs get 
to decide what political speech gets amplified or suppressed. 
And it assumes that you are the arbiters of truth or at the 
very least the publishers making editorial decisions about 
speech. So yes or no, I would ask this of each of the three of 
you, are the Democrats correct that you all are the legitimate 
referees over our political speech? Mr. Zuckerberg, are you the 
ref?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, I certainly think not. And I do 
not want us to have that role.
    Senator Thune. Mr. Dorsey, are you the ref?
    Mr. Dorsey. No.
    Senator Thune. Mr. Pichai, are you the ref?
    Mr. Pichai. Senator, I do think we make content moderation 
decisions, but we are transparent about it and we do it to 
protect users. But we really believe and support maximizing 
freedom of expression.
    Senator Thune. I will take that as three noes, and I agree 
with that. You are not the referees of our political speech. 
That is why all three of you have to be more transparent and 
fair with your content moderation policies and your content 
selection algorithms, because at the moment it is, as I said, 
largely a black box. There is real mistrust among the American 
people about whether you are being fair or transparent. And 
this extends to concerns about the kinds of amplification and 
suppression decisions your platforms may make on Election Day 
and during the post-election period if the results of the 
election are too close to call.
    And so I just want to underscore again, for my Democratic 
friends who keep using this really bad referee analogy, Google, 
Facebook and Twitter are not the referees over our democracy. 
Now, a second question, the PACT Act, which I referenced 
earlier, includes provisions to give users due process and an 
explanation when content they post is removed. So this is, 
again, a yes or no question. Do you agree that users should be 
entitled to due process and an explanation when content they 
post has been taken down? Mr. Zuckerberg?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, I think that that would be a good 
principle to have.
    Senator Thune. Thank you. Mr. Dorsey.
    Mr. Dorsey. Absolutely. We believe in a fair and 
straightforward appeals process.
    Senator Thune. Right. Mr. Pichai?
    Mr. Pichai. Yes, Senator.
    Senator Thune. Alright. Thank you. Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. 
Dorsey, your platforms knowingly suppressed or limited the 
visibility of this New York Post article about the content on 
Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop. Many in the country are 
justifiably concerned how often the suppression of major 
newspaper articles occurs online. And I would say, Mr. 
Zuckerberg, would you commit to provide, for the record, a 
complete list of newspaper articles that Facebook suppressed or 
limited the distribution of over the past 5 years, along with 
an explanation of why each article was suppressed or the 
distribution was limited?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, I can certainly follow up with you 
and your team to discuss that. We have an independent fact 
checking program, as you are as you are saying. You know, we 
try not to be arbiters of what is true ourselves, but we have 
partnered with fact checkers around the world to help assess 
that, to prevent misinformation and viral hoaxes from becoming 
widely distributed on our platform. And I believe that the 
information that they fact check and the content that they fact 
check is public. So I think that there is probably already a 
record of this that can be reviewed.
    Senator Thune. Yes. But if you could do that, as it applies 
to newspapers, that would be very helpful. And Mr. Dorsey, 
would you commit to doing the same on behalf of Twitter?
    Mr. Dorsey. We would absolutely be open to it and we are 
suggesting going a step further, which is aligned with what you 
are introducing in the PACT Act, which is much more 
transparency around our process, content moderation process, 
and also the results, the outcomes and doing that on a regular 
basis. I do agree and think that builds more accountability and 
ultimately that that lends itself to more trust.
    Senator Thune. Great. Thank you. All right. Very quickly, I 
have a lot of time either, but I often hear from conservative 
and religious Americans who look at the public statements of 
your companies, the geographic concentration of your companies 
and the political donations of your employees, which often are 
in the 80 to 90 percent to Democrat politicians. And you can 
see why this lack of ideological diversity among the executives 
and employees of your company could be problematic and may be 
contributing to some of the distrust among conservatives and 
Republican users.
    And so I guess the question that I would ask is, and Mr. 
Zuckerberg, my understanding is that the person that is in 
charge of election integrity and security at Facebook is a 
former Joe Biden staffer. Is there someone that is closely 
associated with President Trump who is in the same sort of 
election integrity role at Facebook? And what--how do you all 
respond to that argument that there isn't sufficient balance in 
terms of the political ideology or diversity in your companies? 
And how do you deal with the lack of, sort of, trust that 
creates among conservatives?
    The Chairman. Let's see if we can have three brief answers 
there.
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, I think having balances is 
valuable. We try to do that. I am not aware of the example that 
you say of someone in charge of this process who worked for 
Biden in the past. So we can follow up on that if that is 
right.
    The Chairman. Follow up on the record for the rest of this 
answer, please, Mr. Zuckerberg. Thank you.
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Alright.
    The Chairman. Mr. Dorsey.
    Mr. Dorsey. This is why I do believe it is important to 
have more transparency around our process and our practices, 
and it is independent of the viewpoints that our employees 
hold. We need to make sure that we are showing people that we 
have objective policies and enforcement.
    The Chairman. And Mr. Pichai.
    Mr. Pichai. In these teams, there are people who are 
liberal, Republican, libertarian and so on. We are committed. 
We consult widely with important third party organizations 
across both sides when we develop our policies. And as the CEO, 
I am committed to running it without any political bias, but 
happy to engage more.
    The Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen, and thank you, Senator 
Thune. The Ranking Member has now deferred to Senator 
Blumenthal. Sir, you are recognized.

             STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, 
                 U.S. SENATOR FROM CONNECTICUT

    Senator Blumenthal. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to 
the Ranking Member. I want to begin by associating myself with 
the very thoughtful comments made by the Ranking Member as to 
the need for broader consideration of issues of privacy and 
competition and local news. They are vitally important. And 
also with comments made by my colleague, Senator Klobuchar, 
about the need for antitrust review and I soon will be 
examining some of these topics in November before the Judiciary 
committee. You know, I have been an advocate of reform of 
Section 230 for literally 15 years. When I was Attorney General 
of the State of Connecticut, I raised this issue of the 
absolute immunity that no longer seems appropriate, so I really 
welcome the bipartisan consensus that we are seeing now that 
there needs to be constructive review. But frankly, I am 
appalled that my Republican colleagues are holding this hearing 
literally days before an election when they seem to want to 
bully and browbeat the platforms here to try to tilt them 
toward President Trump's favor.
    The timing seems inexplicable, except to game the ref, in 
effect. I recognize the referee analogy is not completely 
exact, but that is exactly what they are trying to do, namely, 
to bully and browbeat these platforms to favor Senator--
President Trump's tweets and posts. And frankly, President 
Trump has broken all the norms and he has put on your platforms 
potentially dangerous and lethal misinformation and 
disinformation. I am going to hold up one of them. This one, as 
you could see, pertains to COVID. We have learned to live with 
it, he says, just like we are learning to live with COVID, 
talking about the flu. We have learned to live with it.
    In most populations, far less lethal. He has said that 
children, I would say almost definitely, are almost immune from 
this disease. He has said about the elections, big problems and 
discrepancies with mail in ballots all over the USA. Must have 
final total on November 3rd. Fortunately, the platforms are 
acting to label or take down these kinds of posts but my 
Republican colleagues have been silent. They lost their phones 
or their voices and the platforms, in my view----
    The Chairman. We just lost your voice there in midsentence, 
Richard. Let's suspend for just a minute till we get.
    Senator Blumenthal. I hope you can hear me now.
    The Chairman. There we are. OK. We can hear you now, 
Senator Blumenthal. Just start back one sentence before--we had 
you until then.
    Senator Blumenthal. I just want to say about this 
disinformation from the President, there has been deafening 
silence from my Republican colleagues. And now we have a 
hearing that is, in effect, designed to intimidate and browbeat 
the platforms that have labeled this disinformation for exactly 
what it is. We are on the verge of a massive onslaught on the 
integrity of our election. President Trump has indicated that 
he will potentially interfere by posting disinformation on 
Election Day or the morning after. The Russians have begun 
already interfering in our elections. We have all received 
briefings that are literally chilling about what they are doing 
and the FBI and the CSIS have recently issued public alerts 
that, ``foreign actors and cyber criminals likely to spread 
disinformation regarding 2020 results.'' They are making 2016 
look like child's play in what they are doing.
    So, President Trump and the Republicans have a plan which 
involves disinformation and misinformation. The Russians have a 
plan. I want to know whether you have a plan, Facebook, 
Twitter, Google, a plan if the President uses your platforms to 
say on the day of the election that there is rigging or fraud 
without any basis in evidence or attempts to say that the 
election is over and the voting--the counting of votes must 
stop either on November 4 or someday subsequent. And I would 
like as to this question about whether you have a plan, a yes 
or no.
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator to start, we do. We have policies 
related to all of the areas that you just mentioned. Candidates 
or campaigns trying to delegitimize methods of voting or the 
election. Candidates trying to prematurely declare victory. And 
candidates trying to spread voter suppression material that is 
misleading about how, when or where to vote. So we are--we have 
taken a number of steps on that front.
    The Chairman. Perhaps we could take Mr. Pichai next and 
then Mr. Dorsey. Mr. Pichai.
    Mr. Pichai. Senator, yes, we definitely are robustly--we 
have been planning for a while and we rely on racing up on new 
sources through moments like that, as well as we have closely 
partnered with the Associated Press to make sure we can provide 
users the most accurate information possible.
    Mr. Dorsey. Yes, we also we also have a plan. So, you know, 
our plan and our enforcement around these issues is pointing to 
more information and specifically state election officials. So 
we want to give the people using the service as much 
information as possible.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Blumenthal. Senator Cruz.

                  STATEMENT OF HON. TED CRUZ, 
                    U.S. SENATOR FROM TEXAS

    Senator Cruz. I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for 
holding this hearing. The three witnesses we have before this 
Committee today collectively pose, I believe, the single 
greatest threat to free speech in America and the greatest 
threat we have to free and fair elections. Yesterday, I spent a 
considerable amount of time speaking with both Mr. Zuckerberg 
and Mr. Pichai. I have concerns about the behavior of both of 
their companies. I would note that Facebook is at the minimum, 
at least trying to make some efforts in the direction of 
defending free speech.
    I appreciate their doing so. Google, I agree with the 
concerns that Senator Klobuchar raised. I think Google has more 
power than any company on the face of the planet. And the 
antitrust concerns are real. The impact of Google is profound. 
And I expect we will have continued and ongoing discussions 
about Google's abuse of that power and its willingness to 
manipulate search outcomes to influence and change election 
results. 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?
    Mr. Dorsey. No.
    Senator Cruz. You don't believe Twitter has any ability to 
influence elections?
    Mr. Dorsey. No, we are one part of a spectrum of 
communication channels that people have.
    Senator Cruz. So you are 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?
    Mr. Dorsey. People have a choice of other communication 
channels----
    Senator Cruz. Not if they don't hear information. If you 
don't think you have the power to influence elections, why do 
you block anything?
    Mr. Dorsey. Well, we have policies that are focused on 
making sure that more voices on the platform are possible. We 
see a lot of abuse and harassment, which turns up silencing 
people and helping them leave from the platform.
    Senator Cruz. Alright. Mr. Dorsey, I find your opening 
questions, your opening answers absurd on their face. Let's 
talk about the last two weeks in particular. As you know, I 
have long been concerned about Twitter's pattern of censoring 
and silencing individual Americans with whom Twitter disagrees. 
But two weeks ago, Twitter and to a lesser extent, Facebook, 
crossed a threshold that is fundamental in our country.
    Two weeks ago, Twitter made the unilateral decision to 
censor the New York Post in a series of two blockbuster 
articles, both alleging evidence of corruption against Joe 
Biden. The first concerning Ukraine. The second concerning 
communist China. And Twitter made the decision, number one, to 
prevent users, any user from sharing those stories. And number 
two, you went even further and blocked the New York Post from 
sharing on Twitter its own reporting. Why did Twitter make the 
decision to censor the New York Post?
    Mr. Dorsey. We had a hack materials policy----
    Senator Cruz. When was policy adopted?
    Mr. Dorsey.in 2018, I believe.
    Senator Cruz. In 2018, go ahead. What was the policy?
    Mr. Dorsey. So the policy is around limiting the spread of 
materials that are hackable. We do not want Twitter to be a 
distributor for hacked materials. We found that the New York 
Post, because it showed the direct materials, screenshots of 
the direct materials, and it was unclear how these were 
obtained, that it fell under this policy. Now----
    Senator Cruz. So in your view, if it is unclear the source 
of a document, in this instance, the New York Post documented 
what it said the source was, which it said it was a laptop 
owned by Hunter Biden that had been turned into a repair store. 
So they weren't hiding what they claimed to be the source. Is 
it your position that Twitter, when you can't tell the source, 
blocks press stories?
    Mr. Dorsey. No, not at all. Our team made a fast decision. 
The enforcement action over blocking URLs, both in tweets and 
in DMs, in direct messages, we believe was incorrect. And we 
changed it--.
    Senator Cruz. Today, the New York Post is still blocked 
from tweeting two weeks later.
    Mr. Dorsey. Yes, they have to log into their account, which 
they can do at this minute. Delete the original tweet, which 
fell under our original enforcement actions, and they can tweet 
the exact same material, the exact same article, and it would 
go through.
    Senator Cruz. And so, Mr. Dorsey, your ability is you have 
the power to force a media outlet--and let's be clear, the New 
York Post isn't just some random guy tweeting. The New York 
Post has the fourth highest circulation of any newspaper in 
America. The New York Post is over 200 years old. The New York 
Post was founded by Alexander Hamilton. And your position is 
that you can sit in Silicon Valley and demand of the media, 
that you can tell them what stories they can publish. You can 
tell the American people what reporting they can hear, is that 
right?
    Mr. Dorsey. No, every person, every account, every 
organization that signs up to Twitter, agrees to a terms of 
service. And the terms of service----
    Senator Cruz. The media outlets must genuflect and obey 
your dictates if they wish to be able to communicate with 
readers. Is that right?
    Mr. Dorsey. No, not at all. You know, we recognized an 
error in this policy and specifically the enforcement----
    Senator Cruz. You are still blocking their post. You are 
still blocking their post. Right now, today, you are blocking 
their posts.
    Mr. Dorsey. We are not blocking the post. Anyone can 
tweet----
    Senator Cruz. Can the New York Post on their Twitter 
account?
    Mr. Dorsey. If they go into their account--.
    Senator Cruz. No is your answer to that, no, unless they 
take back and agree with your dictates. Let me ask you 
something, you claimed it was because of a hacked materials 
policy. I find that facially highly dubious and clearly 
employed in a deeply partial way. Did Twitter block the 
distribution of the New York Times story a few weeks ago that 
purported to be based on copies of President Trump's tax 
returns?
    Mr. Dorsey. We didn't find that to be a violation of our 
terms of service because his reporting about the material, it 
wasn't distributing the material.
    Senator Cruz. OK. Well, that's actually not true. They 
posted what they reported to be original source materials and 
Federal law, Federal statute makes it a crime, a Federal felony 
to distribute someone's tax returns against their knowledge. So 
that material was based on something that was distributed in 
violation of Federal law, and yet Twitter gleefully allowed 
people to circulate that. But when the article was critical of 
Joe Biden, Twitter engaged in rampant censorship and silencing.
    Mr. Dorsey. And again, we recognize there is that policy. 
We changed it within 24 hours.
    Senator Cruz. But you still blocked the New York Post. You 
haven't changed it.
    Mr. Dorsey. We have changed that. They can log into their 
account, delete the original tweet----
    Senator Cruz. You forced a Politico  reporter to take down 
his post about the New York Post as well. Is that correct?
    Mr. Dorsey. Within that 24 hour period, yes. But we know as 
the policy has changed, anyone can tweet that article out.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Cruz.
    Senator Cruz. So you censor the New York Post. You can 
censor Politico. Presumably you can censor the New York Times 
or any other media outlet. Mr. Dorsey, who the hell elected you 
and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report 
and what the American people are allowed to hear? And why do 
you persist in behaving as a Democratic super PAC, silencing 
views to the contrary of your political beliefs?
    The Chairman. Let's give Mr. Dorsey a few seconds to answer 
that, and then we will have to conclude this segment.
    Mr. Dorsey. We are not doing that. And this is why I opened 
this hearing with calls for more transparency. We realize we 
need to earn trust more. We realize that more accountability is 
needed to show our intentions and to show the outcomes.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Mr. Dorsey. So I hear the concerns and acknowledge them. We 
want to fix it with more transparency.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Cruz. The Ranking Member 
has deferred now to Senator Schatz, who joins us remotely. Sir, 
you are recognized.

                STATEMENT OF HON. BRIAN SCHATZ, 
                    U.S. SENATOR FROM HAWAII

    Senator Schatz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Ranking 
Member. You know, this is an unusual hearing at an unusual 
time. I have never seen a hearing so close to an election on 
any topic, let alone on something that is so obviously a 
violation of our obligation under the law and the rules of the 
Senate to stay out of electioneering. We never do this and 
there is a very good reason that we don't call people before us 
to yell at them for not doing our bidding during an election. 
It is a misuse of taxpayer dollars. What is happening here is a 
scar on this committee and the U.S. Senate. What we are seeing 
today is an attempt to bully the CEOs of private companies into 
carrying out a hit job on a Presidential candidate by making 
sure that they push out foreign and domestic misinformation 
meant to influence the election. To our witnesses today, you 
and other tech leaders need to stand up to this immoral 
behavior.
    The truth is that because some of my colleagues accuse you, 
your companies and your employees of being biased or liberal, 
you have institutionally bent over backward and 
overcompensated. You have hired Republican operatives, posted 
private dinners with Republican leaders and in contravention of 
your terms of service, given special dispensation to right wing 
voices and even throttled progressive journalism. Simply put, 
the Republicans have been successful in this play. And so 
during one of the most consequential elections in American 
history, my colleagues are trying to run this play again and it 
is an embarrassment. I have plenty of questions for the 
witnesses on Section 230, on antitrust, on privacy, on anti-
Semitism, on their relationship with journalism, but we have to 
call this hearing what it is, it is a sham.
    And so for the first time in my 8 years in the U.S. Senate, 
I am not going to use my time to ask any questions because this 
is nonsense and it is not going to work this time. This play my 
colleagues are running did not start today. And it is not just 
happening here in the Senate. It is a coordinated effort by 
Republicans across the Government. Last May, President Trump 
issued an Executive Order designed to narrow the protections of 
Section 230 to discourage platforms from engaging in content 
moderation on their own sites. After it was issued, President 
Trump started tweeting that Section 230 should be repealed, as 
if he understands Section 230. In the last 6 months, President 
Trump has tweeted to repeal Section 230 five times, in addition 
to other tweets in which he has threatened the tech companies.
    A few weeks later, President Trump withdrew the nomination 
of FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly. Republican Commissioner 
O'Rielly questioned the FCC's authority to regulate under 
Section 230 and the statute is not unclear on this. President 
Trump then nominated Nathan Simington, who was the drafter of 
NTIA's petition to the FCC regarding Section 230. And 
Republican Senators have enthusiastically participated. Since 
June of this year, six Republican only bills have been 
introduced, all of which threaten platforms' ability to 
moderate content on their site. And as the election draws 
closer, this Republican effort has become more and more 
aggressive. September 23, DOJ unveiled its own Section 230 
draft legislation that would narrow the protections under the 
current law and discourage platforms from moderating content on 
their own site. September 14 and October 1, respectively, 
Senators Hawley and Kennedy tried to pass their Republican-only 
Section 230 bills by unanimous consent.
    Now, what that means is they went down to the floor and 
without a legislative hearing, without any input from Democrats 
at all, they tried to pass something so foundational to the 
Internet unanimously without any discussion and any debate. On 
the same day as Senator Kennedy's UC attempt, Senator Wicker 
forced the Commerce Committee, without any discussion or 
negotiation beforehand, to vote on subpoenaing the CEOs of 
Twitter, Facebook and Google to testify. That is why we are 
here today. Two weeks later, on October 14, Justice Clarence 
Thomas, on his own, issued a statement that appeared to support 
the narrowing of the court's interpretation on Section 230. The 
very next day, the FCC Chairman, Ajit Pai, announced that the 
FCC would seek to clarify the meaning of Section 230.
    On that day, Senator Graham announced that the Judiciary 
Committee would vote to subpoena the tech companies over the 
content moderation. And the context of this, in addition to 
everything, Senator Cruz is on Maria Bartiromo talking about a 
blockbuster story from The New York Post. Senator Hawley is on 
Fox and on the Senate floor. And the Commerce Committee itself 
is tweeting out a campaign style video that sort of alarmingly 
says Hunter Biden's e-mails, text censorship. On October 21, 
Senator Hawley reattempted to pass his bill on Section 230 via 
UC, again, without going through any committee markup or vote.
    And on Friday, Senator Graham announced that the CEOs of 
Facebook and Twitter would testify before the Senate Judiciary 
Committee on November 17. This is bullying and it is for 
electoral purposes. Do not let the U.S. Senate bully you into 
carrying the water for those who want to advance 
misinformation. And don't let the specter of removing Section 
230 protections or an amendment to antitrust law or any other 
kinds of threats cause you to be a party to the subversion of 
our democracy. I will be glad to participate in good faith, 
bipartisan hearings on these issues when the election is over. 
But this is not that. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Schatz. Next is Senator 
Fischer.

                STATEMENT OF HON. DEB FISCHER, 
                   U.S. SENATOR FROM NEBRASKA

    Senator Fischer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, I am 
not here to bully you today. And I am certainly not here to 
read any kind of political statement right before an election. 
To me, this hearing is not a sham. I am here to gain some 
clarity on the policies that you use. I am here to look at your 
proposals for more transparency because your platforms have 
become an integral part of our democratic process for both 
candidates, but also more importantly, for our citizens as 
well. Your platforms also have enormous power to manipulate 
user behavior and to direct content and to shape narratives. 
Mr. Dorsey, I heard your opening statement. I have read it. You 
also tweeted that the concept of good faith is what is being 
challenged by many of you here today. Some of you don't trust 
we are acting in good faith. That is the problem I want to 
focus on solving. Mr. Dorsey, why should we trust you with so 
much power? In other words, why shouldn't we regulate you more?
    Mr. Dorsey. Well, the suggestions we are making around more 
transparency is how we want to build that trust. We do agree 
that we should be publishing more of our practice of content 
moderation. We have made decisions to moderate content. We have 
made decisions to moderate content to make sure that we are 
enabling as many voices on our platform as possible. And I 
acknowledge and completely agree with the concerns that it 
feels like a black box and anything that we can do to bring 
transparency to it, including publishing our policies, our 
practices, answering very simple questions around how content 
is moderated, and then doing what we can around the growing 
trend of algorithms moderating more of this content. As I said, 
this one is a tough one to actually bring transparency to. 
Explainability in AI is a field of research, but it is far out. 
And I think a better opportunity is giving people more choice 
around the algorithms they use, including people to turn off 
the algorithms completely, which is what we are attempting to 
do. So----
    Senator Fischer. Right. You can understand the concerns 
that the people have when they see that what many consider you 
are making value judgments on what is going to be on your 
platforms. You say users can report content and then you take 
action. But certainly you can understand that people are very 
concerned, they are very worried about what they see as 
manipulation on your part. And to say you are going to have 
more transparency and--yes, that is--sir, I would say with 
respect, I don't think that is enough just to say you are you 
are going to have that transparency there and you are not 
influencing people, because as any time a free press is blocked 
on both sides with what we would view in the political world as 
both sides here, when views aren't able to be expressed, that 
does have a huge amount of influence.
    Mr. Dorsey. I completely understand. I agree that it is not 
enough. I don't think transparency alone addresses these 
concerns. I think we have to continue to push for a more 
straightforward and fast and efficient appeals process. And I 
do believe we need to look deeply at algorithms and how they 
are used and how people have choice on how to use those 
algorithms or whether they use them.
    Senator Fischer. But ultimately, somebody makes a decision. 
Where does the buck stop? With the algorithms? Where does the 
buck stop? Who is going to make a value judgment? Because in my 
opinion, it is a value judgment.
    Mr. Dorsey. Well, ultimately, I am accountable to all the 
decisions that the company makes. But we want to make sure that 
we are providing clear frameworks that are objective and that 
can be tested. And that we have multiple checkpoints associated 
with them so that we can learn quickly if we are doing 
something in error.
    Senator Fischer. And when your company amplifies some 
content over others, is it fair for you to have legal 
protections for your actions?
    Mr. Dorsey. We believe so. Keep in mind, a lot of our 
algorithms recommending content is focused on saving people 
time. So we are ranking things that the algorithms believe 
people would find most relevant and most valuable in the time--
--
    Senator Fischer. That is your value judgment on what those 
people would find most relevant.
    Mr. Dorsey. No, it is not a value judgment. It is based on 
engagement metrics, it is based on who you follow. It is based 
on activity you take on on the network.
    Senator Fischer. Mr. Zuckerberg, with your ever expanding 
content moderation policies, are you materially involved in 
that content?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, yes, I spend a meaningful amount 
of time on making sure that we get our content policies and 
enforcement right.
    Senator Fischer. OK. Thank you. What, if any, changes do 
you think should be made to Section 230 to address the specific 
concerns regarding content moderation that you have heard so 
far this morning?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, I would outline a couple. First, I 
agree with Jack that increasing transparency into the content 
moderation process would be an important step for building 
trust and accountability. One thing that we already do at 
Facebook is every quarter, we issue a transparency report where 
for each of the 20 or so categories of harmful content that we 
are trying to address, so terrorism, child exploitation, 
incitement of violence, pornography, different types of 
content, we issue a report on how we are doing, what the 
prevalence of that content is on our network, and what percent 
of it our systems are able to take down before someone even has 
to report it to us, and what the precision is and basically how 
accurate our systems are in dealing with it.
    And getting to the point where everyone across the industry 
is reporting on a baseline like that I think would be valuable 
for people to have these discussions, not just about anecdotes, 
OK, I saw a piece of content tonight. I am not necessarily sure 
I agree with how that was moderated. It would allow the 
conversation to move to data so that we can understand how 
these platforms are performing overall and hold them 
accountable.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Senator Fischer. At issue with your answer, I think, would 
be the time involved. That it wouldn't be an immediate response 
to have that conversation, as you call it. I hope that all 
three of you gentlemen can answer that question and written 
questions. So my time is up. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Fischer. I appreciate 
that. We are going to take now Senator Cantwell's questioning 
after which we are going to accommodate our witnesses with a 5-
minute recess. So, Senator Cantwell, you are recognized.
    Senator Cantwell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Can you hear me?
    The Chairman. Surely can.
    Senator Cantwell. And can you see me this time?
    The Chairman. We can now see you, yes.
    Senator Cantwell. OK. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And 
this is such an important hearing. I agree with many of the 
statements my colleagues have made, that this hearing didn't 
need to take place at this moment, that the important 
discussion about how we maintain a thriving Internet economy 
and how we continue to make sure that hate speech and 
misinformation is taken down from the web is something that 
would probably better been done in January than now. But here 
we are today and we have heard some astounding things that I 
definitely must refute.
    First of all, I am not going to take lightly anybody who 
tries to undermine mail-in voting. Mail-in voting in the United 
States of America is safe. The State of Washington and the 
State of Oregon have been doing it for years. There is nothing 
wrong with our mail-in system. So, I think that there will be 
secretaries of state and law enforcement agencies who have 
worked hard with state election officials, and others who will 
be talking about how this process works and how we are going to 
fight to protect it.
    I am also not going to demean an organization just because 
they happen to be headquartered in the State of Washington or 
happen to have business there. I seriously doubt that the 
geography of a company somehow makes it more political for one 
side of the aisle or another. I know that because I see many of 
you coming to the State of Washington for Republican 
fundraisers with these officials. I know ythat ou know darn 
well that there are plenty of Republicans that work in high 
tech firms.
    So, the notion that somehow these people are crossing the 
aisle because of something and creating censorship, the notion 
that free speech is about the ability to say things and it 
doesn't take--well, maybe we need to have a history lesson from 
high school again. But, yes, free speech means that people can 
make outrageous statements about their beliefs. So, I think 
that the CEOs are telling us here what their process is for 
taking down healthcare information that is not true, that is a 
threat to the public, and information that is a threat to our 
democracy.
    That is what they are talking about. So, I want to make it 
clear that this hearing could have happened at a later date, 
and I don't appreciate the misinformation that is coming across 
today, that is trying to undermine our election process. It is 
safe. It is the backbone of what distinguishes America from 
other countries in the world. We do know how to have a safe and 
fair election. And one of the ways that we are doing that is to 
have these individuals work with our law enforcement entities.
    My colleague Gary Peters made it very clear that they 
successfully helped stop a threat targeting the Governor of 
Michigan. And why? Because they were working with them to make 
sure that information was passed on. So, this is what we are 
talking about. We are talking about whether we are going to be 
on the side of freedom and information and whether we are going 
to put our shoulder to the wheel to continue to make sure that 
engine is there or whether we are going to prematurely try to 
get rid of 230 and squash free speech. And so, I want to make 
sure that we continue to move forward. So, Mr. Zuckerberg, I 
would like to turn to you because there was a time when there 
was great concern about what happened in Myanmar, about the 
Government using information against a Muslim minority. And you 
acted and reformed the system.
    Just recently in September, Facebook and Twitter announced 
they had suspended networks and accounts linked to various 
organizations and used for laundering Russian backed websites 
and accounts and derisive propaganda that we associated with 
state-run attempts to interfere in our elections. So, could you 
please, Mr. Zuckerberg, talk about what you were doing to make 
sure state-run entities don't interfere in U.S. elections?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Yes. Thank you, Senator. Since 2016, we 
have been building up some very sophisticated systems to make 
sure that we can stop foreign interference in elections, not 
just in the U.S., but all around the world. And a lot of this 
involves building up AI systems to identify when clusters of 
accounts aren't behaving in the way that a normal person would. 
They are behaving as fake accounts in some coordinated way. A 
lot of this is also about forming partnerships. The tech 
companies here today work more closely together to share 
signals about what is happening on the different platforms to 
be able to combat these threats, as well as working more 
closely with law enforcement and intelligence communities 
around the world.
    And the net result of that is that over the last few years, 
we have taken down more than 100 networks that were potentially 
attempting to spread misinformation or interfere. A lot of them 
were coming from Russia or Iran. A growing number from China as 
well. And at this point, I am proud that our company and as 
well as the others in the industry, I think have built systems 
that are very effective at this. We can't stop countries like 
Russia from trying to interfere in an election. Only the U.S. 
Government can really push back with the appropriate leverage 
to do that. But we have built up systems to make sure that we 
can identify much faster when they are attempting to do that, 
and I think that that should give the American people a good 
amount of confidence leading into this election.
    Senator Cantwell. And is it true that those entities are 
trying to find domestic sources to help with that 
misinformation?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, yes. The tactics of these 
different Governments are certainly evolving, including trying 
to find people outside of their country and in some cases we 
are seeing domestic interference operations as well. And the 
systems have had to evolve to be able to identify and take 
those down as well. Of the hundred or so networks that I just 
cited that we took down, about half were domestic operations at 
this point. And that is in various countries around the world, 
not primarily in the U.S., but this is a global phenomenon that 
we need to make sure that we continue pushing forward 
aggressively on.
    Senator Cantwell. Thank you.
    Mr. Pichai, I would like to turn to you for a second, 
because I do want information from Facebook on this point, but 
I would like to turn to you. There is information now from 
media organizations that broadcasters and newsprint are losing 
somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of their revenue that they 
could be getting to newspapers and broadcasting to the formats 
that Google has as it relates to their platform and ad 
information. Can you confirm what information you have about 
this? And do you think that Google is taking ad revenue from 
these new sources in an unfair way?
    Mr. Pichai. Senator, it is an important topic. It is a 
complex topic. I do think journalism, as you rightfully call 
it, attention to it, particularly local journalism, is very 
important. The Internet has been a tremendously disrupting 
force and the pandemic has exacerbated it. I would have to say 
that Google, you know, I would make the case that we believe in 
raising news across our products because we realize the 
importance of journalism. We send a lot of traffic to news 
publishers, all the ad technology questions I am getting asked 
today. We invest in ad technology.
    We share the majority of revenue back to publishers. We are 
investing in subscription products. We have committed $2 
billion in new licensing over the next 2 years to news 
organizations. We have set up local emergency fund to code for 
local journalistic institutions. I could give plenty of 
examples, but the underlying forces which are impacting the 
industry, which is the Internet and whether it is school or if 
not Google, advertisers are----
    Senator Cantwell. Yes, I don't have a clock----
    The Chairman. You are a minute and a half over, but so 
let's----
    Senator Cantwell. OK. I would just leave it with this, that 
Mr. Pichai, you hit on the key word, majority. I don't think 
that you are returning in the majority of the revenue to these 
broadcast entities. I do think it is a problem. Yes, they have 
had to make it through the transformation, which is a rocky 
transformation. The message from today's hearing is the free 
press needs to live and be supported by all of us. And we look 
forward to discussing how we can make sure that they get fair 
return on their value. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Cantwell. We will now take 
a five-minute recess and then we will begin with--most of our 
members have not yet had a chance to ask questions. The 
Committee is in recess for five minutes.
    [Recess.]
    The Chairman. OK. This hearing will return to order and we 
understand that Senator Moran is next. Sir, you are recognized.

                STATEMENT OF HON. JERRY MORAN, 
                    U.S. SENATOR FROM KANSAS

    Senator Moran. Chairman Wicker, thank you very much. And 
thank you for you and Senator Cantwell hosting this hearing. 
Let me address initially the topic that seems to be primary 
today and the time, data privacy. Let me ask all three 
witnesses, how much money does your company spend annually on 
content moderation? How many people work in general in the area 
of content moderation, including by private contract? Let me 
just start with those two questions. I also want to ask you, 
how much money does your company spend in defending lawsuits 
stemming from user content on the platform?
    The Chairman. OK, Mr. Zuckerberg, you want to go first 
there?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, we have more than 35,000 people 
who work on content and safety review. And I believe our budget 
is multiple billions of dollars a year on this. I think upwards 
of three or maybe even more billion dollars a year, which is a 
greater amount in revenue that we are spending on this than the 
whole revenue of our company was the year before we filed to go 
public in 2012.
    The Chairman. Mr. Pichai.
    Mr. Pichai. Senator, we use both a combination of human 
reviewers and AI moderation systems. We have well over an 
available 10,000 reviewers and we are investing there 
significantly. And, you know, I would again, not sure of the 
exact numbers, but I would say it is in the order of four 
billion dollars we spend on these things.
    The Chairman. Thank you. Mr. Dorsey.
    Mr. Dorsey. I don't have the specific numbers, but we want 
to maintain agility between the people that we have working on 
this and also just building better technology to automate it. 
So our goal is flexibility here.
    Senator Moran. Let me ask that question again about how 
much would you estimate that your company is currently spending 
on defending lawsuits related to user content?
    The Chairman. In the same order. OK?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, I don't know the answer to that 
off the top of my head, but I can get back to you.
    Senator Moran. Thank you.
    Mr. Pichai. Senator, we do spend a lot on legal lawsuits, 
but not sure what of it applies to content related issues. But 
will be happy to follow up.
    Senator Moran. Thank you.
    Mr. Dorsey. And I don't have those numbers.
    Senator Moran. Let me use your answers to highlight 
something that I want to be a topic of our conversation as we 
debate this legislation. Whatever the numbers are, you indicate 
that they are significant. It is an enormous amount of money 
and an enormous amount of employee time, contract labor time in 
dealing with a modification of content. 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 
operate in this sphere. Let me quickly turn to Federal privacy.
    I chaired 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 2012 for violations of the FTC Act 
and later agreed to pay a $5 billion penalty, along with a 
robust settlement order in 2018, following the Cambria 
Analytica incident that violated the 2012 order. My legislation 
would provide the FTC with first time civil penalty authority. 
Do you think this type of enforcement tool for the FTC would 
better deter unfair and deceptive practices than the current 
enforcement regime?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, I would need to understand it a 
little bit more detail before weighing in on this. But I think 
that the settlement that we have with the FTC, what we are 
going to be setting up is an industry leading privacy program. 
We have, I think, more than 1,000 engineers working on the 
privacy program now and we are basically implementing a program 
which is sort of the equivalent of Sarbanes-Oxley's financial 
regulation around kind of internal auditing and controls around 
privacy and protecting people's data as well. So I think that 
that settlement will be quite effective in ensuring that 
people's data and privacy are protected.
    Senator Moran. Mr. Pichai, Google, YouTube's $170 million 
settlement with the FTC in the State of New York for alleged 
violations of COPPA involve persistent identifiers. How should 
Federal legislation address persistent identifiers for 
consumers over the age of 13?
    Mr. Pichai. Senator, we today have invested--we have done 
two things as a company, we have invested in wonderful special 
product called YouTube Kids. Fair content can be safe for kids. 
Obviously, on a YouTube main product today, how the Internet 
gets used, families to view content and part of our settlement 
was adapting so that we can accommodate for those use cases as 
well. You know, privacy is one of the most important areas 
being missed and as a company, have thousands of engineers 
working on it. We believe in giving users control of choice and 
transparency.
    And any time we associate data with users, we are 
transparent, they can go see what data is there. We give them 
delete controls. We give data portability options. And just 
last year, we announced an important change by which for all 
new users, we delete that data automatically without them 
needing to do anything. And the end stages is to go through 
privacy checkup or a billion people have gone through their 
privacy checkouts and, you know, it is an area where we are 
investing significantly.
    Senator Moran. Thank you. Chairman. I don't see my time 
clock. Do I have time for one more?
    The Chairman. You really don't. Your time has just expired. 
But thank you very much for--.
    Senator Moran. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
    The Chairman. Thank you so much. Senator Markey.

               STATEMENT OF HON. EDWARD MARKEY, 
                U.S. SENATOR FROM MASSACHUSETTS

    Senator Markey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much. Today 
from his Republican allies in Congress and his propaganda 
parrots on Fox News are peddling 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 feed a false narrative about anti-
conservative bias meant to intimidate big tech so it will stand 
idly by and allow interference in our elections again. Here is 
the truth. Violence and hate speech online are real problems. 
Anti-bias is a problem. Foreign attempts to influence our 
election with disinformation are real problems. The anti-
conservative bias is not a problem. The big tech business model 
which puts profits ahead of people is a real problem. Anti-
conservative bias is not a problem.
    The issue is not that the companies before us today are 
taking too many posts down, the issue is that they are leaving 
too many dangerous posts up. In fact, they are 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 
failed 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, ``stand by.'' And 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?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, yes, incitement of violence is 
against our policy, and there are not exceptions to that, 
including for politicians.
    Senator Markey. There are exceptions, did you say?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. There are no exceptions.
    Senator Markey. There are no exceptions, which is very 
important because obviously there could be 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 the 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 
your algorithms do not amplify that content and that you will 
immediately take that content down?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, we have a policy in place that 
prevents any candidate or campaign from prematurely declaring 
victory or trying to delegitimize the result of the election. 
And what we will do in that case is we will append some factual 
information to any posts that is trying to do that. So if 
someone says that they won the election when the result isn't 
in, for example, we will append a piece of information to that 
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 the top of the 
Facebook app for everyone who signs in, in the U.S. information 
about the accurate U.S. election voting results. I think that 
this is a very important issue to make sure that people can get 
accurate information about the results of the election.
    Senator Markey. 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 voter 
intimidation and violation of the Voting Rights Act, will you 
commit that your algorithms will not spread that content and 
that you will immediately take that content down?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, my understanding is that content 
like what you are saying would violate our voter suppression 
policies and would come down.
    Senator Markey. OK. Again, the stakes are going to be very 
high and we are going to take that as a commitment that you 
will do that because obviously we would otherwise have a 
serious question mark placed over our elections. We know 
Facebook cares about one thing using--keeping users glued to 
its platform. One of the ways you do that is with Facebook 
groups. Mr. Zuckerberg, in 2017, you announced the goal of one 
billion users joining Facebook groups. Unfortunately, these 
forum pages have become breeding grounds for hate, echo 
chambers of misinformation, and then used for coordination of 
violence. Again, Facebook is not only failing to take these 
pages down, it is actively spreading these pages and helping 
these groups' recruitment efforts. Facebook's own internal 
research found that 64 percent of all extremist group joins are 
due to Facebook's recommendation tools. Mr. Zuckerberg, will 
you commit to stopping all group recommendations on your 
platform until U.S. election results are certified, yes or no?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, we have taken the step of stopping 
recommendations and groups for all political content or social 
issue groups as a precaution for this. Just to clarify one 
thing, the vast, vast majority of groups and communities that 
people are part of are not extremist organizations or even 
political. They are interest based in communities that 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. And 
I agree with you it is very important that we continue to make 
progress on.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Senator Markey. Well, your algorithm are promoting online 
spaces that foster political violence. At the very least, you 
should disable those algorithms that are recruiting users 
during this most sensitive period of our democracy.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Senator Markey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Markey. Mr. Zuckerberg, 
let me just 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?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, I think that you are right and 
that 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.
    The Chairman. Thank you for clarifying that. Senator 
Blackburn, you are recognized.

              STATEMENT OF HON. MARSHA BLACKBURN, 
                  U.S. SENATOR FROM TENNESSEE

    Senator Blackburn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to 
thank each of you for coming to us voluntarily. We appreciate 
that. There are undoubtably benefits to using your platforms, 
as you have heard everyone mention today. There are also some 
concerns which you are also hearing. Privacy, free speech, 
politics, religion and I have kind of chuckled as I have sat 
here listening to you all. That book, Valley of the Gods, it 
reminds me that you all are kind of in control of what people 
are going to hear, what they are going to see, and therefore, 
you have the ability to dictate what is coming in, what 
information is coming into them. And I think it is important to 
realize, you know, you're set up as an information source, not 
as a news media. And so, therefore, censoring things that you 
all think 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 conservatives? Mr. Dorsey, first, yes or no?
    Mr. Dorsey. We don't ask political ideology----
    Senator Blackburn. OK, you don't. OK, Mr. Zuckerberg?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, we don't ask for their ideology, 
but just statistically, they are 35,000 in cities and places 
all across the country and world so I imagine, yes.
    Senator Blackburn. Mr. Pichai?
    Mr. Pichai. The answer would be yes, because we hired them, 
you know, through the United States.
    Senator Blackburn. OK. Alright. 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 Gardner's question. You claimed earlier that 
the Holocaust denial and threats of Jewish genocide by Iran's 
terrorist Ayatollah don't violate Twitter's so called rules and 
that it is important for world leaders like Iran's terrorist 
leader to have a platform on Twitter. So let me ask you this. 
Who elected the Ayatollah?
    Mr. Dorsey. I don't know.
    Senator Blackburn. You don't know? OK. 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?
    Mr. Dorsey. Ideally, we would love for the people of Iran 
to use Twitter.
    Senator Blackburn. Well, Iran banned Twitter, and Mr. 
Zuckerberg, I know you are aware they banned Facebook also. So, 
Mr. Dorsey, is Donald Trump a world leader?
    Mr. Dorsey. Yes.
    Senator Blackburn. OK. So it would be important for world 
leaders to have access to your platform, correct?
    Mr. Dorsey. Correct.
    Senator Blackburn. And so why did you deny that platform 
via censorship to the U.S. President?
    Mr. Dorsey. We haven't censored the U.S. President.
    Senator Blackburn. Oh, yes, you have. How many posts from 
Iran's terrorist Ayatollah have you censored? How many posts 
from Vladimir Putin have you censored?
    Mr. Dorsey. We have we have label tweets of world leaders. 
We have a policy around not taking down the content, but simply 
finding more context around it.
    Senator Blackburn. OK. And the U.S. President, you have 
censored 65 times. You testified that you are 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 are onto your platforms. They see this as a 
way to get access to the American people. So given your refusal 
to censor or ban foreign dictators while regularly censoring 
the President, aren't you at this very moment personally 
responsible for flooding the Nation with foreign 
disinformation?
    Mr. Dorsey. Just to be clear, we have not censured the 
President. We have not taken the tweets down that you are 
referencing. They have more context in the label applied to 
them. And we do the same for leaders around the world.
    Senator Blackburn. OK. Let me ask you this. Do you share 
any of your data mining, and this is to each of the three of 
you, do you share any of your data mining with the Democrat 
National Committee?
    Mr. Dorsey. I am not sure what you mean by the question, 
but we have a data platform that we have a number of customers. 
I am not sure of the customer list.
    Senator Blackburn. OK. And you said you don't keep lists. I 
make that note.
    Mr. Dorsey. Well we keep a list of accounts that we watch--
we don't keep lists of accounts that we watch.
    Senator Blackburn. OK. Alright. OK. Mr. Pichai, is a Blake 
Lemoine, one of your engineers still working with you?
    Mr. Pichai. Senator, I am familiar with this name as a 
name, as an employer--I am not sure that he is currently an 
employee.
    Senator Blackburn. OK. 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, 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 5, 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 exist, 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 are realizing that you are 
picking winners and losers. You are trying to--Mr. Zuckerberg, 
years ago you said Facebook functioned more like a Government 
than a company. And you are beginning to insert yourself into 
these issues of free speech. Mr. Zuckerberg, with 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?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. I believe strongly in free expression. 
Sorry if I was on mute there. But I do think that, like all 
equities, it is balanced against other equities like safety and 
privacy. And 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. That the kind of famous example 
that is used is that you can't shout fire in a crowded theater. 
So I think that getting those equities in the balance right is 
the challenge that we face.
    Senator Blackburn. My time has expired.
    The Chairman. The time has expired, Perhaps we can----
    Senator Blackburn. Well, we believe in the First Amendment 
and we are going to--yes, we will have questions to follow up. 
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I can't see the clock.
    The Chairman. Thank you. Senator Udall.

                 STATEMENT OF HON. TOM UDALL, 
                  U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW MEXICO

    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 
are doing it in 2020. The intelligence also says they want to 
help President Trump. They did so in 2016. The 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 that 
companies like Twitter and Facebook that took action to not 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, two, conspiracy theories, 
and disinformation campaigns. And my question to all three of 
you, 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 and then 
Mr. Pichai. And Mr. Zuckerberg, you gave an answer partially on 
this. I would like you to expand on that answer. Thank you.
    Mr. Dorsey. 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 share those with your team. But this remains, as you have 
heard from others on the panel, and as Mark has detailed, one 
of our highest priorities and something we want to make sure 
that we are focused on eliminating as much platform 
manipulation as possible.
    Mr. Pichai. Senator, we do continue to see coordinated 
influence operation at times. We have been very vigilant. We 
appreciate the cooperation we get from intelligence agencies 
and companies. We are sharing information, to give you an 
example. And we publish transparency reports. In June, we 
identified efforts, one from Iran, a group, PAD 35, targeting 
the Trump campaign, one from China, a group, PAD 31, targeting 
the Biden campaign. Most of those were phishing attempts by our 
spam filters. We are able to remove most of the e-mails out 
from reaching users, but we notified intelligence agencies and 
that is an example of the kind of activity we see. And, 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 with the companies here today and 
with law enforcement and the intelligence community to be able 
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 a hack and leak operation in the 
days or weeks leading up to this election.
    So you have 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 
are seeing. And I am happy to go into more detail as well if 
that is helpful.
    Senator Udall. Thank you very much. And this one is a 
really 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?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, absolutely. This is incredibly 
important for our democracy and we are committed to doing this 
work.
    Mr. Pichai. Senator, absolutely. Protecting our civic and 
democratic process is fundamental to what we do and we will do 
everything we can.
    Mr. Dorsey. Yes, and we will continue to work and push back 
on any manipulation of the platform.
    Senator Udall. 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?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, in general, yes. I think that for 
foreign countries trying to interfere in democracy, I think 
that that is a relatively clear cut question where I would hope 
that no one disagrees that 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, you know, we are in the middle of 
a pandemic. It is a health emergency. I certainly think that 
this is a high sensitivity time. So we are 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 a 
distinction between harmful misinformation and information 
that's just wrong. And we take a harder line and more 
enforcement against harmful misinformation.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator--.
    Senator Udall. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Udall. Senator Capito.

            STATEMENT OF HON. SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, 
                U.S. SENATOR FROM WEST VIRGINIA

    Senator Capito. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank all of 
you for being with us today. I would say that any time that we 
can get the three of you in front of the American people, 
whether it is several days before the election or several days 
after, is extremely useful and can be very productive. So I 
appreciate the three of you coming in the Committee holding 
this hearing. As we have heard, Americans turn every day to 
your platforms for a lot of different information.
    I would like to give a shout out to Mr. Zuckerberg, because 
the last time, he was in front of our Committee, I had asked 
him to share the plenty of Facebook into rural America and help 
us with our fiber deployments into rural America. And when we 
see in this COVID environment, we see how important that is. 
And he followed 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. And I think that is an essential--I 
would make a suggestion as well. Maybe when we get to the end, 
when we talk about fines.
    What I think we could do with these millions and billion 
dollar fines that some of your companies that have been 
penalized on, we could make a great jump and get to that last 
household. But the topic today is on objectionable content and 
how you make those judgments. So quickly each one of you, I 
know that in the Section 230, it says that if 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. So we will start with Mr. 
Dorsey on the how do you define ``otherwise objectionable'' and 
how can we improve that definition so that it is easier to 
follow?
    Mr. Dorsey. Well, our interpretation of objectional is 
anything that is limiting potentially the speech of others. 
However, policies are focused on making sure that people feel 
safe to express themselves. And when we see abuse, harassment, 
misleading information, these are all threats against us and 
that makes people want to leave the Internet. It makes people 
want to leave these conversations online. So that is what we 
are trying to protect, is making sure that people feel safe 
enough and free enough to express themselves in whatever way 
they wish.
    Senator Capito. So this is a follow up to that. Much has 
been talked about the blocking of the New York Post. Do you 
have an instance or, for instance, of when you have actually 
blocked somebody that would be considered politically liberal 
on the other side of the political realm in this country? Do 
you have an example of that to sort of offset where the New 
York Post criticism has come from?
    Mr. Dorsey. Well, we don't have an understanding of the 
ideology of any one particular account, and that is also not 
our policies or our enforcement taken. So I am sure there are a 
number of examples. But that is not our focus. We are looking 
purely for violations of our policies, taking action against 
it.
    Senator Capito. Yes. Mr. Zuckerberg, how would you define 
``otherwise objectionable''?--not how would you define it, but 
how would you define the definition of that to make it more 
objective than subjective?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. 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 today include 
general bullying and harassment of people on the platform. So 
somewhat similar to what Jack was just talking about a minute 
ago. And I would worry that 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 I think would make them worse 
places for people. So I think we need to be very careful in how 
we think through that.
    Senator Capito. Well, thank you. Mr. Pichai?
    Mr. Pichai. Senator. Maybe what I would add is that the 
content is so dynamic. YouTube gets 500 hours per minute of 
video uploaded on an average of any day search. 15 percent of 
queries we have never seen before. To give me an example, a few 
years ago there was an issue around teenagers consuming Tide 
Pods and it was a kind of issue which was causing real harm. 
When we had run into those situations, we were able to act with 
certainty and protect our users. The Christchurch shooting 
where there was a live shooter, you know, live-streaming, 
horrific images. It was a learning moment for all our 
platforms. We were able to intervene again with certainty. And 
so that is what otherwise objectionable allows. And, you know, 
I think 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.
    Senator Capito. Thank you. I think I am hearing from all 
three of you, really, that the definition is fairly acceptable 
to you all. In my view, sometimes I think it can go too much to 
the eye of the beholder--the beholder being either a you all or 
your reviewers or your AI, and then it gets into the region 
where maybe you become so, so very subjective. I want to move 
to a different topic, because in my personal conversations with 
at least two of you, you have expressed the need to have the 
230 protections because of the protections that it gives to the 
small innovators. Well, you sit in front of us and I think all 
of us are wondering how many small innovators and what kind of 
market share could they possibly have when we see the dominance 
of the three of you. So I understand you started as small 
innovators when you first started. I get that. How can a small 
innovator really break through? And what does 230 really have 
to do with the ability--I am skeptical on the argument, quite 
frankly. So whoever wants to answer that, Mr. Zuckerberg, do 
you want to start?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Sure, Senator. I do think that when we were 
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. And 
I think that it may make sense to modify 230 at this point just 
to make sure that 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 is, at a minimum, taken into account as a serious 
factor to make sure that we are not preventing the next set of 
ideas from getting built.
    The Chairman. Thank you. Thank you, Senator.
    Senator Capito. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you. Senator Baldwin.

               STATEMENT OF HON. TAMMY BALDWIN, 
                  U.S. SENATOR FROM WISCONSIN

    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 reelection 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 that Twitter has done to flag or 
even take down false or misleading information about COVID-19, 
such as this October 11th tweet by the President claiming he 
has immunity from the virus after contracting it and 
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, ``rounding the turn on COVID-19.'' In fact, 
according to Johns Hopkins University in the past week, the 7-
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 5,462 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. Mr. 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 alert user of Twitter?
    Mr. Dorsey. 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 in our interface. 
So we, with in regards to misleading information, we have 
policies against manipulating media in support of public health 
and COVID information. And election interference and civic 
integrity. And we take action on it. In some cases, it's 
labeling. In some cases, it is removal.
    Senator Baldwin. What additional steps are you planning to 
take to address dangerously misleading tweets like the 
President's rounding the turn tweet?
    Mr. Dorsey. We want to make sure that we are giving people 
as much information as possible and that ultimately we are 
connecting the dots. When they see information like that, that 
they have an easy way to get an official resource or many more 
viewpoints on what they are seeing. So we will continue to 
refine our policy. We will continue to refine our enforcement 
around misleading information. And we are looking deeply at how 
we can evolve our product to do the same.
    Senator Baldwin. 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 
25, a self-described militia group called Kenosha Guard created 
a Facebook event page entitled ``Armed Citizens to Protect Our 
Lives and Property,'' encouraging armed individuals to go to 
Kenosha and, ``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. Commenters in 
this group wrote that they wanted to kill looters and rioters 
and switch to real bullets and 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 show 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 ensure that your platform is not being used to promote 
more of this type of violence?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Thank you, Senator. This is a big area of 
concern for me personally and for the company. We have 
strengthened our policies to prohibit any militarized social 
movement. So any kind of militia like this. We have also banned 
conspiracy network. So, Qanon being the largest example of 
that. That is completely prohibited on Facebook at this point, 
which, you know, in this period where I am personally--I am 
worried about the potential of increased civil unrest, making 
sure that those groups can't organize on Facebook. It may 
cutoff some legitimate uses, but I think that they will also 
preclude greater potential for organizing any harm. And by 
making the policy simpler, we will also make it so that there 
are fewer mistakes in content moderation. So I feel like we are 
in a much stronger place on the policies on this at this point.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Baldwin. Senator Lee.

                  STATEMENT OF HON. MIKE LEE, 
                     U.S. SENATOR FROM UTAH

    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 may ask for a 
response. So, Mr. Zuckerberg, this one is from you. You said, 
``we have 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 18, 2016. Mr. Dorsey, on September 5, 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 28, 2020, you said, ``let me be 
clear, we approach our work without political bias.'' Now, 
these quotes make me think that there is a good case to be made 
that you are engaging in unfair or deceptive trade practices in 
violation of Federal law. I see these 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 
related actions against the President, against members of his 
Administration, against the New York Post, the Babylon Bee, the 
Federalist, pro-life groups, and there are countless other 
examples. In fact, I think the trend is clear that you almost 
always censor and when I use the word censor here, I mean block 
content, fact check or label content or demonetize websites of 
conservative, Republican, or pro-life individuals or groups or 
companies contradicting your commercial promises. But I don't 
see this suppression of high profile liberal commentators.
    So, for example. Have you ever censored a Democratic 
Senator? How about President Obama? How about a Democratic 
Presidential candidate? How about Planned Parenthood or NARAL 
or Emily's List? So Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. Dorsey and Mr. Pachai, 
can any of you, and let's go in that order, Zuckerberg, Dorsey, 
and then Pichai, can you name for me one high profile person or 
entity from a liberal ideology who you have censored and what 
particular action you took?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, I can get you a list of some more 
of this, but there are certainly many examples that your 
Democratic colleagues object to when, you know, the fact 
checker might label something as false they disagree with or 
they are not able to--.
    Senator Lee. I get that. I get that. I just want to be 
clear. I am just asking you if you can name for me one high-
profile liberal person or company who you have censored. I 
understand that you are saying that there are complaints on 
both sides, but I just I just want one name of one person or 
one entity.
    Mr. Zuckerberg. 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 we are 
making content moderation decisions that they disagree with.
    Senator Lee. I got that. And I think everybody on this call 
could agree that they could identify at least five, maybe 10, 
maybe more high profile conservative examples. And what about 
you, Mr. Dorsey?
    Mr. Dorsey. Well, we can give a more exhaustive list, but 
again, we don't have an understanding of political ideologies 
of our accounts----
    Senator Lee. But I am not asking for an exhaustive list. I 
am asking for a single example. One, just one individual, one 
entity, anyone?
    Mr. Dorsey. We have--we have taken action on tweets from 
members of the House for Election misinfo.
    Senator Lee. Can you identify an example?
    Mr. Dorsey. Yes, with two Democratic congresspeople.
    Senator Lee. What are their names?
    Mr. Dorsey. I will get those names to you.
    Senator Lee. Great, great. Mr. Pichai, how about you?
    Mr. Pichai. Senator, I will give specific examples, but let 
me step back. We don't censor. We have moderation policies 
which apply equally. To give you an example----
    Senator Lee. I get that. I used the word censor as a term 
and I defined that term. And again, I am not asking for a 
comprehensive list. I want a name----
    Mr. Pichai. We have done ads from Priorities USA, from Vice 
President Biden's campaign. We have had compliance issues with 
the World Socialist Review, which is a left leaning 
publication. I can give you several examples. But for example, 
when we have a graphic content policy, we don't allow for ads 
which show graphic violent content in those ads. And we have 
taken down ads on both sides of the campaign. And I gave you a 
couple of examples.
    Senator Lee. OK. At least with respect to Mr. Zuckerberg 
and Mr. Dorsey. And I would point out that 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 and 
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--of the bat. Look, there is a 
disparity between the censorship, and again, I am using that as 
a term of art, as I did find it a moment ago, between the 
censorship of conservative and liberal points of view. It is an 
enormous disparity. Now you have the right, and 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 that you are 
either one, not enforcing your terms of service equally or 
alternatively two, that 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 have stated as 
your corporate business model or as your policy. So, 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, 
before the record, that you always apply your terms of service 
equally to all of your users?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. 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 are 
trying to enforce our policies in a way that is anything other 
than fair and consistent. But it's also a big company. So 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.
    Senator Lee. I appreciate that. I understand what you are 
saying, but intentional examples of a big company. But again, 
there is a disparate impact. There is a disparate impact that's 
unmistakable as evidenced by the fact that neither you nor Jack 
could identify a single example. Mr. Dorsey, how do you answer 
that question?
    The Chairman. A brief answer, please, Mr. Dorsey.
    Mr. Dorsey. Yes, we operate our enforcement and our policy 
without an understanding of political ideology. We don't--
anytime we find examples of bias in how people operate our 
systems or our algorithms, we remove it. And as Mark mentioned, 
there are checkpoints in these companies and in these 
frameworks, and we do need more transparency around them and 
how they work. And we do need a much more straightforward and 
quick and efficient appeals process to give us a further 
checkpoint from the public.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Lee. Senator Duckworth.

              STATEMENT OF HON. TAMMY DUCKWORTH, 
                   U.S. SENATOR FROM ILLINOIS

    Senator Duckworth. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, I 
have devoted my life to public service, to upholding a sacred 
oath through 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 interests of Donald Trump ahead of the health of our 
democracy, Senate Republicans, whether they realize it or not, 
are weakening our national security and providing aid to our 
adversaries.
    As my late friend Congressman Cummings often reminded us, 
you know, 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. Despite all the recent talk 
of great power competition, our adversaries know they still 
cannot defeat us on a conventional battlefield. Yet 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. And 
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 us 
in conventional, military or diplomatic ways, they look for 
unconventional means to weaken our democracy, and they realize 
that social media could be the exhaust port 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 incredibly successful in 
disrupting our democracy 4 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 failed to hinder Russia's sweeping and systemic 
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 efforts 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 elections and system of Government. The reckless 
actions of Donald Trump and Senate Republicans do not let 
technology companies off the hook.
    None of the companies testifying before our committee today 
are helpless in the face of threats to our democracy, small d 
democracy. Federal law provides you respective companies--
Federal laws provides 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 to do a duty to do the right thing 
because facts still exist.
    Facts still matter. Facts save lives. And there is no both 
sides when one side has chosen to reject truth and embrace 
poisonous false information. So in closing, I would like each 
witness to provide a personal commitment that your respective 
companies will proactively counter domestic disinformation that 
spreads the dangerous lie 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?
    The Chairman. OK, Will. We will take Dorsey, Pichai, and 
then Zuckerberg. Mr. Dorsey.
    Mr. Dorsey. We make that commitment.
    The Chairman. Mr. Pichai.
    Mr. Pichai. Senator, absolutely, yes.
    The Chairman. And Mr. Zuckerberg.
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Yes, Senator. I agree with that.
    Senator Duckworth. Thank you. Your industry 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 and I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. The Senator yields back. Senator Johnson.

                STATEMENT OF HON. RON JOHNSON, 
                  U.S. SENATOR FROM WISCONSIN

    Senator Johnson. I would like to start with a question for 
all three of the witnesses. You know, we have public reports 
that you have different chat forums in your companies and also 
public reports where, you know, the few conservatives that 
might work for your companies have 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 a kind of a sense, 
because I think it is pretty obvious, but would you say that 
the political ideology of the employees in your company is, you 
know, let's say 50/50, conservative versus liberal, 
progressive? Or do you think it's closer to 90 percent liberal, 
10 percent conservative? We will start with Mr. Dorsey.
    Mr. Dorsey. As you mentioned, I don't know the makeup of 
our employees because it is not something we ask or focus on.
    Senator Johnson. Just what do you think off the top of your 
head based on your chat rooms and kind of people you talk to?
    Mr. Dorsey. Not something I look for or----
    Senator Johnson. Right. Mr. Pichai.
    Mr. Pichai. Senator, we have over 100,000 employees. For 
the past two years, we have hired greater than 50 percent of 
our workforce outside California. It does tend to be 
proportionate to the areas where we are in but we do have a 
have a million message boards at Google. We have groups like 
Republicans side, liberals side, conservative side, and so on. 
And we have definitely made an effort to make sure people of 
all viewpoints are welcome.
    Senator Johnson. So, again, you and Mr. Zuckerberg, you 
answered the question honestly. Is it 90 percent or 50/50, 
which is closer to----
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, I don't know the exact number, but 
I would guess that our employee base skews left leaning.
    Senator Johnson. Thank you for your honesty. Mr. Dorsey, 
you started your opening comments that, you know, you think 
that people don't trust you. I agree that, we don't trust you. 
You all say you are fair and you are consistent. You are 
neutral. You are unbiased. Mr. Dorsey, I think the most 
incredible answer I have seen so far in this hearing is when 
Senator Cruz asked, does Twitter have the ability to influence 
elections? Again, does Twitter have the ability to influence 
elections? You said no. Did you stick to that answer that you 
don't even believe--let's face it, you all believe that Russia 
has the ability to influence the elections or interfere by 
using your social platforms. Mr. Dorsey, you still deny that 
you don't have the ability to influence and interfere in our 
elections?
    Mr. Dorsey. Yes, I mean my answer was around of people's 
choice around other communication channels.
    Senator Johnson. No, your answer was--the question was, 
does Twitter have the ability to influence elections? You said 
no. Do you still stand by that? That doesn't translate?
    Mr. Dorsey. Twitter is a company, no.
    Senator Johnson. You don't think you have the ability by 
moderation policies, by what I would call censoring. You know, 
what you did to the New York Post. You don't think that 
censorship, that moderation policies, you don't think that 
influences elections by withholding what I believe is true 
information for American public? You don't think that 
interferes in elections?
    Mr. Dorsey. Not our current moderation policies. Our 
current moderation policies are to protect the conversation and 
the integrity of the conversation around the elections.
    Senator Johnson. OK. For both Mr. Zuckerberg and Dorsey, 
who censored, censored New York Post stories or throttled them 
back either way, did you have any evidence that the New York 
Post story is part of Russian disinformation or that those e-
mails aren't authentic? Did any of you have any information 
whatsoever that they are not authentic or that they are Russian 
disinformation? Mr. Dorsey.
    Mr. Dorsey. We don't.
    Senator Johnson. You don't know? So why would you censor 
it? Why did you prevent that from being disseminated on your 
platform? It is supposed to be for the free expression of ideas 
and particularly true ideas.
    Mr. Dorsey. We believe--of hacking materials policy. We 
judged----.
    Senator Johnson. But what evidence of--it was hacked? They 
weren't hacked.
    Mr. Dorsey. We judged at the moment that it looked like it 
was hacked material----
    Senator Johnson. You were wrong.
    Mr. Dorsey.--surfacing, and we updated our policy and our 
enforcement within 24 hours.
    Senator Johnson. Mr. Zuckerberg?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, as I testified before, we relied 
heavily on the FBI's intelligence and alert staffs, both 
through their public testimony and private briefings----
    Senator Johnson. Did the FBI contact you and say the New 
York Post story was false?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, not about that story 
specifically--.
    Senator Johnson. Why did you throttle it back?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. They alerted us to be on heightened alert 
around a risk of hack and leak operations around a release of 
information--and Senator, 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 that it didn't spread wildly while it 
was being reviewed. But it is not up to us either to determine 
whether it is Russian interference nor whether it is true. We 
rely on the FBI and intelligence and fact checkers to do that--
--
    Senator Johnson. Fine. Mr. Dorsey, you talked about your 
policies toward misinformation and that you will block 
misinformation if it is 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 retweet and note that there are 
more 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 is admitted it 
is a lie, how does that not affect civic integrity? How could 
you view that not as being election interference? That could 
definitely impact my bill to get reelected. How could that not 
be a violation of voter suppression? Obviously, if people think 
I am strangling my neighbor's dog, they may not show up at the 
polls. That would be voter suppression. So why didn't you take 
that--by the way, that tweet was retweeted like some suddenly 
17,000 times and viewed by over and loved commented and 
appreciated by over 50,000 people. How is that not voter 
suppression? How is that not election interference? How does 
that not affect civic integrity?
    Mr. Dorsey. We will have to look into our enforcement or 
nonenforcement in this case for the tweet and we can get back 
to you with more context.
    Senator Johnson. So Mr. Zuckerberg, in that same June 
hearing--real quick, Mr. Dorsey, you referred to that June 
hearing with Stephan Wolfgang had all kinds of good ideas. That 
was 16 months ago. Why haven't you entered--why haven't you 
implemented any of those transparency ideas you thought were 
pretty good 16 months ago?
    Mr. Dorsey. Well, he was talking about algorithm choice, 
and we have implemented one of them, which is we allow people 
to turn off the ranking over a timeline. The rest is work and 
it is going to take some time.
    Senator Johnson. So I would get to it if I were you. Thank 
you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Senator Johnston, thank you. Let me just make 
sure I understood the answer. Mr. Dorsey and Mr. Zuckerberg, 
Mr. Dorsey did I understand you to say that you have no 
information indicating that the New York Post story about 
Hunter Biden has a Russian source? Did I understand correctly?
    Mr. Dorsey. Yes. Not that I am aware of.
    The Chairman. And is that also your answer, Mr. Zuckerberg, 
that you have no information at all to indicate that Russia was 
the source of this New York Post article?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, I would rely on the FBI to make 
that assessment.
    The Chairman. But you don't have any such information, do 
you?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. I do not myself.
    The Chairman. We are just trying to clarify the answer to 
Senator Johnson's question. Thank you very much for indulging 
me there. Senator Tester, you are next, sir.

                 STATEMENT OF HON. JON TESTER, 
                   U.S. SENATOR FROM MONTANA

    Senator Tester. I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I 
want to thank Sundar and Jack and Mark for being in front of 
this committee. There is no doubt that there are two major 
issues with Google and Facebook and Twitter that Congress needs 
to address. Quite frankly, big tech is the unregulated Wild 
West that needs to be held accountable. And we do need to hear 
from all three of you about a range of critical issues that 
Americans deserve answers, online data privacy, anti-trust, the 
proliferation of misinformation on your platforms. In a moment, 
I am going to ask all of you to commit to returning to this 
committee early next year to have a hearing on these important 
issues. But the truth 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 and 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 bad information to stay up as November 3 
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 U.S. Senate, an equal part of an 
independent branch of Government, allows the Senate's halls to 
be used for the President's political stance. There is a 
national election in six days, Mr. Chairman. You have nearly 
two years to hold this hearing. It is happening six days before 
the election.
    The idea that we should have a somber 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. And I know the American people are smart 
enough to figure that out. I am going to talk a little more 
about that in a second. But first, I want to thank the panel 
once again for being here.
    And I will start by asking question about making a more 
sincere effort to discuss the issues that surround big tech 
down the road. So the question for the panel and yes is a yes 
or no answer. Will you commit to returning to testify again in 
the new Congress? Let's start with you, Jack.
    Mr. Dorsey. Yes, we are always happy--myself or teammates--
to talk with the American people.
    Senator Tester. Sundar.
    Mr. Pichai. Senator, yes, we have engaged many times and we 
are happy to continue that engagement with Congress.
    Senator Tester. How about you, Mark?
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, yes. I hope we can continue to 
have this conversation and hopefully not just with the CEOs of 
the companies, but also with experts who work on these issues 
every day as is part of their jobs.
    Senator Tester. Absolutely. I think the more information, 
the better, but not based on politics, based on reality. And I 
want to thank you for that, because we are in a very unreal 
time when it comes to politics. Quite frankly, we are in 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 
smile or whether it comes from Donald Trump's mouth. And the 
fact is, if Joe Biden said suddenly crazy and offensive stuff 
that the President has said, you 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 that you would do the same sort of fact checking on him?
    The Chairman. Shall we take on Mr. Dorsey, Mr. Pichai and 
Mr. Zuckerberg in that order?
    Mr. Dorsey. If we found violations of our policy, we would 
do the appropriate enforcement action.
    Senator Tester. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Just go ahead then, Mr. Pichai.
    Mr. Pichai. Senator, yes, we would apply our policies 
without regard to who is strong and be applied neutrally.
    Senator Tester. OK, thank you. Mark.
    Mr. Zuckerberg. 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.
    Senator Tester. Thank you for that. In 2016, Russians built 
a network of bots and fake accounts to spread disinformation. 
This year, it seems they are seeding your networks with 
disinformation and relying on Americans, including some folks 
in Congress, to amplify and distribute it. What tools do you 
have to fight foreign disinformation on your platforms when it 
is spread by Americans? Jack?
    Mr. Dorsey. We are looking at--you know, our policies are 
against platform integration, period, no matter where it comes 
from. So whether that's foreign or domestic, we see patterns of 
people, organizations that attempt to manipulate platform in 
the conversation, artificially amplify information.
    Senator Tester. Thanks. Mark.
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, the efforts are a combination of 
AI systems that look for anomalous behavior by accounts or 
networks of accounts, a large human effort where we have 35,000 
employees who work on security and content review, and 
partnerships that we have made with the other tech companies 
here, as well as law enforcement and intelligence community and 
election officials across the world to make sure that we have 
all the appropriate input signals and can share signals on what 
we are seeing with the other platforms as well.
    Senator Tester. OK. Sundar?
    Mr. Pichai. Two things to add, Senator, to give it 
different examples. We partner with over 5,000 civic entities, 
campaign organizations, at the Federal and state level to 
protect their campaign's digital assets with advanced 
protection program and training. And others I would echo, there 
has been an enormous increase in cooperation between the tech 
companies. You know, as companies, we are sharing a lot of 
information and doing more together than ever before.
    Senator Tester. Thank you. I just want to close with one 
thing. We have learned a lot of information out here today 
where when you hire somebody you are supposed to ask them their 
political affiliation. You are supposed to ask them who they 
have donated to? They are 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 test person? And let's talk about 
business. We want to regulate business, and if that business is 
won by a liberal, we are going to regulate them different than 
if they are run by a conservative outfit. That reminds me a lot 
of the Supreme Court where you have two sets of polls--one for 
a Democratic president and one for a Republican. This is 
baloney, folks. Get off the political garbage and let's have 
the commerce committee do its job. Thank you very much.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Tester. Senator Scott.

                 STATEMENT OF HON. RICK SCOTT, 
                   U.S. SENATOR FROM FLORIDA

    Senator Scott. Thank you, Chairman, for hosting this. I 
think, first off, if you followed this today, which you will 
clearly come to a conclusion is Republicans believe that you 
censor and Democrats think it is pretty good what you are 
doing. We are blessed to live in the United States. Our 
democracy where we are granted individual freedoms and 
liberties under the Constitution. This isn't the case around 
the world. We can look at what's happening in Communist China 
right now. General Secretary Xi is committing horrible human 
rights abuses against China's minority communities and 
censoring anyone that speaks out about their oppression. The 
Chinese Communist Party who surveils their citizens and uses 
state-run media to push through propaganda, control information 
their citizens consume, and hide their human rights abuses. 
Twitter and Facebook are banned in communist China, so you can 
understand why it is concerning to be even discussing issues 
that big technology companies are interfering with free speech.
    The American people entrust your companies with their 
information. They believe that you will protect their 
information, 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 is becoming 
obvious that your companies are unfairly targeting 
conservatives. That is clearly the perception today. Facebook 
is actively targeting ads by conservative groups ahead of the 
election, either removing the ads completely or adding their 
own disclosure if they claim they didn't pass their fact checks 
system.
    But their fact check is based on imports from known liberal 
media groups like PolitiFact, which clearly is a liberal media 
group. Twitter censored Senator Mitch McConnell and put 
warnings on several of the President's tweets. And until 
recently, they completely blocked the American people from 
sharing the New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop and 
suspended the New York Post account. The New York Post is one 
of the most circulated publications in the United States. This 
isn't some fringe media outlet filled with conspiracy theories. 
Yet you allowed murderous dictators around the world to freely 
use your platform. Let me give you a few examples.
    On Twitter, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah, tweeted, 
calling for the elimination of the Zionist regime. He said on 
May 21, 2020, ``the elimination of the Zionist regime does not 
mean the massacre of the Jewish people. The people of Palestine 
should hold a referendum. Any political system that they vote 
for should govern all Palestine. The only remedy until the 
removal of the Zionist regime is firm, armed resistance.'' I 
would like to know first why Twitter let that stay up and why 
the Ayatollah has not been blocked? In May 2019, Maduro, a 
murderous dictator, tweeted a photo of him backed by his 
military for a March after 3 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 was 
saying this glorifies violence, which Twitter has flagged 
President Trump for, but Twitter let that stand jurisdiction's. 
Secretary Xi's communist regime stood by the fact that it is 
committing genocide against the Uyghurs, forcing millions into 
internment camps because of their religion.
    On September 1, the Chinese Government account posted on 
Twitter, ``Xinjiang `camps' more fake news. What the Chinese 
Government has done in Xinjiang has created the possibility for 
the locals to lead better lives. But truth that simply goes 
against ``anti-China narrative'' will not report by some biased 
media.'' Clear lie. It has been widely reported that this claim 
by the Chinese Government is false, but Twitter took no action. 
Your companies are inconsistently applying the road rules with 
an obvious bias. Your companies are censoring free speech to 
target the President, the White House Press Secretary, Senator 
Mitch McConnell, the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life group, 
while giving dictators a free, unfettered platform. It is our 
responsibility to hold your companies accountable and protect 
Americans ability to speak freely 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 and expect to keep the immunity granted by 
Section 230. So, Mr. Dorsey, you allow dangerous dictators on 
your platform. Tell me why you flag conservatives in America, 
like President Trump or Leader McConnell, for potential 
misinformation while allowing dictators to spew their 
propaganda on your platform?
    Mr. Dorsey. We have taken actions around leaders around the 
world and certainly with some dictators as well. We looked at--
we look at the tweets, we review them and we figure out if they 
violated a policy of ours or not.
    Senator Scott. Mr. Dorsey, can you tell me one you did 
against Iran, the Ayatollah? Can you tell me about one you have 
ever done against the Ayatollah or Maduro?
    Mr. Dorsey. I think we have done more than one actually, 
but we can send you that information on those actions. But we, 
you know, we do have a global leader policy that we believe is 
important where people can see what these leaders are saying 
and those tweets remain up, but if they are labeled that they 
violated our service just to show the integrity of our policy 
and our enforcement.
    Senator Scott. When the communists struck China, which we 
all know, put a million people, Uyghurs in camps, you did 
nothing about the tweet. And they said that they are just 
helping them lead a better life. I mean, we mean--you can 
just--anybody that follows the news knows what is happening to 
the Uyghurs. I mean it is genocide, what they are doing to the 
Uyghurs. I have never seen anything you've done on calling that 
lie.
    Mr. Dorsey. 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 
in those ideas. And that is part of the conversation is if 
there is something found to be in contest, then people reply to 
it. People retweet it and say that this is wrong. This is 
obviously wrong. You would be able to quote, retweet that today 
and say that this is utterly wrong and we would benefit from 
more of those voices calling it out.
    Senator Scott. So but you block Mitch McConnell and Trump's 
tweets and you just say, right. Here is what I don't get, is 
that you guys have set up policies that you don't enforce 
consistently. And then and then what is the recourse to a user? 
I talked to a lady this week. She has got her Facebook account 
just eliminated. There is no recourse. There is nothing she can 
do about it. So every one of you have these policies that you 
don't enforce consistently. So what should be the recourse?
    Mr. Dorsey. We enforce them consistently and as I said in 
my opening remarks, we believe it is critical that we have more 
transparency around our process. We have clear and 
straightforward and efficient appeals. So the woman that you 
talked to could actually appeal the decision that we made. And 
that we focus on algorithms and figure out how to give people 
more choice.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Scott. Senator Rosen.

                STATEMENT OF HON. JACKY ROSEN, 
                    U.S. SENATOR FROM NEVADA

    Senator Rosen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the 
witnesses for being here today, and I want to focus a little 
bit, thank you Mr. Dorsey, on algorithms, because my colleagues 
on the Majority called this hearing in order to argue that you 
are doing too much to stop the spread of disinformation, 
conspiracy theories and hate speech on your platforms. I am 
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 that on 
these platforms and 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, and particularly the recommendation algorithms, 
the potentiators of this content. Now, I was doing a little 
cleaning in my garage like a lot of people during COVID.
    I am a former computer programmer. I actually 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. And I know that you have the ability to remove bigoted, 
hateful, and incendiary content that will lead and has led to 
violence. So I want to be clear, it is really not about what 
you can or cannot do, it is 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 are 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 the 
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. And 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 am 
relieved to see that Facebook has really taken that long 
overdue action in banning Holocaust denial content.
    But while you have made some policy changes, what we have 
seen time and time again is what starts online doesn't end 
online. Hateful words morph into deadly actions, which are then 
amplified again and again and it is a vicious cycle. Just 
yesterday, we commemorated the 2-year anniversary of the Tree 
of Life shooting in Pittsburgh, the deadliest targeted attack 
on the Jewish community in American history. 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 accountability when algorithms actively 
contribute to radicalization and hate. So Mr. Zuckerberg and 
Mr. Dorsey, 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. Perhaps it doesn't continue to spread. We know 
those recommendation algorithms continue to drive someone more 
specifically and specifically and specifically. Great when you 
want to buy a new sweater, it is going to be cold out here. It 
is winter. Not so great when you are driving them toward hate. 
Can you talk to us about that please? Mr. Dorsey, you can go 
first, please.
    Mr. Dorsey. As you know, algorithms, machine learning and 
deep learning are complex. They are complicated and they 
require testing and training. So as we learn about how, about 
their effectiveness, we can shift them and we can iterate them. 
But it does require experience and it does require a little bit 
of time, so the most important thing that we need to build into 
the organization is a fast learning mindset and that agility 
around updating these algorithms. So we do try to focus on the 
urgency of our updates on any severity of harm, as you 
mentioned, specifically which tends to lead to off-line 
dangerous speech that goes into----
    Senator Rosen. Well, Mr. Zuckerberg, I will ask you to 
answer that then I have some more questions about how, I guess, 
the nimbleness of your algorithms. Go ahead.
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Senator, I think you are focused on exactly 
the right thing in terms of how many people see the harmful 
content. And as we talk about putting in place regulation or 
reforming Section 230 in terms of what we want to hold 
companies accountable for, I think that what we should be 
judging the companies on is how many people see harmful content 
before the companies act on it. And 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 or what 
percent of the content that a person sees is harmful in any of 
the categories of harm that we track. And we try to hold 
ourselves accountable for it, for basically driving the 
prevalence of that harmful content down. And I think good 
content regulation here would create a standard like that 
across the whole industry.
    Senator Rosen. So I like what you said, your recommendation 
algorithms need to learn to drive the prevalence of this 
harmful content down. So I have some other questions and I want 
to ask those. But I would like to see some of the information 
about how nimble you are on dropping down that prevalence when 
you do see it trending, when you do see an uptick, whether it 
is by bots, by human beings, or whatever that is. We need to 
drive that prevalence down. And so can you talk a little bit, 
maybe more specifically then on things you might be doing for 
anti-Semitism? We know that that is white supremacy, the 
biggest domestic threat--I'm on the Homeland Security 
Committee. They have testified to this, the largest threat, of 
course, to our Nation. And I want to be sure that violence is 
not celebrated and not amplified on your platform.
    The Chairman. We will have to have a brief answer to that. 
Senator, to whom are you addressing the question?
    Senator Rosen. Mr. Zuckerberg. I think I am the last one 
but we have just a few seconds we can ask that.
    Mr. Zuckerberg. Sure, Senator. Thank you. I mean, this is--
there is a lot of nuance here, but in general, for each 
category of harmful content, whether it is terrorist propaganda 
or incitement and violence and hate speech, we have to build 
specific systems and specific AI systems. And one of the 
benefits of, I think, having transparency and transparency 
reports into how these companies are doing is that we have to 
report on a quarterly basis how effectively we are doing at 
finding those types of content. So 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 
linguistically nuanced. We operate in 150 languages around the 
world. But what our transparency reports show is that over the 
last few years, we have gone from proactively identifying and 
taking down about 20 percent of the hate speech on the service.
    To now we are proactively identifying I think it is about 
94 percent of the hate speech that we end up taking down and 
the vast majority of that before people even have to report it 
to us. So but by having this kind of transparency requirement, 
which is part of what I am advocating for in the Section 230 
reform, I think we will be able to have a broader sense across 
the industry of how all of the companies are improving in each 
of these areas.
    The Chairman. Thank you for that answer.
    Senator Rosen. I look forward to working with everyone on 
this. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. As do I, Senator Rosen. Thank you very much. 
When this hearing convened, I estimated that it would last 3 
hours and 42 minutes. It has now been 3 hours and 41 minutes. 
Four of our members have been unable to join us and that is the 
only reason my prediction was the least bit accurate. So thank 
you all, thank you very much. And I thank our witnesses. During 
my first series, during my first question to the panelists, I 
have referred to a document that I had entered into the record 
during our committee meeting, I believe, on October 1, 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.
    [The information referred to follows:]

     Social Media Companies Censoring Prominent Conservative Voices
1) Restricted Reach, Deleted Post: Twitter, October 14, 2020--Twitter 
blocked the distribution of a New York Post article that suggests 
Hunter Biden introduced Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of 
Burisma, to his father Joe Biden while Joe Biden was Vice President, 
even though the story was not yet fact-checked.

  a)  Twitter began by providing some users with a notice that reads 
        ``Headlines don't tell the full story. You can read the article 
        on Twitter before Retweeting'' when they wanted to retweet it.

  b)  Twitter then began blocking users from posting any tweets that 
        included a link to the New York Post article. The tweet from 
        the New York Post with the link to the article was deleted from 
        the platform and the4 New York Post's account was suspended. 
        Twitter also blocked users from sending the link to the article 
        via Twitter direct messages.

  c)  If a user could find a tweet with the link to the New York Post 
        article and clicked on it, they were not taken to the New York 
        Post, but were taken to the following warning page instead:
        
        
  d)  Twitter released the following statement through a 
        representative: ``In line with our Hacked Materials Policy, as 
        well as our approach to blocking URLs, we are taking action to 
        block any links to or images of the material in question on 
        Twitter.'' \1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Karissa Bell, Facebook and Twitter Try to Limit `NY Post' Story 
on Joe Biden's Son, Engadget, Oct. 14, 2020, available at https://
www.engadget.com/facebook-twitter-limit-ny-post-story-joe-biden-son-
192852336.html

  e)  Twitter's distribution of hacked material policy states: ``[W]e 
        don't permit the use of our services to directly distribute 
        content obtained through hacking that contains private 
        information, may put people in physical harm or danger, or 
        contains trade secrets.'' \2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hacked-materials

  f)  On October 12, Twitter allowed a fake quote attributed to Susan 
        Collins regarding Judge Amy Coney Barrett to be retweeted more 
        than 6,000 times and received over 17,000 likes. On October 13, 
        the Associated Press conducted a fact check and found the quote 
        was fake.\3\ The tweet with the false quote has still not been 
        removed. The false quote reads ``At this time I'm not certain 
        that Judge Amy Coney Barrett is the right person to replace 
        Justice Ginsburg. I hope that my colleagues in the Judiciary 
        Committee will be able to alleviate my doubts.'' \4\ The 
        account in question has a history of posting fake quotes from 
        Susan Collins.\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\ Arijeta Lajka, Fabricated Quote About Supreme Court Nominee 
Attributed to Maine Senator, Associated Press, Oct. 13, 2020, available 
at https://apneas/article/fact-checking-afs:
Content:9526587424
    \4\ https://twitter.com/PAULUSV3/status/1315612923000102912
    \5\ https://twitter.com/AndrewSolender/status/1315786510709522437

  g)  Twitter suspended several prominent accounts related to President 
        Trump for sharing the New York Post article including White 
        House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany's personal account \6\ 
        and the official Twitter account of the Trump campaign, 
        @TeamTrump.\7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \6\ https://twitter.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1316510056591040513
    \7\ https://twitter.com/mikehahn_/status/1316716049946021888

  h)  Reporters were also locked out of their accounts for sharing the 
        link to the article. Politico's Jake Sherman had his account 
        suspended for sharing the link,\8\ as well as NewsBusters 
        managing editor Curtis Houck.\9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \8\ https://twitter.com/JakeSherman/status/1316781581785337857
    \9\ Joseph Wulfsohn, Politico's Jake Sherman Says Twitter Suspended 
Him For Sharing New York Post Report on Hunter Biden, Fox News, Oct. 
16, 2020, available at https://www.foxnews
.com/media/politico-jake-sherman-twitter-suspended-hunter-biden

  i)  Twitter Safety released the following statement at 7:44 PM on 
        October 14: ``The images contained in the articles include 
        personal and private information--like e-mail addresses and 
        phone numbers--which violate our rules. As noted this morning, 
        we also currently view materials included in the articles as 
        violations of our Hacked Materials Policy.'' \10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \10\ https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1316525303930458115

  j)  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey released the following statement at 7:55 
        PM on October 14: ``Our communication around our actions on the 
        @nypost article was not great. And blocking URL sharing via 
        tweet or DM with zero context as to why we're blocking: 
        unacceptable.'' \11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \11\ https://twitter.com/jack/status/1316528193621327876

  k)  Twitter updated its Hacked Materials Policy the day after they 
        blocked the New York Post article. Twitter General Counsel 
        Vijaya Gadde announced the following changes: ``1. We will no 
        longer remove hacked content unless it is directly shared by 
        hackers or those acting in concert with them 2. We will label 
        Tweets to provide context instead of blocking links from being 
        shared on Twitter'' \12\ According to Gadde, the changes were 
        made ``to address the concerns that there could be many 
        unintended consequences to journalists, whistleblowers and 
        others in ways that are contrary to Twitter's purpose of 
        serving the public conversation.'' \13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \12\ https://twitter.com/vijaya/status/1316923557268652033
    \13\ https://twitter.com/vijaya/status/1316923550733881344

  l)  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey released the following statement 
        regarding the policy changes: ``Straight blocking of URLs was 
        wrong, and we updated our policy and enforcement to fix. Our 
        goal is to attempt to add context, and now we have capabilities 
        to do that.'' \14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \14\ https://twitter.com/jack/status/1317081843443912706

2) Restricted Reach: Facebook, October 14, 2020--Facebook restricted 
the reach of the New York Post article regarding Hunter Biden even 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
though the article was not yet fact-checked.

  a)  On October 14, 2020, at 5:00 AM, the New York Post published a 
        story with a newly released e-mail that suggests Hunter Biden 
        introduced Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of 
        Burisma, to his father Joe Biden while Joe Biden was Vice 
        President. This allegation contradicts Vice President Biden's 
        public position that he has ``never spoken to my son about his 
        overseas business dealings.''

  b)  On October 14, 2020, at 11:10 AM, Andy Stone, Policy 
        Communications Director, Facebook, released the following 
        statement: ``While I will intentionally not link to the New 
        York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be 
        fact checked by Facebook's third-party fact checking partners. 
        In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our 
        platform.''

  c)  Mr. Stone clarified, at 1:00 PM, that ``[t]his is part of our 
        standard process to reduce the spread of misinformation. We 
        temporarily reduce distribution pending fact-checker review.'' 
        \15\ Facebook's policy on temporarily reducing the reach of 
        potential misinformation reads: ``[W]e're also working to take 
        faster action to prevent misinformation from going viral, 
        especially given that quality reporting and fact-checking takes 
        time. In many countries, including in the US, if we have 
        signals that a piece of content is false, we temporarily reduce 
        its distribution pending review by a third-party fact-
        checker.'' \16\ It is not clear what ``signals'' to Facebook 
        that a piece of content is false.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \15\ https://twitter.com/andymstone/status/1316423671314026496
    \16\ https://about.fb.com/news/2019/10/update-on-election-
integrity-efforts/

3) Threats of Harm: Twitter, October 3, 2020--After President Trump was 
diagnosed with COVID-19, Twitter reiterated that tweets that wish death 
or bodily harm on any person will be removed and may result in account 
suspension.\17\ After this announcement, Twitter faced criticism that 
this policy is not forced consistently and Twitter admitted it must 
improve its enforcement.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \17\ https://twitter.com/TwitterComms/status/1312167835783708672

  a)  Twitter's statement in response to criticism: ``We hear the 
        voices who feel that we're enforcing some policies 
        inconsistently. We agree we must do better, and we are working 
        together inside to do so.'' \18\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \18\ https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1312498514002243584

4) Label: Twitter, September 21, 2020--Tucker Carlson, of Fox's Tucker 
Carlson Tonight, tweeted a news clip of one of his nightly newscasts. 
Carlson spoke about the destruction and violence in the U.S. and the 
role that George Soros has played in funding the campaigns of 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
politicians who fail to prosecute those causing the damage.

  a)  Twitter placed a sensitive label on the video, which required 
        users to click through a filter in order to watch the video.

5) Deleted Post: Facebook, September 18, 2020--Facebook removed an ad 
run by America First PAC that criticizes Joe Biden's tax policy for 
raising taxes on all income groups because it lacks context, even 
though a PolitiFact check finds it is true that Joe Biden's tax policy 
will result in a tax increase for all income groups.

  a)  The ad begins with a narrator saying ``Sometimes, politicians 
        accidentally tell the truth'' and then cuts to a clip of Biden 
        saying ``Guess what, if you elect me, your taxes are going to 
        be raised, not cut.'' The narrator then says ``the New York 
        Times says Biden's tax increases are more than double Hillary 
        Clinton's plan. Even the Tax Policy Center admits taxes would 
        increase `on all income groups.'' \19\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \19\ Bill McCarthy, Ad Attacking Joe Biden's Tax Plan Takes His 
Comments Out of Context, PolitiFact, Aug. 20, 2020, available at 
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/aug/20/america-first/ad-
attacking-joe-bidens-tax-plan-takes-his-comment/

  b)  PolitiFact finds it is true that Biden's tax plan would raise 
        taxes for all income groups but rates the ad mostly false 
        because the Biden comment in the ad ``came during a South 
        Carolina event, when a member of his crowd said he or she had 
        benefited from the GOP-led tax bill. The full context of the 
        quote shows Biden saying that individual's taxes would be 
        `raised, not cut, if you benefited from that.' '' \20\ Facebook 
        removed the ad based on that fact check.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \20\ Id.

6) Label: Twitter, September 17, 2020--Twitter labeled President 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trump's parody tweet of Joe Biden as ``manipulated media.''

  a)  At a recent rally, Joe Biden stopped speaking, took out his 
        phone, and played Despacito into the microphone. President 
        Trump shared a video where instead of playing Despacito, Biden 
        plays ``F*ck Tha Police.''

7) Label, Restricted Reach: Facebook, September 16, 2020--Facebook 
labeled a Fox News article about Chinese virologist Dr. Li-Meng Yan's 
claim that China manufactured and intentionally released COVID-19 as 
containing ``false information.''

  a)  The Fox News article summarizes Dr. Yan's interview with Tucker 
        Carlson where she makes her claim and explains that she worked 
        at a World Health Organization (WHO) reference lab at the 
        University of Hong Kong. The article notes that this claim is 
        in conflict with statements made by Dr. Fauci. The article also 
        notes that Dr. Yan helped expose China's attempts to suppress 
        information about how it initially responded to COVID-19.\21\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \21\ Sam Dorman, Chinese Virologist: China's Government 
`Intentionally' Released COVID-19, Fox News, Sept. 15, 2020, available 
at https://www.foxnews.com/media/chinese-virologist-government-
intentionally-
coronavirus?fbclid=IwAR2q_Jq06e8eN_0oOAjZy8waEu8t_7bckiRg-IUFG9r
9abSwIE0ai8KTms4

8) Label, Restricted Reach: Facebook, September 15, 2020--Facebook 
labeled an ad run by conservative PAC American Principles Project as 
``missing context and could mislead people'' even though PolitiFact 
says it cannot fact check the ad. Facebook will allow for the ad to be 
posted organically, but it will not allow for it to be posted as a paid 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
advertisement.

  a)  The ad, titled ``Not Fair'' criticizes Joe Biden and Gary Peters 
        for supporting the Equality Act and states ``all female 
        athletes want is a fair shot at competition, at a scholarship, 
        at a title, at victory. But what if that shot was taken away by 
        a competitor who claims to be a girl but was born a boy? 
        Senator Gary Peters and Joe Biden support legislation that 
        would destroy girls' sports.'' \22\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \22\ Clara Hendrickson, Ad Watch: Conservative PAC Claims Gary 
Peters Would `Destroy Girls' Sports', PolitiFact, Sept. 15, 2020, 
available at https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/sep/15/ad-watch-
peters-supports-ending-discrimination-bas/

  b)  The Politifact fact check finds that the Equality Act ``would 
        allow transgender students to compete on school sports teams 
        based on their gender identity rather than their sex assigned 
        at birth.'' It also finds that the ``specific criticism is that 
        allowing transgender girls and women to compete on the basis of 
        their gender identity would create an uneven playing field for 
        student athlete and ultimately end girls' and women's sports. 
        That's a prediction we can't fact-check.'' \23\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \23\ Id.

  c)  American Principles Project's Director stated: ``Our ad campaign 
        makes a very simple claim: policies supported by Joe Biden, 
        Sen. Gary Peters and other Democrats would destroy girls' 
        sports. There is ample evidence for this claim and more coming 
        in every day. Nothing in the PolitiFact review shows this claim 
        to be false. Yet Facebook has nevertheless decided to declare 
        our ad might `mislead people' because it is missing context.' 
        Apparently, they believe the ad will only be fair if we also 
        included leftist `arguments' against us. Do we now need pre-
        approval from Democrats before we run ads critical of their 
        policies? This is an absurd standard--one which Facebook 
        obviously doesn't hold the other side to.'' \24\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \24\ https://twitter.com/approject/status/1305903785227714563/
photo/1

9) Deleted Post: YouTube, September 14, 2020--YouTube removed a video 
published by the Hoover Institution of a conversation between Dr. Scott 
Atlas, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Peter Robinson, a 
Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, because the video 
``contradicts the WHO or local health authorities medical information 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
about COVID-19''

  a)  YouTube informed the Wall Street Journal that the video was 
        removed for ``falsely stating that a certain age group cannot 
        transmit the virus.'' \25\ In the video, Atlas states children 
        ``do not even transmit the disease'' but then corrects himself 
        and states that transmission by children is ``not impossible, 
        but it's less likely.'' This is consistent with a review 
        conducted by the American Academy of Pediatrics that states 
        ``children are not significant drivers of the COVID-19 
        pandemic.'' \26\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \25\ Editorial Board, YouTube's Political Censorship, Wall Street 
Journal, Sept. 14, 2020, available at https://www.wsj.com/articles/
youtubes-political-censorship-11600126230
    \26\ Id.

  b)  The video was published in June, before Dr. Atlas left the Hoover 
        Institution to work in the White House. It was removed in 
        September, two days after the New York Times published a story 
        on an open letter from a group of Stanford faculty contesting 
        some of the statements made by Dr. Atlas.\27\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \27\ The New York Times, Stanford Doctors Issue a Warning About a 
Trump Adviser--a Colleague--in an Open Letter, The New York Times, 
Sept. 10, 2020, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/10/world/
covid-19-coronavirus.html#link-14e948b0

  c)  Hoover Institution Fellow Lanhee Chen \28\ pointed out that, 
        while YouTube has removed the video of Dr. Atlas making a 
        contested claim, it has not removed a video published by the 
        WHO in February that states if you are asymptomatic ``you do 
        not have to wear a mask because there is no evidence that they 
        protect people who are not sick.'' \29\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \28\ https://twitter.com/lanheechen/status/1305905684785971200
    \29\ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ded_AxFfJoQ&feature=emb_logo

10) Label: Twitter and Facebook, September 12, 2020--Twitter and 
Facebook both placed labels on President Trump's posts asking North 
Carolina voters to go to the polls to see if their mailed ballot had 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
been recorded.

  a)  President Trump posted: ``NORTH CAROLINA: To make sure your 
        Ballot COUNTS, sign & send it in EARLY. When Polls open, go to 
        your Polling Place to see if it was COUNTED. IF NOT, VOTE! Your 
        signed Ballot will not count because your vote has been posted. 
        Don't let them illegally take your vote away from you!'' \30\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \30\ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1304769412759724033

  b)  Twitter placed a label requiring users to click through it to 
        view the tweet. The label reads ``This Tweet violated the 
        Twitter Rules about civic and election integrity. However, 
        Twitter has determined that it may be in the public's interest 
        for the Tweet to remain accessible.'' \31\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \31\ Id.

  c)  The Facebook label states ``voting by mail has a long history of 
        trustworthiness in the U.S. and the same is predicted this 
        year.'' \32\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \32\ https://www.facebook.com/DonaldTrump/posts/north-carolina-to-
make-sure-your-ballot-counts-sign-send-it-in-early-when-polls-/
10165434016180725/

  d)  Twitter refused to place a ``civic and election integrity'' label 
        on a verifiably false tweet with 25,000 retweets of a picture 
        of locked USPS mailboxes with the caption ``A disgrace and 
        immediate threat to American democracy. Shame on them. Shame on 
        the GOP. Where are you Mitch McConnell?'' The picture of the 
        mailboxes in the tweet is from 2016 and there is a news article 
        from four years ago explaining they were locked to prevent mail 
        theft. The mailboxes are not locked anymore.\33\ This tweet was 
        later deleted by the author.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \33\ Tobia Hoonhout, Twitter Says Viral Mailbox Misinformation Does 
Not Violate Company's Policies, National Review, Aug. 19, 2020 
available at https://www.nationalreview.com/news/twitter-says-viral-
mailbox-misinformation-does-not-violate-companys-policies/

  e)  Twitter refused to place a ``civic and election integrity'' label 
        on another verifiably false tweet with over 74,000 retweets and 
        127,000 likes of a picture of a stack of USPS mailboxes in an 
        industrial lot with the caption ``Photo taken in Wisconsin. 
        This is happening right before our eyes. They are sabotaging 
        USPS to sabotage vote by mail. This is massive voter 
        suppression and part of their plan to steal the election.'' 
        Reuters photojournalist Gary He took the picture included in 
        this tweet and explained that the mailboxes were in the lot of 
        Hartford Finishing Inc. and had been there for years. Hartford 
        Finishing Inc. has a contract with the USPS to refurbish and 
        salvage old mailboxes. A USAToday fact check found the tweet 
        was false.\34\ Daniel Goldman, a lawyer who most recently 
        served as majority counsel in the impeachment inquiry and staff 
        counsel to the House Managers, retweeted the tweet with the 
        caption ``What possible cost-cutting measure does removing 
        existing mailboxes and mail sorters support? None, of course. 
        Trump admitted that he is using his crony postmaster general to 
        try to steal the election by suppressing votes. This is the 
        most anti-democratic thing he has done.'' \35\ There was no 
        ``civic and election integrity'' label on his tweet which was 
        retweeted over 8,000 times and received over 17,000 likes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \34\ Id.
    \35\ https://twitter.com/danielsgoldman/status/1294640736688844803

11) Failure to Act: Facebook, September 9, 2020--Facebook allowed a 
video of a Mississippi man taking his own life to remain on the 
platform for three hours. Facebook did not take the video down after an 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
initial review finds that it did not violate any Community Standards.

  a)  A Mississippi man on a Facebook livestream died of a self-
        inflicted gunshot wound. Viewers immediately reported the video 
        to Facebook, but Facebook did not take down the video after an 
        initial review. The video remained on the platform for three 
        hours which allowed for nefarious actors to copy it. The video 
        is now circulating on other social media platforms. A close 
        friend of the victim who immediately reported the video 
        believes ``if Facebook had intervened 10 minutes after I made 
        the initial report, this is not a situation we're discussing. 
        This is not a situation where a video is spread virally from 
        Facebook to websites, intercut into videos on TikTok. It just 
        doesn't exist.'' \36\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \36\ C.J. LeMaster, Criticism Lobbed at Social Media Companies 
After Suicide Video of Mississippi Man Goes Viral, WLBT3, Sept. 9, 2020 
available at https://www.wlbt.com/2020/09/09/criticism-lobbed-social-
media-companies-after-suicide-video-mississippi-man-goes-viral/

12) Label: Twitter and Facebook, September 3, 2020--Twitter and 
Facebook placed labels on President Trump's posts about going to the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
polling place to ensure a ballot cast in the mail is tabulated.

  a)  The President posted: ``go to your Polling Place to see whether 
        or not your Mail In Vote has been Tabulated (Counted). If it 
        has you will not be able to Vote & the Mail In System worked 
        properly. If it has not been Counted, VOTE (which is a 
        citizen's right to do). If your Mail In Ballot arrives after 
        you Vote, which it should not, that Ballot will not be used or 
        counted in that your vote has already been cast & tabulated. 
        YOU ARE NOW ASSURED THAT YOUR PRECIOUS VOTE HAS BEEN COUNTED, 
        it hasn't been ``lost, thrown out, or in any way destroyed''. 
        GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!'' \37\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \37\ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1301528521752354816

  b)  The Facebook and Twitter labels are the same as the ones placed 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        on his September 12th post which is detailed above.

  c)  Twitter labeled this unverifiable claim by President Trump but 
        refused to label two viral examples of election misinformation 
        accusing Republicans of sabotaging the USPS to prevent voting 
        by mail despite the fact that both tweets are verifiably false, 
        one even rated false by a USAToday fact check (see above for 
        details).

13) Deleted Post: Facebook, August 28, 2020--The day after a New York 
Times article noted that the most-shared Facebook post containing the 
term ``Black Lives Matter'' in the past six months comes from The 
Hodgetwins,\38\ Facebook notified The Hodgetwins that their ``page is 
at risk of being unpublished because of continued Community Standard 
violations'' and removed three of their videos.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \38\ Kevin Roose, What if Facebook is the Real `Silent Majority'? 
The New York Times, Aug. 27, 2020, available at https://
www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/technology/what-if-facebook-is-the-real-
silent-majority.html

  a)  The Hodgetwins are black conservative comedians. Their BLM video 
        states that the movement is ``a damn lie.'' \39\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \39\ Id.

  b)  One of the removed videos is titled ``Liberal has mental 
        breakdown,'' and another is titled ``AOC YOU CRAZY,'' which 
        contains quotes such as ``Man how the hell did she get out of 
        high school,'' and ``She's got a Ph.D, a Ph.D in stupidity.'' 
        \40\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \40\ Corinne Weaver, Facebook Threatens to Unpublish Black 
Conservative Creators Hodgetwins, Free Speech America, Aug. 28, 2020, 
available at https://censortrack.org/case/hodgetwins

14) Temporary Ban, Deleted Post: Twitter, July 28, 2020--Twitter 
suspended the account of Donald Trump Jr. for 12 hours for posting a 
video of doctors telling Americans they do not have to wear masks and 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
arguing that hydroxychloroquine can treat COVID-19.

  a)  Twitter deleted the tweet and suspended the account because the 
        tweet was in violation of its COVID-19 misinformation policy.

  b)  Donald. Trump Jr. responded that ``when the Chinese Communist 
        government literally spread disinformation about coronavirus, 
        Twitter literally said that is not a violation of their 
        rules.'' \41\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \41\ Joshua Nelson, Trump Jr. Rips Twitter for Restricting His 
Posts but Allowing China's `Disinformation' About COVID-19, Fox News, 
July, 30, 2020, available at https://www.foxnews.com/media/donald-
trump-jr-twitter-china-propaganda

15) Temporary Ban: Instagram, July 15, 2020--Instagram twice prevented 
Mary Morgan Ketchel, daughter of Senator Marsha Blackburn, from 
advertising the book she wrote with Senator Blackburn titled ``Camila 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Can Vote: Celebrating the Centennial of Women's Right to Vote.''

  a)  Instagram classified advertisements for the book as political ads 
        because of the book's potential to ``influence the outcome of 
        an election, or existing proposed legislation.'' Instagram has 
        stricter disclosure and transparency rules for political ads. 
        Ketchel says the book is solely focused on Tennessee's role in 
        passing women's suffrage laws. Ketchel was asked to register 
        her personal account as a political group. Eventually, 
        Instagram conceded it was not a political ad and published 
        it.\42\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \42\ Tristan Justice, Instagram Blocked Sen. Blackburn And 
Daughter's Children's Book on Launch Day, The Federalist, July 15, 
2020, available at https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/15/instagram-
blocked-sen-blackburn-and-daughters-childrens-book-on-launch-day/

16) Temporary Ban: Instagram July 2, 2020--Instagram temporarily 
suspended the account of Moral Revolution, a nonprofit Christian group 
that ``speaks about healthy Biblical sexuality'' and had 129,000 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
followers at the time, for posting an anti-porn video.

  a)  Moral Revolution posted a video on its Instagram alleging that 
        PornHub.com is harmful, is possibly connected to sex 
        trafficking, and should be taken down. Instagram removed the 
        post and then removed the account. The account was eventually 
        reinstated after 350 posts with the hashtag 
        #bringbackmoralrevolution and an account dedicated to restoring 
        the deleted one garnered 19,300 followers.\43\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \43\ Heather Moon, Instagram Disables, Reinstates Christian Group 
That Posted Ant-Porn Video, mrcNewsBusters, July 2, 2020, available at 
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/techwatch/heather-moon/2020/07/02/
instagram-disables-reinstates-christian-group-posted-anti

17) Restricted Reach: Instagram, June 25, 2020--Instagram users were 
unable to share an Instagram Live video of Christian preacher and music 
artist Sean Feucht because it contains ``harmful or false 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
information.''

  a)  Sean Feucht holds worship services in areas where there recently 
        has been civil unrest. Instagram prevented users from sharing 
        one particular service on their stories because it failed to 
        meet ``community standards.'' \44\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \44\ Michael Brown, Instagram Brands Christian Worship `Harmful,' 
Christian Post, June 26, 2020, available at https://
www.christianpost.com/voices/instagram-brands-christian-worship-
harmful.html

  b)  Senator Hawley tweeted about this.\45\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \45\ https://twitter.com/HawleyMO/status/1275565792705339392

18) Label: Twitter, June 23, 2020--Twitter added a notice to President 
Trump's tweet against establishing an ``autonomous zone'' in 
Washington, D.C. because the tweet violated its rules against abusive 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
behavior. You have to click through the notice to view the tweet.

  a)  President Trump tweeted ``There will never be an 'Autonomous 
        Zone' in Washington, D.C., as long as I'm your President. If 
        they try they will be met with serious force!'' \46\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \46\ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1275409656488382465

  b)  Twitter responded: ``We've placed a public interest notice on 
        this Tweet for violating our policy against abusive behavior, 
        specifically, the presence of a threat of harm against an 
        identifiable group.'' \47\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \47\ https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1275500569940176897

  c)  White House Press Secretary Kyleigh McEnany responded: ``Twitter 
        labeled it ``abusive behavior'' for the President of the United 
        States to say that he will enforce the law. Twitter says it is 
        ``abusive'' to prevent rioters from forcibly seizing territory 
        to set up a lawless zone in our capital. Recall what happened 
        in Seattle's lawless CHOP zone where multiple people have been 
        shot and one 19-year-old tragically lost his life! We must have 
        LAW AND ORDER!'' \48\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \48\ https://twitter.com/PressSec/status/1275546706336116736

19) Deleted Post: YouTube, June 19, 2020--YouTube removed a video 
published by the Heritage Foundation of a panel discussion at its 
``Summit on Protecting Children from Sexualization'' because it 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
violated YouTube's hate speech policies.

  a)  In the video, Walter Heyer, a formerly transgender person, 
        expresses regret for his transition and argues that children 
        should not be encouraged to try hormones or surgery. YouTube 
        took issue with Heyer's statement that people are ``not born 
        transgender. This is a childhood developmental disorder, that 
        adults are perpetrating on our young people today, and our 
        schools are complicit in this.'' \49\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \49\ Emily Jashinsky, Exclusive: Man Tried to Share His Regrets 
About Transgender Life. YouTube Censored It, The Federalist, June 19, 
2020 available at https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/19/exclusive-man-
tried-to-share-his-regrets-about-transgender-life-youtube-censored-it/

  b)  YouTube removed the video because its ``speech policy prohibits 
        videos which assert that someone's sexuality or gender identity 
        is a disease or a mental illness.'' \50\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \50\ Id.

20) Deleted Post: Facebook, June 18, 2020--Facebook removes one of 
President Trump's ads criticizing Antifa for violating Facebook's 
policy against organized hate because the ad includes an inverted red 
triangle which Nazi's once used to designate political prisoners. The 
Communications Director for the Trump campaign said ``the red triangle 
is a common Antifa symbol used in an ad about Antifa'' which is why it 
was included in Trump's ad.\51\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \51\ Kayla Gogarty and John Whitehouse, Facebook Finally Removed 
Trump Campaign Ads with Inverted Red Triangle--an Infamous Nazi Symbol, 
Media Matters, June 18, 2020, available at https://
www.mediamatters.org/facebook/facebook-let-trump-campaign-run-ads-
inverted-red-triangle-infamous-nazi-symbol

  a)  The ad reads ``Dangerous MOBS of far-left groups are running 
        through our streets and causing absolute mayhem. They are 
        DESTROYING our cities and rioting--it's absolute madness. It's 
        important that EVERY American comes together at a time like 
        this to send a united message that we will not stand for their 
        radical actions any longer. We're calling on YOU to make a 
        public statement and add your name to stand with President 
        Trump against ANTIFA.'' The ad then has a picture of an 
        inverted red triangle, although the President has other ads 
        with the same text and a different alert image.\52\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \52\ Id.

  b)  The inverted red triangle is not listed as a hate symbol by the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Anti-Defamation League.

  c)  The ad was originally flagged on Twitter by a journalist from 
        Fortune.\53\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \53\ https://twitter.com/JohnBuysse/status/1273291676912701441

21) Threat of Demonetization: Google, June 17, 2020--Google threatened 
to ban The Federalist from its advertising platform because of comments 
made under a Federalist article titled ``The Media Are Lying To You 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
About Everything, Including the Riots.''

  a)  Google's statement: ``The Federalist was never demonetized. We 
        worked with them to address issues on their site related to the 
        comments section. Our policies do not allow ads to run against 
        dangerous or derogatory content, which includes comments on 
        sites, and we offer guidance and best practices to publishers 
        on how to comply.'' \54\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \54\ https://twitter.com/Google_Comms/status/1272997427356680195

  b)  The Federalist temporarily deleted its comments section to avoid 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        demonetization.

  c)  The Federalist notes ``Google would be incredibly hard-pressed to 
        moderate or police the millions of incendiary comments posted 
        on YouTube (a website owned by Google). Nor, it should be 
        noted, has Google clamped down on the toxic comment sections of 
        left-wing websites like Daily Kos, Jezebel, or The Young 
        Turks.'' \55\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \55\ Joshua Lawson, Corporate Media Wants to Silence The Federalist 
Because It Can't Compete, The Federalist, June 18, 2020, available at 
https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/18/corporate-media-wants-to-silence-
the-federalist-because-it-cant-compete/

22) Demonetization: Google, June 16, 2020--Google banned ZeroHedge, a 
far-right website, from it advertising platform because of comments 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
made under stories about Black Lives Matter protests.

  a)  Google stated ``We have strict publisher policies that govern the 
        content ads can run on and explicitly prohibit derogatory 
        content that promotes hatred, intolerance, violence or 
        discrimination based on race from monetizing.'' \56\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \56\ Adele-Momoko Fraser, Google Bans ZeroHedge From Its Ad 
Platform Over Comments on Protest Article, NBC News, June 16, 2020, 
available at https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/google-bans-two-
websites-its-ad-platform-over-protest-articles-n1231176

23) Label: Twitter, May 29, 2020--Twitter placed a public interest 
label on President Trump's tweet about the riots in Minnesota. Users 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
have to click through the label to view the tweet.

  a)  President Trump tweeted: ``These THUGS are dishonoring the memory 
        of George Floyd, and I won't let that happen. Just spoke to 
        Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him 
        all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, 
        when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!'' \57\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \57\ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1266231100780744704

  b)  The label reads: ``This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about 
        glorifying violence. However, Twitter has determined that it 
        may be in the public's interest for the Tweet to remain 
        accessible.'' \58\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \58\ Id.

  c)  Ajit Pai, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, 
        highlighted four tweets from the Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ali 
        Khamenei, which Twitter did not place a public interest label 
        on for glorifying violence.\59\ The tweets at issue include the 
        phrases:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \59\ https://twitter.com/AjitPaiFCC/status/1266368492258816002

    (1)  ``The Zionist regime is a deadly, cancerous growth and a 
            detriment to this region. It will undoubtedly be uprooted 
            and destroyed.'' \60\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \60\ https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1263749566744100864

    (2)  ``The only remedy until the removal of the Zionist regime is 
            firm, armed resistance.'' \61\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \61\ https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1263551872872386562

    (3)  ``The struggle to free Palestine is #Jihad in the way of God. 
            Victory in such a struggle has been guaranteed, because the 
            person, even if killed, will receive `one of the two 
            excellent things.' '' \62\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \62\ https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1263742339891298304

    (4)  ``We will support and assist any nation or any group anywhere 
            who opposes and fights the Zionist regime, and we do not 
            hesitate to say this.'' \63\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \63\ https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1263181288338587649

24) Label: Twitter, May 26, 2020--Twitter placed a label on President 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trump's tweets related to mail-in ballots for the first time.

  a)  The President tweeted: ``There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In 
        Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. 
        Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even 
        illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of 
        California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone 
        living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got 
        there, will get one. That will be followed up with 
        professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have 
        never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to 
        vote. This will be a Rigged Election. No way!'' \64\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \64\ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1265255835124539392

  b)  Twitter placed a label on the tweet that reads ``get the facts 
        about mail-in ballot.'' Users do not have to click through a 
        filter to view the tweet. If you click on the label you are 
        taken to a page with Twitter-curated information on election 
        security.\65\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \65\ https://twitter.com/i/events/
1265330601034256384?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5E
tweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1265255845358645254%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https
%3A%2F
%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fus-news%2F2020%2Fmay%2F26%2Ftrump-twitter-
fact-check-warning-label

25) Label, Restricted Reach: Facebook, May 19, 2020--Facebook reduced 
the reach of the PragerU page for ``repeated sharing of false news.'' 
Facebook flagged a video shared by PragerU titled ``Remember This 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Starving Polar Bear?'' as containing false information.

  a)  The PragerU video contends that the polar bear population is 
        higher than it has been in over 50 years and implores viewers 
        not to ``fall for the lies of the climate elites.'' It is based 
        off of a paper published by Susan Crockford, an Adjunct 
        Professor at the University of Victoria in Canada. After 
        Facebook flagged the post as containing false information, Dr. 
        Crockford defended her claim and noted that while there are 
        conflicting views ``this is a classic conflict that happens all 
        the time in science but presents no proof that I'm wrong or 
        that the PragerU video is inherently `false'.'' \66\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \66\ Susan Crockford, ClimateFeedback Review of PragerU Video 
Challenges Good News on Polar Bears, Polar Bear Science, May 18, 2020, 
available at https://polarbearscience.com/2020/05/18/climate feedback-
review-of-prageru-video-challenges-good-news-on-polar-bears/

  b)  Facebook released this statement: ``Third-party fact-checking 
        partners operate independently from Facebook and are certified 
        through the non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network. 
        Publishers appeal to individual fact-checkers directly to 
        dispute ratings.'' \67\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \67\ Lucas Nolan, Facebook Evicts PragerU From Normal Public 
Visibility, Claiming `Repeated Sharing of False News, American 
Priority, May 20, 2020 available at https://american
priority.com/news/facebook-evicts-prageru-from-normal-public-
visibility-claiming-repeated-sharing-of-false-news/

26) Label, Restricted Reach: Facebook, May 11, 2020--Facebook labeled a 
LifeNews story as false and reduced its reach after a USAToday fact-
check determines it is partly false because the story states that 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Planned Parenthood is an ``abortion business.''

  a)  On February 21, 2019, LifeNews published a story titled 
        ``Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers Wants to Force Residents to 
        Fund Planned Parenthood Abortion Business,'' which states 
        ``Governor Tony Evers announced today that he will force state 
        residents to fund the Planned Parenthood abortion business as 
        part of his state budget.'' \68\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \68\ Steven Ertelt, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers Wants to Force 
Residents to Fund Planned Parenthood Abortion Business, LifeNews, Feb. 
21, 2019, available at https://www.lifenews.com/2019/02/21/wisconsin-
governor-tony-evers-will-force-residents-to-fund-planned-parenthood-
abortion-business/

  b)  More than a year later, it gained steam on Facebook after it was 
        posted in a ``Recall Tony Evers'' Facebook group. USAToday 
        decided to fact check it after it goes viral and finds the 
        story to be ``partly false'' because ``it's true Gov. Tony 
        Evers tried and failed to restore funding for entities, like 
        Planned Parenthood, that do provide abortion services. But it 
        is false to say residents would be forced to pay for abortions. 
        Even if the measure had passed, under state and Federal law, 
        the money generally couldn't have gone to pay for abortions. 
        Finally, it's an exaggeration to call Planned Parenthood an 
        abortion business, when abortions make up a small portion of 
        the services offered.'' \69\ In response to the USAToday 
        article, Facebook labeled the article as false and restricted 
        its reach.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \69\ Haley BeMiller, Fact Check: Planned Parenthood Abortion 
Funding, Business Claim Goes Too Far, USAToday, May 1, 2020 available 
at https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck
/2020/05/01/fact-check-wis-planned-parenthood-abortion-claim-goes-too-
far/3057827001/?fbc
lid=IwAR3dThZ_ZGK5b8kMOr7Dz9c_SMKUitj99e8mTRJi87M_GKdJn2O1uvNiEbg

  c)  Former head of Planned Parenthood Leana Wen said that ``First, 
        our core mission is providing, protecting and expanding access 
        to abortion and reproductive health care.'' \70\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \70\ Corinne Weaver, Facebook Censors Pro-Life Page for Calling 
Planned Parenthood an ``Abortion Business,'' LifeNews, May 11, 2020, 
available at https://www.lifenews.com/2020/05/11/ facebook-censors-
lifenews-after-media-falsely-claims-planned-parenthood-not-an-abortion-
biz/

27) Deleted Post: Facebook, March 5, 2020--Facebook removed one of 
President Trump's ads for violating its policy on misleading census 
information after initially allowing the ad to stay on the site 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
following criticism from Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

  a)  The ad reads ``We need your help to defeat the Democrats and the 
        FAKE NEWS, who are working around the clock to defeat President 
        Trump in November. President Trump needs you to take the 
        official 2020 Congressional District Census today. We need to 
        hear from you before the most important election in American 
        history. The information we gather from this survey will help 
        us craft strategies in YOUR CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT. Please 
        respond NOW to help our campaign messaging strategy.'' The ad 
        then links to a form on President Trump's website which 
        collects information and requests a donation. Facebook allowed 
        the ad to stay up after initially reviewing it. \71\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \71\ Craig Timberg and Tara Bahrampour, Facebook Takes Down 
Deceptive Trump Campaign Ads--After First Allowing Them, The Washington 
Post, March 5, 2020, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/ 
technology/2020/03/05/facebook-removes-trump-ads/

  b)  Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticized Facebook for allowing the ad to 
        stay up, stating ``I am particularly annoyed today at the 
        actions of Facebook. Facebook has something that is an official 
        document of Donald Trump as saying, `Fill this out, this is a 
        census form'--it is not. It is an absolute lie, a lie that is 
        consistent with the misrepresentation policy of Facebook. But 
        now they are messing with who we are as Americans.'' \72\ Her 
        characterization of the ad is inconsistent with the text of the 
        ad quoted above.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \72\ Id.

  c)  Hours after Speaker Pelosi criticized Facebook, Facebook reversed 
        its decision and removed the ad for ``misrepresentation of the 
        dates, locations, times and methods for census participation.'' 
        Facebook Spokesman Andy stone explained that Facebook reversed 
        its decision because ``we conducted a further review.'' \73\ 
        Nothing about the ad changed from the time Facebook initially 
        approved it to when it decided to remove it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \73\ Id.

28) Label, Restricted Reach: Facebook, August 30, 2019--Facebook marked 
two Live Action videos as false for containing the statement ``abortion 
is never medically necessary'' and restricted the distribution of the 
page's posts for repeatedly sharing false information. Live Action is a 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
pro-life group with more than 3 million followers on Facebook.

  a)  The first video, titled ``The Pro-Life Reply to `Abortion Can be 
        Medically Necessary' '' features neonatologist Dr. Kendra Kolb. 
        The second video titled ``Abortion is NEVER Medically 
        Necessary'' features Live Action's President Lila Rose. Rose 
        says her claim is supported by thousands of OBGYNs and medical 
        experts.\74\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \74\ https://twitter.com/LilaGraceRose/status/1167544725517156352

  b)  Senators Hawley, Cruz, Cramer, and Braun sent a letter to Mark 
        Zuckerberg asking for Facebook to remove the label and any 
        restrictions on distribution.\75\ The letter notes that the 
        fact check on this video was conducted by Daniel Grossman, who 
        sits on the board of NARAL Pro-Choice and has testified in 
        support of Planned Parenthood, and Robyn Schickler, who is a 
        Fellow at a pro-abortion advocacy group Physicians for 
        Reproductive Health.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \75\ Letter to Mark Zuckerberg, from Senators Hawley, Cruz, Cramer, 
and Braun (Sept. 11, 2019) https://www.hawley.senate.gov/sites/default/
files/2019-09/2019-09-11_Hawley-Cruz-Cra
mer-Braun-Letter-Facebook-Live-Action.pdf

  c)  Mr. Zuckerberg met with Senator Hawley to discuss the issue. 
        Apparently, Mr. Zuckerberg said there ``clearly was bias'' in 
        the decision to censor Live Action and told Senator Hawley that 
        bias is ``an issue we've struggled with for a long time.'' \76\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \76\ https://twitter.com/HawleyMO/status/1174778110262284288

  d)  Facebook removed the labels and restrictions after they had been 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        in place for a month.

29) Temporary Ban: Twitter, August 7, 2019--Twitter temporarily 
suspended Senator McConnell's ``Team Mitch'' campaign Twitter account 
for tweeting a video of protestors gathered outside of Senator 
McConnell's house shouting violent threats.

  a)  McConnell was resting at his home and recovering from a broken 
        shoulder. In the video, a protestor outside of the house shouts 
        McConnell ``should have broken his little raggedy, wrinkled-
        (expletive) neck.'' Another protestor in the video says ``Just 
        stab the m----f---- in the heart,'' in reference to a McConnell 
        voodoo doll. \77\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \77\ Gregg Re, Twitter Locks Out McConnell's Campaign for Posting 
Video of Calls for Violence at His Home, Fox News, August 7, 2019, 
available at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ twitter-locks-out-
mcconnell-campaign-for-posting-video-of-calls-for-violence-at-
mcconnells-home

  b)  Twitter stated that ``the users were temporarily locked out of 
        their accounts for a Tweet that violated our violent threats 
        policy, specifically threats involving physical safety.'' In a 
        statement to Fox News a Twitter representative said that no 
        account can post calls for violence, even accounts belonging to 
        the targets of those threats.\78\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \78\ Id.

  c)  McConnell's campaign manager Kevin Golden released this 
        statement: ``This morning, Twitter locked our account for 
        posting the video of real-world, violent threats made against 
        Mitch McConnell. This is the problem with the speech police in 
        America today. The Lexington-Herald can attack Mitch with 
        cartoon tombstones of his opponents. But we can't mock it. 
        Twitter will allow the words 'Massacre Mitch' to trend 
        nationally on their platform. But locks our account for posting 
        actual threats against us. We appealed and Twitter stood by 
        their decision, saying our account will remain locked until we 
        delete the video.'' \79\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \79\ Id.

30) Label, Restricted Reach: YouTube, August 6, 2019--Dennis Prager, 
founder of PragerU wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal describing 
how the reach of PragerU videos is limited on YouTube.\80\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \80\ Dennis Prager, Don't Let Google Get Away With Censorship, The 
Wall Street Journal, Aug. 6, 2019, available at https://www.wsj.com/
articles/dont-let-google-get-away-with-censorship-11565132175

  a)  At the time of publication, 56 of the 320 videos PragerU had 
        published on YouTube were age-restricted which limits their 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        reach.

  b)  Restricted video include: ``Israel's Legal Founding'' (by Harvard 
        Law professor Alan Dershowitz); ``Why America Invaded Iraq'' 
        (by Churchill biographer Andrew Roberts); ``Why Don't Feminists 
        Fight for Muslim Women?'' (by the Somali-American women's-
        rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali); ``Are the Police Racist?'' 
        (by the Manhattan Institute's Heather Mac Donald); and ``Why Is 
        Modern Art So Bad?'' (by artist Robert Florczak).

  c)  The op-ed also cites research by Richard Hanania, a research 
        fellow at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at 
        Columbia University which finds: ``My results make it difficult 
        to take claims of political neutrality seriously. Of 22 
        prominent, politically active individuals who are known to have 
        been suspended since 2005 and who expressed a preference in the 
        2016 U.S. presidential election, 21 supported Donald Trump.'' 
        \81\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \81\ Id.

31) Restricted Reach: Instagram, May 21, 2019--Instagram admitted that 
it inadvertently and incorrectly blocked Let Them Live, a pro-life 
account with more than 30,000 followers, from using features that let 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
posts go viral.

  a)  On April 18th, Let Them Live noticed that several of their posts 
        no longer appeared under hashtags which resulted in a large 
        drop in engagement. (If a post is blocked from hashtags then it 
        will not appear when a user clicks on a hashtag and scrolls 
        through all posts with that tag) On April 25th, Let Them Live 
        appealed to Instagram and some of the posts began appearing on 
        hashtags again. On May 11th, all of Let Them Live's posts were 
        blocked from hashtags and were removed from the Explore page. 
        (The Explore page is a page of viral posts from accounts a user 
        does not follow that is curated by algorithm).

  b)  Instagram told the Daily Caller that ``we investigated this issue 
        and found that this account was incorrectly filtered from 
        Explore and hashtags. We have removed this restriction and 
        taken steps to ensure this account is not impacted in the 
        future.'' \82\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \82\ Chris White, Instagram Explains Why It Effectively Shadow 
Banned A Pro-Life Group's Content, Daily Caller News Foundation, May 
21, 2019, available at https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/21/instagram-
prolife-shadow-ban/

32) Temporary Ban, Temporary Deleted Post: Instagram, February 6, 
2019--Instagram temporarily disabled Kayleigh McEnany's account and 
removed her post of Senator Elizabeth Warren's bar registration card 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
because it violated community guidelines on bullying and harassment.

  a)  At the time, McEnany was not the White House Press Secretary but 
        she was the Republican Party national spokeswoman.

  b)  Senator Warren said ``I never used my family tree to get a break 
        or get ahead'' and ``I never used it to advance my career.'' In 
        response, McEnany posted Senator Warren's State Bar of Texas 
        registration card, with Warren's 1986 home address blocked, 
        where Warren listed her race as ``American Indian.'' \83\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \83\ https://twitter.com/kayleighmcenany/status/
1093191708257538048?lang=en

  c)  Senator Warren's registration card was originally obtained and 
        released by the Washington Post and McEnany posted the image of 
        the registration card in the Washington Post article. Instagram 
        apologized and stated ``we incorrectly removed this image for 
        including personal information, in this case the home address 
        of someone else, which is not allowed on Instagram. On 
        secondary review, we confirmed that the image included an 
        office address and not a personal home address. The content has 
        now been restored and we apologize for the mistake.'' \84\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \84\ Amber Athey, Instagram Apologizes for Removing GOP 
Spokeswoman's Post About Sen. Warren, The Federalist, Feb. 6, 2020, 
available at https://dailycaller.com/2019/02/06/instagram-kayleigh-
mcenany-elizabeth-warren/

33) Deleted Post, Restricted Reach: Facebook, August 16, 2018--Facebook 
deleted two PragerU videos and severely limited the reach of seven 
other videos. Facebook deleted the videos titled ``Make Men Masculine 
Again'' and ``Where Are the Moderate Muslims?'' The seven other videos 
did not receive more than 10 views despite being shared on the PragerU 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
page that has over 3 million followers.

  a)  Facebook stated that is mistakenly removed the videos and 
        subsequently restored them which would reverse the reduction in 
        content distribution the PragerU page was experiencing. 
        Facebook also apologized and said it was investigating the 
        matter.\85\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \85\ https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2018/08/18/facebook-hey-
sorry-making-prageru-videos-disappear/

34) Shadow Ban: Twitter, July 26, 2018--Twitter corrected a ``glitch'' 
which prevented high-profile conservatives from appearing in the search 
menu. The phenomenon is referred to as a ``shadow ban.'' RNC Chair 
Ronna McDaniel, then Representative Mark Meadows, Representative Jim 
Jordan, Representative Matt Gaetz, and Andrew Surabian, Donald Trump 
Jr.'s spokesman and former Special Assistant to the President were all 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
affected.

  a)  Vice News reported on this reduced visibility on July 25, 2018. 
        In the report, Twitter says the reduced visibility is a result 
        of its policies that combat ``troll-like behaviors'' which is 
        designed such that ``people contributing to the healthy 
        conversation will be more visible in conversations and 
        search.'' The product lead at Twitter said this policy was a 
        result of the behavior of the account and not the content of 
        the account.\86\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \86\ Alex Thompson, Twitter Appears to Have Fixed `Shadow Ban' of 
Prominent Republicans like the RNC Chair and Trump Jr.'s Spokesman, 
Vice News, July 25, 2018, available at https://www.vice.com/en_us/
article/43paqq/twitter-is-shadow-banning-prominent-republicans-like-
the-rnc-chair-and-trump-jrs-spokesman

  b)  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey stated that Twitter does not shadow ban, 
        but that ``it suffices to say we have a lot more work to do to 
        earn people's trust on how we work.'' \87\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \87\ https://twitter.com/jack/status/1022196722905296896

35) Restricted Reach: Twitter, October 9, 2017--Twitter blocked Senator 
Marsha Blackburn from paying to promote a campaign ad titled ``Why I'm 
Running'' because it contained an ``inflammatory statement'' about 
abortion. In the ad, Senator Blackburn states that while she was in the 
House she ``fought Planned Parenthood, and we stopped the sale of baby 
body parts. Thank God.'' \88\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \88\ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxSPO4V7FYI

  a)  Senator Blackburn served as the Chair of the House Select 
        Investigative Panel on Infant Lives. In that position, Senator 
        Blackburn led the investigation into the illegal fetal-tissue-
        trafficking industry which was prompted by a series of 
        undercover videos that were released at the time concerning 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Planned Parenthood.

  b)  Twitter told the Associated Press that it restricted the paid 
        promotion of the ad because it contained ``an inflammatory 
        statement that is likely to evoke a strong negative reaction.'' 
        Twitter told two employees of Targeted Victory, the digital 
        consulting firm working for Senator Blackburn's campaign that 
        if the line ``stopped the sale of baby body parts'' was removed 
        then the ad would not be blocked.\89\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \89\ Kevin Robillard, Twitter Pulls Blackburn Senate Ad Deemed 
`Inflammatory,' Politico, Oct. 9, 2017, available at https://
www.politico.com/story/2017/10/09/marsha-blackburn-twitter-ad-243607

  c)  Twitter reversed the decision after a day and provided this 
        reasoning: ``After further review, we have made the decision to 
        allow the content in question from Rep. Blackburn's campaign ad 
        to be promoted on our ads platform. While we initially 
        determined that a small portion of the video used potentially 
        inflammatory language, after reconsidering the ad in the 
        context of the entire message, we believe that there is room to 
        refine our policies around these issues.'' \90\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \90\ Kurt Wagner, Twitter Changed its Mind and Will Let Marsha 
Blackburn Promote Her `Inflammatory'' Campaign Ad After All, Vox, Oct. 
10, 2017, available at https://www.vox.com/2017/10/10/16455902/twitter-
marsha-blackburn-video-ad-reversal-allowed

36) Deleted Post, Restricted Reach: Facebook, May 10, 2016--Facebook 
removes its ``Trending Topics'' after reports that the curators of the 
feature routinely excluded conservative stories and injected stories 
that were not actually trending but the curators believed deserved 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
attention.

  a)  ``Trending Topics'' was a feature that listed the most talked 
        about news stories of the day in the top right corner of a 
        user's Facebook interface. ``news curators'' hired by Facebook 
        helped determine which stories were listed. A former ``news 
        curator'' admitted in an interview with Gizmodo that the 
        workers would routinely remove or prevent stories about ``CPAC 
        gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and other conservative 
        topics'' from being included in the feature. Other suppressed 
        topics include ``former IRS official Lois Lerner, who was 
        accused by Republicans of inappropriately scrutinizing 
        conservative groups; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker; popular 
        conservative news aggregator the Drudge Report; Chris Kyle, the 
        former Navy SEAL who was murdered in 2013; and former Fox News 
        contributor Steven Crowder.'' \91\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \91\ Michael Nunez, Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely 
Suppressed Conservative News, Gizmodo, May 9, 2016, available at 
https://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-suppressed-
conser-1775461006

  b)  Senator Thune, then Chairman of the Commerce Committee, sent a 
        letter to Mark Zuckerberg asking for more information on the 
        Trending Topics feature.\92\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \92\ Letter to Mark Zuckerberg, from Senator John Thune, Chairman, 
Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, (May 10, 
2016) https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/fe5b7b75-8d53-
44c3-8a20-6b2c12b0970d

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
  c)  Facebook eventually discontinued the feature.

    The Chairman. And I believe we are now at the point of 
closing. 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 25, 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.
    [Whereupon, at 1:42 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

                            A P P E N D I X





    Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Roger Wicker to 
                              Jack Dorsey
    Question 1. What does ``good faith'' in Section 230 mean? Is there 
any action you could take that could not be justified as done in ``good 
faith''? Do you agree bad faith content moderation is not covered by 
Section 230? If content is removed pre-textually, or if terms and 
conditions are applied inconsistently depending on the viewpoint 
expressed in the content, is that removing content in good faith?
    Answer. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) affords 
two critical types of legal protection to ``interactive computer 
service'' providers like Twitter. Under subsection (c)(1), the 
Communications Decency Act provides that neither providers nor the 
people who use our service are to ``be treated as the publisher or 
speaker of any information provided by another information content 
provider.'' Subsection (c)(2) provides that neither interactive 
computer service providers nor the people who use our service are to be 
held liable for either ``action[s] voluntarily taken in good faith to 
restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or 
user considers to be obscene, . . . excessively violent, harassing, or 
otherwise objectionable'' or ``action[s] taken to enable or make 
available . . . the technical means to restrict access'' to any such 
objectionable material.\1\ Irrespective of Section 230s protections, 
companies have a First Amendment right to assert editorial control over 
content published on their platform.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The operation of one shield is not conditioned on the 
availability of the other, and one or both may apply depending on the 
circumstances. Subsection (c)(1) is broad and unconditional (other than 
several limited exceptions), and subsection (c)(2) ``provides an 
additional shield from liability.'' Barnes v. Yahoo!, Inc., 570 F.3d 
1096, 1105 (9th Cir. 2009), as amended (Sept. 28, 2009) see also Fyk v. 
Facebook, Inc., 808 F. App'x 597, 598 (9th Cir. 2020)
    \2\ See, e.g., La'Tiejira v. Facebook, Inc., 272 F. Supp. 3d 981, 
991 (S.D. Tex. 2017) (holding that ``Facebook [has a] First Amendment 
right to decide what to publish and what not to publish on its 
platform'' and collecting cases); Zhang v. Baidu.com, Inc., 10 F. Supp. 
3d 433 (S.D.N.Y. 2014) (rejecting claim seeking to hold a website 
``liable for . . . a conscious decision to design its search-engine 
algorithms to favor a certain expression on core political subjects . . 
. [because] to proceed would plainly `violate the fundamental rule of 
protection under the First Amendment, that a speaker has the autonomy 
to choose the content of his own message.' '')
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    We believe it is critical that individuals have trust in the 
platforms they use and transparency into how content moderation 
decisions are made. Thus, we support efforts to ensure transparency of 
content moderation policies and processes. In addition, we support 
efforts to expand procedural fairness, so customers can feel confident 
that decisions are being made fairly and equitably.

    Question 2. Why wouldn't a platform be able to rely on terms of 
service to address categories of potentially harmful content outside of 
the explicit categories in Section 230(c)(2)? Why should platforms get 
the additional protections of Section 230 for removal of yet undefined 
categories of speech? Does Section 230s ``otherwise objectionable'' 
catchall offer immunity for content moderation decisions motivated by 
political bias? If the ``otherwise objectionable'' catchall does not 
offer such immunity, what limiting principle supports the conclusion 
that the catchall does not cover politically-biased moderation? If the 
``otherwise objectionable'' catchall does offer such immunity now, how 
would you rewrite Section 230 to deny immunity for politically-biased 
content moderation while retaining it for moderation of content that is 
harmful to children?
    Answer. Section 230(c)(2)(A) shields an interactive computer 
service provider like Twitter from liability for good faith attempts to 
restrict access to ``material that the provider or user considers to be 
obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or 
otherwise objectionable.'' The purpose of subsection (c)(2) is to 
encourage Twitter and our industry peers to moderate content without 
fear of being sued for their moderation decisions. It has been 
instrumental in providing platforms the flexibility to make content 
moderation decisions that safeguard the safety of the public 
conversation.
    As explained in more detail in our written testimony, we do not 
believe that the solution to concerns raised about content moderation 
is to eliminate Section 230 liability protections. Instead, we believe 
the solution should be focused on enhancing transparency, procedural 
fairness, privacy, and algorithmic choice.

    Question 3. Are your terms of service easy to understand and 
transparent about what is and is not permitted on your platform? What 
notice and appeals process do you provide users when removing or 
labeling third-party speech? What redress might a user have for 
improper content moderation beyond your internal appeals process? In 
what way do your terms of service ensure against politically-biased 
content moderation and in what way do your terms of service limit your 
ability to moderate content on your platform? How would you rewrite 
your terms of service to protect against politically-biased content 
moderation? Do you think that removing content inconsistent with your 
terms of service and public representations is removal of content ``in 
good faith''?
    Answer. The Twitter Rules and all incorporated policies, Privacy 
Policy, and Terms of Service collectively make up the ``Twitter User 
Agreement'' that governs an individual's access to and use of Twitter's 
services. We have the Twitter Rules in place to help ensure everyone 
feels safe expressing their beliefs and we strive to enforce them with 
uniform consistency. We are continually working to update, refine, and 
improve both our enforcement and our policies, informed by in-depth 
research around trends in online behavior both on and off Twitter and 
feedback from the people who use Twitter. We believe we have to rely on 
a straight-forward, principled approach and focus on the long term goal 
of understanding--not just in terms of the service itself--but in terms 
of the role we play in society and our wider responsibility to foster 
and better serve a healthy public conversation.
    We have worked to make the Twitter Rules, Terms of Service, and 
appeals process accessible and transparent. For example, we recently 
rewrote the Twitter Rules so each Rule can be contained in the length 
of a Tweet (280 characters) and is straightforward for the people who 
use our service. In addition, we offer the ability for people who use 
Twitter to file an appeal if they believe a decision has been made in 
error. We have also expanded efforts to more clearly communicate 
additional information about our actions with affected account holders 
and individuals who reported a Tweet for a potential violation, so they 
have the information to determine whether they want to take follow-up 
action like an appeal.

    Question 4. Please provide a list of all instances in which a 
prominent individual promoting liberal or left-wing views has been 
censored, demonetized, or flagged with extra context by your company. 
Please provide a list of all instances in which a prominent individual 
promoting conservative or right-wing views has been censored, 
demonetized, or flagged with extra context by your company. How many 
posts by government officials from Iran or China have been censored or 
flagged by your company? How many posts critical of the Iranian or 
Communist Chinese government have been flagged or taken down?
    Answer. Twitter does not use political viewpoints, perspectives, or 
party affiliation to make any decisions. In regard to the removal of 
accounts, our biannual Twitter Transparency Center highlights trends in 
enforcement of our Rules, legal requests, intellectual property-related 
requests, and e-mail privacy best practices. We provide aggregate 
numbers of accounts we have actioned across twelve categories of Terms 
of Service violations in this report, which can be found at 
transparency.twitter.com. Due to security and privacy concerns, we 
cannot discuss individual incidents, but we take action on accounts 
across the world and across the political spectrum.

    Question 5. Should algorithms that promote or demote particular 
viewpoints be protected by Section 230? Why or why not? Do you think 
the use of an individual company's algorithms to amplify the spread of 
illicit or harmful materials like online child sexual exploitation 
should be protected by Section 230?
    Answer. We believe that people should have choices about the key 
algorithms that affect their experience online. We recognize that we 
can do even more to provide greater algorithmic transparency and fair 
machine learning. The machine learning teams at Twitter are studying 
these techniques and developing a roadmap to ensure our present and 
future algorithmic models uphold a high standard when it comes to 
transparency and fairness. We believe this is an important step in 
ensuring fairness in how we operate and we also know that it is 
critical that we be more transparent about our efforts in this space. 
Regarding your question on the amplification of harmful materials, 
Twitter has zero tolerance for any material that features or promotes 
child sexual exploitation. We strive to proactively detect and remove 
this abhorrent content and it is not amplified through our algorithms.

    Question 6. Should platforms that knowingly facilitate or 
distribute Federal criminal activity or content be immune from civil 
liability? Why?/Why not? If your company has actual knowledge of 
content on your platform that incites violence, and your company fails 
to remove that content, should Federal law immunize your company from 
any claims that might otherwise be asserted against your company by 
victims of such violence? Are there limitations or exceptions to such 
immunity that you could propose for consideration by the Committee? 
Should platforms that are willfully blind to Federal criminal activity 
or content on their platforms be immune from civil liability? Why? Why 
not?
    Answer. The Communications Decency Act currently exempts Federal 
criminal activity from liability protections. Section 230(e)(1) 
(``Nothing in this section shall be construed to impair the enforcement 
of section 223 or 231 of this title, chapter 71 (relating to obscenity) 
or 110 (relating to sexual exploitation of children) of title 18 or any 
other Federal criminal statute.'').
    An individual who uses Twitter may not use our service for any 
unlawful purposes or in furtherance of illegal activities. By using 
Twitter, an individual agrees to comply with all applicable laws 
governing his or her online conduct and content. Additionally, we have 
Twitter Rules in place that prohibit violence, terrorism/violent 
extremism, child sexual exploitation, abuse/harassment, hateful 
conduct, promoting suicide or self-harm, sensitive media (including 
graphic violence and adult content), and illegal or certain regulated 
goods or services. More information about each policy can be found in 
the Twitter Rules.

    Question 7. Mr. Dorsey, you informed both Senator Cruz and Senator 
Johnson that you believe Twitter has no ability to influence the 
election. Do you still stand by this claim? If Twitter has no ability 
to influence the election, why does it label or remove content on the 
grounds of election interference? Do voter suppression and 
misinformation affect elections? Have voter suppression attempts and 
misinformation appeared on Twitter? How can it then be true that 
Twitter cannot influence elections?
    Answer. We believe that we have a responsibility to protect the 
integrity of conversations related to elections and other civic events 
from interference and manipulation. Therefore, we prohibit attempts to 
use our services to manipulate or disrupt civic processes, including 
through the distribution of false or misleading information about the 
procedures or circumstances around participation in a civic process. 
Combatting attempts to interfere in conversations on Twitter remains a 
top priority for the company, and we continue to invest heavily in our 
detection, disruption, and transparency efforts related to state-backed 
information operations. Twitter defines state-backed information 
operations as coordinated platform manipulation efforts that can be 
attributed with a high degree of confidence to state-affiliated actors. 
Our goal is to remove bad faith actors and to advance public 
understanding of these critical topics.

    Question 8. As you know, many politicians in Washington have 
expressed concerns around how political speech has been monitored by 
online platforms like Twitter leading up to the 2020 election. You 
likely are also aware that the current COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in 
an unthinkable amount of fraudulent and unsafe activities related to 
coronavirus ``cures'' and ``treatments'' through social media. In your 
opinion, should Twitter and other online platforms be held responsible 
for the promulgation of unsafe and fraudulent claims like those related 
to the COVID-19 pandemic? What specific action(s) has Twitter taken to 
block, suspend, or report COVID-related fraudulent activity since the 
pandemic began in March? Has Twitter proactively reported suspected 
illegal or fraudulent users to the proper authorities upon discovering 
the sharing of or attempted sale of illegal products like COVID-19 
``cures'' or other illegal drugs?
    Answer. The public conversation occurring on Twitter is critically 
important during this unprecedented public health emergency. With a 
critical mass of expert organizations, official government accounts, 
health professionals, and epidemiologists on our service, our goal is 
to elevate and amplify authoritative health information as far as 
possible. To address this global pandemic, on March 16, 2020, we 
announced new enforcement guidance, broadening our definition of harm 
to address, specifically, content related to COVID-19 that goes 
directly against guidance from authoritative sources of global and 
local public health information. We require individuals to remove 
violative Tweets in a variety of contexts with the goal of preventing 
offline harm. Additionally, we are currently engaged in an effort 
launched by the Office of the U.S. Chief Technology Officer under 
President Trump in which we are coordinating with our industry peers to 
provide timely, credible information about COVID-19 via our respective 
platforms. This working group also seeks to address misinformation by 
sharing emerging trends and best practices.
                                 ______
                                 
     Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. John Thune to 
                              Jack Dorsey
    Question 1. We have a public policy challenge to connect millions 
of Americans in rural America to broadband. I know you share in our 
commitment to connect every American household with broadband not only 
because it's the right thing to do but because it will add millions of 
new users to your platforms, which of course, means increase profits. 
What role should Congress and your companies play in ensuring that we 
meet all the broadband demands in rural America?
    Answer. Bridging the digital divide is of the utmost importance. 
Twitter is supportive of efforts, including bipartisan proposals to 
expand funding for broadband in response to the pandemic, to ensure 
that all individuals in America can access the Internet. Additionally, 
on May 15, 2020, Mr. Dorsey Tweeted he would personally donate $10 
million dollars to #OaklandUndivided to ensure every child in Oakland, 
CA has access to a laptop and Internet in their homes.

    Question 2. The PACT Act would require your platforms to take down 
content that a court has ruled to be illegal. Do you support a court 
order-based takedown rule?
    Answer. Any court-order takedown rule must be crafted in a way that 
safeguards free expression and due process. For example, we strongly 
encourage any court determinations relied upon to be clear in their 
finality. We do not believe that temporary restraining orders 
constitute a final legal determination; it would be inappropriate to 
require permanent removal of content at a preliminary stage of 
litigation before full consideration of the merits of the case. 
Additionally, temporary restraining orders raise due process concerns 
as the proceeding may be ex parte, particularly where the speaker is 
anonymous. In such cases, the speaker may be unable to participate in 
the proceeding to advance their interests. We believe strongly that any 
court order-based takedown rule must protect individuals' due process, 
speech, and other constitutional rights.
    Moreover, any proposed court-order takedown rule should take into 
account the risk that bad-faith actors submit counterfeit takedown 
notices to platforms, a phenomenon that has been well-documented, 
including in this article regarding falsified court orders.

    Question 3. Section 230 was initially adopted to provide a 
``shield'' for young tech start-ups against the risk of overwhelming 
legal liability. Since then, however, some tech platforms like yours 
have grown larger than anyone could have imagined. Often a defense we 
hear from Section 230 proponents is that reform would hurt current and 
future start-ups. The PACT Act requires greater reporting from tech 
platforms on moderation decisions, largely exempts small business. 
However, your companies are no longer start-ups, but rather some of the 
most powerful and profitable companies in the world. Do tech giants 
need ``shields'' codified by the U.S. government? Have you outgrown 
your need for Section 230 protections?
    Answer. Section 230 is the Internet's most important law for free 
speech and safety. Weakening Section 230 protections will remove 
critical speech from the Internet. We must ensure that all voices can 
be heard, and we continue to make improvements to our service so that 
everyone feels safe participating in the public conversation--whether 
they are speaking or simply listening. Eroding the foundation of 
Section 230 could collapse how we communicate on the Internet, leaving 
only a small number of giant and well-funded technology companies. We 
should also be mindful that undermining Section 230 could result in far 
more removal of online speech and impose severe limitations on our 
collective ability to address harmful content and protect people 
online.

    Question 4. As discussed during the hearing, please provide for the 
record a complete list of U.S. newspaper articles that Facebook 
suppressed or limited the distribution of over the past five years, as 
Facebook did with the October 14, 2020 New York Post article entitled 
``Smoking-Gun E-mail Reveals How Hunter Biden Introduced Ukrainian 
Businessman to VP Dad.'' For each article listed, please also provide 
an explanation why the article was suppressed or the distribution was 
limited.
    Answer. We believe that Facebook is in the best position to respond 
to the question posed.

    Question 5. What does ``good faith'' in Section 230 mean? Is there 
any action you could take that could not be justified as done in ``good 
faith''? Do you agree bad faith content moderation is not covered by 
Section 230? If content is removed pre-textually, or if terms and 
conditions are applied inconsistently depending on the viewpoint 
expressed in the content, is that removing content in good faith?
    Answer. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) affords 
two critical types of legal protection to ``interactive computer 
service'' providers like Twitter. Under subsection (c)(1), the 
Communications Decency Act provides that neither providers nor the 
people who use our service are to ``be treated as the publisher or 
speaker of any information provided by another information content 
provider.'' Subsection (c)(2) provides that neither interactive 
computer service providers nor the people who use our service are to be 
held liable for either ``action[s] voluntarily taken in good faith to 
restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or 
user considers to be obscene, . . . excessively violent, harassing, or 
otherwise objectionable'' or ``action[s] taken to enable or make 
available . . . the technical means to restrict access'' to any such 
objectionable material.\3\ Irrespective of Section 230s protections, 
companies have a First Amendment right to assert editorial control over 
content published on their platform.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\ The operation of one shield is not conditioned on the 
availability of the other, and one or both may apply depending on the 
circumstances. Subsection (c)(1) is broad and unconditional (other than 
several limited exceptions), and subsection (c)(2) ``provides an 
additional shield from liability.'' Barnes v. Yahoo!, Inc., 570 F.3d 
1096, 1105 (9th Cir. 2009), as amended (Sept. 28, 2009) see also Fyk v. 
Facebook, Inc., 808 F. App'x 597, 598 (9th Cir. 2020)
    \4\ See, e.g., La'Tiejira v. Facebook, Inc., 272 F. Supp. 3d 981, 
991 (S.D. Tex. 2017) (holding that ``Facebook [has a] First Amendment 
right to decide what to publish and what not to publish on its 
platform'' and collecting cases); Zhang v. Baidu.com, Inc., 10 F. Supp. 
3d 433 (S.D.N.Y. 2014) (rejecting claim seeking to hold a website 
``liable for . . . a conscious decision to design its search-engine 
algorithms to favor a certain expression on core political subjects . . 
. [because] to proceed would plainly `violate the fundamental rule of 
protection under the First Amendment, that a speaker has the autonomy 
to choose the content of his own message.' '')
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    We believe it is critical that individuals have trust in the 
platforms they use and transparency into how content moderation 
decisions are made. Thus, we support efforts to ensure transparency of 
content moderation policies and processes. In addition, we support 
efforts to expand procedural fairness, so customers can feel confident 
that decisions are being made fairly and equitably.

    Question 6. Mr. Pichai noted in the hearing that without the 
``otherwise objectionable'' language of Section 230, the suppression of 
teenagers eating tide pods, cyber-bullying, and other dangerous trends 
would have been impossible. Could the language of Section 230 be 
amended to specifically address these concerns, by including the 
language of ``promoting selfharm'' or ``unlawful'' without needing the 
``otherwise objectionable'' language that provides online platforms a 
blank check to take down any third-party speech with which they 
disagree?
    Answer. Section 230(c)(2)(A) shields an interactive computer 
service provider like Twitter from liability for good faith attempts to 
restrict access to ``material that the provider or user considers to be 
obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or 
otherwise objectionable.'' The purpose of subsection (c)(2) is to 
encourage Twitter and our industry peers to moderate content without 
fear of being sued for their moderation decisions. The providers who 
undertake the moderating must be empowered to exercise the flexibility 
to determine what content is ``objectionable.'' See, e.g., Domen v. 
Vimeo, Inc., 433 F.Supp.3d 592, 604 (S.D.N.Y. 2020) that held 
subsection (c)(2) immunity applied, and refused to question the 
interactive computer service provider's view regarding objectionable 
material.

    Question 7. What other language would be necessary to address truly 
harmful material online without needing to rely on the vague term 
``otherwise objectionable?''
    Answer. As outlined in our testimony, we believe that future 
solutions should be focused on enhancing transparency, procedural 
fairness, privacy, and algorithmic choice. We caution against changes 
to existing liability protections that could encourage companies to 
over-moderate or under-moderate, out of fear of legal liability. 
Specifically, limiting liability protections for content moderation 
could counterproductively make it more difficult for companies to take 
steps to protect safety and combat malicious actors.

    Question 8. Why wouldn't a platform be able to rely on terms of 
service to address categories of potentially harmful content outside of 
the explicit categories in Section 230(c)(2)? Why should platforms get 
the additional protections of Section 230 for removal of yet undefined 
categories of speech?
    Answer. The Twitter Rules and all incorporated policies, Privacy 
Policy, and Terms of Service collectively make up the ``Twitter User 
Agreement'' that governs an individual's access to and use of Twitter's 
services. We are continually working to update, refine, and improve our 
enforcement and our policies, informed by in-depth research around 
trends in online behavior and feedback from the people who use Twitter. 
However, given the evolving nature of online speech, there is no way 
that any platform can know in advance all of the future speech that 
will be potentially harmful and include it in their terms of service. A 
core purpose of Section 230 is to encourage Twitter and our industry 
peers to moderate content with flexibility to address evolving content 
issues without fear of being sued for their moderation decisions.

    Question 9. Does Section 230s ``otherwise objectionable'' catchall 
offer immunity for content moderation decisions motivated by political 
bias? If the ``otherwise objectionable'' catchall does not offer such 
immunity, what limiting principle supports the conclusion that the 
catchall does not cover politically-biased moderation? If the 
``otherwise objectionable'' catchall does offer such immunity now, how 
would you rewrite Section 230 to deny immunity for politically-biased 
content moderation while retaining it for moderation of content that is 
harmful to children?
    Answer. Twitter does not use political viewpoints, perspectives, or 
party affiliation to make any decisions. In regard to the removal of 
accounts, our biannual Twitter Transparency Report highlights trends in 
enforcement of our Rules, legal requests, intellectual property-related 
requests, and e-mail privacy best practices. We provide aggregate 
numbers of accounts we have actioned across twelve categories of terms 
of service violations in this report, which can be found at 
transparency.twitter.com.

    Question 10. Are your terms of service easy to understand and 
transparent about what is and is not permitted on your platform?
    Answer. The Twitter Rules and all incorporated policies, Privacy 
Policy, and Terms of Service collectively make up the ``Twitter User 
Agreement'' that governs an individual's access to and use of Twitter's 
services. These are easy to understand and are transparent for the 
individuals who use Twitter.

    Question 11. What notice and appeals process do you provide users 
when removing or labeling third-party speech?
    Answer. We may suspend an account if it has been reported to us as 
violating our Rules. We may suspend it temporarily or, in some cases, 
permanently. Individuals may be able to unsuspend their own accounts by 
providing a phone number or confirming an e-mail address. An account 
may also be temporarily disabled in response to reports of automated or 
abusive behavior. For example, an individual may be prevented from 
Tweeting from his or her account for a specific period of time or may 
be asked to verify certain information before proceeding. If an account 
was suspended or locked in error, an individual can appeal. First, the 
individual must log in to the account that is suspended and file an 
appeal. The individual must describe the nature of the appeal and 
provide an explanation of why the account is not in violation of the 
Twitter Rules. Twitter employees will typically engage with the account 
holder via e-mail to resolve the appeal.

    Question 12. What redress might a user have for improper content 
moderation beyond your internal appeals process?
    Answer. We strive to give people an easy, clear way to appeal 
decisions we make that they think are not right. Mistakes in 
enforcement--made either by a human or algorithm--are inevitable, and 
why we strive to make appeals easier. We believe that all companies 
should provide a straightforward process to appeal decisions. This 
makes certain people can let us know when we do not get it right, so 
that we can fix any mistakes and make our processes better in the 
future.

    Question 13. In what way do your terms of service ensure against 
politically-biased content moderation and in what way do your terms of 
service limit your ability to moderate content on your platform?
    Answer. We ensure that all decisions are made at Twitter without 
using political viewpoints, party affiliation, or political ideology, 
whether related to automatically ranking content on our service or how 
we develop or enforce the Twitter Rules. Our Twitter Rules are not 
based on ideology or a particular set of beliefs. We believe strongly 
in being impartial, and we strive to enforce our Twitter Rules fairly.

    Question 14. How would you rewrite your terms of service to protect 
against politically-biased content moderation?
    Answer. Twitter does not use political viewpoints, perspectives, or 
party affiliation to make any decisions, whether related to 
automatically ranking content on our service or how we develop or 
enforce our rules. Our rules are not based on ideology or a particular 
set of beliefs. Instead, the Twitter Rules are based on behavior.

    Question 15. Do you think that removing content inconsistent with 
your terms of service and public representations is removal of content 
``in good faith''?
    Answer. We do not remove content inconsistent with our terms of 
service and public representations, however, mistakes in enforcement 
are inevitable and we strive to make appeals easier.

    Question 16. As it stands, Section 230 has been interpreted not to 
grant immunity if a publishing platform ``ratifies'' illicit activity. 
Do you agree? How do you think ``ratification'' should be defined?
    Answer. Under our policies, an individual who uses Twitter may not 
use our service for any unlawful purposes or in furtherance of illegal 
activities. By using Twitter, an individual agrees to comply with all 
applicable laws governing his or her online conduct and content. 
Twitter does not ``ratify'' illicit activity and this activity is 
expressly prohibited.

    Question 17. Do you agree that a platform should not be covered by 
Section 230 if it adds its own speech to third-party content?
    Answer. Section 230 defines ``information content provider'' as 
``any person or entity that is responsible, in whole or in part, for 
the creation or development of information provided through the 
Internet or any other interactive computer service.'' 47 U.S.C. 
Sec. 230(f)(3). A court would be required to make a legal judgment 
based on specific facts to determine whether a platform had a role in 
``creat[ing] or develop[ing]'' the particular content at issue in a 
specific case.

    Question 18. When a platform adds its own speech, does it become an 
information content provider under Section 230(f)(3)?
    Answer. Section 230 defines ``information content provider'' as 
``any person or entity that is responsible, in whole or in part, for 
the creation or development of information provided through the 
Internet or any other interactive computer service.'' 47 U.S.C. 
Sec. 230(f)(3). A court would be required to make a legal judgment 
based on specific facts to determine whether a platform had a role in 
``creat[ing] or develop[ing]'' the particular content at issue in a 
specific case.

    Question 19. Should algorithms that promote or demote particular 
viewpoints be protected by Section 230? Why or why not?
    Answer. We believe that people should have choices about the key 
algorithms that affect their experience online. We recognize that we 
can do even more to provide greater algorithmic transparency and fair 
machine learning. The machine learning teams at Twitter are studying 
these techniques and developing a roadmap to ensure our present and 
future algorithmic models uphold a high standard when it comes to 
transparency and fairness. We believe this is an important step in 
ensuring fairness in how we operate and we also know that it is 
critical that we be more transparent about our efforts in this space.

    Question 20. Do you think the use of an individual company's 
algorithms to amplify the spread of illicit or harmful materials like 
online child sexual exploitation should be protected by Section 230?
    Answer. Twitter has zero tolerance for any material that features 
or promotes child sexual exploitation. We strive to proactively detect 
and remove this abhorrent content and it is not amplified through our 
algorithms. When we detect childhood sexual exploitation material, we 
report it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children 
(NCMEC) or International Center for Missing and Exploited Children 
(ICMEC). We also are an active member of the Technology Coalition and 
Thorn Technical Task Force, which are collaborative efforts to tackle 
this challenge.

    Question 21. Should platforms that knowingly facilitate or 
distribute Federal criminal activity or content be immune from civil 
liability? Why or why not?
    Answer. The Communications Decency Act does not provide liability 
protections for individuals or platforms that engage in Federal 
criminal activity. Additionally, an individual who uses Twitter may not 
use our service for any unlawful purposes or in furtherance of illegal 
activities. By using Twitter, an individual agrees to comply with all 
applicable laws governing his or her online conduct and content. 
Additionally, we have Twitter Rules in place that prohibit violence, 
terrorism/violent extremism, child sexual exploitation, abuse/
harassment, hateful conduct, promoting suicide or self-harm, sensitive 
media (including graphic violence and adult content), and illegal or 
certain regulated goods or services. More information about each policy 
can be found in the Twitter Rules.

    Question 22. If your company has actual knowledge of content on 
your platform that incites violence, and your company fails to remove 
that content, should Federal law immunize your company from any claims 
that might otherwise be asserted against your company by victims of 
such violence? Are there limitations or exceptions to such immunity 
that you could propose for consideration by the Committee?
    Answer. Twitter does not permit people on Twitter to promote 
violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the 
basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, 
gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or 
serious disease. We also do not allow accounts whose primary purpose is 
inciting harm towards others on the basis of these categories.

    Question 23. Should platforms that are willfully blind to Federal 
criminal activity or content on their platforms be immune from civil 
liability? Why or why not?
    Answer. The Communications Decency Act currently exempts Federal 
criminal activity from liability protections. Section 230(e)(1) 
(``Nothing in this section shall be construed to impair the enforcement 
of section 223 or 231 of this title, chapter 71 (relating to obscenity) 
or 110 (relating to sexual exploitation of children) of title 18 or any 
other Federal criminal statute.'') We do not permit people on Twitter 
to use our service for any unlawful purposes or in furtherance of 
illegal activities. By using Twitter, an individual agrees to comply 
with all applicable laws governing his or her online conduct and 
content.

    Question 24. You informed both Senator Cruz and Senator Johnson 
that you believe Twitter has no ability to influence the election. Do 
you still stand by this claim?
    Answer. We believe that we have a responsibility to protect the 
integrity of conversations related to elections and other civic events 
from interference and manipulation. Therefore, we prohibit attempts to 
use our services to manipulate or disrupt civic processes, including 
through the distribution of false or misleading information about the 
procedures or circumstances around participation in a civic process. 
Combatting attempts to interfere in conversations on Twitter remains a 
top priority for the company, and we continue to invest heavily in our 
detection, disruption, and transparency efforts related to state-backed 
information operations. Twitter defines state-backed information 
operations as coordinated platform manipulation efforts that can be 
attributed with a high degree of confidence to state-affiliated actors. 
Our goal is to remove bad faith actors and to advance public 
understanding of these critical topics.

    Question 25. If Twitter has no ability to influence the election, 
why does it label or remove content on the grounds of election 
interference?
    Answer. We believe we have a responsibility to protect the 
integrity of conversations related to elections and other civic events 
from interference and manipulation. Twitter's civic integrity policy 
addresses four categories of misleading behavior and content. First, we 
label or remove false or misleading information about how to 
participate in an election or other civic process. Second, we take 
action on false or misleading information intended to intimidate or 
dissuade people from participating in an election or other civic 
process. Third, we do not allow individuals to create fake accounts 
which misrepresent their affiliation to a candidate, election, 
official, political party, electoral authority, or government entity. 
Fourth, we label or remove false or misleading information intended to 
undermine public confidence in an election or other civic process.

    Question 26. Do voter suppression and misinformation affect 
elections? Have voter suppression attempts and misinformation appeared 
on Twitter? How can it then be true that Twitter cannot influence 
elections?
    Answer. We have heard from the people who use Twitter that we 
should not determine the truthfulness of Tweets and we should provide 
context to help people make up their own minds in cases where the 
substance of a Tweet is disputed. When we label Tweets, we link to 
Twitter conversation that shows three things for context: (1) factual 
statements; (2) counterpoint opinions and perspectives; and (3) ongoing 
public conversation around the issue. We will only add descriptive text 
that is reflective of the existing public conversation to let people 
determine their own viewpoints. Reducing the visibility of Tweets means 
that we will not amplify the Tweets on a number of surfaces across 
Twitter.
                                 ______
                                 
     Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Roy Blunt to 
                              Jack Dorsey
    Question 1. Twitter is used for a variety of purposes, and this 
hearing has been called to examine whether it is appropriate for 
Twitter to censor some speech or speakers, while it enjoys freedom from 
liability for that speech though Section 230. Music is an essential 
driver of user engagement on Twitter. According to the Recording 
Industry Association of America, seven of the top ten most followed 
accounts are those of recording artists, who have tens of millions of 
followers. These artists' accounts generate millions of views and 
subsequently result in new Twitter accounts that are created by fans. 
Your company greatly benefits from the personal data that is collected 
from this user base to drive advertising revenue. Despite this, I have 
heard that Twitter has been slow to respond to copyright infringement 
on its platform and also refused to negotiate licenses or business 
agreements with music publishers or record labels to compensate music 
creators. How many copyright-related takedown notices has Twitter 
received so far this year? Of those, how many of those have resulted in 
takedowns, or removal of copyright protected content? What do you 
believe constitutes a reasonable attempt to remove copyrighted material 
from your site?
    Answer. Twitter responds to copyright complaints submitted under 
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, also known as the DMCA. We are 
required to respond to reports of alleged copyright infringement, 
including allegations concerning the unauthorized use of a copyrighted 
video or music. We review takedown notices and respond expeditiously as 
the law requires. We are as transparent as possible regarding the 
removal or restriction of access to user-posted content. We report this 
information to Lumen, and we clearly mark withheld Tweets and media to 
indicate to viewers when content has been withheld. We provide detailed 
metrics regarding enforcement of the DMCA in our bi-annual Twitter 
Transparency Report.

    Question 2. Twitter has taken steps to identify and remove both 
illegal and illicit content across its platform, however, content 
creators remain outwardly concerned that reasonable steps aren't being 
taken to protect their work. How can Twitter build on its existing work 
to better identify copyrighted content, and ensure that crimes like 
digital piracy are not permitted to occur on your platform?
    Answer. If the owner of the copyright has considered fair use, and 
the owner still wishes to continue with a copyright complaint, the 
individual may want to first reach out to the user in question to see 
if the owner can resolve the matter directly with the user. The owner 
of the copyright can reply to the user's Tweet or send the user a 
Direct Message and ask for them to remove the copyrighted content 
without having to contact Twitter. An individual can report alleged 
copyright infringement by visiting Twitter's Help Center and filing a 
copyright complaint. An individual logged in to twitter.com can visit 
the Twitter Help Center directly from a Twitter account by clicking the 
`Help' link located in the sidebar.
                                 ______
                                 
    Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Jerry Moran to 
                              Jack Dorsey
    Question 1. How much money does your company spend annually on 
content moderation in general?
    Answer. Putting a dollar amount on our broader efforts on content 
moderation is a complex request. We have made acquisitions of 
companies, our staff work on a series of overlapping issues, and we 
have invested in technology and tools to support our teams reviewing 
content.

    Question 2. How many employees does your company have that are 
involved with content moderation in general? In addition, how many 
outside contractors does your company employ for these purposes?
    Answer. We have a global workforce of over 5,000 employees, a 
substantial portion of whom are directly involved in reviewing and 
moderating content on Twitter.

    Question 3. How much money does your company currently spend on 
defending lawsuits stemming from users' content on your platform?
    Answer. Twitter is currently involved in, and may in the future be 
involved in, legal proceedings, claims, investigations, and government 
inquiries and investigations arising in the ordinary course of 
business. These proceedings, which include both individual and class 
action litigation and administrative proceedings, have included, but 
are not limited to matters involving content on the platform, 
intellectual property, privacy, data protection, consumer protection, 
securities, employment, and contractual rights. Legal fees and other 
costs associated with such actions are expensed as incurred.

    Question 4. Without Section 230s liability shield, would your legal 
and content moderation costs be higher or lower?
    Answer. There are various Executive and Congressional efforts to 
restrict the scope of the protections from legal liability for content 
moderation decisions and third-party content posted on online platforms 
that are currently available to online platforms under Section 230 of 
the Communications Decency Act, and our current protections from 
liability for content moderation decisions and third-party content 
posted on our platform in the United States could decrease or change, 
potentially resulting in increased liability for content moderation 
decisions and third-party content posted on our platform and higher 
litigation costs.

    Question 5. Twitter entered a settlement with the FTC in 2011 to 
resolve charges that the company deceived consumers by putting their 
privacy at risk for failing to safeguard their personal information. 
This settlement was to remain in effect for twenty years. Understanding 
that an investigation is ongoing, are you able to indicate if Twitter's 
recent security incident from July 15, 2020, that involved high profile 
accounts to facilitate a cryptocurrency scam violated that 2011 
settlement?
    Answer. We would respectfully refer you to the U.S. Federal Trade 
Commission for additional information on this matter.

    Question 6. How many liability lawsuits have been filed against 
your company based on user content over the past year?
    Answer. We are currently involved in, and may in the future be 
involved in, legal proceedings, claims, investigations, and government 
inquiries and investigations arising in the ordinary course of 
business.

    Question 7. Please describe the general breakdown of categories of 
liability, such as defamation, involved in the total number of lawsuits 
over the past year.
    Answer. These proceedings, which include both individual and class 
action litigation and administrative proceedings, have included, but 
are not limited to matters involving content on the platform, 
intellectual property, privacy, data protection, consumer protection, 
securities, employment, and contractual rights.

    Question 8. Of the total number of liability lawsuits based on user 
content, how many of them did your company rely on Section 230 in its 
defense?
    Answer. Twitter is currently involved in, and may in the future be 
involved in, legal proceedings, claims, investigations, and government 
inquiries and investigations arising in the ordinary course of 
business. Any filings we have made in response to specific lawsuits in 
the United States are publicly available. While we do not have a 
comprehensive analysis to share at this time, please refer to the 
Internet Association's recent study on Section 230 cases.

    Question 9. Of the liability lawsuits based on user content in 
which your company relies on Section 230 in its defense, what 
categories of liability in each of these lawsuits is your company 
subject to?
    Answer. These proceedings, which include both individual and class 
action litigation and administrative proceedings, have included, but 
are not limited to matters involving content on the platform, 
intellectual property, privacy, data protection, consumer protection, 
securities, employment, and contractual rights.

    Question 10. In a defamation case based on a user content, please 
describe the typical procedural steps your company takes to litigate 
these claims.
    Answer. We engage in standard litigation practices in response to 
legal claims.

    Question 11. Of the claims that have been dismissed on Section 230 
grounds, what is the average cost of litigation?
    Answer. Litigation can involve defense and settlement costs, 
diversion of management resources, and other costs.

    Question 12. I understand the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) 
contains similar intermediary liability protections that Section 230 
established domestically. The recent trade deal with Japan also 
included similar provisions. If Congress were to alter Section 230, do 
you expect litigation or free trade agreement compliance issues related 
to the United States upholding trade agreements that contain those 
provisions?
    Answer. While we cannot speak for the outcome of any actions 
Congress may wish to take in the future, Twitter advocates for regional 
and global regulatory alignment on principle. As a platform for the 
global public conversation, Twitter will support regulations that 
benefit free expression globally.

    Question 13. How does the inclusion of Section 230-like protections 
in the aforementioned trade deals affect your business operations in 
the countries party to said trade deals? Do you expect fewer defamation 
lawsuits and lower legal costs associated with intermediary liability 
in those countries due to these trade deals?
    Answer. As mentioned above, Twitter advocates for regional and 
global regulatory alignment on principle. Countries and companies that 
do not share this core value do so at the expense of global free 
expression, fair competition and global connectivity.

    Question 14. In countries that do not have Section 230-like 
protections, are your companies more vulnerable to litigation or 
liability as a result?
    Answer. We are subject to legislation in Germany that may impose 
significant fines for failure to comply with certain content removal 
and disclosure obligations. Other countries, including Singapore, 
India, Australia, and the United Kingdom, have implemented or are 
considering similar legislation imposing penalties for failure to 
remove certain types of content. We could incur significant costs 
investigating and defending these claims. If we incur material costs or 
liability as a result of these occurrences, our business, financial 
condition and operating results would be adversely impacted.

    Question 15. How do your content moderation and litigation costs 
differ in these countries compared to what you might expect if Section 
230-like protections were in place?
    Answer. Legal risk may be enhanced in jurisdictions outside the 
United States where our protection from liability for content published 
on our platform by third parties may be unclear and where we may be 
less protected under local laws than we are in the United States.

    Question 16. As American companies, does Section 230s existence 
provide you any liability protection overseas in countries that do not 
have similar protections for tech companies?
    Answer. Section 230 is the Internet's most important law for free 
speech and safety, and we encourage countries to use Section 230 as a 
model for protecting critical speech online. Moreover, as we see more 
and more attempts by governments to undermine open conversation around 
the world, Section 230 sets a powerful democratic standard. This has 
helped to protect not only free expression, but other fundamental human 
rights that are interconnected with speech. Thus, changes to Section 
230 could have broader ripple effects across the globe.

    Question 17. To differing extents, all of your companies rely on 
automated content moderation tools to flag and remove content on your 
platforms. What is the difference in effectiveness between automated 
and human moderation?
    Answer. Twitter uses a combination of machine learning and human 
review to adjudicate reports of violations and make determinations on 
whether the activity violates our rules. One of the underlying features 
of our approach is that we take a behavior-first approach. That is to 
say, we look at how accounts behave before we look at the content they 
are posting. This is how we were able to scale our efforts globally.

    Question 18. What percentage of decisions made by automated content 
moderation systems are successfully appealed, and how does that compare 
to human moderation decisions?
    Answer. We may suspend an account if it has been reported to us as 
violating our Rules. We may suspend it temporarily or, in some cases, 
permanently. Individuals may be able to unsuspend their own accounts by 
providing a phone number or confirming an e-mail address. An account 
may also be temporarily disabled in response to reports of automated or 
abusive behavior. For example, an individual may be prevented from 
Tweeting from his or her account for a specific period of time or may 
be asked to verify certain information before proceeding. If an account 
was suspended or locked in error, an individual can appeal. First, the 
individual must log in to the account that is suspended and file an 
appeal. The individual must describe the nature of the appeal and 
provide an explanation of why the account is not in violation of the 
Twitter Rules. Twitter employees will engage with the account holder 
via e-mail to resolve the suspension.

    Question 19. Please describe the limitations and benefits specific 
to automated content moderation and human content moderation.
    Answer. Automated content moderation is necessary to engage in 
content moderation at scale. An additional benefit is that it reduces 
the burden on individuals to report conduct that may violate the 
Twitter Rules. More than 50 percent of Tweets we take action on for 
abuse are now proactively surfaced using technology, rather than 
relying on reports to Twitter.

    Question 20. In your written testimonies, each of you note the 
importance of tech companies being transparent with their users. Have 
you already, or do you plan to make public the processes that your 
automated moderation system undertakes when making decisions about 
content on your platform?
    Answer. An important component of our transparency efforts is the 
Twitter Transparency Center. This year, we expanded our biannual 
transparency report site to become a comprehensive Twitter Transparency 
Center. Our goal with this evolution is make our transparency reporting 
more easily understood and accessible to the general public. This site 
includes data visualizations making it easier to compare trends over 
time and more information for the individuals who use Twitter, 
academics, researchers, civil society groups and others who study what 
we do to understand bigger societal issues. The Center includes data on 
enforcement actions under the Twitter Rules that requires the removal 
of specific Tweets or to suspend accounts. The Center also includes 
sections covering information requests, removal requests, copyright 
notices, trademark notices, e-mail security, platform manipulation, and 
state-backed information operations. We believe it is now more 
important than ever to be transparent about our practices and we 
continue to explore additional ways to increase our transparency.

    Question 21. Given the complexity of the algorithms that are now 
governing a portion of the content across your platforms, how have you 
or how do you plan to explain the functions of your automated 
moderation systems in a simple manner that users can easily understand?
    Answer. In December 2018, Twitter introduced an icon located at the 
top of everyone's timelines that allows individuals using Twitter to 
easily switch to a reverse chronological order ranking of the Tweets 
from accounts or topics they follow. This improvement gives people more 
control over the content they see, and it also provides greater 
transparency into how our algorithms affect what they see. It is a good 
start. We believe this points to an exciting, market-driven approach 
where people can choose what algorithms filter their content so they 
can have the experience they want.

    Question 22. Acknowledging Twitter updated its ``Hacked Materials 
Policy'' on October 15, 2020, the company cited this policy the day 
before when it blocked the distribution of the New York Post article 
pertaining to Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden's business dealings. 
Are you able to describe the substance of the changes in the updates to 
this policy?
    Answer. Following our enforcement actions, we received significant 
feedback--both positive and negative--on how we enforced the 
Distribution of Hacked Materials Policy. After reviewing the feedback, 
we made changes within 24 hours to the policy to address concerns that 
there could be unintended consequences to journalists, whistleblowers 
and others in ways that are contrary to Twitter's purpose of serving 
the public conversation. We also noted publicly that the only 
enforcement action available under the Distribution of Hacked Materials 
Policy was removal, which was no longer in alignment with new product 
capabilities, such as a label, that provide people with additional 
context.
    On October 23, we issued a revised policy on the Distribution of 
Hacked Materials that states that we will no longer remove hacked 
content unless it is directly shared by hackers or groups directly 
associated with a hack. We also laid out our intent to use labels 
instead of removal of Tweets in other circumstances for violations of 
our policy to provide more context.

    Question 23. While I understand that Twitter's policy of outright 
blocking URLs is no longer in place, I found it concerning that reports 
indicated that the top line of the Warning Page that users were 
directed to in trying to access the article stated that ``This link may 
be unsafe.'' While the Warning Page goes on to describe that the link 
was blocked for what could be several categories of reasons, including 
``violations of the Twitter Rules,'' I believe it is deceptive for a 
platform to state that a site a user is trying to visit is ``unsafe'' 
when in actuality the platform determines the content of the site to be 
untrue, or worse, against its own political agenda. What issues could 
we reasonably expect to arise should companies begin to tie data 
security and privacy concerns to materials or sites that they claim are 
untrue or determine to be disadvantageous to the politics of their 
platform?
    Answer. Based on our enforcement decision under our Hacked 
Materials policy, people on Twitter were blocked from sharing certain 
links from the @NYPost, publicly or privately, as those specific 
articles contained the source materials themselves. References to the 
contents of the materials or discussion about the materials were not 
restricted under the policy. In order to address the unique facts in 
the @NYPost case, we determined that we should change our practices to 
allow for circumstances when actions on a specific account have led to 
a policy change. Accordingly, we updated the relevant policy, informed 
@NYPost, and the newspaper's account was restored. While we may have 
taken longer than some would have wanted to take these actions, we 
believe that this process and associated review have helped us create 
strong and more transparent policies.

    Question 24. How has COVID-19 impacted your company's content 
moderation systems? Is there a greater reliance on automated content 
moderation? Please quantify how content moderation responsibilities 
have shifted between human and automated systems due to COVID-19.
    Answer. In March 2020, we released information to the public 
relating to our contingency planning regarding the increase of our use 
of machine learning and automation to take a wide range of actions on 
potentially abusive and manipulative content.
                                 ______
                                 
      Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Mike Lee to 
                              Jack Dorsey
    Question 1. Mr. Dorsey, during the hearing I asked each of the 
witnesses to provide me with one example of a high-profile person or 
entity from a liberal ideology that your company has censored and what 
particular action you took. In response, you stated, ``We can give you 
a more exhaustive list.'' Later you told me that your company has taken 
action against ``two democratic congresspeople,'' although when 
pressed, you were unable to provide their names. Could you provide me 
with the ``exhaustive list'' and the names of the ``two democratic 
congresspeople,'' along with the actions taken against them?
    Answer. We would like to clarify that at the time of the hearing we 
had taken enforcement action on two accounts of Democratic candidates 
for the U.S. House of Representatives for violations of our civic 
integrity policy. The account holders were candidates and do not 
currently serve in Congress. Mr. Dorsey inadvertently stated the 
candidates were members of Congress.

    Question 2. Mr. Dorsey, you have previously stated, ``Let me be 
clear about one important and foundational fact: Twitter does not use 
political ideology to make any decisions, whether related to ranking 
content on our service or how we enforce our rules. . .'' The term 
``misinformation'' can be subjective and Twitter has often used it when 
labeling content that contains political viewpoints especially during 
this election year. How are you consistent with your promise to not 
``use political ideology'' when you subjectively take down political 
views that you deem ``misinformation''?
    Answer. We have heard from the people who use Twitter that we 
should not determine the truthfulness of Tweets and we should provide 
context to help people make up their own minds in cases where the 
substance of a Tweet is disputed. When we label Tweets, we link to 
Twitter conversation that shows three things for context: (1) factual 
statements; (2) counterpoint opinions and perspectives; and (3) ongoing 
public conversation around the issue. We will only add descriptive text 
that is reflective of the existing public conversation to let people 
determine their own viewpoints. Reducing the visibility of Tweets means 
that we will not amplify the Tweets on a number of surfaces across 
Twitter.

    Question 3. Mr. Dorsey, while Facebook ``reduced distribution'' of 
the NY Post, Twitter wouldn't even let anyone post the article. Twitter 
cited its ``hacked materials'' policy for why it chose to block the 
posting of the NY Post article. Did you apply the ``hacked materials'' 
policy to the release of President Trump's tax records? Or the Steele 
Dossier? Did you block the leak of the Edward Snowden documents?
    Answer. We issued the Distribution of Hacked Materials Policy in 
advance of the U.S. 2018 midterm elections to discourage and mitigate 
harms associated with hacks and unauthorized exposure of private 
information. Pursuant to these policies, on October 14, 2020, we took 
action on Tweets related to two articles published by the New York Post 
that, based on preliminary information, linked to content we determined 
to be in violation of our policies. Following our enforcement actions, 
we received significant feedback--both positive and negative--on how we 
enforced the Distribution of Hacked Materials Policy. After reviewing 
the feedback, we made changes within 24 hours to the policy to address 
concerns that there could be unintended consequences to journalists, 
whistleblowers and others in ways that are contrary to Twitter's 
purpose of serving the public conversation. We also noted publicly that 
the only enforcement action available under the Distribution of Hacked 
Materials Policy was removal, which was no longer in alignment with new 
product capabilities, such as a label, that provide people with 
additional context.
    On October 23, we issued a revised policy on the Distribution of 
Hacked Materials that states that we will no longer remove hacked 
content unless it is directly shared by hackers or groups directly 
associated with a hack. We also laid out our intent to use labels 
instead of removal of Tweets in other circumstances for violations of 
our policy to provide more context.

    Question 4. Congress is in the midst of a debate over future 
reforms to Section 230. This is an important discussion that Congress 
should have. a. In making decisions to moderate third-party content on 
your platform, do you rely solely on Section 230? In other words, could 
you still moderate third-party content without the protections of 
Section 230? If the provisions of Section 230 were repealed or severely 
limited, how would your content moderation practices shift?
    Answer. Under the First Amendment, Twitter is permitted to exercise 
affirmative editorial control over content created by the people who 
use our service.\5\ Section 230 is the Internet's most important law 
for free speech and safety. Weakening Section 230 protections will 
remove critical speech from the Internet. We must ensure that all 
voices can be heard, and we continue to make improvements to our 
service so that everyone feels safe participating in the public 
conversation--whether they are speaking or simply listening. The 
protections offered by Section 230 help us achieve this important 
objective. Eroding the foundation of Section 230 could collapse how we 
communicate on the Internet, leaving only a small number of giant and 
well-funded technology companies. We should also be mindful that 
undermining Section 230 will result in far more removal of online 
speech and impose severe limitations on our collective ability to 
address harmful content and protect people online.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \5\ See, e.g., La'Tiejira v. Facebook, Inc., 272 F. Supp. 3d 981, 
991 (S.D. Tex. 2017) (holding that ``Facebook [has a] First Amendment 
right to decide what to publish and what not to publish on its 
platform'' and collecting cases); Zhang v. Baidu.com, Inc., 10 F. Supp. 
3d 433 (S.D.N.Y. 2014) (rejecting claim seeking to hold a website 
``liable for . . . a conscious decision to design its search-engine 
algorithms to favor a certain expression on core political subjects. . 
.[because] to proceed would plainly `violate the fundamental rule of 
protection under the First Amendment, that a speaker has the autonomy 
to choose the content of his own message.' '').

    Question 5. How many content posts or videos are generated by 
third-party users per day on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube? b. How 
many decisions on average per day does your platform take to moderate 
content? Are you able to provide data on your takedown numbers over the 
last year? c. Do you ever make mistakes in a moderation decision? If 
so, how do you become aware of these mistakes and what actions do you 
take to correct them? d. What remedies or appeal process do you provide 
to your users to appeal an action taken against them? On average, how 
long does the adjudication take until a final action is taken? How 
quickly do you provide a response to moderation decision appeals from 
your customers? e. Can you provide approximate numbers, by month or 
week, for the times you took down, blocked, or tagged material from 
November 2019 to November 2020?
    Answer. An important component of our transparency efforts is the 
Twitter Transparency Center. This year, we expanded our biannual 
transparency report site to become a comprehensive Twitter Transparency 
Center. Our goal with this evolution is make our transparency reporting 
more easily understood and accessible to the general public. This site 
includes data visualizations making it easier to compare trends over 
time and more information for the individuals who use Twitter, 
academics, researchers, civil society groups and others who study what 
we do to understand bigger societal issues. The Center includes data on 
enforcement actions under the Twitter Rules that requires the removal 
of specific Tweets or to suspend accounts. The Center also includes 
sections covering information requests, removal requests, copyright 
notices, trademark notices, e-mail security, platform manipulation, and 
state-backed information operations. We believe it is now more 
important than ever to be transparent about our practices.
    If an account was suspended or locked in error, an individual can 
appeal. First, the individual must log in to the account that is 
suspended and file an appeal. The individual must describe the nature 
of the appeal and provide an explanation of why the account is not in 
violation of the Twitter Rules. Twitter employees will typically engage 
with the account holder via e-mail to resolve the appeal.

    Question 6. The first major case to decide the application of 
Section 230 was Zeran v. AOL . In Zeran, Judge Wilkinson recognized the 
challenges of conferring ``distributor liability'' to a website because 
of the sheer number of postings. That was 1997. If we imposed a form of 
``distributor liability'' on your platforms that would likely mean that 
your platform would be liable for content if you acquired knowledge of 
the content. I think there is an argument to be made that you ``acquire 
knowledge'' when a user ``flags'' a post, video, or other form of 
content. f. How many ``user-generated'' flags do your companies receive 
daily? g. Do users ever flag posts solely because they disagree with 
the content? h. If you were liable for content that was ``flagged'' by 
a user, how would that affect content moderation on your platform?
    Answer. More than 186 million people last quarter used Twitter each 
day in dozens of languages and countless cultural contexts. The Twitter 
Transparency Center, described in response to Question 5, can provide a 
sense of the scale of our efforts to safeguard the conversation and 
enforce our policies.

    Question 7. Section 230 is often used as a legal tool to have 
lawsuits dismissed in a pre-trial motion. i. How often is your company 
sued under a theory that you should be responsible for the content 
posted by a user of your platform? How often do you use Section 230 as 
a defense in these lawsuits? And roughly how often are those lawsuits 
thrown out? j. If Section 230 was eliminated and a case seeking to make 
your platform liable for content posted by a third party went to the 
discovery phase, roughly how much more expensive would that case be as 
opposed to its dismissal pre-discovery?
    Answer. Twitter is currently involved in, and may in the future be 
involved in, legal proceedings, claims, investigations, and government 
inquiries and investigations arising in the ordinary course of 
business. These proceedings, which include both individual and class 
action litigation and administrative proceedings, have included, but 
are not limited to matters involving content on the platform, 
intellectual property, privacy, data protection, consumer protection, 
securities, employment, and contractual rights. We are happy to work 
with your teams to provide feedback on the impact on specific proposals 
that seek to amend Section 230.

    Question 8. Section 230s Good Samaritan provision contains the term 
``otherwise objectionable.'' k. How do you define ``otherwise 
objectionable''? l. Is ``otherwise objectionable'' defined in your 
terms of service? If so, has its definition ever changed? And if so, 
can you provide the dates of such changes and the text of each 
definition? m. In most litigation, a defendant relies on Section 
230(c)(1) for editorial decisions. If a company could only rely on 
230(c)(2) for a moderation decision (as has been discussed in 
Congress), how would that affect your moderation practices? And how 
would striking ``otherwise objectionable'' from 230(c)(2) further 
affect your moderation practices?
    Answer. The specific details of a proposal are critical to 
understanding its potential impact on our business practices. We are 
happy to work with you further to provide additional feedback on the 
potential impacts of specific proposals.

    Question 9. Are your terms of service a legally binding contract 
with your users? How many times have you changed your terms of service 
in the past five years? What recourse do users of your platform have 
when you allege that they have violated your terms of service?
    Answer. The Twitter Rules and all incorporated policies, Privacy 
Policy, and Terms of Service collectively make up the ``Twitter User 
Agreement'' that governs an individual's access to and use of Twitter's 
services. We have the Twitter Rules in place to help ensure everyone 
feels safe expressing their beliefs and we strive to enforce them with 
uniform consistency. We are continually working to update, refine, and 
improve both our enforcement and our policies, informed by in-depth 
research around trends in online behavior both on and off Twitter, 
feedback from the people who use Twitter. We have updated our Terms of 
Service six times in five years, and all versions are available here.
    We strive to give people an easy, clear way to appeal decisions we 
make that they think are not right. Mistakes in enforcement--made 
either by a human or algorithm--are inevitable, and why we strive to 
make appeals easier. We look forward to working with the Committee on 
efforts to enhance procedural fairness, including through a 
straightforward appeals process.
                                 ______
                                 
    Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Ron Johnson to 
                              Jack Dorsey
    Question 1. During the hearing, in response to both Senator Cruz's 
line of questioning and mine, you claimed that Twitter does not have 
the ability to influence nor interfere in the election. a. In 
hindsight, do you stand by this claim? To reiterate, I am not asking if 
you have the intent or have actively taken steps to influence/
interfere, but rather if Twitter has the ability. b. If you continue to 
claim that you do not have the ability to influence or interfere in the 
election, can you explain Twitter's rational for suppressing content 
that Twitter deems to be Russian misinformation on the basis that it 
influences the election?
    Answer. We believe that we have a responsibility to protect the 
integrity of conversations related to elections and other civic events 
from interference and manipulation. Therefore, we prohibit attempts to 
use our services to manipulate or disrupt civic processes, including 
through the distribution of false or misleading information about the 
procedures or circumstances around participation in a civic process. 
Combatting attempts to interfere in conversations on Twitter remains a 
top priority for the company, and we continue to invest heavily in our 
detection, disruption, and transparency efforts related to state-backed 
information operations. Twitter defines state-backed information 
operations as coordinated platform manipulation efforts that can be 
attributed with a high degree of confidence to state-affiliated actors. 
Our goal is to remove bad faith actors and to advance public 
understanding of these critical topics.

    Question 2. In Senator Rosen's testimony, Mr. Zuckerberg stated 
that Congress could hold Facebook accountable by monitoring the 
percentage of users that see harmful content before Facebook acts to 
take it down. While this is important, it does not address the problem 
of Facebook biasedly and inconsistently enforcing content moderation 
policies of political speech. Unfortunately, Twitter has the same 
biases and inconsistencies. c. In regards to this issue, what role do 
you think Congress should have in holding Twitter accountable? d. Do 
you have an example of a mechanism by which Congress can currently hold 
Twitter accountable on this issue? If there are none, can you please at 
a minimum acknowledge that there are none?
    Answer. We ensure that all decisions are made at Twitter without 
using political viewpoints, party affiliation, or political ideology, 
whether related to automatically ranking content on our service or how 
we develop or enforce the Twitter Rules. Our Twitter Rules are not 
based on ideology or a particular set of beliefs. We believe strongly 
in being impartial, and we strive to enforce our Twitter Rules fairly. 
As detailed in our testimony, we fully support efforts to enhance 
procedural fairness, so that the public can trust that rules are 
developed and applied consistently and equitably.

    Question 3. When Senator Gardner asked you about misinformation 
related to holocaust deniers, you said ``We have a policy against 
misinformation in 3 categories: 1) manipulated media, 2) public health, 
specifically Covid, and 3) civic integrity, election interference, and 
voter suppression. That is all we have a policy on for misleading 
information.'' The puppy tweet example I raised in my testimony falls 
squarely into the 3rd category. When my staff brought this to your 
company's attention, we got the following response, ``Thanks for 
reaching out. We escalated this to our Support Team for their review 
and they have determined that it is not in violation of our Policies.'' 
e. Can you please further explain your company's decision? How does 
this not violate your misinformation policy?
    Answer. Twitter strongly condemns antisemitism, and hateful conduct 
has absolutely no place on the service. At the time of testimony, Mr. 
Dorsey did not mention that Twitter's Hateful Conduct Policy prohibits 
a wide range of behavior, including making references to violent events 
or types of violence where protected categories of people were the 
primary victims, or attempts to deny or diminish such events. Twitter 
also has a robust policy against glorification of violence and takes 
action against content that glorifies or praises historical acts of 
violence and genocide, including the Holocaust.
    Regarding the specific Tweet you referenced, not all false or 
untrue information about politics or civic processes constitutes 
manipulation or interference that violates our Civic Integrity Policy. 
Our policy specifically references that ``inaccurate statements about 
an elected or appointed official'' are generally not in violation of 
this policy.

    Question 4. During your testimony you said that Twitter should 
``enable people to choose algorithms created by 3rd parties to rank and 
filter their own content,'' in reference to Dr. Stephen Wolfram's 
research. f. Which of the methods described in his research and 
testimony have you deployed on your platform? g. What other methods 
would you like to see put in place? h. What is preventing you from 
implementing more methods such as these?
    Answer. We are inspired by the approach suggested by Dr. Stephen 
Wolfram, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Wolfram Research, in 
his testimony before the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, 
Innovation, and the Internet in June 2019. Enabling people to choose 
algorithms created by third parties to rank and filter their content is 
an incredibly energizing idea that is in reach. As a first step, in 
December 2018, Twitter introduced an icon located at the top of 
everyone's timelines that allows individuals using Twitter to easily 
switch to a reverse chronological order ranking of the Tweets from 
accounts or topics they follow. This improvement gives people more 
control over the content they see, and it also provides greater 
transparency into how our algorithms affect what they see. We believe 
this points to an exciting, market-driven approach where people can 
choose what algorithms filter their content so they can have the 
experience they want.

    Question 5. Do you agree that Twitter competes with local 
newspapers and broadcasters for local advertising dollars? i. Should 
Congress allow local news affiliates, such as local newspapers and 
local broadcast stations, to jointly negotiate with Twitter for fair 
market compensation for the content they create when it is distributed 
over your platform?
    Answer. Providing news media organizations an effective antitrust 
exemption to collectively negotiate against other online platforms 
creates a situation where the media organizations gain leverage in 
negotiations by banding together. Ultimately, the online companies that 
can then afford to pay these heightened premiums for content are the 
large, dominant companies. It is critical that smaller online companies 
are not effectively shut out of these discussions.
                                 ______
                                 
   Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Maria Cantwell to 
                              Jack Dorsey
    Foreign Disinformation. Facebook/Instagram, Twitter, and Google/
YouTube have each taken concrete steps to improve defensive measures 
through automated detection and removal of fake accounts at creation; 
increased internal auditing and detection efforts; and established or 
enhanced security and integrity teams who can identify leads and 
analyze potential networks engaging in coordinated inauthentic 
behavior.
    Social media companies have hired a lot of staff and assembled 
large teams to do this important work and coordinate with the FBI led 
Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF).
    Small companies in the tech sector do not have the same level or 
expertise or resources, but they face some of the same and growing 
threats.
    Likewise, public awareness and understanding of the threats foreign 
actors like Russia pose is key to helping fight back against them.

    Question 1. What specific steps are you taking to share threat 
information with smaller social media companies that do not have the 
same level of resources to detect and stop those threats?
    Answer. Information sharing and collaboration are critical to 
Twitter's success in preventing hostile foreign actors from disrupting 
meaningful political conversations on the service. We have 
significantly deepened our partnership with industry peers, 
establishing formal processes for information sharing with both large 
and small companies and a regular cadence of discussion about shared 
threats. In addition to this, as explained in more detail in our 
response to Question 2, we publicly release data about action we have 
taken on state-backed information operations, to better enable the 
public, researchers, and others to better understand these threats.
    In addition to these efforts, we have well-established 
relationships with Federal government agencies, including the Federal 
Bureau of Investigation Foreign Influence Task Force and the U.S. 
Department of Homeland Security's Election Security Task Force. For 
example, on Election Day and the week after, we virtually participated 
in an operations center run by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 
including officials from the Department of Justice, the Department of 
Homeland Security, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 
and private sector partners.

    Question 2. Intel Chairman Schiff has highlighted the need for 
social media companies to increase transparency about how social media 
companies have stopped foreign actors disinformation and influence 
operations. Where are the gaps in public disclosures of this 
information and what specific actions are you taking to increase 
transparency about malign foreign threats you have throttled?
    Answer. Combatting attempts to interfere in conversations on 
Twitter remains a top priority for the company, and we continue to 
invest heavily in our detection, disruption, and transparency efforts 
related to state-backed information operations. Our goal is to remove 
bad faith actors and to advance public understanding of these critical 
topics. We recognize that to better enable the public, lawmakers, and 
researchers to better understand the threat of state-backed information 
operations, data is essential. In October 2018, we published the first 
comprehensive archive of Tweets and media associated with known state-
backed information operations on Twitter.
    We now routinely update this archive to add additional datasets 
when we disrupt state-backed information operations. This one of a kind 
resource now spans operations across 15 countries, including more than 
nine terabytes of media and 200 million Tweets.
    It is important to remember that these bad faith actors work across 
multiple platforms, leveraging a range of services including ad tech, 
hosting, content distribution, and payment processing. These services 
can also be used by bad faith actors who create financial incentives to 
distribute disinformation content or are derived from a state-backed 
information operation. We support calls for other parts of industry to 
add their own data to the publicly accessible information Twitter 
discloses. We also encourage continued disclosures from government 
partners about activity they observe, including on social media, to 
enable the wider community to build their own resilience and to expose 
to the public the tactics used.

    Addressing Stop Hate for Profit Recommendations. The Stop Hate for 
Profit, Change the Terms, and Free Press coalition--all committed to 
combating racism, violence, and hate online--have called on social 
media platforms to adopt policies and take decisive actions against 
toxic and hateful activities.
    This includes finding and removing public and private groups 
focused on white supremacy, promoting violent conspiracies, or other 
hateful content; submitting to regular, third party, independent audits 
to share information about misinformation; changing corporate policies 
and elevating a civil rights to an executive level position.

    Question 3. Mr. Dorsey, will you commit to making the removal of 
racist, violent, and hateful content an executive level priority?
    Answer. Ensuring that individuals who use Twitter feel safe using 
our service is an executive level priority. Currently, we have numerous 
policies aimed at combating hateful conduct. Our Hateful Conduct Policy 
prohibits promotion of violence against people on the basis of 
protected categories. This includes wishing or calling for serious harm 
against a person or group or people, or targeting individuals with the 
intent to harass with references to violent events or types of violence 
where protected categories were the primary victims. We recently 
expanded this policy to prohibit language that dehumanizes people on 
the basis of race, ethnicity, or national origin. In addition, our 
Glorification of Violence Policy prohibits content that glorifies or 
praises historical acts of violence and genocide, including the 
Holocaust. And, our Violent Organizations Policy prohibits violent 
organizations, including violent extremist groups, from using Twitter 
to promote violence.

    Kenosha Wisconsin Violence. On August 25th, a man from Illinois 
traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin armed with an assault rifle and fatally 
shot Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, and injured another person, 
who were protesting the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black resident, 
which left him paralyzed.
    In the wake of these tragic shootings, we learned that a para-
military group called the Kenosha Guard Militia, a group that organized 
on Facebook, called on followers to ``take up arms'' and ``defend'' the 
city against ``evil thugs''. This event post had been flagged 455 times 
by Facebook users, yet Facebook did not take down the group's page 
until after these lives were already lost.
    While the Illinois shooter may not have been a member of the 
Kenosha Guard Militia, this brings up a very important point--that hate 
spread on social media platforms can lead to real life violence.
    In May of this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook 
had completed internal research that said its internal algorithms 
``exploit the human brain's attraction to divisiveness'', which could 
allow Facebook to feed more divisive content to gain user attention and 
more time on the platform. In response, the Journal reported that 
Facebook buried the research and did little to address it because it 
ran counter to other Facebook initiatives.
    Sowing divisions in this country and further polarizing public 
discourse is dangerous, and can have deadly consequences.

    Question 4. Mr. Dorsey, Twitter also targets information to people 
based on what your data tells them they want to see, which can lead to 
people being stuck in an echo chamber that makes them less likely to 
listen to other viewpoints. What responsibility do you believe you have 
to stem the divisive discourse in this country?
    Answer. Twitter's purpose is to serve the public conversation. 
People from around the world come together on Twitter in an open and 
free exchange of ideas. We want to make sure conversations on Twitter 
are healthy and that people feel safe in expressing their points of 
view. Our role is not to tell people what is the truth or to dictate 
their experience on our service. On the contrary, we (1) invest in 
efforts to provide individuals choices about the algorithms that affect 
their online experience, and (2) work to ensure our approach to harmful 
misinformation is aimed at providing people additional context to help 
inform their views.
    In December 2018, Twitter introduced an icon located at the top of 
everyone's timelines that allows individuals using Twitter to easily 
switch to a reverse chronological order ranking of the Tweets from 
accounts or topics they follow. This improvement gives people more 
control over the content they see, and it also provides greater 
transparency into how our algorithms affect what they see. We believe 
this points to an exciting, market-driven approach where people can 
choose what algorithms filter their content so they can have the 
experience they want.
    In addition, we have conducted research aimed at identifying the 
needs of people who use Twitter, including how to address potential 
misinformation on the platform and how to ensure that people have 
access to credible information to inform their viewpoints. A key piece 
of feedback we got from the people who use our service is that we 
should not determine the truthfulness of Tweets; we should provide 
context to help people make up their own minds in cases where the 
substance of a Tweet is disputed. Consistent with this feedback, we 
continue to explore ways to expand our enforcement options beyond a 
binary choice of leaving content up or taking it down. Instead, we are 
looking at ways to ensure that people can access additional information 
to inform their viewpoints.
    We have expanded our enforcement options to allow us to label 
misinformation related to manipulated media, COVID-19, and civic 
integrity. When we label Tweets, we link to Twitter conversation that 
shows three things for context: (1) factual statements; (2) 
counterpoint opinions and perspectives; and (3) ongoing public 
conversation around the issue. We continue to explore additional 
improvements to our service that we can make to ensure individuals have 
access to credible information and diverse viewpoints.
    Notwithstanding these efforts, we recognize that Twitter is only 
part of a larger ecosystem that impacts the online discourse. For 
example, a Knight Foundation study found that ``evidence for echo 
chambers is actually strongest in offline social networks, which can 
increase exposure to like-minded views and information and amplify 
partisan messages.'' The study also found that ``several studies have 
found evidence for offline echo chambers that are as strong or stronger 
than those documented online.'' \1\

    Russian Election Interference. The U.S. Intelligence community 
found that foreign actors including Russia tried to interfere in the 
2016 election and used social media platforms among other influence 
operations.
    In 2017, the FBI established the Foreign Influence Task Force 
(FITF), which works closely with state and local partners to share 
information on threats and actionable leads.
    The FBI has also established relationships with social media 
companies to enable rapid sharing of threat information. Social media 
companies independently make decisions regarding the content of their 
platforms.
    The U.S. Intelligence Community warned that Russia was using a 
range of active measures to denigrate former Vice President Joe Biden 
in the 2020 election. They also warned about Iran and China.
    Social media companies remain on the front lines of these threats 
to our democracy.

    Question 5. What steps are you taking to prevent amplification of 
false voter fraud claims after the 2020 presidential election and for 
future elections? What challenges do you face trying to prevent foreign 
actors who seek to influence our elections?
    Answer. Twitter has several policies aimed at protecting the 
conversation around the 2020 U.S. elections and elections around the 
world. Notably, our civic integrity policy provides for the labeling or 
removing of false and misleading information related to civic 
processes. The policy prohibits false or misleading information about 
how to participate in an election or civic process; content intended to 
intimidate or dissuade people from participating; misrepresentation 
about affiliation (for ex., a candidate or political party); content 
that causes confusion about laws and regulations of a civic process or 
officials and institutions executing those civic processes; disputed 
claims that could undermine public confidence in the election including 
unverified information about election rigging, ballot tampering, vote 
tallying, or certification of election results; and content that 
misleads about outcomes (e.g., claiming victory before results are in 
or inciting unlawful conduct to prevent the procedural or practical 
implementation of election results).
    In 2020, we found that many of the efforts to disrupt the 
conversation around the election originated domestically. While 
technology companies play an important role in safeguarding against 
efforts to undermine the integrity of the conversation regarding civic 
integrity, they cannot address all facets of complex social issues. 
Looking forward, we need broader conversations around government 
institutional preparedness, media literacy, and other efforts that are 
necessary to build civic resilience.

    Question 6. How the U.S. Government improved information sharing 
about threats from foreign actors seeking to interfere in our elections 
since 2016? Is information that is shared timely and actionable? What 
more can be done to improve the cooperation to stop threats from bad 
actors?
    Answer. As explained in the response to Question 2, we have 
strengthened our relationship with government agencies, including the 
Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), to better share information 
about foreign efforts to interfere with elections. In recent months we 
detected limited state backed information operations tied to the 
conversation regarding the 2020 U.S. election. On September 1, we 
suspended five Twitter accounts for platform manipulation that we can 
reliably attribute to Russian state actors based on information we 
received from the FBI. On September 24, we also permanently suspended 
two distinct networks of accounts that we can reliably attribute to 
state-linked entities in Russia.
    On September 29, based on intelligence provided by the FBI, we 
removed 132 accounts that appeared to originate in Iran. The accounts 
were attempting to disrupt the public conversation during the 
presidential debate. Additionally, on October 8, we announced we had 
identified a network of primarily compromised accounts on Twitter 
operating from Iran. These accounts artificially amplified 
conversations on politically sensitive topics, including the Black 
Lives Matter movement, the death of George Floyd, and other issues of 
racial and social justice in the United States.

    Question 7. How are you working with civil society groups like the 
University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public and Stanford 
Internet Observatory and Program?
    Answer. In order to safeguard the conversation regarding the 2020 
U.S. election, we have developed critical partnerships with government 
entities, news organizations, civil society, and others. These 
partnerships have been instrumental in informing policies and helping 
to identify potential threats regarding the integrity of the election 
conversation occurring on Twitter. In advance of the general election, 
we partnered with the Election Integrity Partnership, a coalition of 
research entities focused on supporting real-time information exchange 
to detect and mitigate the impact of attempts to prevent or deter 
people from voting or to delegitimize election results. The 
foundational Partnership consists of four leading institutions: the 
Stanford Internet Observatory and Program on Democracy and the 
Internet, Graphika, the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research 
Lab, and the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public.

    Question 8. How are you raising social media users' awareness about 
these threats? What more can be done? How do you ensure the actions you 
take do not cross the line into censorship of legitimate free speech?
    Answer. As explained more fully in the response to Question 4, we 
are working to expand our enforcement options to better enable us to 
serve the public conversation. As part of that, we are working to 
expand our enforcement options beyond a binary choice of leaving 
content up or taking it down, to include options that provide 
additional context to the people who use Twitter about the content they 
see on our service. We believe these efforts will provide us more 
flexibility to address harmful misinformation while safeguarding free 
expression.
    In addition, in certain contexts, we have worked to curb 
potentially harmful misinformation by facilitating the ability of 
individuals to access information from official and credible sources. 
For example, prior to the November election, we showed everyone on 
Twitter in the U.S. a series of pre-bunk prompts. These prompts, which 
were seen 389 million times, appeared in people's home timelines and in 
Search, and reminded people that election results were likely to be 
delayed and that voting by mail is safe and legitimate.

    Foreign Disinformation & Russian Election Interference. Since four 
years ago, our national security agencies and the private sector have 
made improvements to address foreign cyber and influence efforts that 
target our electoral process. However, there still needs to be more 
public transparency about foreign disinformation.
    We need to close any gaps to stop any foreign disinformation about 
the 2020 election and disinformation in future elections. We can not 
allow the Russians or other foreign actors to try to delegitimize 
election results or exacerbate political divisions any further.

    Question 9. What more could be done to maximize transparency with 
the public about suspected foreign malign activity?
    Answer. As described in our response to Question 2, when we 
identify inauthentic activity on Twitter that meets our definition of 
an information operation, and we are able to confidently attribute it 
to actors associated with a government, we share comprehensive data 
about this activity publicly. We encourage our industry peers to engage 
in similar transparency efforts.

    Question 10. How could you share more information about foreign 
disinformation threats among the private sector tech community and 
among social media platforms and with smaller companies?
    Answer. Since the 2016 elections, we have significantly deepened 
our partnership with industry peers, establishing formal processes for 
information sharing and a regular cadence of discussion about shared 
threats. These collaborations are a powerful way to identify and 
mitigate malicious activity that is not restricted to a single platform 
or service. We have worked to share information with smaller companies, 
and continue to encourage our government partners to expand the 
companies with whom they meet regularly.

    Question 11. What should the U.S. Government be doing to promote 
information sharing on threats and to increase lawful data-sharing 
about suspected foreign malign activity?
    Answer. Information sharing and collaboration are critical to 
Twitter's success in preventing hostile foreign actors from disrupting 
meaningful political conversations on the service. As described in the 
response to Question 2, we have well-established relationships with law 
enforcement agencies active in this area, and we have mechanisms in 
place to share classified information. We encourage our government 
partners to continue to share as much information as possible with us 
because in certain circumstances only they have access to information 
critical to joint efforts to stop bad faith actors. We also encourage 
continued efforts to ensure relevant information is declassified, as 
appropriate, to allow industry and the public to fully understand 
potential threats.

    Rohingya/Myanmar. In 2018, Facebook was weaponized against to whip 
up hate against the Muslim minority--the Rohingya. Myanmar held a 
general election last month. Prior to that election, there were 
concerns about the integrity of that election.

    Question 12. What did you do and how are you continuing to make 
sure social media is not abused by any foreign or domestic actors to 
distort the electoral process in Myanmar and other countries?
    Answer. The public conversation occurring on Twitter is never more 
important than during elections, the cornerstone of democracies across 
the globe. As platform manipulation tactics evolve, we are continuously 
updating and expanding our rules to better reflect what types of 
inauthentic activity violate our guidelines. We continue to develop and 
acquire sophisticated detection tools and systems to combat malicious 
automation on our service.
    Individuals are not permitted to use Twitter in a manner intended 
to artificially amplify, suppress information, or engage in behavior 
that manipulates or disrupts other people's experience on the service. 
We do not allow spam or platform manipulation, such as bulk, 
aggressive, or deceptive activity that misleads others and disrupts 
their experience on Twitter. We also prohibit the creation or use of 
fake accounts.

    Impact of S. 4534. As you are aware, Chairman Wicker and two of our 
Republican colleagues have offered legislation to amend Section 230 to 
address, among other issues, what they call `repeated instances of 
censorship targeting conservative voices.''
    That legislation would make significant changes to how Section 230 
works, including limiting the categories of content that Section 230 
immunity would cover and making the legal standard for removal of 
content more stringent. Critics of the Chairman's bill, S. 4534, 
suggest that these changes would inhibit companies' ability to remove 
false or harmful content from their platforms.

    Question 13. I would like you to respond yes or no as to whether 
you believe that bills like the Chairman's would make it more difficult 
for Twitter to remove the following types of content--

   Bullying?

   Election disinformation?

   Misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19?

   Foreign interference in U.S. elections?

   Efforts to engage in platform manipulation?

   Hate speech?

   Offensive content directed at vulnerable communities or 
        other dehumanizing content?

    Answer. Section 230 has been critical to Twitter's efforts to 
safeguard the public conversation, including our efforts to combat 
hateful conduct, harmful misinformation in the civic integrity and 
COVID-19 contexts, doxxing, platform manipulation, and foreign 
interference. The law allows us to act responsibly to promote healthy 
conversations by removing content that contains abuse, foreign 
interference, or illegal conduct, among other categories of content 
that violates our rules. Eliminating Section 230s important liability 
protections could discourage platforms like ours from engaging in 
content moderation for the purpose of protecting public safety and 
ensuring that our service is a safe place for all voices.

    Combating ``Garbage'' Content. Santa Clara University Law Professor 
Eric Goldman, a leading scholar on Section 230, has argued that the 
Online Freedom and Viewpoint Diversity Act (S. 4534) wants Internet 
services to act as ``passive'' receptacles for users' content rather 
than content curators or screeners of ``lawful but awful'' third-party 
content.
    He argues that the bill would be counterproductive because we need 
less of what he calls ``garbage'' content on the Internet, not more. 
Section 230 lets Internet services figure out the best ways to combat 
online trolls, and many services have innovated and invested more in 
improving their content moderation functions over the past few years.
    Professor Goldman specifically points out that the bill would make 
it more difficult for social media companies to remove ``junk science/
conspiracy theories, like anti-vax content or quack COVID19 cures.''

    Question 14. Would S. 4534--and similar bills--hurt efforts by 
Twitter to combat online trolls and to fight what Professor Goldman 
calls ``lawful but awful . . . garbage'' content?
    Answer. As noted in Question 13, eliminating Section 230s 
protections would make it more difficult for platforms to address a 
range of harmful issues, including harmful misinformation. As explained 
in more detail in our written testimony, we do not believe that the 
solution to concerns raised about content moderation is to eliminate 
Section 230 liability protections. Instead, we believe the solution 
should be focused on enhancing transparency, procedural fairness, 
privacy, and algorithmic choice, which can be achieved through 
additions to Section 230, industry-wide self-regulation best practices, 
or additional legislative frameworks.

    The FCC's Capitulation to Trump's Section 230 Strategy. The 
Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, announced 
recently that he would heed President Trump's call to start a 
rulemaking to ``clarify'' certain terms in Section 230.
    And reports suggest that the President pulled the renomination of a 
sitting FCC Commissioner due to his concerns about that rulemaking, 
replacing him with a nominee that helped develop the Administration's 
petition that is the foundation of this rulemaking. This capitulation 
to President Trump by a supposedly independent regulatory agency is 
appalling.
    It is particularly troubling that I--and other members of this 
committee--have been pressing Chairman Pai to push the envelope to 
interpret the agency's existing statutory authority to, among other 
things, use the E-Rate program to close the homework gap, which has 
only gotten more severe as a result of remote learning, and to use the 
agency's existing authority to close the digital divide on Tribal 
lands. And we expressed serious concern about Chairman Pai's move to 
repeal net neutrality, which the FCC majority based upon a highly 
conservative reading of agency's statutory authority.
    In contrast, Chairman Pai is now willing to take an expansive view 
of the agency's authority when asked to support the President's 
pressure campaign against social media in an attempt not to fact check 
or label the President's posts.

    Question 15. What are your views on Chairman Pai's announced 
rulemaking and the FCC's legal analysis of section 230? Would you agree 
that his approach on this issue is in tension with his repeal of the 
essential consumer protections afforded by the net neutrality rules?
    Answer. Section 230 protects American innovation and freedom of 
expression. Attempts to erode the foundation of Section 230 could 
collapse how we communicate on the Internet, leaving only a small 
number of giant and well-funded technology companies. Twitter strongly 
supports net neutrality, and we encourage the FCC to instead take steps 
to reinstate the repealed net neutrality order. In addition, we support 
the Save the Internet Act, which would enshrine net neutrality in law.

    Addressing Bad Actors. I have become increasingly concerned with 
how easy it is for bad actors to use social media platforms to achieve 
their ends, and how they have been too slow to stop it. For example, a 
video touting antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a ``cure'' for 
COVID was eventually taken down this summer--but not after garnering 17 
million views on Facebook.
    In May, the watchdog group Tech Transparency Project concluded that 
white supremacist groups are ``thriving'' on Facebook, despite 
assurances that Facebook does not allow such groups on its platform.
    These are obviously troubling developments, especially in light of 
the millions of Americans that rely on social media services. You have 
to do better.
    That said, I am not sure that modifying Section 230 is the solution 
for these and other very real concerns about your industry's behavior.

    Question 16. From your company's perspective, would modifying 
Section 230 prevent bad actors from engaging in harmful conduct?
    Answer. Though we have an important role to play, Twitter is only 
one part of a larger ecosystem that can address the harmful conduct of 
bad faith actors. Notwithstanding this, repealing Section 230s 
protections will likely make it more difficult to combat harm online. 
For example, Section 230 has been instrumental in allowing Twitter to 
take action to prevent harm, including through our policies aimed at 
prohibiting violation organizations, terrorist content, and COVID-19 
misinformation.
    We continue to improve and expand our policies to better combat 
harmful conduct. For example, under our Violent Organizations Policy, 
we have removed more than 200 groups from the platform, half of which 
had links to white supremacy, and permanently suspended 1.7 million 
unique accounts for violating our policy prohibiting the promotion of 
terrorism. In addition, to address the global pandemic, on March 16, 
2020, we announced new enforcement guidance, broadening our definition 
of harm to address content related to COVID-19 that goes directly 
against guidance from authoritative sources of global and local public 
health information. Section 230 enables us to require individuals to 
remove violative Tweets in a variety of contexts with the goal of 
preventing offline harm.

    Question 17. What do you recommend be done to address the concerns 
raised by the critics of Section 230?
    Answer. We believe the solution to concerns raised by critics 
regarding our content moderation efforts is not to eliminate Section 
230, but rather to build on its foundation. Specifically, we support 
requiring the publication of moderation processes and practices, a 
straightforward process to appeal decisions, and best efforts around 
algorithmic choice, while protecting the privacy of people who use the 
Internet. We look forward to working with the Committee to achieve 
these objectives.

    Question 18. How do you expect that Twitter would react when faced 
with increased possibility of litigation over user-submitted content?
    Answer. The specifics of any proposal are necessary to assess its 
potential impact on Twitter. However, we are concerned with proposals 
that seek to roll back essential Section 230 protections, which have 
been critical to promoting innovation, ensuring competition, and 
safeguarding free expression. Specifically, increasing liability for 
content generated by the people who use the platforms could encourage 
overmoderation, likely resulting in increased removal of speech. Such 
an outcome does not align with First Amendment values, nor does it 
address existing concerns. Instead of eliminating existing liability 
protections, future solutions should be focused on ensuring 
transparency, procedural fairness, algorithmic choice, and privacy.

    Trump Administration Records. Mr. Dorsey, over the course of nearly 
four years, President Trump and senior officials in his administration 
have routinely used Twitter to conduct government business including 
announcing key policy and personnel decisions on those platforms. In 
addition, many believe that President Trump and his senior aides have 
used Twitter to engage in unethical and sometimes illegal conduct.
    For example, Special Counsel Mueller cited several of President 
Trump's tweets as evidence of potentially obstructive conduct, and 
senior White House aides such as Kellyanne Conway and Ivanka Trump have 
been cited for violations of the Hatch Act and the misuse of position 
statute based on their use of Twitter in the conduct of their 
government jobs. Meanwhile, it appears that on several occasions 
Twitter has changed or ignored its rules and policies in ways that have 
allowed administration officials to continue using the platform to 
violate the rules for government employees and other Twitter users. 
While government officials are legally obligated to preserve 
presidential and Federal records created or stored on social media 
platforms, this administration's actions cast serious doubts on whether 
they will comply with those obligations, and in many instances, they 
have already failed to do so. Twitter could play a vital role in 
ensuring that the historical record of the Trump administration is 
accessible to the American public, Congress, and other government 
institutions so that people are ``able to see and debate'' the ``words 
and actions'' of the Trump presidency as well as future presidential 
administrations.

    Question 19. Please describe what steps, if any, Twitter has taken 
to ensure that Twitter content--including tweets and direct messages--
sent or received by Trump administration officials on Twitter accounts 
used for official government business are collected and preserved by 
your company.
    Answer. Twitter is actively preparing to support the transition of 
institutional White House Twitter accounts on January 20, 2021. As we 
did for the U.S. presidential transition in 2017, this process is being 
done in close consultation with the National Archives and Records 
Administration (NARA), who has historically played a significant role 
in appropriately preserving records following administration 
transitions. Twitter provides technical support to NARA and other 
government entities to transfer accounts in order to facilitate 
preservation efforts. We defer to these entities to make critical 
decisions about the information and accounts to preserve, agency 
compliance with existing legal obligations, and efforts to make this 
information available to the public.
    In addition, all Twitter account holders can download a machine-
readable archive of information associated with their account. This 
archive dataset includes an account's profile information, Tweets, 
Direct Messages, Moments, media (images, videos, and GIFs attached to 
Tweets, Direct Messages, or Moments), a list of followers, a list of 
followed accounts, address book, lists an account has created, been a 
member of or follow, inferred interest and demographic information, and 
more. We have advised NARA with regard to this self service tool for 
account holders and how to request archives for each account.

    Question 20. Please describe what steps, if any, Twitter has taken 
to ensure that the National Archives and Records Administration can 
obtain and preserve all Twitter content--including tweets and direct 
messages--sent or received by Trump administration officials on Twitter 
accounts used for official government business.
    Answer. Please see the answer to Question 20.

    Question 21. Please describe what steps, if any, Twitter has taken 
to ensure that the White House can preserve all Twitter content--
including tweets and direct messages--sent or received by Trump 
administration officials on Twitter accounts used for official 
government business.
    Answer. Please see the answer to Question 20.

    Question 22. Will you commit to ensuring that all Twitter content--
including tweets and direct messages--sent or received by Trump 
administration officials on Twitter accounts used for official 
government business are collected and preserved by your company?
    Answer. Please see the answer to Question 20.

    Online Disinformation. I have serious concerns about the unchecked 
spread of disinformation online. From false political claims to harmful 
health information, each day the problem seems to get worse and worse. 
And I do not believe that social media companies--who make billions of 
dollars from ads based in part on user views of this disinformation--
are giving this problem the serious attention that it deserves.
    Question 23. Do you agree that Twitter can and should do more to 
stop the spread of harmful online disinformation?
    Answer. As outlined in the responses to Question 4 and Question 8, 
we have taken significant steps to combat harmful misinformation online 
as it relates to COVID-19, civic integrity, and synthetic and 
manipulated media. We continue to improve and expand these policies, 
and welcome working with the Committee to address these issues more 
broadly.

    Question 24. Can you commit that Twitter will take more aggressive 
steps to stop the spread of this disinformation? What specific 
additional actions will you take?
    Answer. We continue to expand our policies on misinformation, 
prioritizing our work on the areas with the greatest likelihood of 
harm. For example, in December 2020, we updated our policy approach to 
misleading information about COVID-19, originally issued in March 2020. 
Beginning December 21, we may require people to remove Tweets which 
advance harmful false or misleading narratives about COVID-19 
vaccinations, including:

   False claims that suggest immunizations and vaccines are 
        used to intentionally cause harm to or control populations, 
        including statements about vaccines that invoke a deliberate 
        conspiracy;

   False claims which have been widely debunked about the 
        adverse impacts or effects of receiving vaccinations; or

   False claims that COVID-19 is not real or not serious, and 
        therefore that vaccinations are unnecessary.

    Starting in early 2021, we may label or place a warning on Tweets 
that advance unsubstantiated rumors, disputed claims, and incomplete or 
out-of-context information about vaccines. Tweets that are labeled 
under this expanded guidance may link to authoritative public health 
information or the Twitter Rules to provide people with additional 
context and authoritative information about COVID-19. We will enforce 
this policy in close consultation with local, national, and global 
public health authorities around the world, and will strive to be 
iterative and transparent in our approach.

    Question 25. What are the clickthrough rates on your labelling on 
disputed or fact-checked content related to civic integrity, either 
when content is hidden or merely labelled? What metrics do you use to 
gauge the effectiveness of labelling? Please share typical numerical 
values of the metrics you describe.
    Answer. We continue to work to fully assess the impact of our 
misinformation policies, including in the civic integrity context. For 
example, an initial examination of our efforts from October 27 to 
November 11 around the U.S. 2020 election found that:

   Approximately 300,000 Tweets were labeled under our Civic 
        Integrity Policy for content that was disputed and potentially 
        misleading. These represent 0.2 percent of all U.S. election-
        related Tweets sent during this time period;

   456 of those Tweets were also covered by a warning message 
        and had engagement features limited (Tweets could be Quote 
        Tweeted but not Retweeted, replied to, or liked); and

   Approximately 74 percent of the people who viewed those 
        Tweets saw them after we applied a label or warning message.

    We continue to assess the impact of our ongoing election efforts, 
and look forward to sharing this information with the Committee.
                                 ______
                                 
 Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Richard Blumenthal to 
                              Jack Dorsey
    For the following questions, please provide information about your 
firm's content moderation decisions related to election misinformation 
and civic integrity covering the 2020 election period.

    Question 1. Please describe what processes were used to make 
decisions about labeling or taking down organic and paid content 
related to elections or civic integrity.
    Answer. In the lead up to the 2020 elections, we made significant 
enhancements to our policies to protect the integrity of the election. 
Most notably, this year, we updated our civic integrity policy to more 
comprehensively enforce labeling or removing of false and misleading 
information. The updated policy, which we not only announced publicly 
but also briefed the Presidential campaigns, civil society, and other 
stakeholders on, covers the following activities:

   False or misleading information about how to participate in 
        an election or civic process;

   Content intended to intimidate or dissuade people from 
        participating;

   Misrepresentation about affiliation (for ex., a candidate or 
        political party);

   Content that causes confusion about laws and regulations of 
        a civic process, or officials and institutions executing those 
        civic processes;

   Disputes of claims that could undermine public confidence in 
        the election (e.g., unverified information about election 
        rigging, ballot tampering, vote tallying, or certification of 
        election results); and

   Content that misleads about outcomes (e.g., claiming victory 
        before results are in, inciting unlawful conduct to prevent the 
        procedural or practical implementation of election results).

    The civic integrity policy augmented and enhanced other important 
rules aimed at preventing interference with the election. Twitter 
banned all political advertising in 2019, only allowing some cause-
based advertising for non-partisan civic engagement, in line with our 
belief that the reach of political speech should be earned, not bought. 
Additionally, we adopted rules prohibiting deceptively shared synthetic 
or manipulated media, sometimes referred to as ``deep fakes,'' that may 
lead to serious offline harm; and labeling deceptive or synthetic media 
to provide additional context. Moreover, we have rules prohibiting 
platform manipulation, impersonation, hateful conduct, ban evasion, and 
attributed activity, among other harmful activities. We have also 
labeled specific government and state-media accounts from UN P-5 nation 
states, and plan to expand this effort in the near future.

    Question 2. How many posts were reported or identified as 
potentially containing election misinformation or violations of civic 
integrity policies?
    Answer. We continue to analyze and assess our efforts regarding the 
2020 U.S. election, and have publicly released initial findings here. 
Our efforts to safeguard the conversation on Twitter regarding the 2020 
U.S. election are ongoing. We will continue to work with the Committee 
to provide comprehensive information to the public regarding the 
activity we saw on our service.

    Question 3. How many posts had enforcement action taken for 
containing election misinformation or violations of civic integrity 
policies?
    Answer. Our efforts to safeguard the conversation on Twitter 
regarding the 2020 U.S. election are ongoing and we continue to apply 
labels, warnings, and additional restrictions to Tweets that included 
potentially misleading information about the election. During the 
period from October 27 to November 11, 2020, we labeled approximately 
300,000 Tweets under our Civic Integrity Policy for content that was 
disputed and potentially misleading. These represent 0.2 percent of all 
U.S. election-related Tweets sent during this time period. 
Approximately 450 of those Tweets were also covered by a warning 
message and had engagement features limited, including Tweets could be 
Quote Tweeted but not Retweeted, replied to or liked. Approximately 74 
percent of the people who viewed those Tweets saw them after we applied 
a label or warning message. We saw an estimated 29 percent decrease in 
Quote Tweets of these labeled Tweets due in part to a prompt that 
warned people prior to sharing.

    Question 4. Who did your firm consult to draft and implement 
election misinformation and civic integrity policies?
    Answer. During the 2020 U.S. Election, we cultivated close 
partnerships with election stakeholders that informed our approach, 
including collaborating with Federal and state government officials, 
election officials, industry peers, and civil society. We are provided 
ongoing briefings by the FBI and its Foreign Influence Task Force 
regarding specific threats from foreign actors. We also participate in 
monthly briefings with U.S. government partners and industry peers to 
discuss the evolving threat landscape. We have established routine 
communications channels with the FBI, the Department of Justice, U.S. 
Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of 
National Intelligence. We have strengthened our relationships with the 
elections community, including state elections officials at the state 
and local levels non-governmental organizations, and advocacy groups. 
Twitter also works in close collaboration with our industry peers and 
we share and receive threat information on an ongoing basis. In 
addition, we have engaged key civil rights and civil liberties groups 
on elections related issues.

    Question 5. Who made final decisions about labeling or taking down 
a post related to election misinformation or civic integrity? Who did 
that person or those persons consult?
    Answer. Twitter uses a combination of machine learning and human 
review to adjudicate reports of violations and make determinations on 
whether the activity violates our rules. In addition, Twitter has 
created an internal cross-functional analytical team whose mission is 
to monitor site and service integrity. Drawing on expertise across the 
company, this team can respond immediately to escalations of 
inauthentic, malicious automated or human-coordinated activity on the 
service. To supplement its own analyses, Twitter's analytical team also 
receives and responds to reports from across the company and from 
external third parties. The results from all of the team's analyses are 
shared with key stakeholders at Twitter and provide the basis for 
policy changes, product initiatives, and the removal of accounts.

    Question 6. Does a different or specialized process exist for 
content from Presidential candidates, and if so, how does that process 
for review differ from the normal review?
    Answer. Our mission is to provide a forum that enables people to be 
informed and to engage their leaders directly. Everything we do starts 
with an understanding of our purpose and of the service we provide: a 
place where people can participate in public conversation and get 
informed about the world around them.
    We assess reported Tweets from world leaders against the Twitter 
Rules, which are designed to ensure people can participate in the 
public conversation freely and safely. We focus on the language of 
reported Tweets and do not attempt to determine all potential 
interpretations of the content or its intent. In cases involving a 
world leader, we will err on the side of leaving the content up if 
there is a clear public interest in doing so. We place the violative 
content behind a warning notice.

    Question 7. Based on enforcement actions taken, is there a 
discernible difference in engagement between a labeled post and 
unlabeled posts? Please provide any supporting information.
    Answer. Yes, our analysis of the 300,000 Tweets that had a label or 
warning applied between October 27 and November 11, 2020 indicates that 
approximately 74 percent of the people who viewed those Tweets saw them 
after we applied a label or warning message. We also confronted 
potentially misleading information by showing everyone on Twitter in 
the United States a series of pre-bunk prompts. These prompts, which 
were seen 389 million times, appeared in people's home timelines and in 
Search, and reminded people that the announcement of election results 
were likely to be delayed, and that voting by mail is safe and 
legitimate. Finally, we encouraged people to add their own commentary 
when amplifying content by prompting Quote Tweets instead of Retweets. 
This change introduced some friction, and gave people an extra moment 
to consider why and what they were adding to the conversation. Since 
making this change, we observed a 23 percent decrease in Retweets and a 
26 percent increase in Quote Tweets, but on a net basis the overall 
number of Retweets and Quote Tweets combined decreased by 20 percent. 
In short, this change slowed the spread of misleading information by 
virtue of an overall reduction in the amount of sharing on the service.

    Question 8. What was the average time to add a misinformation label 
to a post?
    Answer. Our efforts to safeguard the conversation on Twitter 
regarding the 2020 U.S. election are ongoing. We will continue to work 
with the Committee to provide comprehensive information to the public 
regarding the enforcement actions we took on our service.

    For the following questions, please provide information about your 
firm's content moderation decisions related to hate speech, election 
interference, civic integrity, medical misinformation, or other harmful 
misinformation over the previous year.

    Question 9. How many pieces of content were reported by users to 
the platform related to hate speech, election interference, civic 
integrity, and medical misinformation, broken down by category?
    Answer. An important component of our transparency efforts is the 
Twitter Transparency Center. This year, we expanded our biannual 
transparency report site to become a comprehensive Twitter Transparency 
Center. Our goal with this evolution is make our transparency reporting 
more easily understood and accessible to the general public. This site 
includes data visualizations making it easier to compare trends over 
time and more information for the individuals who use Twitter, 
academics, researchers, civil society groups and others who study what 
we do to understand bigger societal issues. The Center includes data on 
enforcement actions under the Twitter Rules that requires the removal 
of specific Tweets or to suspend accounts. The Center also includes 
sections covering information requests, removal requests, copyright 
notices, trademark notices, e-mail security, platform manipulation, and 
state-backed information operations. We believe it is now more 
important than ever to be transparent about our practices.

    Question 10. How many pieces of content were automatically 
identified or identified by employees related to hate speech, election 
interference, civic integrity, and medical misinformation, broken down 
by category?
    Answer. Any individual, including employees, can report behavior 
that violates our terms of service directly from a Tweet, profile, or 
Direct Message. An individual navigates to the offending Tweet, 
account, or message and selects an icon that reports that it is 
harmful. Multiple Tweets can be included in the same report, helping us 
gain better context while investigating the issues to resolve them 
faster. For some types of report Twitter also prompts the individual to 
provide more information concerning the issue that is being reported. 
More than 50 percent of Tweets we take action on for abuse are now 
proactively surfaced using technology, rather than relying on reports 
to Twitter.

    Question 11. Of the content reported or flagged for review, how 
many pieces of content were reviewed by humans?
    Answer. Twitter uses a combination of machine learning and human 
review to adjudicate reports of violations and make determinations on 
whether the activity violates our rules. One of the underlying features 
of our approach is that we take a behavior-first approach. That is to 
say, we look at how accounts behave before we look at the content they 
are posting. This is how we were able to scale our efforts globally.

    Question 12. How many pieces of content were subject to enforcement 
action? Please provide a break down for each type of enforcement action 
taken for each category.
    Answer. Please see the response to Question 9.

    Question 13. For content subject to enforcement action due to 
violation of hate speech rules, please identify how many pieces of 
content targeted each type of protected category (such as race or 
gender) covered by your rules. Do you track this information?
    Answer. Twitter does not permit people on Twitter to promote 
violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the 
basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, 
gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or 
serious disease. We also do not allow accounts whose primary purpose is 
inciting harm towards others on the basis of these categories. As 
published in our Twitter Transparency Center, we took action on over 
970,000 accounts for violations of our Hateful Conduct Policy between 
July and December 2019. Although we do not currently report statistics 
on what protected class may be targeted by hateful conduct. We continue 
to explore improvements to tracking the reporting of more detailed 
information regarding the enforcement of our Rules.
                                 ______
                                 
   Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Edward Markey to 
                              Jack Dorsey
    Question 1. Mr. Dorsey, in 2018, you testified before the House 
Energy & Commerce Committee and committed to conducting a public civil 
rights audit at Twitter. Please provide a detailed status report on 
that audit. Please also describe in detail the steps Twitter will take 
to comply with the recommendations of that audit in a transparent 
manner.
    Answer. We agree that third-party feedback and metrics can be 
valuable resources to inform our work. Our focus is not only assessment 
but building a framework both internally and externally to make 
substantive change over time. To that end, currently, several national 
organizations that represent the interests and defense of civil rights, 
serve in advisory roles on our Trust and Safety Council. In addition, 
we have also established a global, cross-functional group to inform and 
evaluate our work related to civil rights.

    Question 2. Mr. Dorsey, children and teens are a uniquely 
vulnerable population online, and a comprehensive Federal privacy law 
should provide them with heightened data privacy protections. Do you 
agree that Congress should prohibit online behavioral advertising, or 
``targeted marketing'' as defined in S.748, directed at children under 
the age of 13?
    Answer. MoPub, a division of Twitter and Twitter International 
Company, provides advertising technology services that allow publishers 
of mobile applications to show ads in their apps, and for advertisers 
to reach audiences that may be interested in their products and 
services. MoPub's policies clearly prohibit the use of MoPub's services 
in violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA. 
MoPub Publisher Partners--companies that develop mobile applications 
(or ``apps'' as they are more commonly known) and integrate the MoPub 
Services to show in-app advertising--are explicitly required to comply 
with COPPA in the collection and use of ``Personal Information'' from 
children under 13 years old. We believe strongly in protecting children 
on Twitter.
                                 ______
                                 
    Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Gary Peters to 
                              Jack Dorsey
    Question 1. Twitter does not alert users if they have seen or 
interacted with content that content moderators have deemed harmful 
disinformation or extremist. Has Twitter examined or considered a 
policy of notifying users when content they have viewed has been 
removed? Why has such a policy not been implemented?
    Answer. Our policies regarding terrorism, violent organizations, 
and hateful conduct are strictly enforced, as are all our policies. We 
take additional steps to safeguard the public conversation from 
manipulation. We proactively enforce policies and use technology to 
halt the spread of content propagated through manipulative tactics, 
such as automation or attempting to deliberately game trending topics. 
For example, we typically challenge 8 to 10 million accounts per week 
for these behaviors, requesting additional details, like e-mail 
addresses and phone numbers in order to authenticate the account.

    Question 2. Twitter's community standards often draw the line at 
specific threats of violence for the removal of content, rather than 
conspiracy theories that may set the predicate for radicalization and 
future action. When it comes to conspiracy theories and misinformation, 
Twitter often chooses not to remove content, but rather to reduce the 
spread and to attach warnings. What testing or other analysis has 
Twitter done that shows your work to reduce the spread of 
disinformation and misinformation is effective?
    Answer. As it relates specifically to violation of our Civic 
Integrity Policy related to the 2020 U.S. Election, we continue to 
apply labels, warnings, and additional restrictions to Tweets that 
included potentially misleading information about the election. During 
the period from October 27, 2020 to November 11, 2020, we labeled 
approximately 300,000 Tweets under our Civic Integrity Policy for 
content that was disputed and potentially misleading. These represent 
0.2 percent of all U.S. election-related Tweets sent during this time 
period. Approximately 450 of those Tweets were also covered by a 
warning message and had engagement features limited, including Tweets 
could be Quote Tweeted but not Retweeted, replied to or liked. 
Approximately 74 percent of the people who viewed those Tweets saw them 
after we applied a label or warning message. We saw an estimated 29 
percent decrease in Quote Tweets of these labeled Tweets due in part to 
a prompt that warned people prior to sharing. Since taking action on 
coordinated harmful activity, we have reduced impressions on this 
content by 50 percent.

    Question 3. It is clear that the existence of conspiracy theories, 
disinformation campaigns, and misinformation has led to violence, even 
if not specifically planned on your platform. Recently, Twitter has 
taken action against the QAnon conspiracy for this reason. Why did 
QAnon reach that threshold now, and how will Twitter address other 
conspiracies? Is there a set number of violent incidents that must 
occur before Twitter considers a group unfit for the platform?
    Answer. The Twitter Rules exist to ensure that people can 
participate in the public conversation freely and safely. In some 
cases, we identify groups, movements, or campaigns that are engaged in 
coordinated activity resulting in harm on and off of Twitter. We 
evaluate these groups, movements, or campaigns against an analytical 
framework, with specific on-Twitter consequences if we determine that 
they are harmful. Coordinated harmful activity is an actor-level 
framework, meaning we assess groups, movements, and campaigns and then 
take enforcement action on any accounts which we identify as associated 
with those entities. In order to take action under this framework, we 
must find both evidence that individuals associated with a group, 
movement, or campaign are engaged in some form of coordination and that 
the results of that coordination cause harm to others. We respectfully 
direct you to our policy for greater detail on our enforcement 
approach.

    Question 4. While I appreciate that Twitter continues to evolve and 
learn about threats of violence on the platform, would you agree that 
as groups evolve and change their tactics you will always be one step 
behind extremist groups that seek to use social media to recruit and 
plan violent acts? How do you address this problem?
    Answer. The challenges we face as a society are complex, varied, 
and constantly evolving. These challenges are reflected and often 
magnified by technology. The push and pull factors influencing 
individuals vary widely and there is no one solution to prevent an 
individual turning to violence. This is a long-term problem requiring a 
long-term response, not just the removal of content.
    While we strictly enforce our policies, removing all discussion of 
particular viewpoints, no matter how uncomfortable our customers may 
find them, does not eliminate the ideology underpinning them. Quite 
often, it moves these views into darker corners of the Internet where 
they cannot be challenged and held to account. As our peer companies 
improve in their efforts, this content continues to migrate to less-
governed platforms and services. We are committed to learning and 
improving, but every part of the online ecosystem has a part to play.

    Question 5. When prioritizing which content to evaluate, Twitter 
does not always consider the amount of time that content is on the 
platform but rather the spread. While this may make sense for 
disinformation, where the threat lies in misleading the population, 
when dealing with content to inspire violence, who sees the content can 
be more important than how many. As we have seen time and again, lone 
actors inspired to violence can cause significant harm. How do you 
address this issue?
    Answer. The trend we are observing year-over-year is a steady 
decrease in terrorist organizations attempting to use our service. This 
is due to zero-tolerance policy enforcement that has allowed us to take 
swift action on ban evaders and other identified forms of behavior used 
by terrorist entities and their affiliates. In the majority of cases, 
we take action at the account creation stage--before the account even 
Tweets. We are reassured by the progress we have made, including 
recognition by independent experts. For example, Dublin City University 
Professor Maura Conway found in a detailed study that ``ISIS's 
previously strong and vibrant Twitter community is now . . . virtually 
non-existent.''

    Question 6. What has Twitter done to work with the National 
Archives and Records Administration to help preserve the API and the 
content of Federal records on your platform in a way consistent with 
Federal records management processes?
    Answer. As we have in prior years, we continue to engage with the 
National Archives and Records Administration on an ongoing basis to 
support their efforts during transition-related periods.

    Question 7. How will Twitter address maintaining records in a way 
consistent with Federal records management processes from the 
``personal'' social media accounts of the president, his advisors, and 
other members of the administration?
    Answer. Twitter defers to the National Archives and Records 
Administration (NARA) and its Management Guide Series to provide 
Federal agencies with guidance on the management of records and other 
types of documentary materials accumulated by Federal agencies and 
officials. However, we work with NARA and other Federal entities to 
ensure they have the tools to preserve records, in cases where such 
preservation may be required or in the public interest.
                                 ______
                                 
   Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Kyrsten Sinema to 
                              Jack Dorsey
    COVID-19 Misinformation. The United States remains in the midst of 
a global pandemic. More than 227,000 Americans have died of COVID-19, 
including nearly 6,000 in my home state of Arizona. COVID has impacted 
the health, employment, and education of Arizonans, from large cities 
to tribal lands like the Navajo Nation. And at the time of this 
hearing, the country is facing another significant surge in cases.
    The persistent spread of COVID-19 misinformation on social media 
remains a significant concern to health officials. Digital platforms 
allow for inflammatory, dangerous, and inaccurate information--or 
outright lies--to spread rapidly. Sometimes it seems that 
misinformation about the virus spreads as rapidly as the virus itself. 
This misinformation can endanger the lives and livelihoods of 
Arizonans.
    Social distancing, hand washing, testing, contact tracing, and mask 
wearing should not be partisan issues, nor should they be the subject 
of online misinformation.

    Question 1. What has Twitter done to limit the spread of dangerous 
misinformation related to COVID-19 and what more can it do?
    Answer. The public conversation occurring on Twitter is critically 
important during this unprecedented public health emergency. With a 
critical mass of expert organizations, official government accounts, 
health professionals, and epidemiologists on our service, our goal is 
to elevate and amplify authoritative health information as far as 
possible. To address this global pandemic, on March 16, 2020, we 
announced new enforcement guidance, broadening our definition of harm 
to address, specifically, content related to COVID-19 that goes 
directly against guidance from authoritative sources of global and 
local public health information. We require individuals to remove 
violative Tweets in a variety of contexts with the goal of preventing 
offline harm. Additionally, we are currently engaged in an effort 
launched by the Office of the U.S. Chief Technology Officer under 
President Trump in which we are coordinating with our industry peers to 
provide timely, credible information about COVID-19 via our respective 
platforms. This working group also seeks to address misinformation by 
sharing emerging trends and best practices.

    Spreading Accurate Information. Arizonans need accurate, 
scientifically based information to help get through this pandemic. 
Many Arizonans get their news from sources such as Twitter. As a 
result, your companies can play a role in helping people receive 
accurate information that is relevant to their communities and can aid 
them in their decisions that keep their families healthy and safe.
    For example, earlier this month, the CDC issued a report 
illustrating that COVID-19 cases fell dramatically in Arizona after 
prevention and control measures were put into place. I shared this 
information on social media, and this is the type of information we 
should emphasize to help save lives.

    Question 2. What more can Twitter do to better amplify accurate, 
scientifically-based health information to ensure that Arizonans 
understand how best to protect themselves from the pandemic?
    Answer. In January 2020, we launched a dedicated search prompt 
feature to ensure that when individuals come to the service for 
information about COVID-19, they are met with credible, authoritative 
content at the top of their search experience. We have been 
continuously monitoring the conversation on the service to make sure 
keywords--including common misspellings--also generate the search 
prompt.
    In the United States, people who search for key terms on Twitter 
are directed to the dedicated website on coronavirus and COVID-19 
administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 
In each country where we have launched the initiative, we have 
partnered with the national public health agency or the World Health 
Organization (@WHO) directly.
    The proactive search prompt is in place with official local 
partnerships in the United States and nearly 70 markets around the 
world. We have also ensured the Events feature on Twitter contains 
credible information about COVID-19 and is available at the top of the 
home timeline for everyone in the U.S. and a number of other countries.

    Scientific Evidence-based COVID Information. Our best sources of 
information related to the pandemic are doctors, researchers, and 
scientists. We should be relying on their expertise to help stop the 
spread of the virus and help our country recover from its devastating 
impacts.

    Question 3. Who determines whether content on Twitter is 
scientifically supported and evidence based?
    Answer. Twitter is enhancing our internal and external efforts to 
build partnerships, protect the public conversation, help people find 
authoritative health information, and contribute pro bono advertising 
support to ensure people are getting the right message, from the right 
source.
    We have open lines of communication with relevant multinational 
stakeholders, including the CDC, the World Health Organization, 
numerous global government and public health organizations, and 
officials around the world, to ensure they can troubleshoot account 
issues, get their experts verified, and seek strategic counsel as they 
use the power of Twitter to mitigate harm.

    COVID Scams Arizonans and Americans have been inundated with 
fraudulent offers and scams, using social media to spread inaccurate 
information and perpetrate criminal scams. I've been using my own 
social media to help warn Arizonans about common scams related to 
economic assistance, false coronavirus ``cures'', and where they can 
report scams to Federal and state authorities.

    Question 4. What has Twitter done to limit the spread of scams and 
report criminal activity and what more can be done to protect seniors, 
veterans, and others who have been targeted by fraudsters?
    Answer. In September 2019, we updated our policies to clarify our 
prohibitions against scam tactics. We want Twitter to be a place where 
people can make human connections and find reliable information. For 
this reason, bad-faith actors may not use Twitter's services to deceive 
others into sending money or personal financial information via scam 
tactics, phishing, or otherwise fraudulent or deceptive methods.
    Using scam tactics on Twitter to obtain money or private financial 
information is prohibited under this policy. Individuals are not 
allowed to create accounts, post Tweets, or send Direct Messages that 
solicit engagement in such fraudulent schemes. Our policies outline 
deceptive tactics that are prohibited. These include relationship/
trust-building scams, money-flipping schemes, fraudulent discounts, and 
phishing scams.
                                 ______
                                 
    Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Jacky Rosen to 
                              Jack Dorsey
    Question 1. Adversaries like Russia continue to amplify 
propaganda--on everything from the election to the coronavirus to anti-
Semitic conspiracy theories--and they do it on your platform, 
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 platform, effectively 
rewarding efforts by foreign powers to exploit divisions in our 
country.

    Question 1a. Are you seeing foreign manipulation or amplification 
of white supremacist and anti-Semitic content, and if so, how are your 
algorithms stopping this? Are your algorithms dynamic and nimble enough 
to combat even better and more personalized targeting that can be 
harder to identify?
    Answer. Twitter strongly condemns antisemitism, and hateful conduct 
has absolutely no place on the service. Our Hateful Conduct Policy 
prohibits a wide range of behavior, including making references to 
violent events or types of violence where protected categories of 
people were the primary victims, or attempts to deny or diminish such 
events. Twitter also has a robust policy against glorification of 
violence and takes action against content that glorifies or praises 
historical acts of violence and genocide, including the Holocaust.
    Combatting attempts to interfere in conversations on Twitter 
remains a top priority for the company, and we continue to invest 
heavily in our detection, disruption, and transparency efforts related 
to state-backed information operations. Twitter defines state-backed 
information operations as coordinated platform manipulation efforts 
that can be attributed with a high degree of confidence to state-
affiliated actors. Our goal is to remove bad faith actors and to 
advance public understanding of these critical topics. Whenever we 
identify inauthentic activity on Twitter that meets our definition of 
an information operation, and which we are able to confidently 
attribute to actors associated with a government, we publicly share 
comprehensive data about this activity. To date, it is the only public 
archive of its kind. Using our archive, thousands of researchers have 
conducted their own investigations and shared their insights and 
independent analyses with the world.

    Question 1b. Have you increased or modified your efforts to quell 
Russian disinformation in the wake of recently revealed efforts by 
Russia and Iran to weaponize stolen voter data to exploit divisions in 
our nation? How have you or will you adjust your algorithms to reduce 
the influence of such content--knowing that these countries' newly 
obtained data will allow for even better targeting, making their 
deception harder to identify?
    Answer. Twitter believes that we have a responsibility to protect 
the integrity of conversations related to elections and other civic 
events from interference and manipulation. Therefore, we prohibit 
attempts to use our services to manipulate or disrupt civic processes, 
including through the distribution of false or misleading information 
about the procedures or circumstances around participation in a civic 
process. Combatting attempts to interfere in conversations on Twitter 
remains a top priority for the company, and we continue to invest 
heavily in our detection, disruption, and transparency efforts related 
to state-backed information operations.
    In recent months we detected limited state backed information 
operations tied to the conversation regarding the 2020 U.S. election. 
On September 1, we suspended five Twitter accounts for platform 
manipulation that we can reliably attribute to Russian state actors 
based on information we received from the Federal Bureau of 
Investigations (FBI). We also permanently suspended two distinct 
networks of accounts that we can reliably attribute to state-linked 
entities in Russia on September 24.
    On September 29, based on intelligence provided by the FBI, we 
removed 132 accounts that appeared to originate in Iran. The accounts 
were attempting to disrupt the public conversation during the 
presidential debate. Additionally, on October 8, we announced we had 
identified a network of primarily compromised accounts on Twitter 
operating from Iran. These accounts artificially amplified 
conversations on politically sensitive topics, including the Black 
Lives Matter movement, the death of George Floyd, and other issues of 
racial and social justice in the United States.

    Question 1c. Are you consulting outside groups to validate 
moderator guidelines on hate speech, including what constitutes anti-
Semitic content? Are you collecting data on hate speech content? If so, 
what are you doing with that data to combat hate speech on your 
platforms?
    Answer. In addition to applying our iterative and research-driven 
approach to the expansion of the Twitter Rules, we've reviewed and 
incorporated public feedback to ensure we consider a wide range of 
perspectives. With each update to our policy prohibiting hateful 
conduct, we have sought to expand our understanding of cultural nuances 
and ensure we are able to enforce our rules consistently. We have 
benefited from feedback from various communities and cultures who use 
Twitter around the globe. We realize that we don't have all the 
answers, so in addition to public feedback, we work in partnership with 
our Trust & Safety Council as well as other organizations around the 
world with deep subject matter expertise in this area. Additionally, we 
convened a global working group of third-party experts to help us think 
about how we could appropriately address dehumanizing speech around the 
complex categories of race, ethnicity, and national origin. These 
experts helped us better understand the challenges we would face.

    Question 2. Recently, there have been high profile cybersecurity 
breaches involving private companies, government agencies, and even 
school districts--including in my home state of Nevada. A few months 
ago, a hacker subjected Clark County School District--Nevada's largest 
school district and our country's fifth largest, serving more than 
320,000 students--to a ransomware attack. In the tech industry, there 
was a notable breach of Twitter in July, when hackers were able to 
access an internal IT administrator tool used to manage accounts. 
Dozens of verified accounts with high follower counts--including those 
of President Obama, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos--were used to send out a 
tweet promoting a Bitcoin scam. What we learned from this breach is 
stunning . . . the perpetrators were inside the Twitter network in one 
form or another.

    Question 2a. How often do your staff attend cybersecurity training? 
Do you hire outside cybersecurity firms to look at your systems, 
offering a fresh look and catching overlooked flaws?
    Answer. Every new hire receives security and privacy training 
during onboarding. That training is augmented on an ongoing basis 
through mandatory and optional training. For example, each year 
employees must complete a mandatory compliance training that refreshes 
security and privacy requirements. In addition, employees in applicable 
teams receive training on secure coding and appropriate product launch 
practices. Mandatory training sessions also include phishing training 
and in July 2020, we convened company-wide meetings to provide guidance 
on the security vulnerabilities posed by phishing attacks.

    Question 3. The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a light on our 
Nation's digital divide and on the technological inequalities facing 
millions of American students, including those in Nevada. Lack of 
access to broadband disproportionately affects low-income communities, 
rural populations, and tribal nations--all of which are present in my 
state. In addition to broadband access, many students still do not have 
regular access to a computer or other connected device, making online 
learning incredibly difficult, and sometimes impossible.
    Twitter stepped up during the pandemic to help close the digital 
divide, including by offering many educational resources to help 
teachers and parents during the pandemic.

    Question 3a. As classes continue to meet online, or in a hybrid 
model, what more can Twitter do to help students and teachers?
    Answer. Educators can use Twitter to connect with their students, 
and you can use Twitter to teach about digital citizenship, freedom of 
expression, and respect. The conversation occurring on Twitter on 
#stuvoice and other hashtags are great ways to follow students and hear 
their voices. This is another helpful step in digital literacy and 
citizenship education because students see others speaking up, they 
will feel encouraged to raise their voices as well. One of the first 
lessons of digital literacy is understanding that everyone is a 
speaker, and each of us brings our own values and perspectives to a 
conversation. With support from the United Nations Educational, 
Scientific and Cultural Organization, we released a resource for 
educators on Teaching and Learning with Twitter. We continue to look 
for opportunities to partner with education stakeholders during this 
critical time.

    Question 3b. How does Twitter plan to remain engaged in K-12 
education after we get through the pandemic? In particular, what role 
can you play in closing not only the urban/rural divide, but also the 
racial divide in access to technologies and the Internet?
    Answer. Bridging the digital divide is of the utmost importance. 
Twitter is supportive of efforts by all stakeholders to ensure that 
broadband access reaches every American. On May 15, 2020, Mr. Dorsey 
Tweeted he would personally donate $10 million dollars to 
#OaklandUndivided to ensure every child in Oakland, CA has access to a 
laptop and Internet in their homes.

    Question 4. One of my top priorities in Congress is supporting the 
STEM workforce and breaking down barriers to entering and succeeding in 
STEM fields. This includes ensuring we have a diverse STEM workforce 
that includes people of color and women. In the past several years, 
tech companies have begun releasing diversity reports and promising to 
do better at hiring Black and Latino workers, including women. In 
overall employment, your companies are doing much better today in 
building a diverse workforce. However, in 2020, just 5.1 percent of 
Twitter's tech employees were Black, and only 4.2 percent were Latino.
    I know that tech companies in Nevada understand that by increasing 
the number of women and people of color in tech careers, we diversify 
the qualified labor pool that the U.S. relies on for innovation. This 
will help us maintain our global competitiveness and expand our 
economy, and I hope your companies redouble your efforts to this 
effect.

    Question 4a. Can you discuss the full set of 2020 data on women and 
the people of color who work at your companies, and would you please 
discuss what you are doing to increase these numbers in 2021?
    Answer. Twitter is on a journey to be the world's most diverse and 
inclusive company--it is key to serving the public conversation. Our 
path starts with having a workforce that looks like the amazing people 
around the world who use our service everyday. We have made steady 
progress, but our work doesn't end UntilWe
AllBelong. We provide detailed information in our report on our 
Inclusion and Diversity efforts.

    Question 4b. What are you doing more broadly to support STEM 
education programs and initiatives for women and people of color, 
including young girls of color?
    Answer. Twitter's NeighborNest is a community space dedicated to 
creating new opportunities through technology for San Francisco's most 
underserved, particularly homeless families who are over-represented by 
women and people of color. We do this by partnering with nonprofit 
organizations, Twitter employees, and community residents. Our programs 
focus on advancing Internet safety and education, equality and 
workforce development, and capacity building for NGOs. From career 
mentorship and STEAM education to Twitter training and hosted event 
space, we work to empower the community while cultivating empathy and 
equity. Through its University Recruiting team, Twitter participates in 
events and programs across the country that support aspiring 
technologists of color, such as the National Society of Black Engineers 
Annual Conference, as well as actively recruiting from Historically 
Black Colleges and Universities and higher education institutions 
serving LatinX students. In addition, Twitter is a corporate sponsor of 
the leading national organization dedicated to training young girls to 
enter careers in software engineering and computer science, Girls Who 
Code.
    Finally, recognizing that great talent can come from non-
traditional educational backgrounds, Twitter launched the Engineering 
Apprenticeship. Participants engage in an one-year program with full-
time employment benefits. Apprentices are provided with hands-on 
experience while being paired with dedicated coaches and mentors to 
propel them to a successful career in engineering. Upon completion of 
the program, Engineering Apprentices graduate and are embedded in a 
Twitter engineering team.

    Question 5. To continue being the most innovative country in the 
world, we need to maintain a workforce that can innovate. By 2026, the 
Department of Labor projects there will be 3.5 million computing-
related jobs, yet our current education pipeline will only fill 19 
percent of those openings. While other countries have prioritized STEM 
education as a national security issue, collaborating with non-profits 
and industry, the United States has mostly pursued an approach that 
does not meaningfully include such partnerships. The results of such a 
strategy are clear. A recent study found that less than half of K-12 
students are getting any cyber related education, despite a growing 
demand for cyber professionals, both in national security fields and in 
the private sector.

    Question 5a. What role can Twitter play in helping the United 
States boost its competitiveness in STEM fields, so that our economy 
can better compete with others around the globe?
    Answer. Our efforts for corporate philanthropic investment can 
serve as a model. Under our Twitter for Good program, we have heavily 
invested in workforce development and youth service programs in San 
Francisco to prepare these populations for STEM fields. We work with 
the San Francisco United School District Department of Technology to 
assist them in their STEM curriculum. Additionally, we recently 
expanded this support globally through our partnership with JA 
Worldwide. We also fund specific programs like Techtonica, Hack the 
Hood, and dev/mission as a way to expand STEM opportunities to 
underrepresented communities.
                                 ______
                                 
    Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Roger Wicker to 
                             Sundar Pichai
    Question 1. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides 
platforms like Twitter immunity from civil liability when dangerous--
even illegal--third-party content is published on the platform. During 
the COVID-19 pandemic, search terms like ``COVID cure'' and ``get 
hydroxychloroquine'' have been popular in the United States as 
unsuspecting Americans grapple with the public health emergency. The 
search results often direct individuals to unregulated illegal 
``pharmacies'' on the internet. In fact, last year, the National 
Association of Boards of Pharmacy found that of nearly 12,000 surveyed 
pharmacy websites, 90 percent were illegal. However, a recent survey 
found that 7 in 10 Americans erroneously believe that if an online 
pharmacy website appears high up in a search engine search, it is 
likely to be legitimate.
    What specific action(s) has Google taken to ensure users are 
directed to safe websites to find reliable and correct information 
about the COVID-19 pandemic?
    How has Google's search algorithm specifically taken illegal online 
pharmacies into consideration to ensure unsuspecting consumers are not 
directed to a website selling dangerous or illegal products?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to all subparts of Question No. 1.
    We were committed to combating health misinformation before the 
coronavirus crisis, and our commitment has not wavered. In fact, a 
number of the policies and product features we are currently using as 
pat of our response to COVID-19 were already in place before the crisis 
began. For example, our ranking systems on Google Search and YouTube 
have been designed to elevate authoritative information in response to 
health-related searches for years, and we have significantly enhanced 
our efforts to combat COVID-19 misinformation. Since the outbreak of 
COVID-19, teams across Google have launched 200 new products, features, 
and initiatives, and we are contributing over $1 billion in resources 
to help our users, clients, and partners through this unprecedented 
time. These efforts include our Homepage ``Do the Five'' promotion, 
launch of a COVID-19-focused site (https://www.google.com/intl/en_us/
covid19/), and amplifying authoritative voices through ad grants. There 
have been over 400 billion impressions on our information panels for 
coronavirus related videos and searches since the pandemic began, and 
since February, we've removed over 270 million coronavirus related ads 
across all Google advertising platforms, and 600,000 coronavirus 
videos, globally. We have invested heavily to make sure that we surface 
authoritative content in our search results, which significantly 
reduces the spread of misinformation, and we will continue to do so 
after this unprecedented public health crisis. And our work to update 
our YouTube recommendation systems to decrease the spread of 
misinformation, including (but not limited to) health-related 
misinformation, was announced in January 2019. For more information, 
please see https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/continuing-our-work-to-
improve.
    Our advertising policies prohibit unauthorized pharmacies and we 
restrict the promotion of online pharmacies (https://support/adspolicy/
answer/176031). We do not allow advertisers to offer drugs without a 
prescription or target a location where the advertiser is not licensed 
to sell. We also require online pharmacies to be accredited by either 
the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) or the 
LegitScript Healthcare Merchant Certification and Monitoring Program 
and to apply to advertise with Google before they can promote their 
services. Users on YouTube also are not allowed to include links to an 
online pharmacy that does not require prescriptions.
    In addition, irrespective of any claim of legality, our advertising 
policies prevent a long list of content from being promoted. This 
includes a non-exhaustive list of prohibited pharmaceuticals and 
supplements, products that have been subject to any government or 
regulatory action or warning, and products with names that are 
confusingly similar to an unapproved pharmaceutical or supplement or 
controlled substance. Our policies prevent Lapps, ads or merchant 
products that promote or sell unapproved substances as well, 
irrespective of any claims of legality, such as apps that facilitate 
the sale of marijuana.
    In 2018, we also began delisting online rogue pharmacies identified 
in Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warning letters submitted 
directly to us by the FDA. Google and the FDA worked upon building and 
honing procedures to efficiently process these letters. Upon receipt of 
these letters from the FDA, we review and take delisting action for 
active sites associated with the rogue pharmacies identified in the 
warning letters.
    We are also founding members of the Center for Safe Internet 
Pharmacies (CSIP), a nonprofit organization of diverse Internet service 
providers and technology companies that together with a growing group 
of U.S. states, supportive nonprofits, and other organizations, offers 
online pharmacy verification powered by LegitScript, and works closely 
with concerned organizations, such as the Partnership for Drug Free 
Kids, to educate consumers and others on vital addiction support and 
other related resources. For more information, please see https://
safemedsonline.org/resources/opioid-addiction-resources/.
    We have and will continue to identify new or changing illicit drugs 
or pharmaceutical products and to prohibit them from being surfaced on 
our products, and to address attempts to evade or circumvent our 
efforts in this area. We will continue to reassess our policies and 
procedures to increase the protection of our users and the public, and 
work to improve our policies.

    Question 2. Mr. Pichai, you noted in the hearing that without the 
``otherwise objectionable'' language of Section 230, the suppression of 
teenagers eating tide pods, cyber-bullying, and other dangerous trends 
would have been impossible.
    Couldn't the language of Section 230 be amended to specifically 
address these concerns, including by the language of ``promoting self 
harm'' or unlawful'' without needing the ``otherwise objectionable'' 
language that provides online platforms a blank check to take down any 
third-party speech with which they disagree?
    What other language would be necessary to address truly harmful 
material online without needing to rely on the vague term ``otherwise 
objectionable''?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to all subparts of Question No. 2.
    Threats to our platforms and our users are constantly evolving. We 
certainly agree that we need to be able to limit content that 
``promot[es] self harm,'' is ``unlawful,'' or is otherwise truly 
harmful material. But we have concerns about unintended consequences in 
removing ``otherwise objectionable'' material, as the nature of the 
harmful content we see is always changing. If we were to have specific 
exceptions, we would lose the ability to act in real time on troubling 
and dangerous content that we are seeing for the first time. Striking 
``otherwise objectionable'' also could put removals of spam, malware, 
fraud, scams, misinformation, manipulated media, and hate speech at 
risk. Our ability to remove such content is particularly important now, 
when there has been a flood of daily malware, phishing e-mails, and 
spam messages related to COVID-19.
    We also recognize the legitimate questions raised by this Committee 
on Section 230 and would be pleased to continue our ongoing dialogue 
with Congress.

    Question 3. Why wouldn't a platform be able to rely on terms of 
service to address categories of potentially harmful content outside of 
the explicit categories in Section 230(c)(2)? Why should platforms get 
the additional protections of Section 230 for removal of yet undefined 
categories of speech?
    Answer. Section 230 is what permits us to curate content to protect 
users--and changes could jeopardize removals of terrorist content, 
spam, malware, scams, misinformation, manipulated media, and hate 
speech. Given the ever-evolving threats to our platforms and users, and 
that the nature of the content we see is always changing, it would be 
ineffective and impractical to attempt to address every possible harm 
in advance in our terms of service, and we could lose the ability to 
act in real time on troubling and harmful content that we are seeing 
for the first time. It is important that we and other platforms do not 
have to second guess our ability to act quickly to remove violative 
content. We are strong proponents of free speech, but have always had 
rules of the road and are never going to be ``neutral'' about issues 
like child abuse, terrorism, and harassment.
    Google also remains committed to transparency in our business 
practices, including our content moderation efforts. In fact, we were 
the first to launch a Transparency Report (https://
transparencyreport.google.com/) and have continued to expand and 
enhance our transparency efforts across numerous products and services 
over time. We do recognize the legitimate questions raised by this 
Committee on Section 230 and would be pleased to continue our ongoing 
dialogue with Congress.

    Does Section 230s ``otherwise objectionable'' catchall offer 
immunity for content moderation decisions motivated by political bias?

    If the ``otherwise objectionable'' catchall does not offer such 
immunity, what limiting principle supports the conclusion that the 
catchall does not cover politically-biased moderation?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to these subparts of Question No. 3.
    Our products are built for everyone, and we design them with 
extraordinary care to be a trustworthy source of information without 
regard to politics or political viewpoint. Our users overwhelmingly 
trust us to deliver the most helpful and reliable information available 
on the web. Distorting results or moderating content for political 
purposes would be antithetical to our mission and contrary to our 
business interests--it's simply not how we operate.
    Consistent with our mission, Google enforces its content moderation 
policies consistently and impartially, without regard to political 
viewpoint. Section 230 has enabled us to respond quickly to ever-
evolving threats to our platforms and users. For example, when the 
Christchurch videos happened, we saw a highly distressing type of 
content on our platforms--something that the ``otherwise 
objectionable'' standard allowed us to quickly address. It was 
important that we and other platforms did not have to second guess our 
ability to act quickly to remove that content. We also have robust 
policies and procedures in place to prevent content moderation 
decisions motivated by improper bias.
    We also recognize the legitimate questions raised by this Committee 
on Section 230 and would be pleased to continue our ongoing dialogue 
with Congress.

    If the ``otherwise objectionable'' catchall does offer such 
immunity now, how would you rewrite Section 230 to deny immunity for 
politically-biased content moderation while retaining it for moderation 
of content that is harmful to children?
    Answer. Section 230 is one of the foundational laws that has 
enabled America's technology leadership and success in the Internet 
sector--allowing freedom of expression to flourish online. Google 
facilitates the speech of a wide range of people and organizations from 
across the political spectrum, giving them a voice and new ways to 
reach their audiences. We have always stood for protecting free 
expression online, and have enforced our content moderation policies 
consistently and impartially, and we will continue to do so.
    In addition, millions of small and large platforms and websites 
across the Internet rely on Section 230 to keep users safe by 
addressing harmful content and to promote free expression. Section 230 
is what permits us to curate content to protect users--and changes to 
Section 230 could jeopardize removals of terrorist content, spam, 
malware, scams, misinformation, manipulated media, hate speech, and 
content harmful to children. We are committed to working with Congress 
to see if there is a more flexible approach that would give overall 
guidance to platforms to receive complaints, implement appropriate 
processes, and report out--without overprescribing the precise manner 
and timelines by which they do so, or causing any unintended 
consequences.
    As to content that is harmful to children, we are committed to 
protecting children on our platform. We have invested heavily in 
technologies and efforts to protect children like our Content Safety 
API and CSAI Match tools (https://www.youtube.com/csai-match/). And in 
2019 alone, we filed more than 449,000 reports to the National Center 
for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) Cyber Tipline. We are also a 
leading member of the Technology Coalition, where child safety experts 
across the industry build capacity and help companies working to 
increase their capacity to detect Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) 
(https://www.technologycoalition.org/). In June, the Tech Coalition 
announced a multi-million dollar Research and Innovation Fund and 
Project Protect--a cross-industry initiative to combat CSAM through 
investment, research, and information sharing. For more information, 
please see https://www.technologycoalition.org/2020/05/28/a-plan-to-
combat-online-child-sexual-abuse.
    We're committed to ensuring that our products are safe for children 
and families online, innovating and investing in measures to combat 
CSAM, and continuing to work with you to improve the ability to 
proactively detect, remove, and report this disturbing content. We also 
recognize the legitimate questions raised by this Committee on Section 
230 and would be pleased to continue our ongoing dialogue with 
Congress.

    Question 4. Are your terms of service easy to understand and 
transparent about what is and is not permitted on your platform?
    Answer. The policies that govern use of our products and services 
work best when users are aware of the rules and understand how we 
enforce them. That is why we work to make this information clear and 
easily available to all. We are always working to provide greater 
transparency around our products and our business practices, including 
by making our Google terms of service (https://policies.google.com/
terms) publicly available and plainly worded.
    Our terms of service reflect the way our business works, the laws 
that apply to our company, and certain things we believe to be true. 
Among other things, we use examples from how users interact with and 
use our services to make our terms of service easy to understand. 
Google also has developed comprehensive help centers, websites 
outlining our policies, and blog posts that detail the specific 
provisions of our policies, as well as updates to these policies. In 
fact, Google was the first to launch a Transparency Report (https://
transparencyreport.google.com/), we have expanded and enhanced our 
transparency efforts across numerous products and services over time, 
and we will continue to do so.

    What notice and appeals process do you provide users when removing 
or labeling third-party speech?
    What redress might a user have for improper content moderation 
beyond your internal appeals process?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to these subparts of Question No. 4.
    Our mission at Google is to organize the world's information and 
make it universally accessible and useful. Core to this mission is a 
focus on the relevance and quality of the information we present to 
users. While the breadth of information available online makes it 
impossible to give each piece of content an equal amount of attention, 
human review, and deliberation, we certainly enforce our policies in an 
impartial manner without regard to politics or political viewpoint.
    We want to make it easy for good-faith actors to understand and 
abide by our rules, while making it difficult for bad actors to flout 
them. If users believe their Google Accounts have been suspended or 
terminated in error, we seek to provide the opportunity for users to 
appeal decisions and provide clarification when reasonably possible. To 
help ensure consistent and fair application of our rules and policies, 
such decisions are then evaluated by a different member of our Trust 
and Safety team. Users can learn more about their rights relating to 
our terms of service at https://policies.google.com/terms.
    In addition to our general terms of service, we also publish 
service-specific policies detailing the appeals process, including 
information on Search Reconsideration Requests (https://
support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35843), Ads disapprovals and 
suspensions (https://support.google.com/adspolicy/topic/1308266), 
publisher Policy Center violations (https://support.google.com/adsense/
answer/7003627), and YouTube Community Guidelines violations (https://
support.google.com/youtube/answer/185111). We are transparent about our 
decisions and discuss them further in places like our How Search Works 
page (https://www.google.com/search/researchers/mission/open-web/), 
Google Transparency Report (https://transparencyreport
.google.com/), and YouTube Community Guidelines Enforcement 
Transparency Report (https://transparencyreport.google.com/youtube-
policy/removals).

    In what way do your terms of service ensure against politically-
biased content moderation and in what way do your terms of service 
limit your ability to moderate content on your platform?
    How would you rewrite your terms of service to protect against 
politically-biased content Moderation?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to these subparts of Question No. 4.
    Our products are built for everyone, and we design them with 
extraordinary care to be a trustworthy source of information without 
regard to political viewpoint. Our users overwhelmingly trust us to 
deliver the most helpful and reliable information available. Distorting 
results or moderating content for political purposes or based on 
ideology would be antithetical to our mission and contrary to our 
business interests.
    Google's publicly available terms of service (https://
policies.google.com/terms) provide that we reserve the right to take 
down any content that we reasonably believe breaches our terms of 
service, violates applicable law, or could harm our users, third 
patsies, or Google--we enforce these terms and our other policies in a 
impartial and consistent manner without regard to politics or political 
viewpoint.
    We also have safeguards in place to ensure that we enforce our 
policies in a way that is free from political bias. In addition to 
technical controls and machine learning detection systems, we have 
robust systems to ensure that employees' personal biases do not impact 
our products and that our policies are enforced in a politically 
neutral way. These include policies that prohibit employees from 
engaging in unethical behavior, including altering or falsifying 
Google's systems to achieve some personal goal or benefit. In addition, 
Google reviewers, including Search raters, go through regular training 
and training refreshes. These reviewers are regularly tested and graded 
for consistency with Google's policies. Our Trust and Safety team also 
conducts reviews for compliance in accordance with our own policies. 
Finally, we employ review teams across the globe to ensure we have a 
diverse set of reviewers who are reviewing publisher sites and apps. We 
are proud of our processes and are committed to ensuring we are fair 
and unbiased in enforcing our policies.

    Do you think that removing content inconsistent with your terms of 
service and public representations is removal of content ``in good 
faith''?
    Answer. We design and build our products for everyone, and enforce 
our policies in a good faith, impartial way. We endeavor to remove 
content only when it is inconsistent with our policies, with no regard 
to ideology or political viewpoint. As explained above, when we take 
action or make decisions to enforce our policies, we make it clear to 
users that we have taken action on their content and provide them the 
opportunity to appeal that decision and provide any clarification.

    Question 5. Please provide a list of all instances in which a 
prominent individual promoting liberal or left-wing views has been 
censored, demonetized, or flagged with extra context by your company.
    Please provide a list of all instances in which a prominent 
individual promoting conservative or right-wing views has been 
censored, demonetized, or flagged with extra context by your company.
    How many posts by government officials from Iran or China have been 
censored or flagged by your company?
    How many posts critical of the Iranian or Communist Chinese 
government have been flagged or taken down?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to all subparts of Question No. 5.
    Our products are built for everyone, and we design them with 
extraordinary care to be a trustworthy source of information without 
regard to politics or political viewpoint. Billions of people use our 
products to find information, and we help our users, of every 
background and belief, find the high-quality information they need to 
better understand the topics they care about. That is why we are 
committed to transparency in our business practices, including our 
content moderation efforts. Our Terms of Service are public and can be 
found at: https://policies.google.com/terms. And while they provide 
that we reserve the right to take down any content that we reasonably 
believe breaches our terms of service, violates applicable law, or 
could harm our users, third parties, or Google--we enforce those terms 
and our other policies in an impartial manner, without regard to 
politics or political viewpoint and, wherever possible, we make it 
clear to creators that we have taken action on their content and 
provide them the opportunity to appeal that decision and provide 
clarification.
    To give some sense of the scale of our efforts, in 2019 we blocked 
and removed 2.7 billion bad ads--that's more than 5,000 bad ads per 
minute. We also suspended nearly 1 million advertiser accounts for 
policy violations. On the publisher side, we terminated over 1.2 
million accounts and removed ads from over 21 million web pages that 
are pat of our publisher network for violating our policies. Our 
efforts to protect users from bad ads are described in more detail at 
https://blog.google/products/ads/stopping-bad-ads-to-protect-users, and 
our efforts to enforce our YouTube Community Guidelines are described 
in more detail at https://transparencyreport.google.com/youtube-policy/
removals.
    For example, in the lead up to the 2020 election, we refused to 
publish ads that violated our policies from both the Biden and Trump 
campaigns. For additional information, please see the Political 
Advertising section of our Transparency Report (https://
transparencyreport.google.com/political-ads/region/US). We've also 
received complaints about Search rankings from across the political 
spectrum, from the World Socialist Web Site to Breitbart.
    At the same time, creators on both the left and right have had 
unprecedented success on our platforms. For example, YouTube has been a 
tremendous tool for conservative outlets such as PragerU seeking to 
expand the reach of their message. That channel has over 2 million 
subscribers and over 1 billion video views. Similarly, candidates from 
both parties heavily utilized YouTube as a way to reach voters this 
election cycle, including running ads and publishing content from a 
wide variety of political commentators.
    As to government requests to remove content, including requests 
from the Chinese and Iranian governments, we provide information about 
these requests in our transparency report: https://
transparencyreport.google.com/government-removals/by-country. 
Additionally, we've provided ongoing updates about our efforts to 
combat coordinated influence operations, including operations linked to 
China and Iran, and in May 2020 we announced the launch of a new 
bulletin to provide more frequent, quarterly updates about our 
findings: https://blog.google/threat-analysis-group/updates-about-
government-backed-hacking-and-disinformation/.
    We are proud that we have a wide variety of views expressed on our 
platforms and are committed to ensuring we continue to enforce our 
policies in a fair and impartial manner.

    Question 6. Mr. Pichai, you responded to Senator Gardner that 
companies should not be given sweeping immunity for ``Company-Created 
Content''.
    As it stands, Section 230 has been interpreted not to grant 
immunity if a publishing platform ``ratifies'' illicit activity. Do you 
agree? How do you think ``ratification'' should be defined?
    Do you agree that a platform should not be covered by Section 230 
if it adds its own speech to third-party content?
    When a platform adds its own speech, does it become an information 
content provider under Section 230(f)(3)?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to all subparts of Question No. 6.
    Google is a technology company that facilitates the speech of a 
wide range of people and organizations from across the political 
spectrum, giving them a voice and new ways to reach their audiences. We 
provide a platform for creators, advertisers, academics, politicians, 
scientists, religious groups, and myriad others. Section 230 was passed 
recognizing the unique nature of platforms that host user-generated 
content and allows us to protect our users in the face of ever-evolving 
content and threats. Section 230 safeguards open access to information 
and free expression online. Instead of overblocking speech, the law 
supports platforms' ability to responsibly manage content.
    In some cases, we may also act as an information content provider--
for instance, when we publish a logos on blog.google. In such 
instances, we would be treated as the information content provider with 
respect to that specific content, but that does not and should not 
affect how our services overall are treated under the law.
    We also recognize the legitimate questions raised by this Committee 
on Section 230 and would be pleased to continue our ongoing dialogue 
with Congress.

    Question 7. Should algorithms that promote or demote particular 
viewpoints be protected by Section 230? Why or why not?
    Answer. Our products are built for everyone, and we design them 
with extraordinary care to be a trustworthy source of information 
without regard to political viewpoint. Our users overwhelmingly trust 
us to deliver the most helpful and reliable information available. 
Distorting results or moderating content for political purposes would 
be antithetical to our mission and contrary to our business interests.
    Our services organize, rank, and recommend content in a wide 
variety of ways to help meet people's needs and interests. Indeed, this 
is the essence of most online services today.
    Curtailing Section 230 based on the use of ranking algorithms would 
thus undermine the many benefits of the statute today.
    We also recognize the legitimate questions raised by this Committee 
on Section 230 and would be pleased to continue our ongoing dialogue 
with Congress.

    Do you think the use of an individual company's algorithms to 
amplify the spread of illicit or harmful materials like online child 
sexual exploitation should be protected by Section 230?
    Answer. We've always been proponents of free speech, but have 
always had rules of the road and are never going to be ``neutral'' 
about issues like child abuse, terrorism, and harassment. We are very 
focused on the protection of children on our platforms. Section 230 is 
what permits us to curate content to protect users, and changes to 
Section 230 could jeopardize removals of terrorist content, spam, 
malware, scams, misinformation, manipulated media, and hate speech.
    At Google, we have invested heavily in technologies and efforts to 
protect children on our platform, like our Content Safety API and CSAI 
Match tools (https://www.youtube.com/csai-match/). We already 
proactively look for and report illegal child sexual abuse to NCMEC--
filing more than 449,000 reports to the NCMEC Cyber Tipline in 2019 
alone. We are also a leading member of the Technology Coalition, where 
child safety experts across the industry build capacity and help 
companies working to increase their capacity to detect Child Sexual 
Abuse Material (CSAM) (https://www.technologycoalition.org/). In June, 
the Tech Coalition announced a multi-million dollar Research and 
Innovation Fund and Project Protect--a cross-industry initiative to 
combat CSAM through investment, research, and information sharing. For 
more information, please see https://www.technologycoali
tion.org/2020/05/28/a-plan-to-combat-online-child-sexual-abuse.
    This is a very important issue and we're committed to continue 
working with Congress on it.

    Question 8. Should platforms that knowingly facilitate or 
distribute Federal criminal activity or content be immune from civil 
liability? Why?/Why not?
    If your company has actual knowledge of content on your platform 
that incites violence, and your company fails to remove that content, 
should Federal law immunize your company from any claims that might 
otherwise be asserted against your company by victims of such violence? 
Are there limitations or exceptions to such immunity that you could 
propose for consideration by the Committee?
    Should platforms that are willfully blind to Federal criminal 
activity or content on their platforms be immune from civil liability? 
Why? Why not?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to all subparts of Question No. 8.
    Section 230 helps Internet companies address harmful content, 
including user comments, and while we've always been proponents of free 
speech, we've also always had rules of the road and are never going to 
be ``neutral'' about harmful content. Millions of small and large 
platforms and websites across the Internet rely on Section 230 to both 
keep users safe and promote free expression. Google also has worked 
closely with law enforcement and organizations such as NCMEC, Thorn, 
and Polaris for years. Under existing law, Section 230s protections for 
online platforms already exempt all Federal criminal law. We have 
concerns that changes to Section 230 would negatively impact our 
ability to remove harmful content of all types and would make our 
services less useful and safe. We also recognize the legitimate 
questions raised by this Committee on Section 230 and would be pleased 
to continue our ongoing dialogue with Congress.

    Question 9. Ranking has been described as Google's ``Holy Grail.'' 
During the 2020 election (January 1, 2020 to date), how was ranking 
used for searches related to candidates and election-related issues to 
control the content seen by its users?
    During the 2020 election (January 1, 2020 to date), did Google 
lower the search visibility, suppress, or de-rank in any way any search 
results for any candidates, or election-related issues? If so, how and 
when was this done, and why?
    During the 2020 election (January 1, 2020 to date), did Google 
lower the search visibility, suppress, or de-rank in any way search 
results for any news outlets, including Breitbart News, the Daily 
Caller, or the Federalist? If so, how and when was this done, and why?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to all subparts of Question No. 9.
    Our business model is dependent on being a useful and trustworthy 
source of information for everyone and we design Search and other 
products with extraordinary care to serve our mission without regard to 
politics or political viewpoint. Our Search algorithm ranks pages to 
provide the most useful and relevant information by matching search 
terms against available web pages and looking at factors like the 
number of times the words appear and freshness of the page. Political 
viewpoint is not a relevant factor to our Search results or ranking and 
the 2020 election cycle was no exception. We also seek to ensure that 
our Search results are providing the most authoritative and responsive 
results by using external quality raters from across the vast majority 
of U.S. states. In addition, we have robust systems in place to ensure 
that our policies are enforced in a politically impartial way across 
all of our products and services, including Search.
    For the 2020 election, we worked with The Associated Press (AP)--a 
trusted source of information on election results--to provide 
authoritative elections results on Google. When people come to Search 
looking for information on election results, we provide a dedicated 
feature with data provided by the AP to provide real-time information 
on Google for Federal and state level races.
    Finally, we do not manually intervene in any particular Search 
result. We remove content from our organic Search results only in very 
limited circumstances, such as a court order, valid DMCA takedown 
notice, or violation of our webspam policies. Search ranking considers 
many factors, but political ideology is not factored into the process. 
When we make changes to Search, they apply broadly, after extensive 
testing and controls, rigorous evaluation, and use of detailed metrics. 
Our publicly available Search Quality Rater Guidelines (https://
static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/en//
searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf) provide transparency for ratings, 
users, and webmasters about how Search works. And they make it clear 
that ratings should never be based on personal opinions, preferences, 
religious beliefs, or political views.

    Question 10. In our increasingly digital world, consumers are 
demanding more access to video digital data products and services. The 
need for these mediums has only increased due to the pandemic with more 
Americans relying on video players as pat of their online school and 
work. Competition in this area is key to ensure that the best 
technically available products are available to consumers at 
competitive prices, however, products such as ISO's MPEG High 
Efficiency Video Code have had its access restricted by certain 
browsers, including Chrome. Is Google actively blocking competing video 
players in favor of Chrome-specific products? What steps is Google 
taking to ensure that products and services that directly compete with 
its own product offerings are easily available and accessible to all 
consumers when using Chrome?
    Answer. Google Chrome is focused on creating the best possible 
experience for web browsing. To this end, Google has focused on 
including technologies in Chrome that facilitate the development and 
delivery of media content on internet-connected devices and that 
improve the media experience for all users across the browser 
ecosystem, including OEMs and content providers. These include media 
technologies developed by third parties outside Google.
    The success of Chrome depends on providing users with a fast, 
secure, and performant browsing experience for websites and services 
across the web whether or not they are from Google or other providers; 
understanding that is why a number of users choose Chrome from among 
the many browser options available. We continually evaluate the need to 
include technologies in Chrome based on feedback from our entire 
ecosystem of users, OEMs, and content providers, and we add 
technologies where we identify shared needs across the ecosystem.
                                 ______
                                 
     Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. John Thune to 
                             Sundar Pichai
    Question 1. We have a public policy challenge to connect millions 
of Americans in rural America to broadband. I know you share in our 
commitment to connect every American household with broadband not only 
because it's the right thing to do but because it will add millions of 
new users to your platforms, which of course, means increase profits. 
What role should Congress and your companies play in ensuring that we 
meet all the broadband demands in rural America?
    Answer. Broadband technology, specifically high-speed Internet and 
the devices and tools it enables, is essential to unlock key services, 
especially during this time of crisis. For example, access to broadband 
makes telemedicine possible, so patients can easily confer online with 
their doctors, and this access also enables the tools needed for 
distance learning and teleworking. But we have seen that many 
Americans, in both rural and urban areas, are left out of this picture 
because they do not have access to affordable broadband technology.
    Google's commitment to playing its pat to bridge the digital divide 
means we have invested in expanding access to broadband for those who 
need it most. For example, we are proud to have pioneered a program 
called Rolling Study Halls (https://edu.google.com/why-google/our-
commitment/rolling-study-halls) to equip buses with WiFi to provide 
Internet access for students in rural communities. In addition, Google 
Fiber's Community Connections (https://fiber.google.com/community/#!/) 
program offers organizations such as libraries, community centers, and 
nonprofits free Internet access.
    To keep up with the rising demand for bandwidth, the FCC has worked 
with industry leaders like Google to create the CBRS rules (https://
www.cbrsalliance.org/resource/what-is-cbrs/) for shared spectrum as a 
new model for adding capacity at a low cost. By aligning on industry 
standards, Google is helping the CBRS ecosystem bring better wireless 
Internet to more people in more places. As the foundation for Google's 
suite of products and services for CBRS (https://www.google.com/get/
spectrumdatabase/#cbrs), Google's Spectrum Access System (SAS) controls 
fundamental access to CBRS. Google's SAS is purpose-built to support 
dense networks across operators and to scale on-demand--from a small 
in-building network to the largest nationwide deployment. For more 
information on how Google is bringing affordable Internet and choice to 
consumers, please see https://www.google.com/get/spectrumdatabase/sas/.
    Looking forward, we also believe our mapping and network planning 
tools could be useful for improving the reach and coverage of next 
generation broadband networks. While we don't have specific datasets 
that can solve broadband mapping issues, we're happy to come together 
with the government and industry to try to solve this problem. We also 
recognize that any effort would have to be sensitive to privacy best 
practices and consumer expectations, and we are committed to helping 
find a solution.
    While private sector involvement is very important to making 
broadband more accessible, government policy is fundamental. Now more 
than ever, there is a need for coordinated action by Federal and state 
governments to support investment in world-class digital infrastructure 
to help close the digital divide and deliver ubiquitous, affordable 
Internet access to rural, urban, tribal, and other underserved 
communities. Legislation that increases investment in broadband 
infrastructure, broadband adoption and digital literacy programs, and 
the availability of commercial spectrum will pay enormous dividends for 
those in rural and urban areas today who are on the wrong side of the 
digital divide. We would be pleased to discuss further existing 
proposals before Congress, as well as any other ways we can assist with 
this effort.

    Question 2. The PACT Act would require your platforms to take down 
content that a court has ruled to be illegal. Do you support a court 
order-based takedown rule?
    Answer. With respect to the PACT Act, we are supportive of steps 
that promote transparency of content policies, provide notices of 
removals, and encourage responsible practices, while still ensuring a 
vibrant and responsible online environment. In fact, we were the first 
to launch a Transparency Report (https://transparency
report.google.com/) and have continued to expand and enhance our 
transparency efforts across numerous products and services over time. 
We do think it is important that any legislative approach provides 
flexibility--allowing platforms to build content moderation systems fit 
for the type of service they offer and the processes they use. We have 
concerns that certain changes would negatively impact our ability to 
remove harmful content of all types and would make our services less 
useful and safe. We view Section 230 as a foundational American law 
that has enabled the U.S. to lead the Internet globally, supporting 
millions of jobs and billions of dollars of economic activity--so we 
want to be very cautious and thoughtful about potential changes. We 
also recognize the legitimate questions raised by this Committee on 
Section 230 and would be pleased to continue our ongoing dialogue with 
Congress.

    Question 3. Google's Trust and Safety team has the challenging task 
of filtering out things like violent extremism from your products, but 
Google largely sets its own standards for what should be blocked under 
the rationale of protecting users, and many are skeptical about where 
the line is drawn once you get past incitements to violence. For 
example, an under-reported but nevertheless newsworthy story might be 
mislabeled a conspiracy theory by those seeking to suppress it.
    Would you agree that no one's ``safety'' is protected--and the 
``trust'' of many users is actually jeopardized--when Google uses such 
policies to restrict the exposure of conservative content online? Can 
you assure the committee that such suppression is not occurring?
    Answer. Yes. We are pleased to assure you that we apply our 
policies objectively and consistently in an impartial manner without 
regard to politics or political viewpoint. We build products that are 
for everyone, and we design and enforce our policies in a fair and 
impartial manner.
    For each product and service we offer, we tailor our policies to 
distinguish between providing access to a diversity of voices and 
limiting harmful content and behaviors--whether those are our policies 
against hate speech or material that is excessively violent, unlawful, 
deceptive, or obscene (e.g., Advertising Policies, https://
support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6015406; Publisher Policies, 
https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/9335564; and YouTube 
Community Guidelines, https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/
9288567). We also have safeguards in place to ensure that we enforce 
these policies in a consistent way without bias as to the ideological 
viewpoint of the content.

    Question 4. Section 230 was initially adopted to provide a 
``shield'' for young tech stat-ups against the risk of overwhelming 
legal liability. Since then, however, some tech platforms like yours 
have grown larger than anyone could have imagined. Often a defense we 
hear from Section 230 proponents is that reform would hut current and 
future stat-ups. The PACT Act requires greater reporting from tech 
platforms on moderation decisions, largely exempts small business. 
However, your companies are no longer stat-ups, but rather some of the 
most powerful and profitable companies in the world.
    Do tech giants need ``shields'' codified by the U.S. government? 
Have you outgrown your need for Section 230 protections?
    Answer. It is no accident that the greatest Internet companies in 
the world were created in the United States. Section 230 has worked 
remarkably well, and we believe a cautious and thoughtful approach to 
potential changes is appropriate. Our platforms empower a wide range of 
people and organizations from across the political spectrum, giving 
them a voice and new ways to reach their audiences. Section 230 has 
enabled that, and millions of small and large platforms and websites 
across the Internet rely on Section 230 to both keep users safe and 
promote free expression. Changes to 230 would disproportionately impact 
up-and-coming platforms without the resources to try and police every 
comment or defend every litigation, which could deter the next Google, 
Twitter, or Facebook, as the liability for third-party content would be 
too great. We also recognize the legitimate questions raised by this 
Committee on Section 230 and would be pleased to continue our ongoing 
dialogue with Congress.

    Question 5. Justice Thomas recently observed that ``[p]aring back 
the sweeping immunity courts have read into Sec. 230 would not 
necessarily render defendants liable for online misconduct. It simply 
would give plaintiffs a chance to raise their claims in the first 
place. Plaintiffs still must prove the merits of their cases, and some 
claims will undoubtedly fail.'' Do you agree with him? Why shouldn't 
lawsuits alleging that a tech platform has violated a law by exercising 
editorial discretion be evaluated on the merits rather than being 
dismissed because a defendant invokes Section 230 as a broad shield 
from liability?
    Answer. By putting potentially every decision around content 
moderation up to judicial review, we do have concerns that this type of 
change would negatively impact our ability to remove harmful content of 
all types and would make our services less useful and safe. Millions of 
small and large platforms and websites across the Internet rely on 
Section 230 to both keep users safe and promote free expression. We 
believe that Section 230 strikes the appropriate balance that 
facilitates making more content and diverse points of view available 
than ever before in history, all while ensuring Internet companies can 
keep their platforms safe and secure for our users. We also recognize 
the legitimate questions raised by this Committee on Section 230 and 
would be pleased to continue our ongoing dialogue with Congress.

    Question 6. What does ``good faith'' in Section 230 mean? Is there 
any action you could take that could not be justified as done in ``good 
faith''? Do you agree bad faith content moderation is not covered by 
Section 230? If content is removed pre-textually, or if terms and 
conditions are applied inconsistently depending on the viewpoint 
expressed in the content, is that removing content in good faith?
    Answer. Google agrees that exercising good faith is important, and 
we also believe we already engage in good faith content moderation. 
Among the many policies and publicly available materials we make 
available, we have published terms of service (https://
policies.google.com/terms) and endeavor to remove content only when 
removal is consistent with our policies. When we make decisions to 
enforce our policies, we make it clear to creators that we have taken 
action on their content and provide them the opportunity to appeal that 
decision and provide clarification.
    Our products are built for everyone, and we design them with 
extraordinary care to be a trustworthy source of information without 
regard to politics or political viewpoint. Our users overwhelmingly 
trust us to deliver the most helpful and reliable information available 
on the web. Distorting results or moderating content for political 
purposes would be antithetical to our mission and contrary to our 
business interests--it's simply not how we operate.
    We also recognize the legitimate questions raised by this Committee 
on Section 230 and would be pleased to continue our ongoing dialogue 
with Congress.

    Question 7. You noted in the hearing that without the ``otherwise 
objectionable'' language of Section 230, the suppression of teenagers 
eating tide pods, cyber-bullying, and other dangerous trends would have 
been impossible. Could the language of Section 230 be amended to 
specifically address these concerns, by including the language of 
``promoting self-harm'' or ``unlawful'' without needing the ``otherwise 
objectionable'' language that provides online platforms a blank check 
to take down any third-party speech with which they disagree?

    Question 8. What other language would be necessary to address truly 
harmful material online without needing to rely on the vague term 
``otherwise objectionable?''
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to Question Nos. 7 and 8.
    Threats to our platforms and our users are constantly evolving. We 
certainly agree that we need to be able to limit content that 
``promot[es] self harm,'' is ``unlawful,'' or is otherwise truly 
harmful material. But we have concerns about unintended consequences in 
removing ``otherwise objectionable'' material, as the nature of the 
harmful content we see is always changing. If we were to have specific 
exceptions, we would lose the ability to act in real time on troubling 
and dangerous content that we are seeing for the first time. Striking 
``otherwise objectionable'' also could put removals of spam, malware, 
fraud, scams, misinformation, manipulated media, and hate speech at 
risk. Our ability to remove such content is particularly important now, 
when there has been a flood of daily malware, phishing e-mails, and 
spam messages related to COVID-19.
    We also recognize the legitimate questions raised by this Committee 
on Section 230 and would be pleased to continue our ongoing dialogue 
with Congress.

    Question 9. Why wouldn't a platform be able to rely on the terms of 
service to address categories of potentially harmful content outside of 
the explicit categories in Section 230(c)(2)? Why should platforms get 
the additional protections of Section 230 for removal of yet undefined 
categories of speech?
    Answer. Section 230 is what permits us to curate content to protect 
users--and changes could jeopardize removals of terrorist content, 
spam, malware, scams, misinformation, manipulated media, and hate 
speech. Given the ever-evolving threats to our platforms and users, and 
that the nature of the content we see is always changing, it would be 
ineffective and impractical to attempt to address every possible harm 
in advance in our terms of service, and we could lose the ability to 
act in real time on troubling and harmful content that we are seeing 
for the first time. It is important that we and other platforms do not 
have to second guess our ability to act quickly to remove violative 
content. We are strong proponents of free speech, but have always had 
rules of the road and are never going to be ``neutral'' about issues 
like child abuse, terrorism, and harassment.
    Google remains committed to transparency in our business practices, 
including our content moderation efforts. In fact, we were the first to 
launch a Transparency Report (https://transparencyreport.google.com/) 
and have continued to expand and enhance our transparency efforts 
across numerous products and services over time. We recognize the 
legitimate questions raised by this Committee on Section 230 and would 
be pleased to continue our ongoing dialogue with Congress.

    Question 10. Does Section 230s ``otherwise objectionable'' catchall 
offer immunity for content moderation decisions motivated by political 
bias?
    If the ``otherwise objectionable'' catchall does not offer such 
immunity, what limiting principle supports the conclusion that the 
catchall does not cover politically-biased moderation?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to these subparts of Question No. 10.
    Our products are built for everyone, and we design them with 
extraordinary care to be a impartially source of information without 
regard to politics or political viewpoint. Our users overwhelmingly 
trust us to deliver the most helpful and reliable information available 
on the web. Distorting results or moderating content for political 
purposes would be antithetical to our mission and contrary to our 
business interests--it's simply not how we operate.
    Consistent with our mission, Google enforces its content moderation 
policies consistently and impartially, without regard to political 
viewpoint. Section 230 has enabled us to respond quickly to ever-
evolving threats to our platforms and users. For example, when the 
Christchurch videos happened, we saw a highly distressing type of 
content on our platforms--something that the ``otherwise 
objectionable'' standard allowed us to quickly address. It was 
important that we and other platforms did not have to second guess our 
ability to act quickly to remove that content. We also have robust 
policies and procedures in place to prevent content moderation 
decisions motivated by improper bias.
    We also recognize the legitimate questions raised by this Committee 
on Section 230 and would be pleased to continue our ongoing dialogue 
with Congress.

    If the ``otherwise objectionable'' catchall does offer such 
immunity now, how would you rewrite Section 230 to deny immunity for 
politically-biased content moderation while retaining it for moderation 
of content that is harmful to children?
    Answer. Section 230 is one of the foundational laws that has 
enabled America's technology leadership and success in the Internet 
sector--allowing freedom of expression to flourish online. Google 
facilitates the speech of a wide range of people and organizations from 
across the political spectrum, giving them a voice and new ways to 
reach their audiences. We have always stood for protecting free 
expression online, and have enforced our content moderation policies 
consistently and impartially, and we will continue to do so.
    In addition, millions of small and large platforms and websites 
across the Internet rely on Section 230 to keep users safe by 
addressing harmful content and to promote free expression. Section 230 
is what permits us to curate content to protect users--and changes to 
Section 230 could jeopardize removals of terrorist content, spam, 
malware, scams, misinformation, manipulated media, hate speech, and 
content harmful to children. We are committed to working with Congress 
to see if there is a more flexible approach that would give overall 
guidance to platforms to receive complaints, implement appropriate 
processes, and report out--without overprescribing the precise manner 
and timelines by which they do so, or causing any unintended 
consequences.
    As to content that is harmful to children, we are committed to 
protecting children on our platform. We have invested heavily in 
technologies and efforts to protect children like our Content Safety 
API and CSAI Match tools (https://www.youtube.com/csai-match/). And in 
2019 alone, we filed more than 449,000 reports to the NCMEC Cyber 
Tipline. We are also a leading member of the Technology Coalition, 
where child safety experts across the industry build capacity and help 
companies working to increase their capacity to detect Child Sexual 
Abuse Material (CSAM), https://www.technologycoalition.org/. In June, 
the Tech Coalition announced a multi-million dollar Research and 
Innovation Fund and Project Protect-a cross-industry initiative to 
combat CSAM through investment, research, and information sharing. For 
more information, please see https://www.technologycoalition.org/2020/
05/28/a-plan-to-combat-online-child-sexual-abuse.
    We're committed to ensuring that our products are safe for children 
and families online, innovating and investing in measures to combat 
CSAM, and continuing to work with you to improve the ability to 
proactively detect, remove, and report this disturbing content. We also 
recognize the legitimate questions raised by this Committee on Section 
230 and would be pleased to continue our ongoing dialogue with 
Congress.

    Question 11. Are your terms of service easy to understand and 
transparent about what is and is not permitted on your platform?
    Answer. The policies that govern use of our products and services 
work best when users are aware of the rules and understand how we 
enforce them. That is why we work to make this information clear and 
easily available to all. We are always working to provide greater 
transparency around our products and our business practices, including 
by making our Google terms of service (https://policies.google.com/
terms) publicly available and plainly worded.
    Our terms of service reflect the way our business works, the laws 
that apply to our company, and certain things we believe to be true. 
Among other things, we use examples from how users interact with and 
use our services to make our terms of service easy to understand. 
Google has also developed comprehensive help centers, websites 
outlining our policies, and blog posts that detail the specific 
provisions of our policies, as well as updates to these policies. In 
fact, Google was the first to launch a Transparency Report (https://
transparencyreport.google.com/), we have expanded and enhanced our 
transparency efforts across numerous products and services over time, 
and we will continue to do so.

    Question 12. What notice and appeals process do you provide users 
when removing or labeling third-party speech?

    Question 13. What redress might a user have for improper content 
moderation beyond your internal appeals process?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to Question Nos. 12 and 13.
    Our mission at Google is to organize the world's information and 
make it universally accessible and useful. Core to this mission is a 
focus on the relevance and quality of the information we present to 
users. While the breadth of information available online makes it 
impossible to give each piece of content an equal amount of attention, 
human review, and deliberation, we certainly enforce our policies in an 
impartial manner without regard to politics or political viewpoint.
    We want to make it easy for good-faith actors to understand and 
abide by our rules, while making it difficult for bad actors to flout 
them. If users believe their Google Accounts have been suspended or 
terminated in error, we seek to provide the opportunity for users to 
appeal decisions and provide clarification when reasonably possible. To 
help ensure consistent and fair application of our rules and policies, 
such decisions are then evaluated by a different member of our Trust 
and Safety team. Users can learn more about their rights relating to 
our terms of service at https://policies.google.com/terms.
    In addition to our general terms of service, we also publish 
service-specific policies detailing the appeals process, including 
information on Search Reconsideration Requests (https://
support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35843), Ads disapprovals and 
suspensions (https://support.google.com/adspolicy/topic/1308266), 
publisher Policy Center violations (https://support.google.com/adsense/
answer/7003627), and YouTube Community Guidelines violations (https://
support.google.com/youtube/answer/185111). We are transparent about our 
decisions and discuss them further in places like our How Search Works 
page (https://www.google.com/search/hawser/mission/open-web/), Google 
Transparency Report (https://transparency
report.google.com/), and YouTube Community Guidelines Enforcement 
Transparency Report (https://transparencyreport.google.com/youtube-
policy/removals).

    Question 14. In what way do your terms of service ensure against 
politically-biased content moderation and in what way do your terms of 
service limit your ability to moderate content on your platform?

    Question 15. How would you rewrite your terms of service to protect 
against politically-biased content moderation?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to Question Nos. 14 and 15.
    Our products are built for everyone, and we design them with 
extraordinary care to be a impartially source of information without 
regard to political viewpoint. Our users overwhelmingly trust us to 
deliver the most helpful and reliable information available. Distorting 
results or moderating content for political purposes or based on 
ideology would be antithetical to our mission and contrary to our 
business interests.
    Google's publicly available terms of service (https://
policies.google.com/terms) provide that we reserve the right to take 
down any content that we reasonably believe breaches our terms of 
service, violates applicable law, or could harm our users, third 
patsies, or Google--we enforce these terms and our other policies in a 
impartial and consistent manner without regard to politics or political 
viewpoint.
    We also have safeguards in place to ensure that we enforce our 
policies in a way that is free from political bias. In addition to 
technical controls and machine learning detection systems, we have 
robust systems to ensure that employees' personal biases do not impact 
our products and that our policies are enforced in a politically 
neutral way. These include policies that prohibit employees from 
engaging in unethical behavior, including altering or falsifying 
Google's systems to achieve some personal goal or benefit. In addition, 
Google reviewers, including Search raters, go through regular training 
and training refreshes. These reviewers are regularly tested and graded 
for consistency with Google's policies. Our Trust and Safety team also 
conducts reviews for compliance in accordance with our own policies. 
Finally, we employ review teams across the globe to ensure we have a 
diverse set of reviewers who are reviewing publisher sites and apps. We 
are proud of our processes and are committed to ensuring we are fair 
and unbiased in enforcing our policies. We also recognize the 
legitimate questions raised by this Committee on Section 230 and would 
be pleased to continue our ongoing dialogue with Congress.

    Question 16. Do you think that removing content inconsistent with 
your terms of service and public representations is removal of content 
``in good faith''?
    Answer. We design and build our products for everyone, and enforce 
our policies in a good faith, impartial way. We endeavor to remove 
content only when it is inconsistent with our policies, with no regard 
to ideology or political viewpoint. As explained above, when we take 
action or make decisions to enforce our policies, we make it clear to 
users that we have taken action on their content and provide them the 
opportunity to appeal that decision and provide any clarification.

    Question 17. As it stands, Section 230 has been interpreted not to 
grant immunity if a publishing platform ``ratifies'' illicit activity. 
Do you agree? How do you think ``ratification'' should be defined?

    Question 18. Do you agree that a platform should not be covered by 
Section 230 if it adds its own speech to third-party content?

    Question 19. When a platform adds its own speech, does it become an 
information content provider under Section 230(f)(3)?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to Question Nos. 17-19.
    Google is a technology company that facilitates the speech of a 
wide range of people and organizations from across the political 
spectrum, giving them a voice and new ways to reach their audiences. We 
provide a platform for creators, advertisers, academics, politicians, 
scientists, religious groups, and myriad others. Section 230 was passed 
recognizing the unique nature of platforms that host user-generated 
content and allows us to protect our users in the face of ever-evolving 
content and threats. Section 230 safeguards open access to information 
and free expression online. Instead of overblocking speech, the law 
supports platforms' ability to responsibly manage content.
    In some cases, we may also act as an information content provider--
for instance, when we publish a blogpost on blog.google. In such 
instances, we would be treated as the information content provider with 
respect to that specific content, but that does not and should not 
affect how our services overall are treated under the law.
    We also recognize the legitimate questions raised by this Committee 
on Section 230 and would be pleased to continue our ongoing dialogue 
with Congress.

    Question 20. Should algorithms that promote or demote particular 
viewpoints be protected by Section 230? Why or why not?
    Answer. Our products are built for everyone, and we design them 
with extraordinary care to be a trustworthy source of information 
without regard to political viewpoint. Our users overwhelmingly trust 
us to deliver the most helpful and reliable information available. 
Distorting results or moderating content for political purposes would 
be antithetical to our mission and contrary to our business interests.
    Our services organize, rank, and recommend content in a wide 
variety of ways to help meet people's needs and interests. Indeed, this 
is the essence of most online services today. Curtailing Section 230 
based on the use of ranking algorithms would thus undermine the many 
benefits of the statute today. We also recognize the legitimate 
questions raised by this Committee on Section 230 and would be pleased 
to continue our ongoing dialogue with Congress.

    Question 21. Do you think the use of an individual company's 
algorithms to amplify the spread of illicit or harmful materials like 
online child sexual exploitation should be protected by Section 230?
    Answer. We've always been proponents of free speech, but have 
always had rules of the road and are never going to be ``neutral'' 
about issues like child abuse, terrorism, and harassment. We are very 
focused on the protection of children on our platforms. Section 230 is 
what permits us to curate content to protect users, and changes to 
Section 230 could jeopardize removals of terrorist content, spam, 
malware, scams, misinformation, manipulated media, and hate speech.
    At Google, we have invested heavily in technologies and efforts to 
protect children on our platform, like our Content Safety API and CSAI 
Match tools (https://www.youtube.com/csai-match/). We already 
proactively look for and report illegal child sexual abuse to NCMEC--
filing more than 449,000 reports to the NCMEC Cyber Tipline in 2019 
alone. We are also a leading member of the Technology Coalition, where 
child safety experts across the industry build capacity and help 
companies working to increase their capacity to detect Child Sexual 
Abuse Material (CSAM) (https://www.technologycoalition.org/). In June, 
the Tech Coalition announced a multi-million dollar Research and 
Innovation Fund and Project Protect--a cross-industry initiative to 
combat CSAM through investment, research, and information sharing. For 
more information, please see https://www.technology
coalition.org/2020/05/28/a-plan-to-combat-online-child-sexual-abuse.
    This is a very important issue and we're committed to continue 
working with Congress on it.

    Question 22. Should platforms that knowingly facilitate or 
distribute Federal criminal activity or content be immune from civil 
liability? Why or why not?

    Question 23. If your company has actual knowledge of content on 
your platform that incites violence, and your company fails to remove 
that content, should Federal law immunize your company from any claims 
that might otherwise be asserted against your company by victims of 
such violence? Are there limitations or exceptions to such immunity 
that you could propose for consideration by the Committee?

    Question 24. Should platforms that are willfully blind to Federal 
criminal activity or content on their platforms be immune from civil 
liability? Why or why not?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to Question Nos. 22-24.
    Section 230 helps Internet companies address harmful content, 
including user comments, and while we've always been proponents of free 
speech, we've also always had rules of the road and are never going to 
be ``neutral'' about harmful content. Millions of small and large 
platforms and websites across the Internet rely on Section 230 to both 
keep users safe and promote free expression. Google also has worked 
closely with law enforcement and organizations such as NCMEC, Thorn, 
and Polaris for years. Under existing law, Section 230s protections for 
online platforms already exempt all Federal criminal law. We have 
concerns that changes to Section 230 would negatively impact our 
ability to remove harmful content of all types and would make our 
services less useful and safe. We also recognize the legitimate 
questions raised by this Committee on Section 230 and would be pleased 
to continue our ongoing dialogue with Congress.

    Question 25. Ranking has been described as Google's Holy Grail. 
During the 2020 election (January 1, 2020 to date), how was ranking 
used for searches related to candidates and election-related issues to 
control the content seen by its users?

    Question 26. During the 2020 election (January 1, 2020 to date), 
did Google lower the search visibility, suppress, or de-rank in any way 
any search results for any candidates, or election-related issues? If 
so, how and when was this done, and for what reason?

    Question 27. During the 2020 election (January 1, 2020 to date), 
did Google lower the search visibility, suppress, or de-rank in any way 
search results for any news outlets, including Breitbart News, the 
Daily Caller, or the Federalist? If so, how and when was this done, and 
why?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to Question Nos. 25-27.
    Our business model is dependent on being a useful and trustworthy 
source of information for everyone and we design Search and other 
products with extraordinary care to serve our mission without regard to 
politics or political viewpoint. Our Search algorithm ranks pages to 
provide the most useful and relevant information by matching search 
terms against available web pages and looking at factors like the 
number of times the words appear and freshness of the page. Political 
viewpoint is not a relevant factor to our Search results or ranking and 
the 2020 election cycle was no exception. We also seek to ensure that 
our Search results are providing the most authoritative and responsive 
results by using external quality raters from across the vast majority 
of U.S. states. In addition, we have robust systems in place to ensure 
that our policies are enforced in a politically impartial way across 
all of our products and services, including Search.
    For the 2020 election, we worked with The Associated Press (AP)--a 
trusted source of information on election results--to provide 
authoritative elections results on Google. When people come to Search 
looking for information on election results, we provide a dedicated 
feature with data provided by the AP to provide real-time information 
on Google for Federal and state level races.
    Finally, we do not manually intervene in any particular Search 
result. We remove content from our organic Search results only in very 
limited circumstances, such as a court order, valid DMCA takedown 
notice, or violation of our webspam policies. Search ranking considers 
many factors, but political ideology is not factored into the process. 
When we make changes to Search, they apply broadly, after extensive 
testing and controls, rigorous evaluation, and use of detailed metrics. 
Our publicly available Search Quality Rater Guidelines (https://
static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/en//
searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf) provide transparency for ratings, 
users, and webmasters about how Search works. And they make it clear 
that ratings should never be based on personal opinions, preferences, 
religious beliefs, or political views.
                                 ______
                                 
    Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Jerry Moran to 
                             Sundar Pichai
    Question 1. How much money does your company spend annually on 
content moderation in general?
    Answer. Our mission is to organize the world's information and make 
it universally useful and accessible. As such, it is difficult for us 
to separate our content moderation efforts and investments from our 
overall efforts and investments. However, we estimate that we spent at 
least $1 billion over the past year on content moderation systems and 
processes. We continue to invest aggressively in this area.

    Question 2. How many employees does your company have that are 
involved with content moderation in general? In addition, how many 
outside contractors does your company employ for these purposes?
    Answer. We enforce our content policies at scale and take tens of 
millions of actions every day against content that does not abide by 
the policies for one or more of our products. To enforce our policies 
at scale, we use a combination of reviewers and AI moderation systems.
    In the last year, more than 20,000 people have worked in a variety 
of roles to help enforce our policies and moderate content. Content 
moderation at Google and YouTube is primarily managed by Trust and 
Safety teams across the company. These teams are made up of engineers, 
content reviewers, and others who work across Google to address content 
that violates any of our policies. These teams also work with our legal 
and public policy teams, and oversee the vendors we hire to help us 
scale our content moderation efforts, as well as provide the native 
language expertise and the 24-hour coverage required of a global 
platform. Moderating content at scale is an immense challenge, but we 
see this as one of our core responsibilities and we are focused on 
continuously working towards removing content that violates our 
policies before it is widely viewed.

    Question 3. How much money does your company currently spend on 
defending lawsuits stemming from users' content on your platform?
    Answer. Google is subject to and defends against numerous lawsuits 
and legal claims each year, including content-related claims, ranging 
from complex Federal litigation to local small claims count claims. 
Alphabet Inc.'s annual 10-K filing (https://abc.xyz/investor/) includes 
information on the types of material, public legal matters we defend. 
As detailed in our 10-K filings, we are subject to claims, suits, and 
government investigations involving content generated by our users and/
or based on the nature and content of information available on or via 
our services, as well as other issues such as competition, intellectual 
property, data privacy and security, consumer protection, tax, labor 
and employment, commercial disputes, goods and services offered by 
advertisers or publishers using our platforms, and other legal 
theories.

    Question 4. Without Section 230s liability shield, would your legal 
and content moderation costs be higher or lower?
    Answer. Without Section 230, we certainly could face an increased 
risk of liability and litigation costs for decisions around removal of 
content from our platforms. For example, YouTube might face legal 
claims for removing videos we determine could harm or mislead users in 
violation of our policies. Or we might be sued for trying to protect 
our users from spam and malware on Gmail and Search.
    By putting potentially every decision around content moderation up 
to judicial review, we have concerns that this type of change would 
negatively impact our ability to remove harmful content of all types 
and would make our services less useful and safe. Millions of small and 
large platforms and websites across the Internet rely on Section 230 to 
both keep users safe and promote free expression. We believe that 
Section 230 strikes the appropriate balance that facilitates making 
more content and diverse points of view available than ever before in 
history, all while ensuring Internet companies can keep their platforms 
safe and secure for our users. We also recognize the legitimate 
questions raised by this Committee on Section 230 and would be pleased 
to continue our ongoing dialogue with Congress.

    Question 5. How many liability lawsuits have been filed against 
your company based on user content over the past year?

    Question 6. Please describe the general breakdown of categories of 
liability, such as defamation, involved in the total number of lawsuits 
over the past year.

    Question 7. Of the total number of liability lawsuits based on user 
content, how many of them did your company rely on Section 230 in its 
defense?

    Question 8. Of the liability lawsuits based on user content in 
which your company relies on Section 230 in its defense, what 
categories of liability in each of these lawsuits is your company 
subject to?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to Question Nos. 5-8.
    As noted in our response to Question No. 3 above, Google is subject 
to and defends against numerous lawsuits and legal claims each year, 
including content-related claims, ranging from complex Federal 
litigation to local small claims court claims. Alphabet Inc.'s annual 
10-K filing (https://abc.xyz/investor/) includes information on the 
types of material, public legal matters we defend.

    Question 9. In a defamation case based on a user content, please 
describe the typical procedural steps your company takes to litigate 
these claims.
    Answer. While Google is unable to provide privileged or other 
information that could impact its legal strategy in current or future 
matters, Google defends against claims to the full extent permitted by 
law. We have strong policies across our products to protect our users, 
including our content moderation policies. We take allegations of this 
nature seriously and take appropriate action.

    Question 10. Of the claims that have been dismissed on Section 230 
grounds, what is the average cost of litigation?
    Answer. As noted in our response to Question Nos. 3 and 5-8 above, 
Google is subject to and defends against numerous lawsuits and legal 
claims each year, including content-related claims, ranging from 
complex Federal litigation to local small claims count claims. Alphabet 
Inc.'s annual 10-K filing (https://abc.xyz/investor/) includes 
information on the types of material, public legal matters we defend.

    Question 11. I understand the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (MUSCAT) 
contains similar intermediary liability protections that Section 230 
established domestically. The recent trade deal with Japan also 
included similar provisions.
    If Congress were to alter Section 230, do you expect litigation or 
free trade agreement compliance issues related to the United States 
upholding trade agreements that contain those provisions?
    Answer. Section 230 is one of the foundational laws that has 
enabled America's technology leadership and success in the Internet 
sector--allowing freedom of expression to flourish online. And it has 
worked remarkably well in the United States. Some other countries are 
increasingly looking to regulate, restrict, and censor content in a way 
that harms U.S. exporters and U.S. creators. Including pro-speech and 
pro-innovation rules in a trade agreement helps the U.S. push back on 
those regimes and defend an open Internet globally. The online 
liability provisions of USMCA (Article 19.17) and the U.S.-Japan Trade 
Agreement are aligned with Section 230 and ensure that service 
providers are not held liable for third-party content published on 
their platforms.
    Because Section 230 is not the only U.S. law included in trade 
agreements (e.g., copyright protections are often included), the 
litigation and compliance risks associated with upholding trade 
agreements containing Section 230-like protections that Congress may 
change are generally similar to the risks associated with upholding 
trade agreements containing other U.S. laws that Congress may change.

    Question 12. How does the inclusion of Section 230-like protections 
in the aforementioned trade deals affect your business operations in 
the countries party to said trade deals? Do you expect fewer defamation 
lawsuits and lower legal costs associated with intermediary liability 
in those countries due to these trade deals?
    Answer. The importance of Section 230 to the U.S. economy has grown 
since Section 230 was first introduced in the 1990s. It has generated a 
robust Internet ecosystem where commerce, innovation, and free 
expression all thrive--while at the same time enabling providers to 
develop content detection mechanisms and take aggressive steps to fight 
online abuse.
    Intermediary safe harbors in trade deals are critical to digital 
trade and contribute to the success of the U.S. economy. A recent 
report found that over the next decade, Section 230 will contribute 
4.25 million additional jobs and $440 billion in growth to the economy. 
(NetChoice and the Copia Institute, ``Don't Shoot The Message Board: 
How Intermediary Liability Harms Online Investment and Innovation'' 
(June 25, 2019), https://copia.is/library/dont-shoot-the-message-board/
). Section 230 is also a key contributor to the U.S.'s $172 billion 
digital trade surplus and helps large and small firms run a global 
business. (Internet Association, ``A Look At American Digital Exports'' 
(January 23, 2019), https://internetassociation.org/publications/a-
look-at-american-digital-exports/.)
    It is important for businesses to be able to moderate content and 
to prevent censorship from other, more oppressive regimes abroad. 
Including pro-speech and pro-innovation rules in trade agreements helps 
us avoid the costs and harm (including lawsuits and legal costs) 
associated with overbroad intermediary liability.

    Question 13. In countries that do not have Section 230-like 
protections, are your companies more vulnerable to litigation or 
liability as a result?

    Question 14. How do your content moderation and litigation costs 
differ in these countries compared to what you might expect if Section 
230-like protections were in place?

    Question 15. As American companies, does Section 230s existence 
provide you any liability protection overseas in countries that do not 
have similar protections for tech companies?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to Question Nos. 13-15.
    It is no accident that the greatest Internet companies in the world 
were created in the United States. As noted in other responses related 
to Section 230, it is one of the foundational laws that has enabled 
America's technology leadership and success in the Internet sector--
allowing freedom of expression to flourish online.
    While liability limitations under Section 230 exist in U.S. courts, 
in countries without Section 230-like protections, we could face an 
increased risk of liability and litigation costs for decisions around 
removal of content from our platforms. Threats to our platforms and our 
users are ever-evolving, and the nature of the content we see is always 
changing. Section 230 enables Google and other platforms to act quickly 
to remove violative content and avoid the increased risk of liability 
and litigation costs associated with such intermediary liability.

    Question 16. To differing extents, all of your companies rely on 
automated content moderation tools to flag and remove content on your 
platforms.
    What is the difference in effectiveness between automated and human 
moderation?

    Question 17. What percentage of decisions made by automated content 
moderation systems are successfully appealed, and how does that compare 
to human moderation decisions?

    Question 18. Please describe the limitations and benefits specific 
to automated content moderation and human content moderation.
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to Question Nos. 16-18.
    To enforce our policies at scale, we rely on a mix of automated and 
manual efforts to spot problematic content in violation of our 
policies. In addition to flags by individual users, sophisticated 
automated technology helps us detect problematic content at scale. Our 
automated systems are carefully trained to quickly identify and take 
action against spam and violative content. This includes flagging 
potentially problematic content for reviewers, whose judgment is needed 
for the many decisions that require a more nuanced determination.
    Automated flagging also allows us to identify and act more quickly 
and accurately to remove violative content, lessening both the burden 
on human reviewers and the time it takes to remove such content. Our 
machine learning systems are faster and more effective than ever before 
and are helping our human review teams remove content with speed and 
volume that could not be achieved with people alone. For example, in 
the third quarter of 2020, more than 7.8 million videos were removed 
from YouTube for violating our community guidelines. Ninety-four 
percent of these videos were first flagged by machines rather than 
humans. Of those detected by machines, over 45 percent never received a 
single view, and just over 80 percent received fewer than 10 views. In 
the same period, YouTube removed more than 1.1 billion comments, 99 
percent of which were detected automatically. For more information, 
please see our YouTube Community Guidelines Enforcement Transparency 
Report (https://transparencyreport.google.com/youtube-policy/removals).
    As we work continuously to improve and enhance information quality 
and our content moderation practices, we rely heavily on machines and 
technology, but reviewers also play a critical role. New forms of abuse 
and threats are constantly emerging that require human ingenuity to 
assess and develop appropriate plans for action. Our reviewers perform 
billions of reviews every year, working to make fair and consistent 
enforcement decisions in enforcing our policies and helping to build 
training data for machine learning models.
    For example, at YouTube, reviews of Community Guideline flags and 
other notices are conducted by our technological systems in conjunction 
with Google reviewers. We have a robust quality review framework in 
place to make sure our global staff are consistently making the 
appropriate decisions on reported content, and receive regular feedback 
on their performance. We also operate dedicated threat intelligence and 
monitoring teams (e.g., Google's Threat Analysis Group, https://
blog.google/threat-analysis-group), which provide insights and 
intelligence to our policy development and enforcement teams so they 
can stay ahead of bad actors.
    If users believe their Google Accounts have been suspended or 
terminated in error, they can appeal the decision. Users can learn more 
about their rights relating to our terms of service at https://
policies.google.com/terms.
    We also regularly release reports that detail how we enforce our 
policies and review content. For example, our YouTube Community 
Guidelines Enforcement Transparency Report includes information on the 
number of appealed videos that have been reinstated (https://
transparencyreport.google.com/youtube-policy/appeals). In addition to 
our general terms of service, we publish comprehensive guides detailing 
the appeals process to address take-down concerns, including 
information on Search Reconsideration Requests (https://
support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35843), Ads disapprovals and 
suspensions (https://support.google.com/adspolicy/topic/1308266), 
publisher Policy Center violations (https://support.google.com/adsense/
answer/7003627), and YouTube Community Guidelines violations (https://
support.google.com/youtube/answer/185111). We are transparent about our 
decisions and discuss them further in places like our How Search Works 
page (https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/mission/open-web/) 
and our Transparency Report (https://transparencyreport.google.com/).
    Over the past two decades, we have worked hard to maintain a safe 
community, have invested heavily in our enforcement program that relies 
on both people and technology, and we will continue to do so.

    Question 19. In your written testimonies, each of you note the 
importance of tech companies being transparent with their users.
    Have you already, or do you plan to make public the processes that 
your automated moderation system undertakes when making decisions about 
content on your platform?

    Question 20. Given the complexity of the algorithms that are now 
governing a potion of the content across your platforms, how have you 
or how do you plan to explain the functions of your automated 
moderation systems in a simple manner that users can easily understand?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to Question Nos. 19 and 20.
    Google is committed to transparency in our business practices, 
including our content moderation efforts. Our policies work best when 
users are aware of the rules and understand how we enforce them. That 
is why we work to make this information clear and easily available to 
all.
    As to our automated and manual content moderation systems, we 
publish extensive information explaining how they work, including 
information relating to automated review for invalid Ads activity 
(https://www.google.com/ads/adtraffic
quality/how-we-prevent-it/), YouTube Community Guidelines Enforcement 
(https://support.google.com/transparencyreport/answer/9209072), and 
YouTube ads review systems (https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/
9269751). We also publish comprehensive guides regarding our content 
moderation policies in general, including our Publisher Policies 
(https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/9335564), our Publisher 
Center for Google News (https://support.google.com/news/publisher-
center/), permissible content for Ads (https://support.google.com/
adspolicy/answer/6008942), YouTube's Community Guidelines (https://
www.youtube.com/about/policies/#community-guidelines), our Webmaster 
guidelines for Search (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/
35769), Google Play Policies regarding restricted content (https://
play.google.com/about/restricted-content/), and our Terms of Service 
relating to content (https://policies.google.com/terms#toc-content). We 
endeavor to make all of our policies publicly available and easy to 
find.

    Question 21. How has COVID-19 impacted your company's content 
moderation systems?

    Question 22. Is there a greater reliance on automated content 
moderation?
    Please quantify how content moderation responsibilities have 
shifted between human and automated systems due to COVID-19.
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to Question Nos. 21 and 22.
    We are proud of our efforts during this unprecedented public health 
crisis. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, teams across Google have 
launched 200 new products, features, and initiatives and are 
contributing over $1 billion in resources to help our users, clients, 
and patners through this unprecedented time. That includes our Homepage 
``Do the Five'' promotion, launch of the COVID-19-focused site (https:/
/www.google.com/intl/en_us/covid19/), and amplifying authoritative 
voices through ad grants. There have been over 400 billion impressions 
on our information panels for coronavirus related videos and searches, 
and since February we've removed over 270 million coronavirus related 
ads across all Google advertising platforms, and 600,000 coronavirus 
videos, globally. We have invested heavily to make sure that we surface 
authoritative content in our search results, which significantly 
reduces the spread of misinformation, and we will continue to do so 
after the coronavirus crisis.
    As to our use of automated tools for content moderation during the 
pandemic, in the face of temporary reductions in our extended 
workforce, we reallocated employees to prioritize addressing egregious 
content and supported their doing this work onsite, taking extra health 
and safety precautions, and providing private transportation. These 
content moderators ensured we still had capacity to take action on high 
priority workflows and flags for egregious content, including flags 
from our Trusted Flagger program and governments. Where feasible, we 
relied more heavily on automated systems to reduce the need for people 
to come into the office. Given the resulting risk of false positives 
(e.g., more legitimate content being automatically but incorrectly 
removed), we also worked to ensure content creators could appeal and 
would not wrongly receive strikes against their accounts.

    Question 23. Last year, the Department of Justice's Antitrust 
Division held a workshop that brought together academics and executives 
from leading companies, including buyers and sellers of advertising 
inventory. The discussion explored the practical considerations that 
industry participants face and the competitive impact of technological 
developments such as digital and targeted advertising in media markets, 
including dynamics between local broadcast and online platforms for 
advertisement expenditures.
    Separately, the FCC has attempted to update its local broadcast 
ownership rules following its 2018 quadrennial review, including 
permitting the ownership of two TV stations in local markets. However, 
this recent attempt by the FCC to modernize the local media marketplace 
has been halted by the Third Circuit's decision to reject the FCC's 
update of broadcast ownership restrictions.
    For purposes of understanding your companies' general views on the 
local media marketplace, do your companies compete with local broadcast 
stations for digital advertising revenue?
    Answer. Yes. Google is just one player in a crowded advertising 
market, competing against a wide array of business, from digital 
advertising businesses to local broadcast stations. We compete for ad 
dollars with lots of different formats, from websites to apps to 
billboards to radio to TV. In this robustly competitive market, 
advertisers decide where to focus their advertising spend, whether it 
be on Google properties or non-Google properties like local broadcast 
stations, and may do so based on a variety of factors unique to an 
advertiser and its advertising goals.

    Do you think Federal regulations determining acceptable business 
transactions in local media marketplaces should be updated to account 
for this evolving and increasing competition for digital advertising 
purchases?
    Answer. Our grounding principle is that we should do what's right 
for users. While no system is perfect, the U.S. approach has encouraged 
strong competition that has delivered world-leading innovation for 
consumers. We are committed to continuing to work with Congress on 
evolving that framework to advance the interests of consumers, but 
should not lose sight of the significant technological competition we 
face around the world.
                                 ______
                                 
      Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Mike Lee to 
                             Sundar Pichai
    Question 1. Congress is in the midst of a debate over future 
reforms to Section 230. This is an important discussion that Congress 
should have.

    a. In making decisions to moderate third-party content on your 
platform, do you rely solely on Section 230? In other words, could you 
still moderate third-party content without the protections of Section 
230?

    b. If the provisions of Section 230 were repealed or severely 
limited, how would your content moderation practices shift?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to all subparts of Question No. 1.
    Section 230 safeguards open access to information and free 
expression online. Instead of overblocking speech, the law supports 
platforms' ability to responsibly manage content. In this way, Section 
230 is one of the foundational laws that has enabled America's 
technology leadership and success in the Internet sector. Millions of 
small and large platforms and websites across the Internet rely on 
Section 230 to keep users safe by addressing harmful content and to 
promote free expression. While we could moderate third-party content in 
the absence of Section 230, we have concerns that changes to Section 
230 could jeopardize removals of, among other things: terrorist 
content, spam, malware, scams, misinformation, manipulated media and 
hate speech, and other objectionable content.
    The ability to remove harmful, but not necessarily illegal, content 
has been particularly important during COVID-19. In just one week 
earlier this year, we saw 18 million malware and phishing e-mails 
related to coronavirus and more than 240 million COVID-related spam 
messages. Since February, we've removed over 600,000 YouTube videos 
with dangerous or misleading coronavirus information and over 270 
million COVID-related ads.
    Furthermore, before companies advertise, they want some assurance 
that publishers' sites are appropriate for their ads. That's where our 
longstanding content policies come in--they are business-driven 
policies to ensure ads do not appear alongside offensive content. 
Please see our User-Generated Content Overview, https://
support.google.com/adsense/answer/1355699. For example, a company 
marketing baby clothes wouldn't want its paid ads to appear alongside 
violent or mature content. Our content policies cover the entire site 
where ads are displayed, including user-generated comments sections.
    We believe that Section 230 strikes the appropriate balance that 
facilitates making available more content and diverse points of view 
than ever before in history, while ensuring Internet companies can keep 
their platforms safe and secure for our users. We also understand that 
these are important issues and remain committed to working with 
Congress on them.

    Question 2. How many content posts or videos are generated by 
third-party users per day on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube?
    Answer. YouTube has more than 500 hours of video uploaded every 
minute, and every day, people watch over a billion hours of video and 
generate billions of views.

    c. How many decisions on average per day does your platform take to 
moderate content? Are you able to provide data on your takedown numbers 
over the last year?
    Answer. In addition to our automated systems, our reviewers perform 
billions of reviews every year, working to make appropriate content 
policy enforcement decisions and helping build training data for 
machine learning models. We are transparent about our policies and 
enforcement decisions and discuss them in places like our Transparency 
Report (https://transparencyreport.Google/) and YouTube Community 
Guidelines Enforcement Transparency Report (https://transparencyreport
.google.com/youtube-policy/removals). For example, in the third quarter 
of 2020 alone, more than 7.8 million videos were removed from YouTube 
for violating our community guidelines (https://
transparencyreport.google.com/youtube-policy/removals).

    d. Do you ever make mistakes in a moderation decision? If so, how 
do you become aware of these mistakes and what actions do you take to 
correct them?

    e. What remedies or appeal process do you provide to your users to 
appeal an action taken against them? On average, how long does the 
adjudication take until a final action is taken? How quickly do you 
provide a response to moderation decision appeals from your customers?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to these subparts of Question No. 2.
    We sometimes make mistakes in our decisions to enforce our 
policies, which may result in the unwarranted removal of content from 
our services. To address that risk, wherever possible, we make it clear 
to creators that we have taken action on their content and--as noted in 
our responses to Chairman Wicker's Question No. 4 and Senator Moran's 
Question Nos. 16-18--provide them with the opportunity to appeal that 
decision and give us any clarifications they feel are relevant.
    We want to make it easy for good-faith actors to understand and 
abide by our rules, while making it challenging for bad actors to flout 
them. That is why we seek to make room for good-faith errors as we 
enforce our rules, and provide the opportunity for users to appeal 
decisions and provide clarification--decisions that are then evaluated 
by a different member of our Trust and Safety team. Our policies 
detailing the appeals process to address take-down concerns include 
information on Search Reconsideration Requests (https://
support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35843), Ads disapprovals and 
suspensions (https://support.google.com/adspolicy/topic/1308266), 
publisher Policy Center violations (https://support.google.com/adsense/
answer/7003627), and YouTube Community Guidelines violations (https://
support.google.com/youtube/answer/185111).
    Many of these policies also detail how long it takes for us to 
review appeals and provide a response. For example, our publisher 
Policy Center site (https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/7003627) 
explains that we typically review a site within one week of the 
publisher's request for review, but sometimes it can take longer. 
Similarly, our Search Console Help site (https://support.google.com/
webmasters/answer/9044175) explains that Search reconsideration reviews 
can take anywhere from several days up to a week or two.
    We are transparent about our policy enforcement decisions and 
discuss them further in places like our How Search Works page (https://
www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/mission/open-web/), Google 
Transparency Report (https://transparencyreport.google.com/), and 
YouTube Community Guidelines Enforcement Transparency Report (https://
transparencyreport.google.com/youtube-policy/removals).

    f. Can you provide approximate numbers, by month or week, for the 
times you took down, blocked, or tagged material from November 2019 to 
November 2020?
    Answer. We enforce our content policies at scale and take tens of 
millions of actions every day against content that does not abide by 
the ``rules of the road'' for one or more of our products. For example, 
in the third quarter of 2020 alone, we removed over 1.1 billion 
comments, 7.8 million videos, and 1.8 million channels on YouTube for 
violating our Community Guidelines. In 2019, we blocked and removed 2.7 
billion ads, terminated over 1.2 million accounts, and removed ads from 
over 21 million web pages that are pat of our publisher network for 
violating our policies. Google is transparent about our content 
moderation decisions, and we include information on these takedowns in 
places like our Google Transparency Report (https://
transparencyreport.google.com/), YouTube Community Guidelines 
Enforcement Transparency Report (https://transparencyreport.google.com/
youtube-policy/removals), and other updates, such as our quarterly 
Threat Analysis Group (``TAG'') Bulletins (e.g., https://blog.google/
threat-analysis-group/tag-bulletin-q2-2020/) and annual report on Ads 
take downs (e.g., https://www.blog.google/products/ads/stopping-bad-
ads-to-protect-users/).

    Question 3. The first major case to decide the application of 
Section 230 was Zeran v. AOL.\1\ In Zeran, Judge Wilkinson recognized 
the challenges of conferring ``distributor liability'' to a website 
because of the sheer number of postings. That was 1997. If we imposed a 
form of ``distributor liability'' on your platforms that would likely 
mean that your platform would be liable for content if you acquired 
knowledge of the content. I think there is an argument to be made that 
you ``acquire knowledge'' when a user ``flags'' a post, video, or other 
form of content.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Kenneth M. Zeran v. America Online, Inc. 129 F. 3d 327 (4th 
Cir. 1997)

    g. How many ``user-generated'' flags do your companies receive 
daily?
    Answer. Google is committed to transparency in our business 
practices, including our content moderation efforts. We publish 
information on removal requests and user flags in our Google 
Transparency Report (https://transparencyreport.google
.com/) and YouTube Community Guidelines Enforcement Transparency Report 
(https://transparencyreport.google.com/youtube-policy/removals). For 
example, in the third quarter of 2020 alone, we removed over 480,000 
videos on YouTube flagged by users and our Trusted Flaggers for 
violating YouTube Community Guidelines (https://
transparencyreport.google.com/youtube-policy/removals).

    h. Do users ever flag posts solely because they disagree with the 
content?
    Answer. Our policies provide that users should only flag content 
that violates Google policies. That said, users often flag content that 
does not violate our policies. When this occurs, we do not take action 
on the flagged content. Many of our policies and blog posts also 
instruct users not to flag content simply because they disagree with it 
(e.g., please see our Maps policy on flagging content, https://support
.google.com/contributionpolicy/answer/7445749).

    i. If you were liable for content that was ``flagged'' by a user, 
how would that affect content moderation on your platform?
    Answer. Section 230 allows us to have content rules that we enforce 
in an effort to ensure that our platform is safe for our users. Without 
Section 230, platforms could be sued for decisions around removal of 
content from their platforms. As a result, search engines, video 
sharing platforms, political bogs, startups, and review sites of all 
kinds would either not be able to filter content at all (resulting in 
more offensive online content, including adult content, spam, security 
threats, etc.) or would over-filter content (possibly including 
important cases of political speech)--in either scenario, harming 
consumers and businesses that rely on and use these services every day.
    We also note that we've always had robust policies, but finding all 
violative content is an immense challenge. We take tens of millions of 
actions every day against content that does not abide by the ``rules of 
the road'' for one or more of our products. For example, in the third 
quarter of 2020 alone, we removed over 480,000 videos on YouTube 
flagged by users and our Trusted Flaggers for violating YouTube 
Community Guidelines. More information about our efforts is available 
in our Transparency Report at https://transparencyreport.google.com.

    Question 4. Section 230 is often used as a legal tool to have 
lawsuits dismissed in a pre-trial motion.

    j. How often is your company sued under a theory that you should be 
responsible for the content posted by a user of your platform? How 
often do you use Section 230 as a defense in these lawsuits? And 
roughly how often are those lawsuits thrown out?
    Answer. As noted in our response to Senator Moran's Question Nos. 
5-8, Google is subject to and defends against numerous lawsuits and 
legal claims each year, including content-related claims, ranging from 
complex Federal litigation to local small claims court claims. Alphabet 
Inc.'s annual 10-K filing (https://abc.xyz/investor/) includes 
information on the types of material, public legal matters we defend.

    k. If Section 230 was eliminated and a case seeking to make your 
platform liable for content posted by a third party went to the 
discovery phase, roughly how much more expensive would that case be as 
opposed to its dismissal pre-discovery?
    Answer. While we do not have an exact figure or estimate, without 
Section 230, we certainly could face an increased risk of liability and 
litigation costs--including the routinely high costs of discovery--for 
decisions around removal of content from our platforms.

    Question 5. Section 230s Good Samaritan provision contains the term 
``otherwise objectionable.''

    l. How do you define ``otherwise objectionable''?

    m. Is ``otherwise objectionable'' defined in your terms of service? 
If so, has its definition ever changed? And if so, can you provide the 
dates of such changes and the text of each definition?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to these subparts of Question No. 5.
    We do not have a specific definition in our terms of service 
regarding ``otherwise objectionable'' content; rather, we describe in 
our terms of service and other policies a range of harmful or 
objectionable content (https://policies.google.com/terms). The term 
``otherwise objectionable'' in the statute allows us to take action 
against such harmful content including spam, malware, phishing, 
spyware, view count manipulation, user data/permissions violations, 
scams and other deceptive practices, misinformation and manipulated 
media, hate speech or other derogatory content, and dangerous content 
(e.g., weapon manufacturing and sales). We would be pleased to continue 
our ongoing dialogue with Congress on Section 230.

    n. In most litigation, a defendant relies on Section 230(c)(1) for 
editorial decisions. If a company could only rely on 230(c)(2) for a 
moderation decision (as has been discussed in Congress), how would that 
affect your moderation practices? And how would striking ``otherwise 
objectionable'' from 230(c)(2) further affect your moderation 
practices?
    Answer. Section 230 is one of the foundational laws that has 
enabled America's technology leadership and success in the Internet 
sector--allowing freedom of expression to flourish online. Section 230 
has worked remarkably well, and we believe a cautious and thoughtful 
approach to potential changes is appropriate. We also recognize the 
legitimate questions raised by this Committee on Section 230 and would 
be pleased to continue our ongoing dialogue with Congress.
    Google agrees that exercising good faith is important, and we also 
believe we already engage in good faith content moderation. We have 
published terms of service (https://policies.google.com/terms), make 
good faith efforts to enforce our policies, and provide opportunities 
to appeal a decision.
    Changes to Section 230 would negatively impact our ability to 
remove harmful content of all types and would make our services less 
useful and safe. We are concerned that striking ``otherwise 
objectionable'' could put removals of spam, malware, fraud, scams, 
misinformation, manipulated media, and hate speech at risk. This is 
especially important as threats to our platforms and our users are 
ever-evolving, and the nature of the content we see is always changing. 
If we were to have specific exceptions, we would lose the ability to 
act in real time on troubling and dangerous content that we are seeing 
for the first time.

    Question 6. Are your terms of service a legally binding contract 
with your users? How many times have you changed your terms of service 
in the past five years? What recourse do users of your platform have 
when you allege that they have violated your terms of service?
    Answer. Yes, in order to use our services, users must agree to our 
terms of service. We want to be as transparent as possible about the 
changes we make to our terms of service. That is why we have archived 
the versions of our Google terms of service from 1999 to present. As 
shown in the archive, we have changed our Google terms of service two 
times in the past five years. We've also included comparisons of each 
version to the previous version to make it as easy as possible to see 
what has changed. Please see https://policies.google.com/terms/archive 
for more information.
    As noted above in our responses to Chairman Wicker's Question No. 4 
and Senator Moran's Question Nos. 16-18, if users believe their Google 
Accounts have been suspended or terminated in error, they can appeal 
the decision. Users can learn more about their rights relating to our 
terms of service at https://policies.google.com/terms.
                                 ______
                                 
    Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Ron Johnson to 
                             Sundar Pichai
    Question 1. During the hearing, in response to both Senator Cruz's 
line of questioning and mine, Mr. Dorsey claimed that Twitter does not 
have the ability to influence nor interfere in the election.

    a. Do you believe Google has the ability to influence and/or 
interfere in the election? To reiterate, I am not asking if you have 
the intent or have actively taken steps to influence/interfere, but 
rather if Google has the ability.

    b. If you claim that you do not have the ability to influence or 
interfere in the election, can you explain Google's rational for 
suppressing content that Google deems to be Russian misinformation on 
the basis that it influences the election?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to all subparts of Question No. 1.
    While many companies and organizations across a wide range of 
industries hypothetically could have the ability to influence an 
election through action or inaction (e.g., a voter registration group 
seeking to increase voter registration or participation), Google makes 
no attempt to do so. Our products are built for everyone, and we design 
them with extraordinary care to be a trustworthy source of information 
without regard to politics or political viewpoint. Our users 
overwhelmingly trust us to deliver the most helpful and reliable 
information, and distorting results or moderating content for political 
or ideological purposes would be antithetical to our mission and 
contrary to our business interests.
    We also have undertaken a wide range of approaches to protect the 
integrity of elections and prevent platform abuse, and we will continue 
to do so. For instance, our efforts during the 2020 election cycle 
focused on four different areas: elevating authoritative election-
related content; combating coordinated influence operations; protecting 
users and campaigns; and continuing to work with law enforcement and 
industry patners on identifying and combating coordinated influence 
operations. Our teams are constantly on the lookout for malicious 
actors that try to game our platforms and we take strong action against 
coordinated influence operations. In May of this year, we also 
announced the launch of our Threat Analysis Group (``TAG'') bulletin 
(https://www.blog.google/threat-analysis-group/updates-about-
government-backed-hacking-and-disinformation/) to provide more 
frequent, quarterly updates about our efforts. (Q1--https://
blog.google/threat-analysis-group/tag-bulletin-q1-2020; Q2--https://
blog.google/threat-analysis-group/tag-bulletin-q2-2020; Q3--https://
blog.google/threat-analysis-group/tag-bulletin-q3-2020.)
                                 ______
                                 
   Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Maria Cantwell to 
                             Sundar Pichai
    Foreign Disinformation. Facebook/Instagram, Twitter, and Google/
YouTube have each taken concrete steps to improve defensive measures 
through automated detection and removal of fake accounts at creation; 
increased internal auditing and detection efforts; and established or 
enhanced security and integrity teams who can identify leads and 
analyze potential networks engaging in coordinated inauthentic 
behavior.
    Social media companies have hired a lot of staff and assembled 
large teams to do this important work and coordinate with the FBI led 
Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF).
    Small companies in the tech sector do not have the same level or 
expertise or resources, but they face some of the same and growing 
threats.
    Likewise, public awareness and understanding of the threats foreign 
actors like Russia pose is key to helping fight back against them.

    Question 1. What specific steps are you taking to share threat 
information with smaller social media companies that do not have the 
same level of resources to detect and stop those threats?
    Answer. As noted in our response to Senator Rosen's Question No. 1 
(a, b), our teams are constantly on the lookout for malicious actors 
that try to game our platforms, and we take strong action against 
coordinated influence operations. We've dedicated significant resources 
to help protect our platforms from such attacks by maintaining cutting-
edge defensive systems and by building advanced security tools directly 
into our consumer products.
    We help industry partners in two main ways. First, to enhance the 
transparency of these efforts, we regularly release reports that detail 
how we protect our platforms, enforce our policies, and review content, 
and hope that these are helpful to other companies in the digital 
ecosystem as well. For instance, we publicly share data in places like 
our Transparency Report (https://transparencyreport.google.com/), 
including data on government removal requests, as well as information 
about political advertising, such as who is buying election ads on our 
platforms and how much money is being spent. We make this data 
available for public research to all who are interested in learning or 
using it to conduct research or improve their own content moderation 
efforts, including social media companies.
    Second, we have collaborated with industry partners to prevent 
terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting our platforms. In 
2017, YouTube, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter founded the Global 
Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFT) as a group of companies, 
dedicated to disrupting terrorist abuse of members' digital platforms. 
Among other important initiatives, GIFCT allows participating companies 
and organizations to submit hashes, or ``digital fingerprints,'' of 
identified terrorist and violent extremist content to a database so 
that it can be swiftly removed from all participating platforms. By 
sharing best practices and collaborating on cross-platform tools, we 
have been able to bring new members to GIFCT and engage more than one 
hundred smaller technology companies through workshops around the 
world. For more information on these efforts, please see https://
gifct.org/.
    We continue to develop and learn from these collaborations over 
time and seek more opportunities to develop best practices jointly with 
partners of all sizes to help people understand what they see online 
and to support the creation of quality content.

    Question 2. Intel Chairman Schiff has highlighted the need for 
social media companies to increase transparency about how social media 
companies have stopped foreign actors disinformation and influence 
operations. Where are the gaps in public disclosures of this 
information and what specific actions are you taking to increase 
transparency about malign foreign threats you have throttled?
    Answer. Google is committed to transparency in our business 
practices, including our efforts to stop foreign disinformation and 
coordinated influence operations across our platforms. We were the 
first to launch a Transparency Report and have continued to expand and 
enhance our transparency efforts across numerous products and services 
over time. As discussed in our response to Question No. 1, in order to 
increase transparency about the threats we see to our platforms, we 
regularly release reports that detail how we protect our platforms, 
enforce our policies, and review content. For more information about 
Google's Transparency Reports, please see https://
transparencyreport.google.com/?hl=en.
    As part of our transparency reports, Google publishes information 
regarding government requests to remove content for each six-month 
period, and carefully evaluates whether content should be removed 
because it violates a law or product policy. For a detailed overview of 
requests by country/region, please see https://trans
parencyreport.google.com/government-removals/overview.
    We've also invested in robust systems to detect phishing and 
hacking attempts (https://security.googleblog.com/2018/08/a-reminder-
about-government-backed.html), identify influence operations launched 
by foreign governments, and protect political campaigns from digital 
attacks through our Protect Your Election program.
    Our Threat Analysis Group, working with our partners at Jigsaw and 
Google's Trust & Safety team, identifies bad actors, disables their 
accounts, warns our users about them, and shares intelligence with 
other companies and law enforcement officials. As noted in our response 
to Senator Rosen's Question No. 1 (a, b), on any given day, our Threat 
Analysis Group tracks more than 270 targeted or government-backed 
attacker groups from more than 50 countries. When we find attempts to 
conduct coordinated influence operations on our platforms, we work with 
our Trust and Safety teams to swiftly remove such content from our 
platforms and terminate these actors' accounts. We take steps to 
prevent possible future attempts by the same actors, and routinely 
exchange information and share our findings with law enforcement and 
others in the industry. For example, in October 2020, the U.S. 
Department of Justice acknowledged Google's contributions to the fight 
against Iranian influence operations, in announcing the seizure of 92 
domain names used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to engage 
in a global disinformation campaign targeting the U.S. and other 
countries (https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/united-states-seizes-
domain-names-used-iran-s-islamic-revolutionary-guard-corps).
    Additionally, if we suspect that users are subject to government-
sponsored attacks, we warn them. In April 2020 alone, for example, we 
sent 1,755 warnings to users whose accounts were targets of government-
backed attackers. We share more information about these actions on our 
Threat Analysis Group blog (https://blog.google/threat-analysis-group/
), which provides information about actions we take against accounts 
that we attribute to coordinated influence campaigns, both foreign and 
domestic.
    With respect to YouTube, our YouTube our Community Guidelines 
Enforcement Transparency Report (https://transparencyreport.google.com/
youtube-policy/removals) explains how our systems and policies are 
actively at work identifying and removing such content. As noted in our 
response to Senator Rosen's Question No. 1 (a, b), in the third quarter 
of 2020, over 7.8 million videos were removed by YouTube for violating 
Community Guidelines, including policies regarding misleading and 
dangerous content. As threats evolve, we will continue to adapt to 
understand and prevent new attempts to misuse our platforms, and will 
continue to expand our use of cutting-edge technology to protect our 
users. We also will build upon our transparency efforts in the future, 
as they are an important component of ensuring an informed public 
dialogue about the role that our services play in society.

    Addressing Stop Hate for Profit Recommendations. The Stop Hate for 
Profit, Change the Terms, and Free Press coalition--all committed to 
combating racism, violence, and hate online--have called on social 
media platforms to adopt policies and take decisive actions against 
toxic and hateful activities.
    This includes finding and removing public and private groups 
focused on white supremacy, promoting violent conspiracies, or other 
hateful content; submitting to regular, third party, independent audits 
to share information about misinformation; changing corporate policies 
and elevating civil rights to an executive level position.

    Question 3. Mr. Pichai, will you commit to making the removal of 
racist, violent, and hateful content an executive level priority?
    Answer. Yes, and we assure you that Google strives to be a safe and 
inclusive space for all of our users. Improvements are happening every 
day, and we will continue to adapt, invent, and react as hate and 
extremism evolve online. We're committed to this constant improvement, 
and the significant human and technological investments we're making 
demonstrate that we're in it for the long haul. In the last year, we 
have spent at least $1 billion on content moderation systems and 
processes, and more than 20,000 people have worked in a variety of 
roles to help enforce our policies and moderate content.
    As noted in our response to Senator Rosen's Question No. 1 (c), one 
of the most complex and constantly evolving areas we deal with is hate 
speech. That is why we systematically review and re-review all our 
policies to make sure we are drawing the line in the right place, often 
consulting with subject matter experts for insight on emerging trends. 
For our hate speech policy, we work with experts in subjects like 
violent extremism, supremacism, civil rights, and free speech from 
across the political spectrum.
    Hate speech is a complex policy area to enforce at scale, as 
decisions require nuanced understanding of local languages and 
contexts. To help us consistently enforce our policies, we have 
expanded our review team's linguistic and subject matter expertise. We 
also deploy machine learning to better detect potentially hateful 
content to send for human review, applying lessons from our enforcement 
against other types of content, like violent extremism.
    We also have recently taken a tougher stance on removing hateful 
and supremacist content from YouTube and have reduced borderline 
content by reducing recommendations of content that comes close to 
violating YouTube's guidelines. Since early 2019, we've increased by 46 
times our daily hate speech comment removals on YouTube. And in the 
last quarter, of the more than 1.8 million channels we terminated for 
violating our policies, more than 54,000 terminations were for hate 
speech. This is the most hate speech terminations in a single quarter 
and three times more than the previous high from Q2 2019 when we 
updated our hate speech policy. For additional information regarding 
enforcement of, and improvements to, our hate speech policies, please 
see https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/make-youtube-more-inclusive-
platform/, https://transparencyreport.google.com/youtube-policy/
featured-policies/hate-speech, and https://blog.youtube/news-and-
events/our-ongoing-work-to-tackle-hate.
    Additionally, in October, we launched a Community Guidelines 
YouTube update on harmful conspiracy theories (https://blog.youtube/
news-and-events/harmful-conspiracy-theories-youtube/), which expanded 
our hate speech and harassment policies to prohibit content that 
targets an individual or group with conspiracy theories that have been 
used to justify real-world violence. For example, content such as 
conspiracy theories saying individuals or groups are evil, corrupt, or 
malicious based on protected attributes (e.g., age, race, religion, 
etc.), or hateful supremacist propaganda, including the recruitment of 
new members or requests for financial support for their ideology, all 
violate our hate speech policy (https://support.google.com/youtube/
answer/2801939) and are subject to removal as such.
    The openness of our platforms has helped creativity and access to 
information thrive. It's our responsibility to protect that and prevent 
our platforms from being used to incite hatred, harassment, 
discrimination, and violence. We are committed to taking the steps 
needed to live up to this responsibility today, tomorrow, and in the 
years to come.

    Kenosha Wisconsin Violence. On August 25th, a man from Illinois 
traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin armed with an assault rifle and fatally 
shot Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, and injured another person, 
who were protesting the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black resident, 
which left him paralyzed.
    In the wake of these tragic shootings, we learned that a para-
military group called the Kenosha Guard Militia, a group that organized 
on Facebook, called on followers to ``take up arms'' and ``defend'' the 
city against ``evil thugs.'' This event post had been flagged 455 times 
by Facebook users, yet Facebook did not take down the group's page 
until after these lives were already lost.
    While the Illinois shooter may not have been a member of the 
Kenosha Guard Militia, this brings up a very important point--that hate 
spread on social media platforms can lead to real life violence.
    In May of this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook 
had completed internal research that said its internal algorithms 
``exploit the human brain's attraction to divisiveness,'' which could 
allow Facebook to feed more divisive content to gain user attention and 
more time on the platform. In response, the Journal reported that 
Facebook buried the research and did little to address it because it 
ran counter to other Facebook initiatives.
    Sowing divisions in this country and further polarizing public 
discourse is dangerous, and can have deadly consequences.

    Question 4. Mr. Pichai, your company also targets information to 
people based on what your data tells them they want to see, which can 
lead to people being stuck in an echo chamber that makes them less 
likely to listen to other viewpoints. What responsibility do you 
believe you have to stem the divisive discourse in this country?
    Answer. We are committed to making Google a safe and inclusive 
space for people to share their viewpoints. We understand your concerns 
and are deeply troubled by any attempts to use our platforms to sow 
division.
    We have put significant effort into combating harmful activity 
across our platforms. This includes, for instance, ranking algorithms 
in Search that prioritize authoritative sources. Our Search algorithm 
ranks pages to provide the most useful and relevant information by 
matching search terms against available web pages and looking at 
factors like the number of times the words appear and freshness of the 
page. A user's viewpoint is not a relevant factor. We also seek to 
ensure that our Search results are providing the most authoritative and 
responsive results by using external quality raters from across the 
vast majority of U.S. states. In addition, we have robust systems in 
place to ensure that our policies are enforced in a politically 
impartial way across all of our products and services, including 
Search.
    Additionally, on Google News, we mark up links with labels that 
help users understand what they are about to read--whether it is local 
content, an op-ed, or an in-depth piece, and encourage them to be 
thoughtful about the content they view. Publishers who review third-
party claims or rumors can showcase their work on Google News and in 
Google Search through fact-check labels. People come across these fact 
checks billions of times per year. For more information, please see 
https://blog.google/products/search/fact-check-now-available-google-
search-and-news-around-world/.
    We also have increased transparency around news sources on YouTube, 
including disclosure of government funding. When a news channel on 
YouTube receives government funding, we make that fact clear by 
including an information panel under each of that channel's videos. 
There have been billions of impressions of information panels on 
YouTube around the world since June 2018. For more information, please 
see https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7630512, and https://
blog.youtube/news-and-events/greater-transparency-for-users-around. Our 
goal is to equip users with additional information to help them better 
understand the sources of news content that they choose to watch on 
YouTube. We also have taken a tougher stance on removing hateful and 
supremacist content and have reduced borderline content by reducing 
recommendations of content that comes close to violating our 
guidelines.
    We are proud that we have a wide variety of views expressed on our 
platforms and are committed to ensuring we continue to enforce our 
policies in a fair and impartial manner.

    Russian Election Interference. The U.S. Intelligence community 
found that foreign actors including Russia tried to interfere in the 
2016 election and used social media platforms among other influence 
operations.
    In 2017, the FBI established the Foreign Influence Task Force 
(FITF), which works closely with state and local partners to share 
information on threats and actionable leads.
    The FBI has also established relationships with social media 
companies to enable rapid sharing of threat information. Social media 
companies independently make decisions regarding the content of their 
platforms.
    The U.S. Intelligence Community warned that Russia was using a 
range of active measures to denigrate former Vice President Joe Biden 
in the 2020 election. They also warned about Iran and China.
    Social media companies remain on the front lines of these threats 
to our democracy.

    Question 5. What steps are you taking to prevent amplification of 
false voter fraud claims after the 2020 presidential election and for 
future elections? What challenges do you face trying to prevent foreign 
actors who seek to influence our elections?
    Answer. Election and civic integrity is an issue that we take very 
seriously, and we have many different policies and processes to combat 
election-related misinformation like false voter fraud claims and 
related violative content. Our efforts relating to the 2020 U.S. 
Presidential election have focused on four different areas: elevating 
authoritative election-related content; combating coordinated influence 
operations; protecting users and campaigns; and continuing to work with 
law enforcement and industry partners on identifying and combating 
coordinated influence operations.
    For example, as noted in our response to Senator Blumenthal's 
Question No. 1, all ads, including political ads, must comply with our 
publicly-available Ads policies (https://support.google.com/adspolicy/
answer/6008942), which prohibit, among other things, dangerous or 
derogatory content; content that is illegal, promotes illegal activity, 
or infringes on the legal rights of others; and content that 
misrepresents the owner's origin or purpose. We put significant effort 
into curbing harmful misinformation on our ads platform, including 
prohibiting content that makes claims that are demonstrably false and 
could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or 
democratic process. Given the unprecedented amount of votes that were 
counted after this past election day, we also implemented a sensitive 
event policy for political ads after the polls closed on November 3, 
2020 (https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/10122500), which 
prohibited advertisers from running ads referencing candidates, the 
election, or its outcome.
    Further, we do not allow content on YouTube alleging that 
widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of a historical U.S. 
Presidential election. As December 8 was the safe harbor deadline for 
the U.S. Presidential election, states have all certified their 
election results. YouTube will remove any piece of content uploaded 
anytime after December 8 that misleads people by alleging that 
widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. 
Presidential election, in line with our approach towards historical 
U.S. Presidential elections. As always, news coverage and commentary on 
these issues can remain on our site if there's sufficient education, 
documentary, scientific, or artistic context, as described here: 
https://blog.youtube/inside-youtube/look-how-we-treat-educational-
documentary-scientific-and-artistic-content-youtube/.
    Additionally, our YouTube Community Guidelines (https://
www.youtube.com/howyoutubeworks/policies/community-guidelines/) 
prohibit spam, scams, or other manipulated media, coordinated influence 
operations, and any content that seeks to incite violence. Since 
September, we've terminated over 8,000 channels and thousands of 
harmful and misleading elections-related videos for violating our 
existing policies. Over 77 percent of those removed videos were taken 
down before they had 100 views. And, since election day, relevant fact 
check information panels from third-party fact checkers were triggered 
over 200,000 times above relevant election-related search results, 
including for voter fraud narratives such as ``Dominion voting 
machines'' and ``Michigan recount.'' For additional information, please 
see https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/supporting-the-2020-us-
election/.
    Similarly, on Search, we have highlighted fact checks for over 
three years as a way to help people make more informed judgments about 
the content they encounter online. For more information, see https://
blog.google/products/search/fact-check-now-available-google-search-and-
news-around-world/.
    We are also aware of the concerns that state-sponsored websites and 
broadcast channels on YouTube may provide a slanted perspective. That's 
why we have long taken steps to provide our users with more context and 
information about news sources, including state-funded sources. When a 
news channel on YouTube receives government funding, we make that fact 
clear by including an information panel under each of that channel's 
videos. For more information on our information panels, please see 
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7630512.
    Additionally, our teams are constantly on the lookout for malicious 
actors that try to game our platforms, and we take strong action 
against coordinated influence operations. If we suspect that users are 
subject to government-sponsored attacks, we warn them. In April 2020 
alone, for example, we sent 1,755 warnings to users whose accounts were 
targets of government-backed attackers. For more information, please 
see https://blog.google/threat-analysis-group/updates-about-government-
backed-hacking-and-disinformation/. Further, Google's Threat Analysis 
Group (``TAG'') works to counter targeted and government-backed hacking 
against Google and our users. TAG tracks more than 270 targeted or 
government-backed groups from more than 50 countries. These groups have 
many goals including intelligence collection, stealing intellectual 
property, targeting dissidents and activists, destructive cyber 
attacks, or spreading coordinated disinformation. We use the 
intelligence we gather to protect Google infrastructure, as well as 
users targeted with malware or phishing. In May of last year, we 
announced the launch of our TAG bulletin (https://blog.google/threat-
analysis-group) to provide more frequent, quarterly updates about our 
efforts.
    Protecting our platforms from foreign interference is a challenge 
we have been tackling as a company long before the 2020 U.S. 
Presidential election. We've dedicated significant resources to help 
protect our platforms from such attacks by maintaining tools aimed at 
protecting our physical and network security but also detecting and 
preventing the artificial boosting of content, spam, and other 
deceptive practices aiming to manipulate our systems. As threats 
evolve, we will continue to adapt to understand and prevent new 
attempts to misuse our platforms and will continue to expand our use of 
cutting-edge technology to protect our users. We are committed to our 
ongoing efforts to strengthen protections around elections, ensure the 
security of users, and help combat disinformation.

    Question 6. How has the U.S. Government improved information 
sharing about threats from foreign actors seeking to interfere in our 
elections since 2016? Is information that is shared timely and 
actionable? What more can be done to improve the cooperation to stop 
threats from bad actors?
    Answer. Preventing the misuse of our platforms is something that we 
take very seriously. We're committed to stopping this type of abuse and 
working closely with the government and law enforcement on how we can 
help to combat election interference and promote election integrity and 
user security.
    When we find attempts to conduct coordinated influence operations 
on our platforms, we work with our Trust and Safety teams to swiftly 
remove such content from our platforms and terminate these actors' 
accounts. We also routinely exchange information and share our findings 
with government agencies, and take steps to prevent possible future 
attempts by the same actors. For example, in October 2020, the U.S. 
Department of Justice acknowledged Google's contributions to the fight 
against Iranian influence operations, in announcing the seizure of 92 
domain names used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to engage 
in a global disinformation campaign targeting the U.S. and other 
countries. For more information, please see https://www.justice.gov/
usao-ndca/pr/united-states-seizes-domain-names-used-iran-s-islamic-
revolutionary-guard-corps.
    We are also focused on working with the government on identifying 
cyber threats. Google Cloud is working closely with the Defense 
Innovation Unit (``DIU'') within the U.S. Department of Defense to 
build a secure cloud management solution to detect, protect against, 
and respond to cyber threats worldwide. We are honored to partner with 
DIU on this critical initiative to protect its network from bad actors 
that pose threats to our national security. For more information, 
please see https://cloud.google.com/press-releases/2020/0520/defense-
Innovation-unit.

    Question 7. How are you working with civil society groups like the 
University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public and Stanford 
Internet Observatory and Program?
    Answer. Combating disinformation campaigns requires efforts from 
across the industry and the public sector, and we are proudly 
collaborating with technology and non-governmental organizations (NGO) 
partners to research and address disinformation and, more broadly, 
election integrity. We have a long-established policy of routinely 
sharing threat information with our peers and working with them to 
better protect the collective digital ecosystem.
    For instance, our YouTube Trusted Flagger program helps provide 
robust tools for individuals, government agencies, and NGOs that are 
particularly effective at notifying YouTube of content that violates 
our Community Guidelines. For more information, please see https://
support.google.com/youtube/answer/7554338. The program provides these 
partners with a bulk-flagging tool and provides a channel for ongoing 
discussion and feedback about YouTube's approach to various content 
areas. The program is part of a network of over 180 academics, 
government partners, and NGOs that bring valuable expertise to our 
enforcement systems. For instance, to help address violent extremism, 
these partners include the International Center for the Study of 
Radicalization at King's College London, the Institute for Strategic 
Dialogue, the Wahid Institute in Indonesia, and government agencies 
focused on counterterrorism.
    In the context of this past election season, we have engaged with 
the Election Integrity Partnership comprising the Stanford Internet 
Observatory, the University of Washington's Center for an Informed 
Public, Graphika, and the Atlantic Council's DFR Lab, and look forward 
to continued dialogue as we prepare for future elections in the U.S. 
and around the globe.
    We are committed to continuing to work with the NGO community and 
others in the industry, as well as Congress and law enforcement, to 
strengthen protections around elections, ensure the security of users, 
and help combat disinformation.

    Question 8. How are you raising social media users' awareness about 
these threats? What more can be done? How do you ensure the actions you 
take do not cross the line into censorship of legitimate free speech?
    Answer. We are deeply concerned about any attempts to use our 
platforms to spread election misinformation and sow division, and have 
put significant efforts into curbing misinformation on our products. 
Our response to Senator Rosen's Question No. 1 (a, b) contains 
responsive information and resource links concerning steps we have 
taken to enforce our policies relating to election misinformation and 
civic integrity that we hope are helpful.
    Additionally, as noted above in our response to Question No. 5, all 
ads, including political ads, must comply with our publicly-available 
Ads policies (https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6008942), 
which prohibit, among other things, dangerous or derogatory content; 
content that is illegal, promotes illegal activity, or infringes on the 
legal rights of others; and content that misrepresents the owner's 
origin or purpose. We put significant effort into curbing harmful 
misinformation on our ads platform, including prohibiting content that 
makes claims that are demonstrably false and could significantly 
undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process. 
Further, given the unprecedented amount of votes that were counted 
after this past election day, we also implemented a sensitive event 
policy for political ads after the polls closed on November 3, 2020 
(https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/10122500), which 
prohibited advertisers from running ads referencing candidates, the 
election, or its outcome. Additionally, all advertisers who run U.S. 
election-related ads must first be verified in order to protect the 
integrity of the election ads that run on our platform. We're serious 
about enforcing these policies, and we block and remove ads that we 
find to be violative. For more information, please see our political 
content advertising policies, https://support.google.com/adspolicy/
answer/6014595.
    Not only do we remove content that violates our policies, but we 
also reduce borderline content and raise up authoritative voices by 
providing users with more information about the content they are seeing 
to allow them to make educated choices. As noted in our response to 
Question No. 4, our efforts include better ranking algorithms in Search 
that prioritize authoritative sources, as well as tougher policies 
against the monetization of misrepresentative content by publishers. On 
Google News, we mark up links with labels that help users understand 
what they are about to read--whether it is local content, an op-ed, or 
an in-depth piece, and encourage them to be thoughtful about the 
content they view. Publishers who review third-party claims or rumors 
can showcase their work on Google News and in Google Search through 
fact-check labels. People come across these fact checks billions of 
times per year. For more information, please see https://blog.google/
products/search/fact-check-now-available-google-search-and-news-around-
world/.
    We also have increased transparency around news sources on YouTube, 
including disclosure of government funding. When a news channel on 
YouTube receives government funding, we make that fact clear by 
including an information panel under each of that channel's videos. 
There have been billions of impressions of information panels on 
YouTube around the world since June 2018. For more information, please 
see https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7630512, and https://
blog.youtube/news-and-events/greater-transparency-for-users-around. Our 
goal is to equip users with additional information to help them better 
understand the sources of news content that they choose to watch on 
YouTube.
    As to concerns of censorship, we work hard to make sure that the 
line between what is removed and what is allowed is drawn in the right 
place. We believe that people are best served when they have access to 
a breadth of diverse content from a variety of sources. That is why, 
for example, we only remove content from search results in limited 
circumstances, including based on our legal obligations, copyright, 
webmaster guidelines, spam, and sensitive personal information like 
government IDs. Please see, for example, our policies relating to 
removals for legal obligations, https://support.google.com/websearch/
answer/9673730; webmaster guidelines https://developers.google.com/
search/docs/advanced/guidelines/webmaster-guidelines;voluntarily 
removal policies, https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/3143948; 
and policies concerning removals for copyright infringement, https://
support.google.com/transparencyreport/answer/7347743. For each product 
and service we offer, we tailor our policies to distinguish between 
providing access to a diversity of voices and limiting harmful content 
and behaviors--whether those are our policies against hate speech or 
material that is excessively violent, unlawful, deceptive, or obscene 
(e.g., Advertising Policies, https://support.google.com/adspolicy/
answer/6015406; Publisher Policies, https://support.google.com/adsense/
answer/9335564; and YouTube Community Guidelines, https://
support.google.com/youtube/answer/9288567). We also have safeguards in 
place to ensure that we enforce these policies in a consistent way 
without bias as to the ideological viewpoint of the content.
    As threats evolve, we will continue to adapt to understand and 
prevent new attempts to misuse our platforms and will continue to 
expand our use of cutting-edge technology to protect our users. There 
are no easy answers here, but we are deeply committed to getting this 
right.

    Foreign Disinformation & Russian Election Interference. Since four 
years ago, our national security agencies and the private sector have 
made improvements to address foreign cyber and influence efforts that 
target our electoral process. However, there still needs to be more 
public transparency about foreign disinformation.
    We need to close any gaps to stop any foreign disinformation about 
the 2020 election and disinformation in future elections. We cannot 
allow the Russians or other foreign actors to try to delegitimize 
election results or exacerbate political divisions any further.

    Question 9. What more could be done to maximize transparency with 
the public about suspected foreign malign activity?
    Answer. As noted in our response to Question No. 2, Google is 
committed to transparency in our business practices, including our 
efforts to stop foreign disinformation and coordinated influence 
operations. In order to increase transparency about the threats we see 
to our platforms, we regularly release reports that detail how we 
protect our platforms, enforce our policies, and review content. For 
instance, our publicly accessible Transparency Report (https://
transparencyreport.google.com) details how we respond to removal 
requests from governments around the world, including those relating to 
national security; explains how our systems and policies are actively 
at work identifying and removing content in violation of our YouTube 
Community Guidelines; and contains information about election 
advertising content, including who is buying election ads on our 
platforms and how much money is being spent.
    Additionally, when we find attempts to conduct coordinated 
influence operations on our platforms, we work with our Trust and 
Safety teams to swiftly remove such content from our platforms and 
terminate these actors' accounts. We take steps to prevent possible 
future attempts by the same actors, and routinely exchange information 
and share our findings with law enforcement and others in the industry. 
We share more information about these actions on our Threat Analysis 
Group blog (https://blog.google/threat-analysis-group/), which provides 
information about actions we take against accounts that we attribute to 
coordinated influence campaigns, both foreign and domestic. Moreover, 
if we suspect that users are subject to government-sponsored attacks, 
we warn them. In April 2020 alone, for example, we sent 1,755 warnings 
to users whose accounts were targets of government-backed attackers. 
For more information, please see https://blog.google/threat-analysis-
group/updates-about-government-backed-hacking-and-disinformation/.
    As threats evolve, we will continue to adapt to understand and 
prevent new attempts to misuse our platforms, and will continue to 
expand our use of cutting-edge technology to protect our users. We also 
will build upon our transparency efforts in the future, as they are an 
important component of ensuring an informed public dialogue about the 
role that our services play in society.

    Question 10. How could you share more information about foreign 
disinformation threats among the private sector tech community and 
among social media platforms and with smaller companies?
    Answer. Foreign disinformation is an issue we take very seriously. 
Managing information quality and content moderation across our products 
and services requires significant resources and effort. As noted in our 
response to Question No. 3, in the last year, we have spent at least $1 
billion on content moderation systems and processes, and more than 
20,000 people have worked in a variety of roles to help enforce our 
policies and moderate content.
    The speed at which content is created and shared, and the 
sophisticated efforts of bad actors who wish to cause harm, compound 
the challenge. Fortunately, we are not alone. As noted in our response 
to Question No. 1, we collaborate with technology partners to research 
and address misinformation and have a long-established policy of 
routinely sharing threat information with our peers and working with 
them to better protect the collective digital ecosystem.
    For instance, we publicly share data in places like our 
Transparency Report (https://transparencyreport.google.com/), including 
data on government removal requests, as well as information about 
political advertising, such as who is buying election ads on our 
platforms and how much money is being spent. We make this data 
available for public research to all who are interested in learning or 
using it to conduct research or improve their content moderation 
efforts, including the tech community, social media platforms, and 
smaller companies.
    We also have collaborated with industry partners to prevent 
terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting our platforms. In 
2017, YouTube, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter founded the Global 
Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) as a group of companies, 
dedicated to disrupting terrorist abuse of members' digital platforms. 
Among other important initiatives, GIFCT allows participating companies 
and organizations to submit hashes, or ``digital fingerprints,'' of 
identified terrorist and violent extremist content to a database so 
that it can be swiftly removed from all participating platforms. By 
sharing best practices and collaborating on cross-platform tools, we 
have been able to bring new members to GIFCT and engage more than one 
hundred smaller technology companies through workshops around the 
world. For more information, please see https://gifct.org/.
    As noted in our response to Question No. 7, we also collaboratively 
identify violative content through our YouTube Trusted Flagger program, 
which helps provide robust tools for individuals, government agencies, 
and NGOs that are particularly effective at notifying YouTube of 
content that violates our Community Guidelines. For more information, 
please see https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7554338. The 
program provides these partners with a bulk-flagging tool and provides 
a channel for ongoing discussion and feedback about YouTube's approach 
to various content areas. The program is part of a network of over 180 
academics, government partners, and NGOs that bring valuable expertise 
to our enforcement systems.
    We also commission or partner with organizations specialized in 
tracking and documenting the work of threat actors who seek to target 
our products and services around the world. We typically do not share 
much information about these partnerships in order to protect these 
companies and their employees from the threat actors they monitor. Some 
examples of this work are public, such as our work with FireEye, a 
cybersecurity company, to detect a number of security incidents and 
influence operations.
    We continue to develop and learn from these collaborations over 
time and seek more opportunities to develop best practices jointly with 
partners of all sizes to help people understand what they see online 
and to support the creation of quality content.

    Question 11. What should the U.S. Government be doing to promote 
information sharing on threats and to increase lawful data-sharing 
about suspected foreign malign activity?
    Answer. As noted in our response to Question No. 6, we recognize 
that U.S. government agencies face significant challenges in protecting 
the public against suspected foreign influence operations. That is why 
we work cooperatively with the government and law enforcement and 
provide information about our efforts in places like our Transparency 
Report (https://transparencyreport.google.com/government-removals/
overview), which details how we work with government agencies around 
the world on removal requests, including those relating to national 
security. Google has a dedicated team that receives and responds to a 
high volume of requests for assistance from the government. We have 
developed a process specifically for these requests, so that Google can 
respond while also appropriately narrowing the scope of data disclosed. 
We work hard to protect the privacy of our users, while also supporting 
the important work of law enforcement.
    Additionally, when we find attempts to conduct coordinated 
influence operations on our platforms, we work with our Trust and 
Safety teams to swiftly remove such content from our platforms and 
terminate these actors' accounts. We also routinely exchange 
information and share our findings with government agencies, and take 
steps to prevent possible future attempts by the same actors. For 
example, in October 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice acknowledged 
Google's contributions to the fight against Iranian influence 
operations, in announcing the seizure of 92 domain names used by Iran's 
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to engage in a global disinformation 
campaign targeting the U.S. and other countries. For more information, 
please see https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/united-states-seizes-
domain-names-used-iran-s-islamic-revolutionary-guard-corps.
    We are also focused on working with the government on identifying 
cyber threats. Google Cloud is working closely with the Defense 
Innovation Unit (``DIU'') within the U.S. Department of Defense to 
build a secure cloud management solution to detect, protect against, 
and respond to cyber threats worldwide. We are honored to partner with 
DIU on this critical initiative to protect its network from bad actors 
that pose threats to our national security. For more information, 
please see https://cloud.google.com/press-releases/2020/0520/defense-
innovation-unit.
    We're committed to stopping this type of abuse, and working closely 
with the government and law enforcement on how we can help promote 
election integrity and user security.

    Rohingya/Myanmar. In 2018, Facebook was weaponized against to whip 
up hate against the Muslim minority--the Rohingya. Myanmar held a 
general election last month. Prior to that election, there were 
concerns about the integrity of that election.

    Question 12. What did you do and how are you continuing to make 
sure social media is not abused by any foreign or domestic actors to 
distort the electoral process in Myanmar and other countries?
    Answer. We take very seriously any attempts to use our platforms to 
spread election misinformation, and have taken significant efforts to 
combat such activity across our platforms. This includes, for instance, 
ranking algorithms in Search that prioritize authoritative sources. Our 
Search algorithm ranks pages to provide the most useful and relevant 
information by matching search terms against available web pages and 
looking at factors like the number of times the words appear and 
freshness of the page.
    Additionally, as noted in our response to Question No. 5, on any 
given day, Google's Threat Analysis Group is tracking more than 270 
targeted or government-backed attacker groups from more than 50 
countries. When we find attempts to conduct coordinated influence 
operations on our platforms, we work with our Trust and Safety teams to 
swiftly remove such content from our platforms and terminate these 
actors' accounts. We take steps to prevent possible future attempts by 
the same actors, and routinely exchange information and share our 
findings with others in the industry.
    We also actively work to provide users with more information about 
the content they are seeing to allow them to make educated choices. On 
YouTube, Our Community Guidelines (https://www.youtube.com/
howyoutubeworks/policies/community-guidelines/) prohibit spam, scams, 
or other manipulated media, coordinated influence operations, and any 
content that seeks to incite violence. Additionally, on Google News, we 
mark up links with labels that help users understand what they are 
about to read--whether it is local content, an op-ed, or an in-depth 
piece, and encourage them to be thoughtful about the content they view. 
Publishers who review third-party claims or rumors can showcase their 
work on Google News and in Google Search through fact-check labels. 
People come across these fact checks billions of times per year. For 
more information, please see https://blog.google/products/search/fact-
check-now-available-google-search-and-news-around-world/.
    We also have increased transparency around news sources on YouTube, 
including disclosure of government funding. When a news channel on 
YouTube receives government funding, we make that fact clear by 
including an information panel under each of that channel's videos. 
There have been billions of impressions of information panels on 
YouTube around the world since June 2018. For more information, please 
see https://support.google.com/youtube/ answer/7630512, and https://
blog.youtube/news-and-events/greater-transparency-for-users-around. 
And, as discussed in response to Question No. 3, we also have taken a 
tougher stance on removing hateful and supremacist content and have 
reduced borderline content by reducing recommendations of content that 
comes close to violating our guidelines.
    We are proud of these processes that help protect against abuse and 
manipulation across our products and that help ensure the integrity and 
transparency of elections all over the world.

    Impact of S. 4534. As you are aware, Chairman Wicker and two of our 
Republican colleagues have offered legislation to amend Section 230 to 
address, among other issues, what they call ``repeated instances of 
censorship targeting conservative voices.''
    That legislation would make significant changes to how Section 230 
works, including limiting the categories of content that Section 230 
immunity would cover and making the legal standard for removal of 
content more stringent. Critics of the Chairman's bill, S. 4534, 
suggest that these changes would inhibit companies' ability to remove 
false or harmful content from their platforms.

    Question 13. I would like you to respond yes or no as to whether 
you believe that bills like the Chairman's would make it more difficult 
for Google to remove the following types of content--

   Bullying?

   Election disinformation?

   Misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19?

   Foreign interference in U.S. elections?

   Efforts to engage in platform manipulation?

   Hate speech?

   Offensive content directed at vulnerable communities or 
        other dehumanizing content?

    Answer. Section 230 safeguards open access to information and free 
expression online. Instead of overblocking speech, the law supports 
platforms' ability to responsibly manage content. In this way, Section 
230 is one of the foundational laws that has enabled America's 
technology leadership and success in the Internet sector. Changes to 
Section 230 could potentially make it more difficult to moderate all of 
the types of content listed above, and others.
    Millions of small and large platforms and websites across the 
Internet rely on Section 230 to keep users safe by addressing harmful 
content and to promote free expression. Changes to Section 230 could 
negatively impact our ability to remove harmful content of all types 
and could make our services less useful and safe. We are concerned that 
changes could jeopardize removals of terrorist content, spam, malware, 
scams, misinformation, manipulated media, hate speech, content harmful 
to children, and other objectionable content. This is especially 
important as threats to our platforms and our users are ever-evolving, 
and the nature of the content we see is always changing.
    We agree with the goal of Ranking Member Wicker's proposal--
protecting free expression online. And we also agree that any proposal 
should address content that promotes self-harm, promotes terrorism, or 
is unlawful. We recognize the legitimate questions raised by this 
Committee on Section 230 and would be pleased to continue our ongoing 
dialogue with Congress.

    Combating ``Garbage'' Content. Santa Clara University Law Professor 
Eric Goldman, a leading scholar on Section 230, has argued that the 
Online Freedom and Viewpoint Diversity Act (S. 4534) wants Internet 
services to act as ``passive'' receptacles for users' content rather 
than content curators or screeners of ``lawful but awful'' third-party 
content.
    He argues that the bill would be counterproductive because we need 
less of what he calls ``garbage'' content on the Internet, not more. 
Section 230 lets Internet services figure out the best ways to combat 
online trolls, and many services have innovated and invested more in 
improving their content moderation functions over the past few years.
    Professor Goldman specifically points out that the bill would make 
it more difficult for social media companies to remove ``junk science/
conspiracy theories, like anti-vax content or quack COVID19 cures.''

    Question 14. Would S. 4534--and similar bills--hurt efforts by 
Google to combat online trolls and to fight what Professor Goldman 
calls ``lawful but awful. . .garbage'' content?
    Answer. Yes, we believe that Section 230 strikes the appropriate 
balance that facilitates making more content and diverse points of view 
available than ever before in history, all while ensuring Internet 
companies can keep their platforms safe and secure for our users. 
Google, and millions of small and large platforms and websites across 
the internet, rely on Section 230 to keep users safe by addressing 
harmful content and to promote free expression. As noted in our 
response to Question No. 13, Section 230 supports our and other 
platforms' ability to curate content to protect users--and changes to 
Section 230 could jeopardize removals of terrorist content, spam, 
malware, scams, misinformation, manipulated media, hate speech, and 
content harmful to children, among other things.
    The ability to remove harmful but not necessarily illegal content 
has been particularly important during COVID-19. In just one week, we 
saw 18 million malware and phishing e-mails related to the coronavirus 
and more than 240 million COVID-related spam messages. Since February 
2020, we've removed over 600,000 YouTube videos with dangerous or 
misleading coronavirus information and over 270 million coronavirus 
ads. Section 230 supports our development and enforcement of content 
rules that ensure that our platforms are safe for our users. We also 
recognize the legitimate questions raised by this Committee on Section 
230 and would be pleased to continue our ongoing dialogue with 
Congress.

    The FCC's Capitulation to Trump's Section 230 Strategy. The 
Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, announced 
recently that he would heed President Trump's call to start a 
rulemaking to ``clarify'' certain terms in Section 230.
    And reports suggest that the President pulled the renomination of a 
sitting FCC Commissioner due to his concerns about that rulemaking, 
replacing him with a nominee that helped develop the Administration's 
petition that is the foundation of this rulemaking. This capitulation 
to President Trump by a supposedly independent regulatory agency is 
appalling.
    It is particularly troubling that I--and other members of this 
committee--have been pressing Chairman Pai to push the envelope to 
interpret the agency's existing statutory authority to, among other 
things, use the E-Rate program to close the homework gap, which has 
only gotten more severe as a result of remote learning, and to use the 
agency's existing authority to close the digital divide on Tribal 
lands. And we expressed serious concern about Chairman Pai's move to 
repeal net neutrality, which the FCC majority based upon a highly 
conservative reading of the agency's statutory authority.
    In contrast, Chairman Pai is now willing to take an expansive view 
of the agency's authority when asked to support the President's 
pressure campaign against social media in an attempt not to fact check 
or label the President's posts.

    Question 15. What are your views on Chairman Pai's announced 
rulemaking and the FCC's legal analysis of section 230? Would you agree 
that his approach on this issue is in tension with his repeal of the 
essential consumer protections afforded by the net neutrality rules?
    Answer. The open Internet has grown to become an unrivaled source 
of choice, competition, innovation, and the free flow of information. 
We appreciate that different sectors have different views about the 
details of `net neutrality' legislation. But everyone agrees that an 
open Internet has been a good thing--the question is how to best 
preserve it.
    We believe that Section 230 strikes the appropriate balance that 
facilitates making available more content and diverse points of view 
than ever before in history, while ensuring Internet companies can keep 
their platforms safe and secure for our users. Our business model 
depends on us being a useful and trustworthy source of information for 
everyone and we have strong policies across our products to protect our 
users. Our platforms empower a wide range of people and organizations 
from across the political spectrum, giving them a voice and new ways to 
reach their audiences. Section 230 enables Google and other platforms 
to strike a balance between maintaining a platform for free speech and 
living up to our responsibility to users. We understand that these are 
important issues and remain committed to working with Congress on them.

    Addressing Bad Actors. I have become increasingly concerned with 
how easy it is for bad actors to use social media platforms to achieve 
their ends, and how they have been too slow to stop it. For example, a 
video touting antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a ``cure'' for 
COVID was eventually taken down this summer--but not after garnering 17 
million views on Facebook.
    In May, the watchdog group Tech Transparency Project concluded that 
white supremacist groups are ``thriving'' on Facebook, despite 
assurances that Facebook does not allow such groups on its platform.
    These are obviously troubling developments, especially in light of 
the millions of Americans that rely on social media services. You have 
to do better.
    That said, I am not sure that modifying Section 230 is the solution 
for these and other very real concerns about your industry's behavior.

    Question 16. From your company's perspective, would modifying 
Section 230 prevent bad actors from engaging in harmful conduct?
    Answer. As noted in our responses above, Section 230 strikes the 
appropriate balance that facilitates making available more content and 
diverse points of view than ever before in history, while ensuring 
Internet companies can keep their platforms safe and secure for our 
users. Changes to Section 230 could jeopardize--rather than encourage--
removals of terrorist content, spam, malware, scams, misinformation, 
manipulated media, hate speech, and content harmful to children. 
Section 230 helps Internet companies address harmful content, including 
user comments, and while we've always been proponents of free speech, 
we've also always had rules of the road and are never going to be 
``neutral'' about harmful content. Millions of small and large 
platforms and websites across the Internet rely on Section 230 to both 
keep users safe and to promote free expression. Under existing law, 
Section 230s protections for online platforms already exempt all 
Federal criminal law. Google also has worked closely with law 
enforcement and organizations such as NCMEC, Thorn, and Polaris for 
years. We have concerns that changes to Section 230 would negatively 
impact our ability to remove harmful content of all types and would 
make our services less useful and safe. We also recognize the 
legitimate questions raised by this Committee on Section 230 and would 
be pleased to continue our ongoing dialogue with Congress.

    Question 17. What do you recommend be done to address the concerns 
raised by the critics of Section 230?
    Answer. It is no accident that the greatest Internet companies in 
the world were created in the United States. Section 230 is one of the 
foundational laws that has enabled the U.S. to lead the Internet 
globally, supporting millions of jobs and billions of dollars of 
economic activity--so we want to be very cautious and thoughtful about 
potential changes.
    Our platforms empower a wide range of people and organizations from 
across the political spectrum, giving them a voice and new ways to 
reach their audiences. We have always stood for protecting free 
expression online, and have enforced our content moderation policies 
consistently and impartially, and we will continue to do so. In 
addition, millions of small and large platforms and websites across the 
Internet rely on Section 230 to keep users safe by addressing harmful 
content and to promote free expression. Section 230 is what permits us 
to curate content to protect users--and changes to Section 230 could 
jeopardize removals of harmful content.
    We are committed to working with all stakeholders to support 
platforms' efforts to receive complaints, implement appropriate 
processes, and report out--without over-prescribing the precise manner 
and timelines by which they do so, or causing any unintended 
consequences. We recognize the legitimate questions raised by this 
Committee on Section 230 and would be pleased to continue our ongoing 
dialogue with Congress.

    Potential Impacts of Changes to Section 230. Section 230 has been 
foundational to the development of the Internet of today. Most believe 
that absent Section 230, we would not have the massive, worldwide 
public forum the Internet provides.
    Of course, we all understand that this forum may not be an 
unmitigated good, but it is equally true that the Internet is a far 
more vibrant place than traditional media, because of the ability of 
users to contribute their thoughts and content.

    Question 18. How do you expect Google would react when faced with 
increased possibility of litigation over user-submitted content?
    Answer. Section 230 is what permits us to curate content to protect 
users-and changes could jeopardize removals of terrorist content, spam/
malware, scams, misinformation, manipulated media, and hate speech. 
Without Section 230, we certainly could face an increased risk of 
liability and litigation costs for decisions around removal of content 
from our platforms. For example, YouTube might face legal claims for 
removing videos we determine could harm or mislead users in violation 
of our policies. Or we might be sued for trying to protect our users 
from spam and malware on Gmail and Search. We have concerns that 
putting potentially every decision around content moderation up to 
judicial review would negatively impact our ability to remove harmful 
content of all types and would make our services less useful and safe. 
As reflected in our other answers, we believe that Section 230 strikes 
the appropriate balance that facilitates making more content and 
diverse points of view available than ever before in history, all while 
ensuring Internet companies can keep their platforms safe and secure 
for our users.
    Moreover, millions of small and large platforms and websites across 
the Internet rely on Section 230 to both keep users safe and promote 
free expression. Changes to 230 would disproportionately impact up-and-
coming platforms without the resources to police every comment or 
defend every litigation. This could deter the next Google or Twitter or 
Facebook--the liability for third party content would be too great.
    We also recognize the legitimate questions raised by this Committee 
on Section 230 and would be pleased to continue our ongoing dialogue 
with Congress.

    Online Disinformation. I have serious concerns about the unchecked 
spread of disinformation online. From false political claims to harmful 
health information, each day the problem seems to get worse and worse. 
And I do not believe that social media companies--who make billions of 
dollars from ads based in part on user views of this disinformation--
are giving this problem the serious attention that it deserves.

    Question 19. Do you agree that Google can and should do more to 
stop the spread of harmful online disinformation?

    Question 20. Can you commit that Google will take more aggressive 
steps to stop the spread of this disinformation? What specific 
additional actions will you take?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to Question Nos. 19 and 20.
    Addressing misinformation is an evolving threat, and we will 
continue to take action to address these issues. Due to the shifting 
tactics of groups promoting misinformation and conspiracy theories, 
we've been investing in the policies, resources, and products needed to 
protect our users from this harmful content.
    As noted in our response to Senator Peters' Question No. 1, among 
other things, we launched a Community Guidelines YouTube update in 
October on harmful conspiracy theories (https://blog.youtube/news-and-
events/harmful-conspiracy-theories-youtube/), which expanded our hate 
speech and harassment policies to prohibit content that targets an 
individual or group with conspiracy theories that have been used to 
justify real-world violence. For example, content such as conspiracy 
theories saying individuals or groups are evil, corrupt, or malicious 
based on protected attributes (e.g., age, race, religion, etc.), or 
hateful supremacist propaganda, including the recruitment of new 
members or requests for financial support for their ideology, all 
violate our hate speech policy (https://support.google.com/youtube/
answer/2801939) and are subject to removal as such.
    As detailed in our October update, these are not the first steps we 
have taken to limit the reach of harmful misinformation. Nearly two 
years ago, we updated our YouTube recommendations system, including 
reducing recommendations of borderline content and content that could 
misinform users in harmful ways--such as videos promoting a phony 
miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or 
making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11. This 
resulted in a 70 percent drop in views coming from our search and 
discovery systems. Further, when we looked at QAnon content, we saw the 
number of views that come from non-subscribed recommendations to 
prominent Q-related channels dropped by over 80 percent from January 
2019 to October 2020. For more information on these policies and 
enforcement actions, please see https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/
harmful-conspiracy-theories-youtube/, https://blog.youtube/news-and-
events/continuing-our-work-to-improve/, and https://blog.youtube/news-
and-events/our-ongoing-work-to-tackle-hate.
    In addition to removing content that violates our policies, we also 
reduce borderline content and raise up authoritative voices by 
providing users with more information about the content they are seeing 
to allow them to make educated choices. On YouTube, for example, there 
have been billions of impressions of information panels around the 
world since June 2018. For more information, please see https://
support.google.com/youtube/answer/9229632. And, for over three years, 
we have highlighted fact checks on Search and News as a way to help 
people make more informed judgments about the content they encounter 
online. People come across these fact checks billions of times per 
year. For more information, please see https://blog.google/products/
search/fact-check-now-available-google-search-and-news-around-world/.
    Concerning political misinformation on YouTube, since September, 
we've terminated over 8,000 channels and thousands of harmful and 
misleading elections-related videos for violating our existing 
policies. Over 77 percent of those removed videos were taken down 
before they had 100 views. And, since election day, relevant fact check 
information panels from third-party fact checkers were triggered over 
200,000 times above relevant election-related search results, including 
for voter fraud narratives such as ``Dominion voting machines'' and 
``Michigan recount.'' For additional information, please see https://
blog.youtube/news-and-events/supporting-the-2020-us-election/.
    Our Ads policies are similarly designed to ensure a safe and 
positive experience for our users. For example, under our existing 
misrepresentation policy, we do not allow ads to run or content to 
monetize that promotes medically unsubstantiated claims related to 
COVID cures (https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9811449). 
Since February 2020, we've blocked or removed over 270 million 
coronavirus related ads across all Google advertising platforms.
    As noted in our response to Question No. 8 and Senator Blumenthal's 
Question No. 1, all ads, including political ads, must comply with our 
publicly-available Ads policies (https://support.google.com/adspolicy/
answer/6008942), which prohibit, among other things, dangerous or 
derogatory content; content that is illegal, promotes illegal activity, 
or infringes on the legal rights of others; and content that 
misrepresents the owner's origin or purpose. We put significant effort 
into curbing harmful misinformation on our ads platform, including 
prohibiting content that makes claims that are demonstrably false and 
could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or 
democratic process. Further, given the unprecedented amount of votes 
that were counted after election day this year, we also implemented a 
sensitive event policy for political ads after the polls closed on 
November 3, 2020 (https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/
10122500), which prohibited advertisers from running ads referencing 
candidates, the election, or its outcome. Additionally, all advertisers 
who run U.S. election ads must first be verified in order to protect 
the integrity of the election ads that run on our platform. We are 
serious about enforcing these policies, and we block and remove ads 
that we find to be violative. For more information, please see our 
political content advertising policies, https://support.google.com/
adspolicy/answer/6014595.
    The openness of our platforms has helped creativity and access to 
information thrive. It's our responsibility to protect that, and 
prevent our platforms from being used to spread dangerous 
misinformation. We are committed to taking the steps needed to live up 
to this responsibility today, tomorrow, and in the years to come.

    Question 21. Although Section 230 says that Google cannot be 
legally considered a publisher, Google does sell a lot of advertising 
and produces a lot of information. In fact, I recently released a 
report on the state of local journalism, and Google alone earns more 
advertising revenue than all of the newspaper publishers in the U.S. 
combined. Google is also a dominant provider of technology and services 
that enable online advertising and many online publishers are reliant 
on these services to earn revenue. What many people probably don't know 
is that Google also buys a lot of online advertising inventory. But you 
don't actually use most of that advertising inventory. Instead, you re-
sell it. Of all the advertising that Google buys, what percentage do 
you then re-sell? Over the last two years, when you bought advertising 
inventory from other publishers and then re-sold it to advertisers, 
what was your average gross profit margin? When a competing publisher 
is also a customer of your ad services business, do you believe you 
have an obligation to help them maximize the revenue they earn from 
their advertising inventory?
    Answer. We work to sustain a healthy, vibrant, and financially 
sound Internet ecosystem and build tools to help publishers make money 
from ad inventory, increase return on ad spend, and reach consumers at 
a global scale. We also strive to help users find the content they need 
quickly while having their privacy expectations respected and without 
being overwhelmed with annoying or intrusive ads. Google designs its 
publisher ad technology products to enable publishers to facilitate 
competition and increase revenues for their ad inventory, making it 
even easier for them to deliver valuable, trustworthy ads and the right 
experiences for consumers across devices and channels. We are proud of 
how Google's digital advertising tools help publishers generate 
revenue--in 2018 alone, we paid our publisher partners more than $14 
billion.
    When ads flow through both our buy-side and sell-side services, 
publishers receive most of the revenue. As detailed in our June 2020 
blogpost (https://blog.google/products/admanager/display-buying-share-
revenue-publishers), in 2019, when marketers used Google Ads or Display 
& Video to buy display ads on Google Ad Manager, publishers kept over 
69 percent of the revenue generated. When publishers use our Ad Manager 
platform to sell ads directly to advertisers, they keep even more of 
the revenue--nearly 100 percent--paying only a minimal ad serving fee. 
We recently analyzed the revenue data of the top 100 news publishers 
globally with the highest programmatic revenue generated in Ad Manager 
and found that, on average, news publishers keep over 95 percent of the 
digital advertising revenue they generate when they use Ad Manager to 
show ads on their websites. For additional information, please see 
https://blog.google/products/admanager/news-publishers-make-money-ad-
manager.
    Google has also publicly disclosed its revenue share when 
publishers use AdSense (Google's ad network) to sell their ad 
inventory. For more information, please see our AdSense revenue share 
page, https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195.
    Fundamentally, we're in the business of providing helpful and 
relevant tools and information, and we are proud that Google's 
investments in this space have helped publishers make money to fund 
their work, made it easy for businesses large and small to reach 
consumers, and supported the creative and diverse content we all enjoy.

    Question 22. The ad server has two main roles in online 
advertising. First, ad servers store and make available advertising 
content that is transmitted to viewers. Secondly, ad servers collect 
metrics about advertising targeting and performance. The first function 
is largely a commodity service, but the second function is very 
strategic, since advertising data is valuable and those who collect 
advertising data also control how the data can be monetized. It's been 
reported that Google controls greater than 90 percent of the ad server 
market. How would you characterize Google's position in this market? 
Who would you describe as your strongest competitor in the ad server 
business?
    Answer. We face formidable competition in every aspect of our 
business, particularly from companies that seek to connect people with 
online information and provide them with relevant advertising. 
Advertisers have lots of options when it comes to choosing an ad 
server, including solutions offered by Adform, AdGlare, Adslot, 
Addition, Amazon's Sizmek, Unilever's Celtra, Clinch, Epon, Extreme 
Reach, Flashtalking, Innovid, OpenX, Verizon Media, Weborama, and Zedo. 
Publishers likewise have many options when it comes to choosing an ad 
server, including solutions offered by Adform, AT&T's Xandr, Comcast's 
FreeWheel, PubMatic, Smart, SpotX, ironSource, Twitter's MoPub, and 
others. Other publishers, such as Twitter, Amazon, and Facebook, have 
decided to build their own in-house ad serving systems. Publishers are 
also able to use ad networks (without a separate ad server) to serve 
ads on their sites, or forgo the use of an ad server by placing an ad 
tag on their web page that directly connects to sell-side tools.
    Additionally, the lines between different advertising technology 
tools have blurred in recent years. For example, many demand-side 
platforms (DSPs), supply-side platforms (SSPs), and ad networks include 
ad serving tools, which publishers and advertisers use interchangeably. 
Industry reports suggest that the average publisher uses four to six 
SSPs. Similarly, the average advertiser uses three DSPs simultaneously 
(and also buys ad inventory directly from publishers like Facebook, 
Twitter, LinkedIn, and Snapchat who have their own buying platforms). 
Thus, publishers and advertisers don't have to use Google's tools, and 
even when they do, they can either switch to competing products or even 
use them simultaneously. (See May 5, 2020 AdExchanger article, https://
www.adexchanger.com/platforms/google-ad-manager-policy-changes-dont-
hurt-publishers-according-to-advertiser-perceptions/; July 13, 2020 
AdExchanger article, https://www.adexchanger.com/online-advertising/
google-reclaims-the-dsp-crown-in-latest-advertiser-perceptions-
report/.)
    Additional information regarding the competition we face in our 
advertising business is available in places like our blogs, including 
https://www.blog.google/technology/ads/ad-tech-industry-crowded-and-
competitive/, as well as our Forms 10-K and 10-Q, available at https://
abc.xyz/investor/. This competitive ecosystem supports the availability 
of free-to-consumer content online, which has a broader, positive 
impact on consumers.

    Question 23. What percentage of users clicked on the ``show me'' 
button on YouTube's election label on disputed content? Please provide 
statistics on the efficacy of this labelling, such as the average 
proportion of a video that is watched before and after labelling.
    Answer. While only a small portion of watch time is election-
related content, YouTube continues to be an important source of 
election news. That is why we show information panels linking both to 
Google's election results feature, which sources election results from 
The Associated Press, and to the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure 
Security Agency's (CISA) ``Rumor Control'' page for debunking election 
integrity misinformation, alongside these and over 200,000 other 
election-related videos. Collectively, these information panels have 
been shown over 4.5 billion times. And, since election day, relevant 
fact check information panels from third-party fact checkers were 
triggered over 200,000 times above relevant election-related search 
results, including for voter fraud narratives such as ``Dominion voting 
machines'' and ``Michigan recount.'' For additional information, please 
see https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/supporting-the-2020-us-
election/, and https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/our-approach-to-
election-day-on-youtube/.

    Question 24. Third parties assessed YouTube as more opaque than 
Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter about its policies on election 
misinformation for months preceding the election and weeks after it. 
For example, an Election Integrity Partnership review of platform 
policies regarding election delegitimization found on October 28th that 
YouTube still had non-existent policies in almost every area, as 
opposed to ``comprehensive'' ratings for Twitter and Facebook in nearly 
every category. Please describe the reasoning behind the lack of 
specificity in your election delegitimization policies leading up to 
the election. On December 9th, YouTube updated its policies, but only 
after a critical period of potential civil unrest in which civil 
servants in swing states were being threatened due to election 
misinformation. Does YouTube plan to establish new mechanisms of policy 
review that would allow it to respond more effectively to such critical 
moments?
    Answer. We've always had rules of the road for YouTube that we 
enforce in order to protect our users. We take a holistic approach to 
disinformation through several policies in our Community Guidelines 
(https://www.youtube.com/howyoutube
works/policies/community-guidelines/), which explain what types of 
content and behaviors are not allowed, and the process by which content 
and users may be removed from the service. However, given the ever-
evolving threats to our platforms and users, and that the nature of the 
content we see is always changing, it would be ineffective and 
impractical to attempt to address every possible harm in advance in our 
YouTube Community Guidelines. Instead, our policies include 
prohibitions against spam, deceptive practices, scams, hate speech, 
harassment, and harmful manipulated media. For example, our deceptive 
practices policy (https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2801973) 
prohibits content that deliberately seeks to spread disinformation that 
could suppress voting or otherwise interfere with democratic or civic 
processes, such as demonstrably false content making claims of 
different voting days for different demographics.
    Google has long had numerous systems in place, both automated and 
manual, to detect and address problematic content in violation of these 
policies. Our machine learning systems are faster and more effective 
than ever before and are helping our human review teams remove content 
with speed and volume that could not be achieved with people alone. For 
example, in the third quarter of 2020, more than 7.8 million videos 
were removed from YouTube for violating our community guidelines. 
Ninety-four percent of these videos were first flagged by machines 
rather than humans. Of those detected by machines, over 45 percent 
never received a single view, and just over 80 percent received fewer 
than 10 views. In the same period, YouTube removed more than 1.1 
billion comments, 99 percent of which were detected automatically. For 
more information, please see our YouTube Community Guidelines 
Enforcement Transparency Report (https://transparencyreport.google
.com/youtube-policy/removals).
    Additionally, as noted in our response to Question No. 5, since 
September, we've terminated over 8,000 channels and thousands of 
harmful and misleading elections-related videos for violating our 
existing policies. Over 77 percent of those removed videos were taken 
down before they had 100 views. And, since election day, relevant fact 
check information panels from third-party fact checkers were triggered 
over 200,000 times above relevant election-related search results, 
including for voter fraud narratives such as ``Dominion voting 
machines'' and ``Michigan recount.'' In addition, we have mechanisms in 
place to reduce the recommendation of content that brushes right up 
against our policy line, including harmful misinformation. Limiting the 
reach of borderline content and prominently surfacing authoritative 
information are important ways we protect people from problematic 
content that doesn't violate our Community Guidelines. Since making 
changes to our recommendations systems, we've seen a substantial drop 
in borderline content and misinformation. Over 70 percent of 
recommendations on election-related topics came from authoritative news 
sources and the top recommended videos and channels for election-
related content were primarily authoritative news. In fact, the top 10 
authoritative news channels were recommended over 14 times more than 
the top 10 non-authoritative channels on election-related content. For 
additional information, please see https://blog.youtube/news-and-
events/supporting-the-2020-us-election/.
    Our teams work hard to ensure we are striking a balance between 
allowing for a broad range of political speech and making sure our 
platform isn't abused to incite real-world harm or broadly spread 
harmful misinformation. We welcome ongoing debate and discussion and 
will keep engaging with experts, researchers, and organizations to 
ensure that our policies and products are meeting that goal. And as 
always, we will apply learnings from this election to our ongoing 
efforts to protect the integrity of elections around the world.

    Question 25. Mr. Pichai, how much money does Google earn in total 
from its ad tech businesses in the United States? What percent of those 
funds come from newspapers and publishers using your ad tech services?

    Question 26. Mr. Pichai, could you also provide the committee a 
breakdown of your yearly revenues of your various ad-tech businesses?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to Question Nos. 25 and 26.
    We generate advertising revenues primarily by delivering 
advertising on Google properties. Google properties revenues consist 
primarily of advertising revenues generated on Google.com, the Google 
Search app, and other Google owned and operated properties like Gmail, 
Google Maps, Google Play, and YouTube. We also generate advertising 
revenues through the ad tech products included in our Google Network 
Member properties (Google Network Members includes, but is not limited 
to, products such as AdMob, AdSense, Google Ad Manager, Display & Video 
360, Campaign Manager, etc.).
    We generate most of our revenue from advertising, and ad tech is a 
portion of our Google Network Member advertising revenue. Our 
advertising revenues are disclosed on a quarterly basis in our Forms 
10-K and 10-Q available at https://abc.xyz/investor/. In 2019, Alphabet 
generated total revenues of $161.9 billion, $74.8 billion of which was 
from the United States. Globally, our advertising revenues for 2019 
were $134.8 billion, or 83 percent of total revenues. In 2019, we had 
gross advertising revenues of $21.5 billion globally from Google 
Network Member properties which includes, but is not limited to, our ad 
tech products, or 16 percent of total advertising gross revenues and 13 
percent of total gross revenues, most of which is paid out to 
publishers. As noted in our response to Question No. 21, we paid more 
than $14 billion to our publishing partners in 2018. And when 
publishers use our Ad Manager platform to sell ads directly to 
advertisers, they keep even more of the revenue--nearly 100 percent--
paying only a minimal ad serving fee. We recently analyzed the revenue 
data of the top 100 news publishers globally with the highest 
programmatic revenue generated in Ad Manager and found that, on 
average, news publishers keep over 95 percent of the digital 
advertising revenue they generate when they use Ad Manager to show ads 
on their websites. For additional information, please see https://
blog.google/products/admanager/news-publishers-make-money-ad-manager.
    Ad tech is a complex, highly-competitive ecosystem, and we believe 
it's working to the benefit of publishers, advertisers, and users, and 
we hope to continue succeeding by building the best products for our 
users.

    Question 27. Mr. Pichai, how much of the $1 billion dollar pledge 
to publishers are you reserving for U.S. publishers? Please explain 
your methodology for paying publishers. How are you determining who to 
pay in the U.S. and internationally? Will you provide clear information 
to the marketplace that explains your methodology? Will you list all of 
the publishers you pay?
    Answer. We believe strongly in connecting our users to high quality 
news content, and, in October 2020, we announced an initial $1 billion 
investment over the next three years in partnerships with news 
publishers and the future of news. This financial commitment--our 
biggest to date--will pay publishers to create and curate high-quality 
content for a different kind of online news experience.
    Google News Showcase is a new product made up of story panels that 
give participating publishers the ability to package the stories that 
appear within Google's news products, providing deeper storytelling and 
more context through features like timelines, bullets, and related 
articles. News Showcase will also provide limited access to paywalled 
content in partnership with select news publishers. We've signed 
partnerships for News Showcase with nearly 400 leading publications 
across Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, France, the U.K., and 
Australia, some of which are identified in our October 2020 blogpost 
(https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/google-news-initiative/
google-news-showcase) and December 2020 blogpost (https://blog.google/
products/news/google-news-showcase-expands). Publishers are selected on 
a country-by-country basis, with publishers that have established 
audiences and serve a community--like local news publishers and print 
newspapers--receiving priority. Financial details of the licensing 
deals vary depending on the volume and type of content each publisher 
provides.
    Both News Showcase and our financial investment--which will extend 
beyond the initial three years--are focused on contributing to the 
overall sustainability of our news partners around the world. We are 
proud that this commitment will build on our long-term support of news 
publishers and the future of news, and help journalism in the 21st 
century not just survive, but thrive.

    Question 28. Mr. Pichai, my staff has been provided reports that 
some of your proposed agreements with news publishers around the world 
require the publishers to promise not to sue Google. Under these 
agreements news publishers would be barred, for instance, from taking 
legal action against Google regarding content aggregation--or they 
would forfeit the entire financial agreement. Are these reports 
accurate? Will you commit to not including covenants not to sue in 
agreements with American publishers?
    Answer. It is not uncommon for companies to include waivers of 
claims in contracts or agreements to settle pending or threatened 
litigation. Google may have entered into these types of contracts over 
the years and to the extent that such terms exist for either or both 
parties, they are the product of good faith negotiations by 
sophisticated parties.
                                 ______
                                 
   Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Amy Klobuchar to 
                             Sundar Pichai
    Health Data Privacy. New technologies have made it easier for 
people to monitor their health, but health tracking apps, wearable 
technology devices, and home DNA testing kits have given companies 
access to consumers' private health data--which is not protected under 
existing privacy law. In June 2019, I introduced legislation with 
Senator Murkowski to require the Department of Health and Human 
Services (HHS) to address this issue.

    Question 1. Do you agree that new privacy regulations that 
complement existing Federal health privacy laws are required to keep up 
with advances in technology to protect sensitive health data?

    Question 2. Do you agree that consumers should have heightened 
privacy for their sensitive health data, and should know where this 
type of data is being shared?
    Answer. We support Federal comprehensive privacy legislation, and 
we would welcome the chance to work with you on it. We also published a 
framework drawing from established privacy frameworks and our practical 
experience. For more information, please see https://
services.google.com/fh/files/blogs/google_framework_
responsible_data_protection_regulation.pdf.
    In the last year, we also have introduced new ways for users to 
protect their personal data, including by making our controls easier to 
use, continuing our advances in privacy enhancing technologies like 
differential privacy, and providing users options to have Google 
automatically delete personal data like Location History, searches, and 
other activity. In our work with healthcare providers helping them to 
deliver better care to patients in a privacy-protective way across the 
U.S., we implement controls designed to adhere to HIPAA and other 
existing data privacy and security regulations where applicable to 
protect patient data, as well as in accordance with our Privacy 
Principles (https://safety.google/principles/) and our Privacy Policy 
(https://policies.google.com/privacy). We recognize the legitimate 
questions raised by this Committee on healthcare data and privacy, and 
would be pleased to continue our ongoing dialogue with Congress. For 
more information on our approach to privacy, please see https://
health.google/ and https://blog.google/products/admanager/additional-
steps-safeguard-user-privacy/.
                                 ______
                                 
 Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Richard Blumenthal to 
                             Sundar Pichai
    For the following questions, please provide information about your 
firm's content moderation decisions related to election misinformation 
and civic integrity covering the 2020 election period.

    Question 1. Please describe what processes were used to make 
decisions about labeling or taking down organic and paid content 
related to elections or civic integrity.
    Elections are a critical part of the democratic process, and we are 
committed to helping voters find relevant, helpful, and accurate 
information.
    Answer. Regarding our processes for paid content, all ads, 
including political ads, must comply with our publicly-available Ads 
policies (https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6008942), under 
which candidates, campaigns, and other types of political spenders are 
treated the same as all other advertisers. These policies prohibit, 
among other things, dangerous or derogatory content; content that is 
illegal, promotes illegal activity, or infringes on the legal rights of 
others; and content that misrepresents the owner's origin or purpose. 
We put significant effort into curbing harmful misinformation on our 
ads platform, including prohibiting content that makes claims that are 
demonstrably false and could significantly undermine participation or 
trust in an electoral or democratic process. For more information, 
please see our Misrepresentation policy, https://support.google.com/
adspolicy/answer/6020955. We also have zero tolerance for ads that 
employ voter suppression tactics or undermine participation in 
elections--when we find those ads, we take them down. Given the 
unprecedented amount of votes that were counted after election day this 
year, we also implemented a sensitive event policy for political ads 
after the polls closed on November 3, 2020 (https://support.google.com/
adspolicy/answer/10122500), which prohibited advertisers from running 
ads referencing candidates, the election, or its outcome. Additionally, 
all advertisers who run U.S. election-related ads must first be 
verified in order to protect the integrity of the election ads that run 
on our platform. We're serious about enforcing these policies, and we 
block and remove ads that we find to be violative. For more 
information, please see our political content advertising policies, 
https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6014595.
    We also actively work to provide users with more information about 
the content they are seeing to allow them to make educated choices. On 
YouTube, Our Community Guidelines (https://www.youtube.com/
howyoutubeworks/policies/community-guidelines/) prohibit spam, scams, 
or other manipulated media, coordinated influence operations, and any 
content that seeks to incite violence. Since September, we've 
terminated over 8,000 channels and thousands of harmful and misleading 
elections-related videos for violating our existing policies. Over 77 
percent of those removed videos were taken down before they had 100 
views. We also work to make sure that the line between what is removed 
and what is allowed is drawn in the right place. Our policies prohibit 
misleading viewers about where and how to vote. We also disallow 
content alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of 
a historical U.S. Presidential election. In some cases, however, that 
has meant allowing controversial views on the outcome or process of 
counting votes of a current election as election officials have worked 
to finalize counts.
    Furthermore, as December 8, 2020 was the safe harbor deadline for 
the U.S. Presidential election, and enough states have certified their 
election results to determine a President-elect, YouTube will remove 
any piece of content uploaded anytime after December 8 that misleads 
people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome 
of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, in line with our approach 
towards historical U.S. Presidential elections. For example, we will 
remove videos claiming that a Presidential candidate won the election 
due to widespread software glitches or counting errors. As always, news 
coverage and commentary on these issues can remain on our site if 
there's sufficient education, documentary, scientific, or artistic 
context, as described here, https://blog.youtube/inside-youtube/look-
how-we-treat-educational-documentary-scientific-and-artistic-content-
youtube/.
    Our publicly accessible, searchable, and downloadable Transparency 
Report contains information about election ad content and spending on 
our platforms (https://transparencyreport.google.com/political-ads/
region/US). The report provides information about when election ads 
ran, how they were targeted, how many impressions they served, and the 
advertiser who paid for the ads. We also describe our efforts to 
promote election and civic integrity in recent blogs, including https:/
/www
.blog.google/technology/ads/update-our-political-ads-policy/, https://
blog.google/
outreach-initiatives/civics/following-2020-us-election-google/, and our 
Threat Analysis Group's blog, https://blog.google/threat-analysis-
group/.
    Our processes relating to organic content on Search apply 
regardless of whether or not the content relates to elections. For over 
three years, we have highlighted fact checks on Search as a way to help 
people make more informed judgments about the content they encounter 
online. For more information, please see https://blog.google/products/
search/fact-check-now-available-google-search-and-news-around-world/. 
In terms of blocking or removing content in Search results, we only 
remove content in limited circumstances, including based on our legal 
obligations, copyright, webmaster guidelines, spam, and sensitive 
personal information like government IDs. Please see, for example, our 
policies relating to removals for legal obligations (https://
support.google.com/websearch/answer/9673730); webmaster guidelines 
(https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/guidelines/
webmaster-guidelines); voluntarily removal policies (https://
support.google.com/websearch/answer/3143948); and policies concerning 
removals for copyright infringement (https://support.google.com/
transparencyreport/answer/7347743). In these cases, content that is 
reported to us or that we identify to be in violation of our policies 
is filtered from our results to adhere to the law and those policies. 
Additionally, some of our Search features, such as featured snippets, 
have policies specifying what is eligible to appear (https://
support.google.com/websearch/answer/9351707). All of these policies are 
intended to ensure we are not surfacing shocking, offensive, hateful, 
violent, dangerous, harmful, or similarly problematic material.
    We are proud of these processes that help protect against abuse and 
manipulation across our products and help ensure the integrity and 
transparency of our Nation's elections.

    Question 2. How many posts were reported or identified as 
potentially containing election misinformation or violations of civic 
integrity policies?

    Question 3. How many posts had enforcement action taken for 
containing election misinformation or violations of civic integrity 
policies?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to Question Nos. 2 and 3.
    Election and civic integrity is an issue that we take very 
seriously, and we have many different policies and processes to combat 
election-related misinformation and related violative content. Notably, 
such content may be removed for violations of a range of policies 
across our products, such as our misrepresentation policies, our 
dangerous or derogatory content policies, or our violent or graphic 
content policies. We regularly release reports that detail how we 
enforce our policies, including information on the number of removals 
and the reasons for those removals. For example, our YouTube Community 
Guidelines Enforcement Transparency Report (https://
transparencyreport.google.com/youtube-policy/removals) contains 
information on the volume of videos removed by YouTube, by reason the 
video was removed. The removal reasons correspond to our YouTube 
Community Guidelines (https://www.youtube.com/howyoutubeworks/policies/
community-guidelines/).
    In the third quarter of 2020, over 7.8 million videos were removed 
by YouTube for violating Community Guidelines, including violations of 
our policies regarding spam, misleading content, and scams (25.5 
percent), violent or graphic content (14.2 percent), promotion of 
violence or violent extremism (2.5 percent), harmful or dangerous 
content (2.5 percent), and hateful or abusive content (1.1 percent). 
Our annual Bad Ads report (https://www.blog.google/products/ads/
stopping-bad-ads-to-protect-users/) provides detailed information 
regarding enforcement actions we've taken to protect our ads ecosystem. 
We also include additional information on these enforcement actions in 
places like our Google Transparency Report (https://
transparencyreport.google.com/), which shares detailed information 
about how the policies and actions of governments and corporations 
affect privacy, security, and access to information. Moreover, our 
quarterly Threat Analysis Group Bulletins (Q4 update here: https://
blog.google/threat-analysis-group/tag-bulletin-q4-2020/) contains 
information about actions we take against accounts that we attribute to 
coordinated influence campaigns. We also recently reported in a blog 
post on ``Supporting the 2020 U.S. election'' (https://blog.youtube/
news-and-events/supporting-the-2020-us-election/) that since September, 
we've terminated over 8,000 channels and thousands of harmful and 
misleading elections-related videos for violating our existing 
policies. Over 77 percent of those removed videos were taken down 
before they had 100 views.

    Question 4. Who did your firm consult to draft and implement 
election misinformation and civic integrity policies?
    Answer. We consult with a diverse set of external and internal 
stakeholders during policy development, which can include expert input, 
user feedback, and regulatory guidance. This collaborative approach 
taps into multiple areas of expertise within and beyond our company and 
is typically driven by our Trust and Safety teams, whose mission 
includes tackling online abuse by developing and enforcing the policies 
that keep our products safe and reliable. These teams include product 
specialists, engineers, lawyers, data scientists, and others who work 
together around the world and with a network of in-house and external 
safety and subject matter experts.
    Where appropriate, these teams consult in-depth studies or research 
by a mix of organizations, academics, universities, or think tanks who 
have topical expertise in specific matters. These analysts study the 
evolving tactics deployed by bad actors, trends observed on other 
platforms, and emerging cultural issues that require further 
observation. Further, we engage in conversations with regulators around 
the world, and their perspectives and concerns directly inform our 
policy process.

    Question 5. Who made final decisions about labeling or taking down 
a post related to election misinformation or civic integrity? Who did 
that person or those persons consult?
    Answer. We enforce our content policies at scale and take tens of 
millions of actions every day against content that violates policies 
for one or more of our products. To enforce our policies at scale, we 
use a combination of reviewers and AI moderation systems.
    Content moderation at Google and YouTube is primarily managed by 
Trust and Safety teams across the company. These teams are made up of 
engineers, content reviewers, and others who work across Google to 
address content that violates any of our policies. These teams also 
work with our legal and public policy teams, and oversee the vendors we 
hire to help us scale our content moderation efforts, as well as 
provide the native language expertise and the 24-hour coverage required 
of a global platform. Google employs review teams across many offices 
globally and across the U.S. to ensure that we have a diverse set of 
reviewers who are reviewing publisher sites, apps, and content.

    Question 6. Does a different or specialize process exist for 
content from Presidential candidates, and if so, how does that process 
for review differ from the normal review?
    Answer. As noted in our response to Question No. 1, we enforce our 
policies consistently, regardless of who or what is involved. Our 
policies apply to all users and advertisers--from voters, to 
politicians, to heads of state--we don't make any special exceptions.

    Question 7. Based on enforcement actions taken, there a discernible 
difference in engagement between a labeled post and unlabeled posts? 
Please provide any supporting information.
    Answer. On YouTube, we may provide contextual information in 
information panels alongside relevant topics. Such panels are displayed 
algorithmically based on subject matter, rather than based on a 
determination of whether the video contains misinformation. For 
example, we seek to display the same COVID information panel on all 
COVID-related videos. Accordingly, we cannot meaningfully compare 
engagement for labeled or unlabeled videos with respect to a given 
topic. When we provide such contextual information, we do so to help 
connect users to authoritative content and to provide information that 
can be used to help them determine for themselves the trustworthiness 
of the content they watch. This isn't possible everywhere, but where we 
have it, these features let users dig deeper on a story or piece of 
content.

    Question 8. What was the average time to add a misinformation label 
to a post?
    Answer. On YouTube, information panels are typically applied when 
appropriate by automated systems shortly after a video is uploaded.

    For the following questions, please provide information about your 
firm's content moderation decisions related hate speech, election 
interference, civic integrity, medical misinformation, or other harmful 
misinformation over the previous year.

    Question 9. How many pieces of content were reported by users to 
the platform related to hate speech, election interference, civic 
integrity, and medical misinformation, broken down by category?

    Question 10. How many pieces of content were automatically 
identified or identified by employees related to hate speech, election 
interference, civic integrity, and medical misinformation, broken down 
by category?

    Question 11. Of the content reported or flagged for review, how 
many pieces of content were reviewed by humans?

    Question 12. How many pieces of content were subject to enforcement 
action? Please provide a break down for each type of enforcement action 
taken for each category.
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to Question Nos. 9 through 12.
    Our responses to Question Nos. 2 and 3 above contain additional 
responsive information and resource links we hope are helpful. As to 
the volume of removals in general, as well as the volume of removals 
done by our machine learning systems versus human review teams, we 
regularly release reports detailing this information. For example, as 
detailed in the YouTube Community Guidelines Enforcement Transparency 
Report (https://transparencyreport.google.com/youtube-policy/removals), 
of the 7.8 million videos removed from YouTube in the third quarter of 
2020 for violating our Community Guidelines, 94 percent of them were 
first flagged by machines. With respect to hate speech on YouTube, we 
publish detailed information about our removals on our Transparency 
Page (https://transparencyreport
.google.com/youtube-policy/featured-policies/hate-speech). And, as 
detailed in our Bad Ads report (https://www.blog.google/products/ads/
stopping-bad-ads-to-protect-users/), in 2019, we blocked and removed 
2.7 billion bad ads, suspended nearly 1 million advertiser accounts for 
policy violations, and on the publisher side, terminated over 1.2 
million accounts and removed ads from over 21 million web pages that 
are part of our publisher network for violating our policies.
    Technology has helped us accelerate and scale our removal process--
our sophisticated automated systems are carefully trained to quickly 
identify and take action against spam and violative content. Our 
machine learning systems are faster and more effective than ever before 
and are helping our human review teams remove content with speed and 
volume that could not be achieved with human reviewers alone. While we 
rely heavily on technology, reviewers also play a critical role. New 
forms of abuse and threats are constantly emerging that require human 
ingenuity to assess and develop appropriate plans for action. Our 
reviewers perform billions of reviews every year, working to make fair 
and consistent enforcement decisions in enforcing our policies and 
helping to build training data for machine learning models.

    Question 13. For content subject to enforcement action due to 
violation of hate speech rules, please identify how many pieces of 
content targeted each type of protected category (such as race or 
gender) covered by your rules. Do you track this information?
    Answer. As referenced in the responses above, in the third quarter 
of 2020 for example, over 7.8 million videos were removed by YouTube 
for violating Community Guidelines, and removals due to hateful or 
abusive content constituted 1.1 percent of the total actions taken, 
though we have not tracked content removal information based on 
demographic sub-categories such as race or gender. We publish details 
concerning these violations and enforcement of our hate speech policy 
in resources such as our YouTube Community Guidelines Enforcement 
Transparency Report (https://transparencyreport.google.com/youtube-
policy/featured-policies/hate-speech), which includes examples of 
content involving categories protected by our hate speech policy and 
subject to removal decisions. For additional information regarding 
enforcement of our hate speech policy, please see https://blog.youtube/
news-and-events/our-ongoing-work-to-tackle-hate and https://
support.google.com/youtube/answer/6162278.
                                 ______
                                 
   Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Edward Markey to 
                             Sundar Pichai
    Question 1. Mr. Pichai, will you commit Google and YouTube to 
undergo an independent civil rights audit covering such topics as 
potential discriminatory data uses, advertising practices, collection 
and use of geolocation information, and online privacy risks that 
disproportionately harm particular demographic populations? Will you 
commit to sharing the findings of this audit publicly? Please describe 
in detail the steps Google and YouTube will take to ensure that they 
implement audit recommendations in a transparent manner.
    Answer. Our products are built for everyone, and we design them 
with extraordinary care to be a trustworthy source of information 
without regard to a user's demographic, socioeconomic background, or 
political viewpoint. Billions of people use our products to find 
information, and we help our users, of every background and belief, 
find the high-quality information they need to better understand the 
topics they care about.
    We are also a leader in transparency concerning our privacy 
policies and practices, and aim to be as clear as possible to our users 
about how our products and policies work. We were the first platform to 
have a publicly-available transparency report in 2010, and since then, 
we have launched a number of different transparency reports to shed 
light on how the policies and actions of governments and corporations 
affect privacy, security, and access to information for our users. Our 
current reports cover topics such as security and privacy, content 
removal, political advertising on Google, and traffic and disruptions 
to Google. We also have a report specifically focused on YouTube 
community guidelines enforcement, including data on removal by the 
numbers, source of first detection, views, removal reason, and country/
region. For example, please see our YouTube Community Guidelines 
Enforcement FAQs, https://support.google.com/transparencyreport/answer/
9209072.
    In the last year, we also introduced new ways for users to protect 
their data, including by making our controls easier to use, continuing 
our advances in privacy enhancing technologies like differential 
privacy, and by providing users options to automatically delete data 
like Location History, searches, and other activity. We design all our 
products in accordance with our Privacy Principles (https://
safety.google/principles/) and provide clear descriptions of how we 
collect and use data from users in our Privacy Policy (https://
policies.google.com/privacy).
    We are also engaged in extensive discussions with civil rights 
experts and leadership, and we are proud that we have civil and human 
rights expertise on staff, internal frameworks like our AI Principles 
and YouTube Community Guidelines in place, and governance structures 
through groups like our Responsible Innovation and Trust and Safety 
teams, working to help build civil and human rights considerations into 
our work. Our civil and human rights leads will continue to develop a 
structure to provide the transparency that the civil rights community 
needs, and we have confidence that we can demonstrate our long-term 
commitment to getting this right.
    We will continue to approach this thoughtfully. We are always open 
to feedback, and will continue to provide transparency about our 
products and policies.

    Question 2. Mr. Pichai, children and teens are a uniquely 
vulnerable population online, and a comprehensive Federal privacy law 
should provide them with heightened data privacy protections. Do you 
agree that Congress should prohibit online behavioral advertising, or 
``targeted marketing'' as defined in S.748, directed at children under 
the age of 13?
    Answer. We support Federal comprehensive privacy legislation, and 
we would welcome the chance to work with you on it. At Google, we are 
committed to ensuring that our products are safe for children and 
families online and are investing significant resources in this effort. 
For example, we offer parental supervision options through Family Link, 
including the option for parents to approve all apps downloaded from 
Google Play. We don't serve personalized ads to children using Family 
Link accounts across Google products. In addition to offering YouTube 
Kids (https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/youtube-kids), even on our 
main YouTube platform, content that is designated as ``Made for Kids'' 
will not run personalized ads and will have certain features disabled, 
like comments and notifications. This is a very important issue and 
we're committed to continue working with Congress on it.
                                 ______
                                 
    Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Gary Peters to 
                             Sundar Pichai
    Question 1. Community standards at Google and YouTube often draw 
the line at specific threats of violence for the removal of content, 
rather than conspiracy theories that may set the predicate for 
radicalization and future action. When it comes to conspiracy theories 
and misinformation, Google and YouTube often choose not to remove 
content, but rather to reduce the spread and to attach warnings. What 
testing or other analysis have Google and YouTube done that shows your 
work to reduce the spread of disinformation and misinformation is 
effective?
    Answer. Managing misinformation and harmful conspiracy theories is 
challenging because the content is always evolving, but we take this 
issue very seriously. Due to the shifting tactics of groups promoting 
these conspiracy theories, we've been investing in the policies, 
resources, and products needed to protect our users from harmful 
content.
    Among other things, we launched a Community Guidelines YouTube 
update in October on harmful conspiracy theories (https://blog.youtube/
news-and-events/harmful-conspiracy-theories-youtube/), which expanded 
our hate speech and harassment policies to prohibit content that 
targets an individual or group with conspiracy theories that have been 
used to justify real-world violence. For example, content such as 
conspiracy theories saying individuals or groups are evil, corrupt, or 
malicious based on protected attributes (e.g., age, race, religion, 
etc.), or hateful supremacist propaganda, including the recruitment of 
new members or requests for financial support for their ideology, all 
violate our hate speech policy (https://support.google.com/youtube/
answer/2801939) and are subject to removal as such.
    As detailed in our October update, these are not the first steps we 
have taken to limit the reach of harmful misinformation. Nearly two 
years ago, we updated our recommendations system, including reducing 
recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform 
users in harmful ways--such as videos promoting a phony miracle cure 
for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly 
false claims about historic events like 9/11. This resulted in a 70 
percent drop in views coming from our search and discovery systems. 
Further, when we looked at QAnon content, we saw the number of views 
that come from non-subscribed recommendations to prominent Q-related 
channels dropped by over 80 percent from January 2019 to October 2020. 
For more information on these policies and enforcement actions, please 
see https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/harmful-conspiracy-theories-
youtube/, https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/continuing-our-work-to-
improve/, and https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/our-ongoing-work-to-
tackle-hate.
    Our Ads policies are similarly designed to ensure a safe and 
positive experience for our users. For example, under our existing 
misrepresentation policy, we do not allow ads to run or content to 
monetize that promotes medically unsubstantiated claims related to 
COVID cures (https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9811449). 
Since this past February, we've blocked or removed over 270 million 
coronavirus related ads across all Google advertising platforms; 
additionally, we've removed 600,000 YouTube videos with dangerous or 
misleading coronavirus information.
    In addition to removing content that violates our policies, we also 
reduce borderline content and raise up authoritative voices by 
providing users with more information about the content they are seeing 
to allow them to make educated choices. On YouTube, for example, there 
have been billions of impressions on information panels around the 
world since June 2018. For more information, please see https://
support.google.com/youtube/answer/9229632. And, for over three years, 
we have highlighted fact checks on Search and News as a way to help 
people make more informed judgments about the content they encounter 
online. People come across these fact checks billions of times per 
year. For more information, please see https://blog.google/products/
search/fact-check-now-available-google-search-and-news-around-world/.
    The openness of our platforms has helped creativity and access to 
information thrive. It's our responsibility to protect that, and 
prevent our platforms from being used to incite hatred, harassment, 
discrimination, and violence. We are committed to taking the steps 
needed to live up to this responsibility today, tomorrow, and in the 
years to come.

    Question 2. It is clear that the existence of conspiracy theories, 
disinformation campaigns, and misinformation has led to violence, even 
if not specifically planned on your platform. Recently, Google and 
YouTube have taken action against the QAnon conspiracy for this reason. 
Why did QAnon reach that threshold now, and how will Google and YouTube 
address other conspiracies?

    Question 2a. Is there a set number of violent incidents that must 
occur before Google and YouTube consider a group unfit for the 
platforms?
    Answer. We approach QAnon the same way we would approach other 
content that violates our policies. We apply our four pillars of 
action: remove violative content; raise up authoritative content; 
reduce the spread of borderline content; and reward trusted creators. 
For more information on these four pillars, please see https://
blog.youtube/news-and-events/our-ongoing-work-to-tackle-hate. Among 
other things, we remove content that violates our hate speech, 
harassment, and COVID misinformation policies. We have removed tens of 
thousands of Q-related videos that target specific groups, and have 
terminated hundreds of Q-related channels on YouTube. If a creator's 
content violates our Community Guidelines, we will issue a strike 
against their channel; their channel will be terminated if they receive 
three strikes. We also terminate entire channels if they are dedicated 
to posting content prohibited by our Community Guidelines or contain a 
single egregious violation, like child sexual abuse material.
    Additionally, we reduce the spread of content that gets close to 
the line of violating our policies--including removing that content 
from the recommendations we show to our users. As described in our 
response to Question No. 1, this has resulted in a drop of over 80 
percent of views from January 2019 to October 2020 from non-subscribed 
recommendations to prominent Q-related channels. We also raise up 
information panels to provide contextual information for QAnon content. 
Since 2018, we have seen 25 million impressions on our QAnon 
information panel. Further, we set a higher bar for what channels can 
make money on our site, rewarding trusted, eligible creators; we don't 
allow QAnon in Ads, because their content violates our dangerous or 
derogatory content policy. Additionally, we recently enhanced our 
policies that address harmful conspiracies, including QAnon, on 
YouTube. For more information, please see https://blog.youtube/news-
and-events/harmful-conspiracy-theories-youtube.
    All of this work has been pivotal in curbing the reach of harmful 
conspiracies like QAnon, and we will continue to approach this 
thoughtfully, balancing maintaining a platform for free speech and 
living up to our responsibility to users.

    Question 3. YouTube policies ensure that family-friendly 
advertisers do not have their paid ads run before potentially harmful 
content, but that same content is still readily served up to viewers 
based on your algorithm. It is clear YouTube algorithms can identify 
the problematic content, yet the algorithm quickly steers users to this 
extremist content. How many people have to view and/or report extremist 
content before YouTube takes it down?

    Question 3a. Why does YouTube then allow those same content 
creators multiple opportunities to post extremist content before they 
hit the ``three strikes'' policy?
    Answer. We believe strongly in the freedom of expression and access 
to information--we know that the overwhelming majority of creators 
follow our guidelines and understand that they are part of a large, 
influential, and interconnected community. However, we also know that 
we have a responsibility to protect our users, which is why we have 
policies prohibiting hate speech, terrorist content, and other content 
that violates our policies, as well as stricter standards for who can 
monetize their content. Each of the products and services we offer has 
a different purpose, and we tailor our approach carefully to the 
content that should be available on each product and service.
    While YouTube creates a space for ideas and expression, it is not a 
free-for-all. For example, it is a violation of YouTube's hate speech 
policy for users to post videos that promote violence against 
particular ethnic or religious groups (https://support.google.com/
youtube/answer/2801939). As described in our response to Question No. 
2, creators who violate those rules may have their content removed or 
their accounts terminated. When we detect a video that violates our 
Community Guidelines, we remove the video and apply a strike to the 
channel. The strike restricts a creator's ability to post or create 
content on the platform for one week. If the creator's behavior 
warrants another strike within 90 days from the first, a new two-week 
prohibition from posting or creating content is implemented. A third 
strike within 90 days results in permanent removal of a channel from 
YouTube. Creators can appeal those strikes if they believe we are 
mistaken. We also terminate entire channels if they are dedicated to 
posting content prohibited by our Community Guidelines or contain a 
single egregious violation, like child sexual abuse material.
    Concerning the timing of content removal, we strive to remove 
violative content as quickly as possible. We take down half of 
extremist content on YouTube within two hours, and nearly 70 percent in 
eight hours. Further, as detailed in the YouTube Community Guidelines 
Enforcement Transparency Report (https://transparencyreport.google.com/
youtube-policy/removals), in the third quarter of 2020, more than 7.8 
million videos were removed from YouTube for violating our Community 
Guidelines--94 percent of which were first flagged by machines rather 
than humans. Of those detected by machines, over 45 percent never 
received a single view, and just over 80 percent received fewer than 10 
views.
    Moreover, in 2019 we announced that we had begun reducing 
recommendations of borderline content on YouTube. This is content which 
comes close to but doesn't quite violate our policies and represents 
less than one percent of the content watched on YouTube. These changes 
have already reduced views from non-subscribed recommendations of this 
type of content by 70 percent in the U.S. and have been rolled out in 
33 countries with more to follow.
    It is also important to note that the vast majority of attempted 
abuse comes from bad actors trying to upload spam or adult content, as 
opposed to extremist content. For example, nearly 92 percent of the 
channels and over 45 percent of the videos that we removed in the third 
quarter of 2020 were removed for violating our policies on spam or 
adult content. In comparison, promotion of violence and violent 
extremism accounted for only 0.5 percent of removed channels and 2.5 
percent of removed videos during the same period. For more information, 
please see our YouTube Community Guidelines Enforcement Transparency 
Report, https://transparencyreport.google.com/youtube-policy/removals.
    We are proud of our efforts to prevent the spread of this type of 
content and are working to do everything we can to ensure users are not 
exposed to extremist content.

    Question 4. While I appreciate that Google and YouTube continue to 
evolve and learn about threats of violence on the platforms, would you 
agree that as groups evolve and change their tactics you will always be 
one step behind extremist groups that seek to use social media to 
recruit and plan violent acts? How do you address this problem?
    Answer. As described in our response to Question No. 3, we strive 
to remove content that violates our policies as quickly as possible. To 
enforce our policies at the scale of the web, we use a combination of 
human reviewers and cutting-edge machine learning to combat violent and 
extremist content. We estimate that we spent at least $1 billion over 
the past year on content moderation systems and processes, and we 
continue to invest aggressively in this area. In the last year, more 
than 20,000 people have worked in a variety of roles to help enforce 
our policies and moderate content. We're also constantly innovating to 
improve our machine learning and algorithms to spot content in 
violation of our policies. And, we partner with a network of academics, 
industry groups, and subject matter experts to help us better 
understand emerging issues.
    These improvements are happening every day, and we will need to 
adapt, invent, and react as hate and extremism evolve online. We're 
committed to this constant improvement, and the significant human and 
technological investments we're making demonstrate that we're in it for 
the long haul.
    We also recognize the value of collaborating with industry partners 
to prevent terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting our 
platforms. That is why in 2017, YouTube, Facebook, Microsoft and 
Twitter founded the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) 
as a group of companies dedicated to disrupting terrorist abuse of 
members' digital platforms.
    Although our companies have been sharing best practices around 
counter-terrorism for several years, GIFCT provided a more formal 
structure to accelerate and strengthen this work and present a united 
front against the online dissemination of terrorist and violent 
extremist content.
    YouTube and GIFCT's other founding members signed on to the 
Christchurch Call to Eliminate Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content 
Online (https://www
.christchurchcall.com/). Building on the Christchurch Call, GIFCT 
developed a new content incident protocol for GIFCT member companies to 
quickly share digital hashes of content and respond efficiently after a 
violent attack. This protocol has been tested and proven effective, for 
example, following the attack on a synagogue in Halle, Germany (October 
2019) and following a shooting in Glendale, Arizona here in the United 
States (May 2020).
    GIFCT has evolved to be a standalone organization with an 
independent Executive Director, Nicholas J. Rasmussen, formerly 
Director of the National Counterterrorism Center and dedicated staff. 
For more information, please see https://gifct.org/about/story/#june-
2020--appointment-of-executive-director-and-formation-of-the-
independent-advisory-committee-1. We remain committed to the GIFCT and 
hold a position on the independent GIFCT's Operating Board within the 
new governance framework of the institution.
                                 ______
                                 
   Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Kyrsten Sinema to 
                             Sundar Pichai
    COVID-19 Misinformation. The United States remains in the midst of 
a global pandemic. More than 227,000 Americans have died of COVID-19, 
including nearly 6,000 in my home state of Arizona. COVID has impacted 
the health, employment, and education of Arizonans, from large cities 
to tribal lands like the Navajo Nation. And at the time of this 
hearing, the country is facing another significant surge in cases.
    The persistent spread of COVID-19 misinformation on social media 
remains a significant concern to health officials. Digital platforms 
allow for inflammatory, dangerous, and inaccurate information--or 
outright lies--to spread rapidly. Sometimes it seems that 
misinformation about the virus spreads as rapidly as the virus itself. 
This misinformation can endanger the lives and livelihoods of 
Arizonans.
    Social distancing, hand washing, testing, contact tracing, and mask 
wearing should not be partisan issues, nor should they be the subject 
of online misinformation.

    Question 1. What has Google done to limit the spread of dangerous 
misinformation related to COVID-19 and what more can it do?
    Answer. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, our efforts have focused on 
keeping people informed with trusted and authoritative information, 
supporting people as they adapt to the current situation, and 
contributing to recovery efforts. To help ensure that people are well 
informed, we have taken multiple steps to organize and provide accurate 
and verifiable information on the pandemic. These efforts to fight 
misinformation across our platforms include our Homepage ``Do the 
Five'' promotion, amplifying authoritative voices through ad grants 
(https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9803410), and launching 
our COVID-19 site (https://www.goo
gle.com/intl/en_us/covid19/), which includes coronavirus information, 
insights, and resources.
    A number of the policies and product features that were used for 
the COVID-19 crisis were already in place before the crisis began, and 
others were underway. For example, our ranking systems on Google Search 
and YouTube have been designed to elevate authoritative information in 
response to health-related searches for years. Before 2020, YouTube's 
advertiser content guidelines (https://support.google.com/youtube/
answer/6162278) already prohibited ``harmful health or medical claims 
or practices,'' and our work to update our YouTube recommendation 
systems to decrease the spread of misinformation, including, but not 
limited to, health-related misinformation, was announced in January 
2019. For more information, please see https://youtube.googleblog.com/
2019/01/continuing-our-work-to-improve.html. Since the outbreak of 
COVID-19, we also implemented, and have enforced, a COVID 
misinformation policy (https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9891
785) to facilitate removal of COVID-19-related misinformation on 
YouTube.
    With respect to COVID-related ads, our Ads policies (https://
support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6008942) are designed not only to 
abide by laws, but also to ensure a safe and positive experience for 
our users. This means that our policies prohibit some content that we 
believe to be harmful to users and the overall advertising ecosystem. 
This includes policies that prohibit ads for counterfeit products, 
dangerous products or services, or dishonest behavior, and any content 
that seeks to capitalize on the pandemic, or lacks reasonable 
sensitivity towards the COVID-19 global health crisis. For more 
information on these policies, please see https://support.google.com/
google-ads/answer/9811449. In addition, our dangerous or derogatory 
content policy (https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6015406) 
prohibits content in Google Ads that would advocate for physical or 
mental harm, such as content that denies the efficacy of vaccines, as 
well as content that relates to a current, major health crisis and 
contradicts authoritative scientific consensus. As a result, content 
contradicted by scientific consensus during COVID-19 such as origin 
theories, claims the virus was created as a bioweapon, as well as 
claims the virus is a hoax or government-funded are not permitted on 
our platform.
    And these efforts to limit the spread of COVID misinformation are 
working. There have been over 400 billion impressions on our 
information panels for coronavirus related videos and searches, and, 
since February, we've removed 600,000 coronavirus videos and removed or 
blocked over 270 million coronavirus-related ads globally across all 
Google advertising platforms--including Shopping ads--for policy 
violations including price-gouging, capitalizing on global medical 
supply shortages, and making misleading claims about cures.
    We are proud of our efforts to combat health misinformation and 
address this unprecedented public health crisis. We will continue to 
work hard and do everything we can to help our communities in 
addressing this global pandemic.

    Spreading Accurate Information. Arizonans need accurate, 
scientifically based information to help get through this pandemic. 
Many Arizonans get their news from sources such as Google. As a result, 
your companies can play a role in helping people receive accurate 
information that is relevant to their communities and can aid them in 
their decisions that keep their families healthy and safe.
    For example, earlier this month, the CDC issued a report 
illustrating that COVID-19 cases fell dramatically in Arizona after 
prevention and control measures were put into place. I shared this 
information on social media, and this is the type of information we 
should emphasize to help save lives.

    Question 2. What more can Google do to better amplify accurate, 
scientifically-based health information to ensure that Arizonans 
understand how best to protect themselves from the pandemic?
    Answer. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, we have worked to surface 
trusted and authoritative information and partner with health 
organizations and governments in order to bring our users information 
they can rely on in a rapidly changing environment.
    With Search, for example, in partnership with the CDC and other 
health authorities, we have promoted important guidance to prevent the 
spread of COVID-19. We have introduced a comprehensive experience for 
users seeking information relating to COVID-19 that provides easy 
access to information from health authorities alongside new data and 
visualizations (https://blog.google/products/search/connecting-people-
covid-19-information-and-resources/). This new format organizes the 
search results page to help people easily navigate resources and makes 
it possible to add more information as it becomes available over time. 
This experience came as a complement to pre-existing work on Google 
Search and Google News to recognize sensitive events and contexts, and 
our systems are designed to elevate authoritative sources for those 
classes of queries.
    Across YouTube, we similarly elevate authoritative sources such as 
the CDC and other authorities to help users get the latest COVID-19 
information. With anti-vaccination content, for example, we elevate 
reliable information across both Google and YouTube regarding medical 
topics (including vaccination) from trustworthy sources, such as health 
authorities.
    Another way we connect users to authoritative content is by 
providing contextual information that can be used to help them 
determine for themselves the trustworthiness of the content they are 
provided. On YouTube, for example, we've included fact check 
information panels on COVID-19 videos, that feature information on 
COVID-19 symptoms, prevention, and treatment, and links to the CDC and 
other health authorities. These panels provide fresh context during 
fast-moving situations such as COVID-19 by highlighting relevant, 
third-party fact-checked articles above search results for relevant 
queries. For more information, please see https://blog.youtube/news-
and-events/expanding-fact-checks-on-youtube-To-united-states, https://
support.google.com/youtube/answer/9795167, and https://support.google
.com/youtube/answer/9004474. In addition, YouTube elevates content from 
authoritative channels such as news organizations or health authorities 
when our systems detect that a user's search is health-related.
    We are committed to our responsibility to provide relevant and 
authoritative context to our users, and to continue to reduce the 
spread of harmful misinformation across our products.

    Scientific Evidence-based COVID Information. Our best sources of 
information related to the pandemic are doctors, researchers, and 
scientists. We should be relying on their expertise to help stop the 
spread of the virus and help our country recover from its devastating 
impacts.

    Question 3. Who determines whether content on Google is 
scientifically supported and evidence based?
    Answer. As noted in our response to Question Nos. 1 and 2, we have 
invested heavily to ensure that we surface authoritative content, and 
have taken active steps to detect and remove COVID-19 related 
misinformation that contradicts guidance from health authorities and 
may result in real-world harm.
    For example, to ensure Search algorithms meet high standards of 
relevance and quality, we have a rigorous process that involves both 
live tests and thousands of trained external Search Quality Raters from 
around the world. Our Search Quality Rater Guidelines (https://
static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub
.com/en//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf) provide that there is a 
higher standard when a user is looking for things like specifical 
medical information or advice. In that case, we work to provide content 
from authoritative sources like health professionals and medical 
organizations. The Guidelines explicitly state, for example, that 
``medical advice should be written or produced by people or 
organizations with appropriate medical expertise or accreditation,'' 
and that ``information pages on scientific topics should be produced by 
people or organizations with appropriate scientific expertise and 
represent well-established scientific consensus on issues where such 
consensus exists.'' For additional information on Search Quality Raters 
and how ratings work, please see https://blog.google/products/search/
raters-experiments-improve-google-search.
    In terms of removing content, we rely on a mix of automated and 
manual efforts to spot problematic content. Our automated systems are 
carefully trained to quickly identify and take action against spam and 
violative content. This includes flagging potentially problematic 
content for reviewers, whose judgement is needed for the many decisions 
that require a more nuanced determination. The context in which a piece 
of content is created or shared is an important factor in any 
assessment about its quality or its purpose, and we are attentive to 
educational and scientific contexts where the content might otherwise 
violate our policies.
    Moreover, as the COVID-19 situation has evolved, we have partnered 
closely with the CDC and other health authorities to ensure that our 
policy enforcement is effective in preventing the spread of harmful 
misinformation relating to COVID-19. Our YouTube policies prohibit, for 
example, content that explicitly disputes the efficacy of CDC and other 
health authority advice regarding social distancing that may lead 
people to act against that guidance. For more information, please see 
our COVID-19 misinformation policy, https://support.google.com/youtube/
answer/9891785.
    We are proud of our efforts to combat health misinformation and 
address this unprecedented public health crisis, and will continue to 
work hard and do everything we can to help our communities in 
addressing this global pandemic.

    COVID Scams. Arizonans and Americans have been inundated with 
fraudulent offers and scams, using social media to spread inaccurate 
information and perpetrate criminal scams. I've been using my own 
social media to help warn Arizonans about common scams related to 
economic assistance, false coronavirus ``cures'', and where they can 
report scams to Federal and state authorities.

    Question 4. What has Google done to limit the spread of scams and 
report criminal activity and what more can be done to protect seniors, 
veterans, and others who have been targeted by fraudsters?
    Answer. As people around the world are staying at home more due to 
COVID-19, many are turning to new apps and communications tools to 
work, learn, access information, and stay connected with loved ones. 
While these digital platforms are helpful in our daily lives, they can 
also introduce new online security risks. Bad actors are creating new 
attacks and scams every day that attempt to take advantage of the fear 
and uncertainty surrounding the pandemic--and we are committed to 
working to constantly stay ahead of those threats.
    Our security systems have detected a range of new scams, such as 
phishing e-mails posing as messages from charities and NGOs battling 
COVID-19, directions from ``administrators'' to employees working from 
home, and even notices spoofing healthcare providers. For example, in 
just one week, we saw 18 million daily malware and phishing e-mails 
related to COVID-19--in addition to more than 240 million COVID-related 
daily spam messages. Our systems have also spotted malware-laden sites 
that pose as sign-in pages for popular social media accounts, health 
organizations, and even official coronavirus maps. As to government-
backed hacking activity, our Threat Analysis Group continually monitors 
for such threats and is seeing new COVID-19 messaging used in attacks. 
For more information, please see https://blog.google/threat-analysis-
group/, and https://cloud.google
.com/blog/products/identity-security/protecting-against-cyber-threats-
during-covid-19-and-beyond.
    In many cases, these threats are not new--rather, they are existing 
malware campaigns that have simply been updated to exploit the 
heightened attention on COVID-19. To protect against these attacks, we 
have put proactive monitoring in place for COVID-19-related malware and 
phishing across our systems and workflows and have built advanced 
security protections into Google products to automatically identify and 
stop threats before they ever reach users. For example, our machine 
learning models in Gmail already detect and block more than 99.9 
percent of spam, phishing, and malware. Our built-in security protocols 
also protect users by alerting them before they enter fraudulent 
websites, by scanning apps in Google Play before downloads, and more.
    When we identify a threat, we add it to the Safe Browsing API, 
which protects users in Chrome, Gmail, and all other integrated 
products. Safe Browsing helps protect over four billion devices every 
day by showing warnings to users when they attempt to navigate to 
dangerous sites or download dangerous files. Further, in G Suite, 
advanced phishing and malware controls are turned on by default, 
ensuring that all G Suite users automatically have these proactive 
protections in place.
    Because we have a longstanding and unwavering commitment to 
security and want to help users stay secure everywhere online, not just 
on our products, we've also provided tips, tools, and resources 
relating to online security in our Safety Center (https://
safety.google/securitytips-covid19/) and public blogs, including 
https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/helping-you-avoid-covid-
19-security-risks/, https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-
security/protecting-against-cyber-threats-during-covid-19-and-beyond, 
and https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/blocking-
coronavirus-cyber-threats.
    Finally, to help facilitate reporting of COVID-related scams to law 
enforcement authorities, we have worked closely with the Department of 
Justice (DOJ) and included its COVID-19 fraud site in our COVID-19 
Safety Center (https://safety.google/securitytips-covid19/). Moreover, 
we have received COVID-19 fraud-related data from DOJ to review for 
policy violations, and we have also submitted proactive criminal 
referrals to DOJ for potential COVID-19-related criminal activity.
                                 ______
                                 
    Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Jacky Rosen to 
                             Sundar Pichai
    Question 1. Adversaries like Russia continue to amplify 
propaganda--on everything from the election to the coronavirus to anti-
Semitic conspiracy theories--and they do it on your platform, 
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.

    Question 1a. Are you seeing foreign manipulation or amplification 
of white supremacist and anti-Semitic content, and if so, how are your 
algorithms stopping this? Are your algorithms dynamic and nimble enough 
to combat even better and more personalized targeting that can be 
harder to identify?

    Question 1b. Have you increased or modified your efforts to quell 
Russian disinformation in the wake of recently revealed efforts by 
Russia and Iran to weaponize stolen voter data to exploit divisions in 
our nation? How have you or will you adjust your algorithms to reduce 
the influence of such content--knowing that these countries' newly 
obtained data will allow for even better targeting, making their 
deception harder to identify?
    Answer. Because the answers to these questions are related, we have 
grouped together our response to these subparts of Question No. 1.
    We are deeply concerned about any attempts to use our platforms to 
sow division and hate. That's why our teams are constantly on the 
lookout for malicious actors that try to game our platforms, and we 
take strong action against coordinated influence operations. We've 
dedicated significant resources to help protect our platforms from such 
attacks by maintaining cutting-edge defensive systems and by building 
advanced security tools directly into our consumer products. As 
examples of how our systems and policies are actively at work 
identifying and removing such content, in the third quarter of 2020, 
over 7.8 million videos were removed by YouTube for violating Community 
Guidelines, including violations of our policies regarding spam, 
misleading content, and scams (25.5 percent), violent or graphic 
content (14.2 percent), promotion of violence or violent extremism (2.5 
percent), harmful or dangerous content (2.5 percent), and hateful or 
abusive content (1.1 percent). For more information, please see our 
YouTube Community Guidelines Enforcement Transparency Report, https://
transparencyreport.google.com/youtube-policy/removals.
    On any given day, Google's Threat Analysis Group is also tracking 
more than 270 targeted or government-backed attacker groups from more 
than 50 countries. When we find attempts to conduct coordinated 
influence operations on our platforms, we work with our Trust and 
Safety teams to swiftly remove such content from our platforms and 
terminate these actors' accounts. We take steps to prevent possible 
future attempts by the same actors, and routinely exchange information 
and share our findings with others in the industry. For example, in 
October 2020, the Department of Justice acknowledged Google's 
contributions to the fight against Iranian influence operations in 
announcing the seizure of 92 domain names used by Iran's Islamic 
Revolutionary Guard Corps to engage in a global disinformation campaign 
targeting the U.S. and other countries (https://www.justice.gov/usao-
ndca/pr/united-states-seizes-domain-names-used-iran-s-islamic-
revolutionary-guard-corps). Additionally, if we suspect that users are 
subject to government-sponsored attacks, we warn them. In April 2020 
alone, for example, we sent 1,755 warnings to users whose accounts were 
targets of government-backed attackers. For more information about 
these actions on our Threat Analysis Group blog, please see https://
blog.google/threat-analysis-group/.
    While some tools may work for violent extremism and terrorism-
related content in a scalable way, the problem is very different for 
misleading or inauthentic content. Many times, the misleading content 
looks identical to content uploaded by genuine activists. As noted in 
our response to Senator Peters' Question No. 4, that is why we use a 
combination of human reviewers and cutting-edge machine learning. 
Technology has helped us accelerate and scale our removal of content 
that violates our policies, but we also rely on highly-trained 
individuals from our Trust and Safety and Security teams, who work 
closely with machine learning tools and our algorithms, to ensure our 
platforms are protected and there is adherence to our policies.
    On YouTube, we also employ a sophisticated spam and security-breach 
detection system to identify anomalous behavior and attempts to 
manipulate our systems. We have also increased transparency around news 
sources on YouTube, including disclosure of government funding. When a 
news channel on YouTube receives government funding, we make that fact 
clear by including an information panel under each of that channel's 
videos. Our goal is to equip users with additional information to help 
them better understand the sources of news content that they choose to 
watch on YouTube. For more information, please see https://
blog.youtube/news-and-events/greater-transparency-for-users-around.
    As threats evolve, we will continue to adapt to understand and 
prevent new attempts to misuse our platforms and will continue to 
expand our use of cutting-edge technology to protect our users. There 
are no easy answers here, but we are deeply committed to getting this 
right.

    Question 1c. Are you consulting outside groups to validate 
moderator guidelines on hate speech, including what constitutes anti-
Semitic content? Are you collecting data on hate speech content? If so, 
what are you doing with that data to combat hate speech on your 
platforms?
    Answer. As described in our response to Senator Blumenthal's 
Question No. 4, we consult with a diverse set of external and internal 
stakeholders during policy development, including expert input, user 
feedback, and regulatory guidance. One of the most complex and 
constantly evolving areas we deal with is hate speech. We 
systematically review and re-review all our policies to make sure we 
are drawing the line in the right place, often consulting with subject 
matter experts for insight on emerging trends. For our hate speech 
policy, we work with experts in subjects like violent extremism, 
supremacism, civil rights, and free speech from across the political 
spectrum.
    Hate speech is a complex policy area to enforce at scale, as 
decisions require nuanced understanding of local languages and 
contexts. To help us consistently enforce our policy, we have expanded 
our review team's linguistic and subject matter expertise. We also 
deploy machine learning to better detect potentially hateful content to 
send for human review, applying lessons from our enforcement against 
other types of content, like violent extremism. As noted in our 
response to Senator Peters' Question No. 1, we have also recently taken 
a tougher stance on removing hateful and supremacist content and have 
reduced borderline content by reducing recommendations of content that 
comes close to violating our guidelines. Since early 2019, we've 
increased by 46 times our daily hate speech comment removals on 
YouTube. And in the last quarter, of the more than 1.8 million channels 
we terminated for violating our policies, more than 54,000 terminations 
were for hate speech. This is the most hate speech terminations in a 
single quarter and three times more than the previous high from Q2 2019 
when we updated our hate speech policy. For additional information 
regarding enforcement of, and improvements to, our hate speech 
policies, please see https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/make-youtube-
more-inclusive-platform/, https://transparencyreport.google.com/
youtube-policy/featured-policies/hate-speech, and https://blog.youtube/
news-and-events/our-ongoing-work-to-tackle-hate.

    Question 1d. When advertisers purchase an ad campaign on YouTube, 
Google then takes the advertisement and plays it with videos determined 
by an algorithm to be the best fit for the ad. Google pays the video's 
creator a small fee each time a user plays or clicks on the ad. What 
specific steps is Google taking to ensure that the creators of videos 
containing hateful content do not receive advertisement-related fees 
from Google?
    Answer. It is critical that our monetization systems reward trusted 
creators who add value to YouTube. We have longstanding guidelines 
(https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6162278) that prohibit ads 
from running (and thus, no fees are paid) on videos that include 
hateful content, and we enforce these policies rigorously. Channels 
that repeatedly brush up against our hate speech policies will be 
suspended from the YouTube Partner program, meaning they can't run ads 
on their channel or use other monetization features like Super Chat. In 
order to protect our ecosystem of creators, advertisers, and viewers, 
we also tightened our advertising criteria in 2017 (https://
blog.youtube/news-and-events/additional-changes-to-youtube-partner). 
After thorough analysis and conversations with creators, we changed 
certain eligibility requirements for monetization, which significantly 
improved our ability to identify creators who contribute positively to 
the community, while also preventing potentially inappropriate videos 
from monetizing content. For more information about these actions, 
please see https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/our-ongoing-work-to-
tackle-hate.

    Question 2. Recently, there have been high profile cybersecurity 
breaches involving private companies, government agencies, and even 
school districts--including in my home state of Nevada. A few months 
ago, a hacker subjected Clark County School District--Nevada's largest 
school district and our country's fifth largest, serving more than 
320,000 students--to a ransomware attack. In the tech industry, there 
was a notable breach of Twitter in July, when hackers were able to 
access an internal IT administrator tool used to manage accounts. 
Dozens of verified accounts with high follower counts--including those 
of President Obama, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos--were used to send out a 
tweet promoting a Bitcoin scam. What we learned from this breach is 
stunning. . .the perpetrators were inside the Twitter network in one 
form or another.

    Question 2a. How often do your staff attend cybersecurity training? 
Do you hire outside cybersecurity firms to look at your systems, 
offering a fresh look and catching overlooked flaws?

    Question 2b. Now that many schools have migrated to using Google 
products for distance education, how are you ensuring that students, 
teachers, and schools are adequately protected from cyberattacks?
    Answer. As a company, cybersecurity is a critical priority, and we 
are proud to have a strong security culture. All Google employees 
undergo security training as part of the orientation process and 
receive ongoing security training throughout their Google careers. 
During orientation, new employees agree to our Code of Conduct, which 
highlights our commitment to keep customer information safe and secure. 
Depending on their job/role, additional training on specific aspects of 
security may be required. For instance, the information security team 
instructs new engineers on topics like secure coding practices, product 
design, and automated vulnerability testing tools. Engineers also 
attend technical presentations on security-related topics and receive a 
security newsletter that covers new threats, attack patterns, 
mitigation techniques, and more. In addition, we host regular internal 
conferences to raise awareness and drive innovation in security and 
data privacy, which are open to all employees. Security and privacy is 
an ever-evolving area, and we recognize that dedicated employee 
engagement is a key means of raising awareness. We host regular ``Tech 
Talks'' focusing on subjects that often include security and privacy. 
In addition, we bring in outside experts from third-party vendors and 
law firms to assist with training our employees on relevant topics to 
make sure all our training needs are met. We also regularly undergo 
independent, third-party verification of our security, privacy, and 
compliance controls.
    As the world continues to adapt to the changes brought on by the 
COVID-19 pandemic, cyber threats are evolving as well. As noted in our 
response to Senator Sinema's Question No. 4, bad actors are creating 
new attacks and scams every day that attempt to take advantage of the 
fear and uncertainty surrounding the pandemic--it's our job to stay 
ahead of those threats. Our teams work every day to make our products 
safe no matter what users are doing--browsing the web, managing their 
inbox, or seeing family on Google Meet. Keeping users safe online means 
continuously protecting the security and privacy of their information. 
That is why protections are automatically built into each user's Google 
Account and every Google product: Safe Browsing protects more than 4 
billion devices; Gmail blocks more than 100 million phishing attempts 
every day; and Google Play Protect scans over 100 billion apps every 
day for malware and other issues. Further, in G Suite, advanced 
phishing and malware controls are turned on by default, ensuring that 
all G Suite users automatically have these proactive protections in 
place. G Suite administrators can also look at Google-recommended 
defenses on our advanced phishing and malware protection page (https://
support.google.com/a/answer/9157861), and may choose to enable the 
security sandbox, a virtual environment where Gmail scans or runs 
attachments (https://support.google.com/a/answer/7676854).
    Because we have a longstanding and unwavering commitment to 
security and want to help users stay secure everywhere online, not just 
on our products, we've also provided tips, tools, and resources 
relating to online security in our Safety Center (https://
safety.google/securitytips-covid19/) and public blogs, including 
https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/helping-you-avoid-covid-
19-security-risks/, https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-
security/protecting-against-cyber-threats-during-covid-19-and-beyond, 
and https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/blocking-
coronavirus-cyber-threats. For more information about privacy and 
security in G Suite for Education, please see our Privacy and Security 
Center, https://edu.google.com/why-google/privacy-security/. 
Safeguarding user security--including that of students, teachers, and 
administrators--is an obligation we take very seriously, and we will 
continue to invest appropriate technical resources in this area.

    Question 3. The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a light on our 
Nation's digital divide and on the technological inequalities facing 
millions of American students, including those in Nevada. Lack of 
access to broadband disproportionately affects low-income communities, 
rural populations, and tribal nations--all of which are present in my 
state. In addition to broadband access, many students still do not have 
regular access to a computer or other connected device, making online 
learning incredibly difficult, and sometimes impossible.
    Google stepped up during the pandemic to help close the digital 
divide. You provided Chromebook tablets to students lacking devices, 
including to thousands in Clark County, and also updated Google 
Classroom products to help students and school districts around the 
world adapt to online education.

    Question 3a. As classes continue to meet online, or in a hybrid 
model, what more can Google do to help students and teachers?
    Answer. We recognize that families and educators are relying on 
digital platforms to provide access to online learning and educational 
tools--especially during COVID-19--and Google is proud to help students 
continue their education from home during the pandemic. From the very 
beginning, Google has been committed to providing students, teachers, 
parents, and IT administrators with the tools young learners need to be 
successful.
    Since March 2020, Google has offered free access to its advanced 
Google Meet features through its Google Classroom solution (https://
edu.google.com/products/classroom/) that is used by thousands of school 
districts, charter schools, private and parochial schools, as well as 
home schoolers.
    To aid teachers and those assisting students at home, Google 
launched a website that lists resources and tips for teaching classes 
remotely through a new Teach from Home hub (https://
teachfromanywhere.google/intl/en/#for-teachers) with information and 
resources. This hub includes tutorials, step-by-step guides, and 
inspiration for distance learning during school closures.
    In addition, our G Suite for Education solution is free, or can be 
upgraded to an enterprise solution (https://edu.google.com/products/
gsuite-for-education/), and helps more than 120 million teachers and 
students around the world work and learn together. We also created a 
dedicated Distance Learning Fund through Google.org to help educators 
and parents access tools and resources needed to provide learning 
opportunities for students (https://www.blog.google/outreach-
initiatives/education/helping-educators-and-students-stay-connected/). 
The Fund supports Khan Academy, Wide Open Schools by Common Sense 
Media, and DonorsChoose.
    Google also has made it easy to turn school-based Chromebooks into 
take-home devices for students. Through Chromebook resellers, multiple 
school districts have purchased Chromebooks to distribute to students, 
and we are proud that our products provide a functional and accessible 
avenue to remote learning. Policies and permissions for Chromebooks can 
be set by IT administrators using Chrome Education Upgrade through the 
Google Admin console, making it simple for schools to deploy and manage 
thousands of devices. There's no need to manually install software or 
login to a device to apply settings--admins can simply flip a switch 
online and every device updates its applications and settings 
automatically. Moreover, educators can easily integrate the 
collaborative power of Google's educational tools into their learning 
management systems. For more information, please see https://
edu.google.com/products/gsuite-for-education/.
    Even if students don't have WiFi access, they can still access 
their Google Drive and edit and save files offline. That said, we are 
acutely aware of the fact that millions of students globally don't have 
connectivity at home, which is what inspired us to create Rolling Study 
Halls (https://edu.google.com/why-google/our-commitment/rolling-study-
halls/), a program that equips school buses across the U.S. with WiFi, 
devices, and onboard educator support. This program has been expanded 
not only by Google, but also by numerous school districts and other 
providers.
    Finally, Google's broader efforts in bringing broadband access to 
rural communities is key to closing the digital divide. Google Fiber's 
Community Connections program (https://fiber.google.com/community/) 
offers organizations such as libraries, community centers, and 
nonprofits free Internet access. To keep up with the rising demand for 
bandwidth, the FCC has worked with industry leaders like Google to 
create the CBRS rules (https://www.cbrsalliance.org/resource/what-is-
cbrs/) for shared spectrum as a new model for adding capacity at a low 
cost. By aligning on industry standards, Google is helping the CBRS 
ecosystem bring better wireless Internet to more people in more places. 
As the foundation for Google's suite of products and services for CBRS 
(https://www.google.com/get/spectrumdatabase/#cbrs), Google's Spectrum 
Access System (SAS) controls fundamental access to CBRS. Google's SAS 
is purpose-built to support dense networks across operators and to 
scale on demand--from a small in-building network to the largest 
nationwide deployment. For more information on how Google is bringing 
affordable Internet and choice to consumers, please see https://
www.google.com/get/spectrumdatabase/sas/.
    As remote learning has evolved, so have we. We're continuing to 
work with partners and local communities to see what else we can do to 
help support students without access at home. And we will continue to 
update our resource hub (https://edu.google.com/latest-news/covid-19-
support-resources/) so that educators and IT professionals can find the 
latest materials, resources, and training. Google is committed to 
helping students and educators across the country, and would be pleased 
to discuss the best ways Google can continue to serve our communities.

    Question 3b. How does Google plan to remain engaged in K-12 
education after we get through the pandemic? In particular, what role 
can you play in closing not only the urban/rural divide, but also the 
racial divide in access to technologies and the Internet?
    Answer. Even before the pandemic, teachers increasingly assigned 
schoolwork that required access to the internet. Google knows that 
millions of students lack connectivity at home. This ``Homework Gap'' 
disproportionately impacts low-income students, especially in more 
remote or rural areas, where they face additional burdens like long bus 
commutes. To help ease this gap, Google piloted a program of Rolling 
Study Halls in North Carolina and South Carolina (https://
edu.google.com/why-google/our-commitment/rolling-study-halls/). As 
noted in our response to Question No. 3.a, this program equips school 
buses with WiFi, devices, and onboard educator support. Since early 
results indicate promising gains in reading and math proficiency, and 
increased digital fluency, Google is expanding the program to reach 
thousands more students across 16 more school districts across 12 
states (Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Minnesota, New Mexico, 
Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia), 
focused on rural communities.
    Moreover, Google's G Suite for Education has helped teachers and 
students connect and collaborate, even when they are not able to be in 
the same classroom. But even when all students are able to return to 
the classroom, G Suite for Education tools will help students turn in 
their best work, help teachers create assignments and grade work all in 
one place, and help schools stay on top of their daily activities, all 
in a secure and safe online environment.
    Google is also committing nearly $3 million to help close the 
racial equity gaps in computer science education and increase Black+ 
representation in STEM fields. And, in connection with our recently-
announced Workplace Commitments, we will ensure that $310 million in 
funding goes toward diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and 
programs focused on increasing access to computer science education and 
careers. We are committed to staying engaged in K-12 education after we 
get through the pandemic and would be pleased to discuss other 
opportunities for further engagement.

    Question 3c. There has been a surge in demand across the globe for 
affordable laptops and Chromebooks, which has created months-long 
shipment delays. How is Google working with its manufacturers on this 
shortage issue?
    Google is committed to helping students and educators across the 
country, and is proud of the positive impact that technology has played 
in that effort. Chromebooks have played a crucial role in remote 
learning, and we continue to work to ensure that everyone who needs 
access to an affordable computer has it.

    Question 4. One of my top priorities in Congress is supporting the 
STEM workforce and breaking down barriers to entering and succeeding in 
STEM fields. This includes ensuring we have a diverse STEM workforce 
that includes people of color and women. In the past several years, 
tech companies have begun releasing diversity reports and promising to 
do better at hiring Black and Latino workers, including women. In 
overall employment, Google is doing much better today in building a 
diverse workforce. However, while overall diversity is increasing, only 
2.4 percent of Google tech employees in 2020 were Black.
    I know that tech companies in Nevada understand that by increasing 
the number of women and people of color in tech careers, we diversify 
the qualified labor pool that the U.S. relies on for innovation. This 
will help us maintain our global competitiveness and expand our 
economy, and I hope your companies redouble your efforts to this 
effect.

    Question 4a. Can you discuss the full set of 2020 data on women and 
the people of color who work at your companies, and would you please 
discuss what you are doing to increase these numbers in 2021?
    Answer. Google is committed to continuing to make diversity, 
equity, and inclusion part of everything we do--from how we build our 
products to how we build our workforce. Our recent diversity report 
(https://diversity.google/) shows how we've taken concrete actions to 
steadily grow a more representative workforce, to launch programs that 
support our communities globally, and to build products that better 
serve all of our users.
    Among other efforts, we have recommitted to our company-wide 
objective in 2020: advance a diverse, accessible, and inclusive Google. 
Earlier this year, we announced our goal to improve leadership 
representation of underrepresented groups by 30 percent by 2025, 
increasing our investment in diverse talent markets such as Atlanta, 
Washington D.C., Chicago, and London.
    Recently, we also expanded on our commitments, including setting a 
goal to spend $100 million with Black-owned businesses, as part of our 
broader commitment to spend a minimum of $1 billion with diverse-owned 
suppliers in the U.S., every year starting in 2021; committing to 
adding an additional 10,000 Googlers across our sites in Atlanta, 
Washington D.C., Chicago and New York; and building off our earlier 
commitment to increase leadership representation of underrepresented 
groups by adding a goal to more than double Black+ representation in 
the U.S. at all other levels by 2025. And in connection with our 
recently-announced Workplace Commitments, we will ensure that $310 
million in funding goes toward diversity, equity, and inclusion 
initiatives and programs focused on increasing access to computer 
science education and careers; continuing to build a more 
representative workforce; fostering a respectful, equitable, and 
inclusive workplace culture; and helping businesses from 
underrepresented groups to succeed in the digital economy and tech 
industry.
    But of course we know that there is much more to be done: only a 
holistic approach to these issues will produce meaningful, sustainable 
change. We must and will continue our work to expand the talent pool 
externally, and improve our culture internally, if we want to create 
equitable outcomes and inclusion for everyone. We understand the 
importance of this issue and remain committed to diversity, equity, and 
inclusion.

    Question 4b. What are you doing more broadly to support STEM 
education programs and initiatives for women and people of color, 
including young girls of color?
    Answer. We recognize the importance of supporting STEM education 
programs and initiatives for women and people of color, including young 
girls of color. Toward that end, Google is committing nearly $3 million 
to help close the racial equity gaps in computer science education and 
increase Black+ representation in STEM fields. This starts with making 
sure Black students have access to opportunities early on in their 
education. To that end, we're expanding our CS First curriculum to 
7,000 more teachers who reach 100,000+ Black students (https://
csfirst.withgoogle.com/s/en/home), scaling our Applied Digital Skills 
program to reach 400,000 Black middle and high school students (https:/
/applieddigitalskills.withgoogle.com/s/en/home), and making a $1 
million Google.org grant to the DonorsChoose #SeeMe campaign, to help 
teachers access materials to make their classrooms more inclusive 
(https://www.donorschoose.org/iseeme).
    Beyond the classroom, we're increasing our exploreCSR awards 
(https://research.google/outreach/explore-csr) to 16 more universities 
to address racial gaps in computing science research and academia, and 
we're also supporting Black in AI (https://blackinai2020.vercel.app/) 
with $250,000 to help increase Black representation in the field of AI.
    These efforts build on our other education initiatives (https://
www.blog.google/inside-google/googlers/she-word/education-equity-team/
), including CodeNext, focused on cultivating the next generation of 
Black and Latinx tech leaders, and TechExchange, which partners with 
historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic-
serving Institutions (HSIs) to bring students to Google's campus for 
four months to learn about topics from product management to machine 
learning. For more information, please see https://blog.google/inside-
google/company-announcements/commitments-racial-equity. Code Next has 
now launched ``Connect,'' a free, fully virtual computer science 
education program for Black and Latinx high school students that 
provides the skills and tech social capital needed to pursue long and 
high achieving careers in technology. For more information, please see 
https://codenext.withgoogle.com/#welcome.

    Question 5. To continue being the most innovative country in the 
world, we need to maintain a workforce that can innovate. By 2026, the 
Department of Labor projects there will be 3.5 million computing-
related jobs, yet our current education pipeline will only fill 19 
percent of those openings. While other countries have prioritized STEM 
education as a national security issue, collaborating with non-profits 
and industry, the United States has mostly pursued an approach that 
does not meaningfully include such partnerships. The results of such a 
strategy are clear. A recent study found that less than half of K-12 
students are getting any cyber related education, despite a growing 
demand for cyber professionals, both in national security fields and in 
the private sector.

    Question 5a. What role can Google play in helping the United States 
boost its competitiveness in STEM fields, so that our economy can 
better compete with others around the globe?
    Answer. As stated in our response to Question No. 4.b, we recognize 
the critical importance of supporting STEM education programs and 
initiatives. In addition to the initiatives detailed in our response to 
Question No. 4.b, we have also launched the Rising STEM Scholars 
Initiative with a $10 million contribution from Google.org. Through a 
partnership with Equal Opportunity Schools, UC Berkeley's Graduate 
School of Education, Kingmakers of Oakland, and Donorschoose.org, we'll 
collaborate with districts, schools, administrators, educators, 
students, and families to place and support 3,000 students of color and 
low income students in Bay Area AP STEM and CS classrooms. We'll also 
provide money for educators to get resources for their classrooms and 
find ways to inspire students to take AP courses. For more information, 
please see https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/google-org/10-
million-increase-diversity-bay-area-stem-classrooms/.
    Google is also investing in students' cyber-related education. More 
than 65 percent of young people will work in jobs that don't currently 
exist. Learning computer science skills helps students thrive in a 
rapidly changing world. Yet our research with Gallup (https://
edu.google.com/latest-news/research) shows that many students aren't 
getting the Computer Science education they need--and teachers don't 
have sufficient resources to provide it. Code with Google helps to 
ensure that every student has access to the collaborative, coding, and 
technical skills that unlock opportunities in the classroom and beyond-
no matter what their future goals may be. For more information, please 
see https://edu.google.com/code-with-google/. Additionally, to help 
school districts provide more STEM opportunities to students, we offer 
a bundle of STEM tools on Chromebooks that are designed to help 
students become inventors and makers. For additional information, 
please see https://edu.google.com/youchromebook/.
    We are proud of, and will continue, our work to support education 
through these products, programs, and philanthropy.
                                 ______
                                 
    Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Roger Wicker to 
                            Mark Zuckerberg
    Question 1. During the COVID-19 pandemic, countless bad actors have 
propagated incorrect and unsafe information about the virus, including 
taking advantage of unsuspecting Internet users by profiting off sales 
of unproven or fake COVID-19 ``cures.''
    What steps has Facebook taken to crack down on this type of illegal 
behavior on its platform?
    How many Facebook pages and groups have been removed upon 
identifying fraudulent COVID-19 claims, including the sale of illegal 
drugs through the platform?
    How has Facebook Marketplace adjusted its algorithms and review 
processes to ensure illicit substances and unproven COVID products are 
not offered through the platform?
    Answer. Facebook is supporting the global public health community's 
work to keep people safe and informed during the COVID-19 public health 
crisis. We're also working to address the pandemic's long-term impacts 
by supporting industries in need and making it easier for people to 
find and offer help in their communities. We've been prioritizing 
ensuring everyone has access to accurate information, removing harmful 
content, supporting health and economic relief efforts, and keeping 
people connected.
    Under our Regulated Goods policy, we've also taken steps to protect 
against exploitation of this crisis for financial gain by banning 
content that attempts to sell or trade medical masks, hand sanitizer, 
surface-disinfecting wipes, and COVID-19 test kits. We also prohibit 
influencers from promoting such sales through branded content. From 
March through October 2020, we removed over 14 million pieces of 
content globally from Facebook and Instagram related to COVID-19 that 
violated our medical supply sales standards. Of these, over 370,000 
were removed in the U.S.
    In removing content that has the potential to contribute to real-
world harm, we are also focusing on our policies related to commerce 
listings. We prohibit people from making health or medical claims 
related to COVID-19 in product listings on commerce surfaces, including 
those listings that guarantee a product will prevent someone from 
contracting COVID-19. We also prohibit the buying or selling of drugs 
and prescription products. When someone creates a listing on 
Marketplace, before it goes live, it is reviewed against our Commerce 
Policies using automated tools, and in some cases, further manual 
review. When we detect that a listing violates our policies, we reject 
it.

    Question 2. What does ``good faith'' in Section 230 mean?
    Is there any action you could take that could not be justified as 
done in ``good faith''? Do you agree bad faith content moderation is 
not covered by Section 230?
    If content is removed pretextually, or if terms and conditions are 
applied inconsistently depending on the viewpoint expressed in the 
content, is that removing content in good faith?
    Answer. As we understand it, ``good faith,'' as that term is used 
in Section 230(c)(2)(A), and as courts have been interpreting it for 
years, relates to a platform's subjective intent when it removes or 
restricts content. At Facebook, we are clear and transparent about what 
our standards are, and we seek to apply them to all of our users 
consistently.
    Decisions about whether to remove content are based on whether the 
content violates our terms and policies, including our Community 
Standards. Our Community Standards are global, and all reviewers use 
the same guidelines when making decisions.

    Question 3. Why wouldn't a platform be able to rely on terms of 
service to address categories of potentially harmful content outside of 
the explicit categories in Section 230(c)(2)? Why should platforms get 
the additional protections of Section 230 for removal of yet undefined 
categories of speech?
    Does Section 230s ``otherwise objectionable'' catchall offer 
immunity for content moderation decisions motivated by political bias?
    If the ``otherwise objectionable'' catchall does not offer such 
immunity, what limiting principle supports the conclusion that the 
catchall does not cover politically-biased moderation?
    If the ``otherwise objectionable'' catchall does offer such 
immunity now, how would you rewrite Section 230 to deny immunity for 
politically-biased content moderation while retaining it for moderation 
of content that is harmful to children?
    Answer. As we understand it, ``otherwise objectionable,'' as the 
term is used in Section 230(c)(2)(A), is a standard that courts have 
interpreted for many years. At Facebook, our Community Standards--which 
are public--include restrictions around content that is harmful to 
members of our community, including bullying, harassment, hate speech, 
and incitement to violence.
    At Facebook, we are a platform for ideas across the political and 
ideological spectrum, and we moderate content according to our 
published Community Standards to help keep users on the platform safe, 
reduce objectionable content, and ensure users participate on the 
platform responsibly. We are clear and transparent about what our 
standards are, and we seek to apply them to all of our users 
consistently. The political affiliation of the user generating the 
content has no bearing on content removal assessments.
    Regarding content that is harmful to children, Facebook's Community 
Standards prohibit coordinating harm and criminal activity, including 
posting content that sexually exploits or endangers children. When we 
become aware of apparent child exploitation, we report it to the 
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (``NCMEC''), in 
compliance with applicable law. We work hard to identify and remove 
such content; over the past three years, we've found over 99 percent of 
the violating content we actioned before users reported it to us. And 
we certainly think it is important to make sure that platforms are 
serious about the illegal activity on their platforms.
    Facebook supported SESTA/FOSTA, and we were very pleased to be able 
to work successfully with a bipartisan group of Senators on a bill that 
protects women and children from the harms of sex trafficking. We would 
welcome the opportunity to work with the Committee on proposals to 
modify Section 230 in ways that focus on bad actors, while being 
mindful not to disincentivize platforms from trying to find the illegal 
activity in the first place.

    Question 4. Are your terms of service easy to understand and 
transparent about what is and is not permitted on your platform?
    What notice and appeals process do you provide users when removing 
or labeling third-party speech?
    What redress might a user have for improper content moderation 
beyond your internal appeals process?
    In what way do your terms of service ensure against politically-
biased content moderation and in what way do your terms of service 
limit your ability to moderate content on your platform?
    How would you rewrite your terms of service to protect against 
politically-biased content moderation?
    Do you think that removing content inconsistent with your terms of 
service and public representations is removal of content ``in good 
faith''?
    Answer. With respect to our Terms of Service, we believe that 
people should have clear, simple explanations of how online services 
work and use personal information. In June 2019, we updated our Terms 
of Service to clarify how Facebook makes money and to better explain 
the rights people have when using our services. The updates did not 
change any of our commitments or policies--they solely explained things 
more clearly. These updates are also part of our ongoing commitment to 
give people more transparency and control over their information.
    When it comes to content moderation, we strive to enforce our 
policies consistently, without regard to political affiliation. 
Suppressing content on the basis of political viewpoint or preventing 
people from seeing what matters most to them directly contradicts 
Facebook's mission and our business objectives. Content reviewers 
assess content based on our Community Standards. We have made our 
detailed reviewer guidelines public to help people understand how and 
why we make decisions about the content that is and is not allowed on 
Facebook.
    We also make appeals or ``disagree with decision'' feedback 
available for certain types of content that is removed from Facebook, 
when we have resources to review the appeals or feedback. We recognize 
that we sometimes make enforcement errors on both what we allow and 
what we remove, and that mistakes may cause significant concern for 
people. That's why we allow the option to request review of the 
decision when we can. This type of feedback will also allow us to 
continue improving our systems and processes so we can work with our 
partners and content reviewers to prevent similar mistakes in the 
future.
    Facebook also recognizes that we should not make so many important 
decisions about free expression and safety on our own. With our size 
comes a great deal of responsibility, and while we have always taken 
advice from experts to inform our policies on how best to keep our 
platforms safe, until now, we have made the final decisions about what 
should be allowed on our platforms and what should be removed. And 
these decisions often are not easy to make; many judgments do not have 
obvious--or uncontroversial--outcomes, and yet they may have 
significant implications for free expression.
    That's why we have created and empowered a new group, the Oversight 
Board, to exercise independent judgment over some of the most difficult 
and significant content decisions. In doing so, we've sought input from 
both critics and supporters of Facebook. We expect this Oversight Board 
to make some decisions that we, at Facebook, will not always agree 
with--but that's the point: Board Members are autonomous in their 
exercise of independent judgment. Facebook will implement the Board's 
decisions unless doing so could violate the law, and we will respond 
constructively and in good faith to policy guidance put forth by the 
Board.
    The Board won't be able to hear every case we or the public might 
want it to hear, but we look forward to working with the Board to 
ensure that its scope grows over time. As it does, we know the Board 
will play an increasingly important role in setting precedent and 
direction for content policy at Facebook. And in the long term, we hope 
its impact extends well beyond Facebook, and that it serves as a 
springboard for similar approaches to content governance in the online 
sphere.

    Question 5. Please provide a list of all instances in which a 
prominent individual promoting liberal or left-wing views has been 
censored, demonetized, or flagged with extra context by your company.
    Please provide a list of all instances in which a prominent 
individual promoting conservative or right-wing views has been 
censored, demonetized, or flagged with extra context by your company.
    How many posts by government officials from Iran or China have been 
censored or flagged by your company?
    How many posts critical of the Iranian or Communist Chinese 
government have been flagged or taken down?
    Answer. As a general matter, when we identify or learn of content 
that violates our policies, we remove that content regardless of who 
posted it. The political affiliation of the user generating the content 
has no bearing on that content assessment. Rather, decisions about 
whether to remove content are based on our Community Standards, which 
direct all reviewers when making decisions. We seek to write actionable 
policies that clearly distinguish between violating and non-violating 
content, and we seek to make the decision-making process for reviewers 
as objective as possible.
    In terms of moderation decisions, we have removed content posted by 
individuals and entities across the political spectrum. For example, we 
have taken down ads submitted on behalf of the Biden campaign and the 
Democratic National Committee, and organizations like the SEIU. We have 
also taken down ads submitted on behalf of the Trump campaign and the 
Republican National Committee, and organizations like the America First 
Action PAC.
    We also remove content linked to coordinated inauthentic behavior 
campaigns, including those connected to state actors. When it comes to 
our influence operations investigations, we are often focused on the 
behavior, as opposed to the content, because that is the best way to 
stop the abuse; hence, our investigative work and enforcement are often 
location-and content-agnostic. We define coordinated inauthentic 
behavior as coordinated efforts to manipulate public debate for a 
strategic goal, where fake accounts are central to the operation. Our 
approach to coordinated inauthentic behavior and influence operations 
more broadly is grounded in behavior-and actor-based enforcement. This 
means that we are looking for specific violating behaviors exhibited by 
violating actors, rather than violating content (which is predicated on 
specific violations of our Community Standards, such as misinformation 
and hate speech). For a comprehensive overview of how we respond to 
inauthentic behavior, see https://about.fb.com/news/2019/10/
inauthentic-behavior-policy-update/. For our most recent report sharing 
our findings about the coordinated inauthentic behavior we detected and 
removed from our platform, see our October 2020 Coordinated Inauthentic 
Behavior Report at https://about.fb.com/news/2020/11/october-2020-cib-
report/.

    Question 6. Should algorithms that promote or demote particular 
viewpoints be protected by Section 230? Why or why not?
    Answer. On Facebook, people see posts from their friends, Pages 
they've chosen to follow, and Groups they've joined, among others, in 
their News Feed. On a given day, the number of eligible posts in a 
user's News Feed inventory can number in the thousands, so we use an 
algorithm to personalize how this content is organized. The goal of the 
News Feed algorithm is to predict what pieces of content are most 
relevant to the individual user, and rank (i.e., order) those pieces of 
content accordingly every time a user opens Facebook, to try and bring 
those posts that are the most relevant to a person closer to the top of 
their News Feed. This ranking process has four main elements: the 
available inventory (all of the available content from the people, 
Pages, and Groups a person has chosen to connect with); the signals, or 
data points, that can inform ranking decisions (e.g., who posted a 
particular piece of content); the predictions we make, including how 
likely we think a person is to comment on a story, share with a friend, 
etc.; and a relevancy score for each story. We've also taken steps to 
try and minimize the amount of divisive news content people see in News 
Feed, including by reducing the distribution of posts containing 
clickbait headlines.
    As for our content moderation, we are clear and transparent about 
what our standards are, and we apply them to all of our users. We are a 
platform for ideas across the political and ideological spectrum, and 
we moderate content according to our published Community Standards in 
order to keep users on the platform safe, reduce objectionable content, 
and ensure users participate on the platform responsibly.
    The debate about Section 230 shows that people of all political 
persuasions are unhappy with the status quo. People want to know that 
companies are taking responsibility for combatting harmful content--
especially illegal activity--on their platforms. They want to know that 
when platforms remove content, they are doing so fairly and 
transparently. And they want to make sure that platforms are held 
accountable.
    Section 230 made it possible for every major Internet service to be 
built and ensured that important values like free expression and 
openness were part of how platforms operate. Changing it is a 
significant decision. However, we believe Congress should update the 
law to make sure it's working as intended. We support the ideas around 
transparency and industry collaboration that are being discussed in 
some of the current bipartisan proposals, and we look forward to a 
meaningful dialogue about how we might update the law to deal with the 
problems we face today.

    Do you think the use of an individual company's algorithms to 
amplify the spread of illicit or harmful materials like online child 
sexual exploitation should be protected by Section 230?
    Answer. As discussed in the response to your Question 3, Facebook's 
Community Standards prohibit coordinating harm and criminal activity, 
including posting content that sexually exploits or endangers children. 
When we become aware of apparent child exploitation, we report it to 
NCMEC, in compliance with applicable law. We work hard to identify and 
remove such content; over the past three years, we've found over 99 
percent of the violating content we actioned before users reported it 
to us. And we certainly think it is important to make sure that 
platforms are serious about addressing the illegal activity on their 
platforms.
    Facebook supported SESTA/FOSTA, and we were very pleased to be able 
to work successfully with a bipartisan group of Senators on a bill that 
protects women and children from the harms of sex trafficking. We would 
welcome the opportunity to work with the Committee on proposals to 
modify Section 230 in ways that focus on bad actors, while being 
mindful not to disincentivize platforms from trying to find the illegal 
activity in the first place.

    Question 7. Should platforms that knowingly facilitate or 
distribute Federal criminal activity or content be immune from civil 
liability? Why?/Why not?
    Answer. Please see the responses to your Questions 3 and 6. 
Facebook has a variety of policies that prohibit the use of our 
platform for illegal activity or to share illegal content, including 
our policy against coordinating harm or publicizing crime, prohibitions 
on the sale of illegal goods, IP protections, and our policy against 
child sexual abuse material. We enforce these policies through a 
combination of human and automated review. We will continue working to 
improve our systems for finding violating content across a variety of 
categories, including illegal activity. As we did in the case of SESTA/
FOSTA, and as indicated above, we would welcome the opportunity to work 
with the Committee on proposals to modify Section 230 in ways that 
focus on bad actors who intentionally facilitate wrongdoing, while 
being mindful not to disincentivize platforms from trying to find the 
illegal activity in the first place.

    If your company has actual knowledge of content on your platform 
that incites violence, and your company fails to remove that content, 
should Federal law immunize your company from any claims that might 
otherwise be asserted against your company by victims of such violence? 
Are there limitations or exceptions to such immunity that you could 
propose for consideration by the Committee?
    Answer. Please see the response to your previous question. Facebook 
prohibits incitement to violence on our platform. We remove content, 
disable accounts, and work with law enforcement when we believe there 
is a genuine risk of physical harm or direct threat to public safety.

    Should platforms that are willfully blind to Federal criminal 
activity or content on their platforms be immune from civil liability? 
Why? Why not?
    Answer. Please see the response to your previous question. We 
certainly think it is important to make sure that platforms are serious 
about addressing the illegal activity on their platforms. Facebook has 
a variety of policies that prohibit the use of our platform for illegal 
activity or to share illegal content, including our policy against 
coordinating harm or publicizing crime, prohibitions on the sale of 
illegal goods, IP protections, and our policy against child sexual 
abuse material. We enforce these policies rigorously through a 
combination of human and automated review.
                                 ______
                                 
     Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. John Thune to 
                            Mark Zuckerberg
    Question 1. We have a public policy challenge to connect millions 
of Americans in rural America to broadband. I know you share in our 
commitment to connect every American household with broadband not only 
because it's the right thing to do but because it will add millions of 
new users to your platforms, which of course, means increase profits. 
What role should Congress and your companies play in ensuring that we 
meet all the broadband demands in rural America?
    Answer. Facebook's ability to build communities and bring the world 
closer together depends on people being connected. Communities come in 
all sizes and across all regions, but many aren't currently being 
served by traditional methods of connectivity. Although hundreds of 
thousands have been connected in rural areas through programs like the 
FCC's High-Cost initiative, in many tribal and other rural areas it is 
still difficult for Internet service providers (``ISPs'') to make the 
business case to serve sparsely populated, expansive geographic areas 
with difficult terrain. That leads to continued diminished access to 
broadband Internet for rural Americans. Through Facebook's connectivity 
efforts, we're working to help change that.
    We're focused on developing next-generation technologies that can 
help bring the cost of connectivity down to reach the unconnected and 
increase capacity and performance for everyone. We know that there is 
no silver bullet for connecting the world; no single technology or 
program will get the job done. Rather than look for a one-size-fits-all 
solution, we are investing in a building block strategy--designing 
different technologies for specific use cases which are then used 
together to help connect people.
    The COVID-19 pandemic in particular has underscored the importance 
of Internet connectivity. While many people have shifted their lives 
online, there are still more than 18 million Americans who lack 
reliable Internet access. To help, we have partnered with the 
Information Technology Disaster Resource Center (``ITDRC'') and NetHope 
to provide Internet connectivity to communities most impacted by COVID-
19. We also work with ISPs--including wireless ISPs--in rural areas. 
The goal of these partnerships is to better understand the unique 
barriers these communities face in getting online and to create the 
programs and infrastructure needed to increase the availability and 
affordability of high-quality internet access.

    Question 2. Local news remains one of the most trusted news sources 
for individuals. Does Facebook's algorithm differentiate at all between 
news reported by a national or international source, and that of a 
local outlet?
    Answer. We want Facebook to be a place where people can discover 
more news, information, and perspectives, and we are working to build 
products that help. Through our News Feed algorithm, we work hard to 
both actively reduce the distribution of clickbait, sensationalism, and 
misinformation and to boost news and information that keeps users 
informed, and we know the importance to users of staying informed about 
their local communities. As part of that effort, Facebook prioritizes 
local news on News Feed, so that people can see topics that have a 
direct impact on their community and discover what's happening in their 
local area.
    We identify local publishers as those whose links are clicked on by 
readers in a tight geographic area. If a story is from a publisher in a 
user's area, and the user either follows the publisher's Page or the 
user's friend shares a story from that outlet, it might show up higher 
in News Feed. For more information, please visit https://about.fb.com/
news/2018/01/news-feed-fyi-local-news/.
    Our guiding principle is that journalism plays a critical role in 
our democracy. When news is deeply reported and well-sourced, it gives 
people information they can rely on to make good decisions. To that 
end, in January 2019, Facebook announced a $300 million investment in 
news programs, partnerships, and content, focused on supporting local 
news outlets and philanthropic efforts.

    Question 3. The PACT Act would require your platforms to take down 
content that a court has ruled to be illegal. Do you support a court 
order-based takedown rule?
    Answer. We support efforts aimed at greater transparency and 
external accountability. A court order-based takedown rule would 
provide this.

    Question 4. Section 230 was initially adopted to provide a 
``shield'' for young tech start-ups against the risk of overwhelming 
legal liability. Since then, however, some tech platforms like yours 
have grown larger than anyone could have imagined. Often a defense we 
hear from Section 230 proponents is that reform would hurt current and 
future start-ups. The PACT Act requires greater reporting from tech 
platforms on moderation decisions, largely exempts small business. 
However, your companies are no longer start-ups, but rather some of the 
most powerful and profitable companies in the world.

    Do tech giants need ``shields'' codified by the U.S. government? 
Have you outgrown your need for Section 230 protections?
    Answer. Section 230 is a foundational law that allows us to provide 
our products and services to users. At a high level, Section 230 does 
two things. First, it encourages free expression. Without Section 230, 
platforms could potentially be held liable for everything people say. 
They would likely remove more content to avoid legal risk and would be 
less likely to invest in technologies that enable people to express 
themselves in new ways. Second, it allows platforms to remove harmful 
content. Without Section 230, platforms could face liability for doing 
even basic moderation, such as removing bullying and harassment that 
impact the safety and security of their communities.
    Section 230 made it possible for every major Internet service to be 
built and ensured important values like free expression and openness 
were part of how platforms operate. As the Internet keeps growing and 
evolving, the core principles of Section 230 will continue to be 
crucial for innovation--for small platforms that don't have the same 
capabilities when it comes to content moderation, for large ones that 
host billions of pieces of content across the globe, and for the 
American tech sector as a whole if we are going to maintain our edge in 
innovation. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be updated to reflect 
the way the Internet has changed in the last 25 years, and that's why 
we support thoughtful reform to make sure the law is working as 
intended.

    Question 5. Last year, I introduced the Filter Bubble Transparency 
Act to address the filter bubble phenomena, in which social media users 
are only shown content they agree with. This is believed to be leading 
to ideological isolation and increased polarization, as illustrated in 
a recent documentary called ``The Social Dilemma''. In response to that 
documentary, Mr. Zuckerberg, your company stated that ``polarization 
and populism have existed long before Facebook'' and that the platform 
``takes steps to reduce content that could drive polarization.''
    Mr. Zuckerberg, do you believe the filter bubble exists, and do you 
believe Facebook's use of algorithms is contributing to polarization?
    Answer. We know that one of the biggest issues social networks face 
is that, when left unchecked, people will engage disproportionately 
with more sensationalist and provocative content. At scale this type of 
content can undermine the quality of public discourse and lead to 
polarization. In our case, it can also degrade the quality of our 
services. Our research suggests that no matter where we draw the line 
for what is allowed, as a piece of content gets close to that line, 
people will engage with it more on average--even when they tell us 
afterwards they don't like the content. That is why we've invested 
heavily and have taken steps to try and minimize the amount of divisive 
news content people see in News Feed, including by reducing the 
distribution of posts containing clickbait headlines.
    On Facebook, people see posts from their friends, Pages they've 
chosen to follow, and Groups they've joined, among others, in their 
News Feed. On a given day, the number of eligible posts in a user's 
News Feed inventory can number in the thousands, so we use an algorithm 
to personalize how this content is organized. The goal of the News Feed 
algorithm is to predict what pieces of content are most relevant to the 
individual user, and rank (i.e., order) those pieces of content 
accordingly every time a user opens Facebook, to try and bring those 
posts that are the most relevant to a person closer to the top of their 
News Feed. This ranking process has four main elements: the available 
inventory (all of the available content from the people, Pages, and 
Groups a person has chosen to connect with); the signals, or data 
points, that can inform ranking decisions (e.g., who posted a 
particular piece of content); the predictions we make, including how 
likely we think a person is to comment on a story, share with a friend, 
etc.; and a relevancy score for each story, which informs its position 
in News Feed.
    We frequently make changes to the algorithm that drives News Feed 
ranking in an effort to improve people's experience on Facebook. For 
example, in 2018, we responded to feedback from our community that 
public content--posts from businesses, brands, and media--was crowding 
out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other. 
As a result, we moved from focusing only on helping people find 
relevant content to helping them have more meaningful social 
interactions. This meant that people began seeing more content from 
their friends, family, and Groups. We also reduce the distribution of 
some problematic types of content, including content that users may 
find spammy or low-quality, such as clickbait headlines, misinformation 
as confirmed by third-party fact-checkers, and links to low-quality 
webpages like ad farms.
    Facebook is a platform that reflects the conversations already 
taking place in society. We are keenly aware of the concern that our 
platform is contributing to polarization, and we have been working to 
understand the role that we play in discourse and information 
diversity. The data on what causes polarization and ``filter bubbles'' 
is mixed. Some independent research has shown that social media 
platforms provide more information diversity than traditional media, 
and our own research indicates that most people on Facebook have at 
least some friends who claim an opposing political ideology--probably 
because Facebook helps people maintain ties with people who are more 
distantly connected to them than their core community--and that the 
content in News Feed reflects that added diversity. We want Facebook to 
be a place where people can discover more news, information, and 
perspectives, and we are working to build products that help. And 
because we want Facebook to be a place where people can express 
themselves, we must also preserve our community's sense of safety, 
privacy, dignity, and authenticity via our Community Standards, which 
define what is and isn't allowed on Facebook. We remove content that 
violates our Community Standards, such as hate speech, bullying, and 
harassment.
    With respect to your legislation, S. 2763, we believe we are 
compliant with the bill's proposed requirement that users be provided 
with the opportunity to choose a chronological feed. Users who do not 
wish to consume ranked News Feed have access to a control to view 
content chronologically from those they follow in the ``Most Recent'' 
News Feed view (see https://www.facebook.com/help/2187281381
56311).

    Question 6. As discussed during the hearing, please provide for the 
record a complete list of U.S. newspaper articles that Facebook 
suppressed or limited the distribution of over the past five years, as 
Facebook did with the October 14, 2020 New York Post article entitled 
``Smoking-Gun E-mail Reveals How Hunter Biden Introduced Ukrainian 
Businessman to VP Dad.'' For each article listed, please also provide 
an explanation why the article was suppressed or the distribution was 
limited.
    Answer. People often tell us they don't want to see misinformation. 
People also tell us that they don't want Facebook to be the arbiter of 
truth or falsity. That's why we work with over 80 independent, third-
party fact-checkers who are certified through the non-partisan 
International Fact-Checking Network (``IFCN'') to help identify and 
review false news. If content is deemed by a fact-checker to be False, 
Altered, or Partly False, according to our public definitions, its 
distribution will be reduced, and it will appear lower in News Feed. We 
also implement an overlaid warning screen on top of fact-checked 
content. People who try to share the content will be notified of the 
fact-checker's reporting and rating, and they will also be notified if 
content they have shared in the past has since been rated false by a 
fact-checker.
    We also work to take fast action to prevent misinformation from 
going viral, especially given that quality reporting and fact-checking 
takes time. In 2019, we announced that, if we identify signals that a 
piece of content is false, we will temporarily reduce its distribution 
in order to allow sufficient time for our independent, third-party 
fact-checkers to review and determine whether to apply a rating. Quick 
action is critical in keeping a false claim from going viral, so we 
take this step to provide an extra level of protection against 
potential misinformation. These temporary demotions expire after seven 
days if the content has not been rated by an independent fact-checker.
    We believe it's important for the fact-checking process to be 
transparent, so Page and domain owners will receive a notification when 
content they shared is rated by a fact-checking partner. Page owners 
can also review all violations, including Community Standards 
violations, in their Page Quality tab. Additionally, the third-party 
fact-checkers with which we work are all signatories to the IFCN's Code 
of Principles, which requires transparency of sources and methodology 
and a commitment to open and honest corrections. To that end, our 
partners' fact-checking articles are publicly available and easily 
accessible at their websites. For a list of our third-party fact-
checkers in the U.S., please visit https://www.facebook.com/journalism
project/programs/third-party-fact-checking/partner-map.
    Regarding the October 14 New York Post story, for the past several 
months, the U.S. intelligence community has urged voters, companies, 
and the Federal government to remain vigilant in the face of the threat 
of foreign influence operations seeking to undermine our democracy and 
the integrity of our electoral process. For example, the Director of 
National Intelligence, the Head of the FBI, and the bipartisan leaders 
of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reminded Americans about 
the threat posed by foreign influence operations emanating from Russia 
and Iran. Along with their public warnings, and as part of the ongoing 
cooperation that tech companies established with government partners 
following the 2016 election, the FBI also privately warned tech 
companies to be on high alert for the potential of hack-and-leak 
operations carried out by foreign actors in the weeks leading up to the 
Presidential election. We took these risks seriously.
    Given the concerns raised by the FBI and others, we took steps 
consistent with our policies to slow the spread of suspicious content 
and provide fact-checkers the opportunity to assess it. However, at no 
point did we take any action to block or remove the content from the 
platform. People could--and did--read and share the Post's reporting 
while we had this temporary demotion in place. Consistent with our 
policy, after seven days, we lifted the temporary demotion on this 
content because it was not rated false by an independent fact-checker.

    Question 7. Justice Thomas recently observed that ``[p]aring back 
the sweeping immunity courts have read into Sec. 230 would not 
necessarily render defendants liable for online misconduct. It simply 
would give plaintiffs a chance to raise their claims in the first 
place. Plaintiffs still must prove the merits of their cases, and some 
claims will undoubtedly fail.'' Do you agree with him? Why shouldn't 
lawsuits alleging that a tech platform has violated a law by exercising 
editorial discretion be evaluated on the merits rather than being 
dismissed because a defendant invokes Section 230 as a broad shield 
from liability?
    Answer. We want to engage productively in conversations about how 
to update Section 230 to make sure it's working as intended. As 
discussed in response to your Question 4, Section 230 made it possible 
for every major Internet service to be built and ensured that important 
values like free expression and openness were part of how platforms 
operate. Changing it is a significant decision. However, we believe 
Congress should update the law to make sure it's working as intended. 
We support the ideas around transparency and industry collaboration 
that are being discussed in some of the current bipartisan proposals, 
and we look forward to a meaningful dialogue about how we might update 
the law to deal with the problems we face today.

    Question 8. What does ``good faith'' in Section 230 mean? Is there 
any action you could take that could not be justified as done in ``good 
faith''? Do you agree bad faith content moderation is not covered by 
Section 230? If content is removed pretextually, or if terms and 
conditions are applied inconsistently depending on the viewpoint 
expressed in the content, is that removing content in good faith?
    Answer. As we understand it, ``good faith,'' as that term is used 
in Section 230(c)(2)(A), and as courts have been interpreting it for 
years, relates to a platform's subjective intent when it removes or 
restricts content. At Facebook, we are clear and transparent about what 
our standards are, and we seek to apply them to all of our users 
consistently.
    Decisions about whether to remove content are based on whether the 
content violates our terms and policies, including our Community 
Standards. Our Community Standards are global, and all reviewers use 
the same guidelines when making decisions.

    Question 9. Mr. Pichai noted in the hearing that without the 
``otherwise objectionable'' language of Section 230, the suppression of 
teenagers eating tide pods, cyber-bullying, and other dangerous trends 
would have been impossible. Could the language of Section 230 be 
amended to specifically address these concerns, by including the 
language of ``promoting self-harm'' or ``unlawful'' without needing the 
``otherwise objectionable'' language that provides online platforms a 
blank check to take down any third-party speech with which they 
disagree?
    Answer. We certainly understand the tension between free expression 
and safety; we grapple with this tension every day. We think there are 
other kinds of content that are also harmful that may not be covered by 
proposals like the ones you reference, such as incitement to violence, 
bullying, and harassment. We do not think we should be subject to 
costly litigation for removal of harmful content. As Mr. Zuckerberg 
said during the hearing, we would worry that 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 we think would make them worse places 
for people.
    However, we do believe Congress should update the law to make sure 
it's working as intended. We support the ideas around transparency and 
industry collaboration that are being discussed in some of the current 
bipartisan proposals, and we look forward to a meaningful dialogue 
about how we might update the law to deal with the problems we face 
today.

    Question 10. What other language would be necessary to address 
truly harmful material online without needing to rely on the vague term 
``otherwise objectionable?''
    Answer. Please see the response to your Question 9.

    Question 11. Why wouldn't a platform be able to rely on terms of 
service to address categories of potentially harmful content outside of 
the explicit categories in Section 230(c)(2)? Why should platforms get 
the additional protections of Section 230 for removal of yet undefined 
categories of speech?
    Answer. As we understand it, ``otherwise objectionable,'' as the 
term is used in Section 230(c)(2)(A), is a standard that courts have 
interpreted for many years. At Facebook, our Community Standards--which 
are public--include restrictions around content that is harmful to 
members of our community, including bullying, harassment, hate speech, 
and incitement to violence.
    At Facebook, we are a platform for ideas across the political and 
ideological spectrum, and we moderate content according to our 
published Community Standards to help keep users on the platform safe, 
reduce objectionable content, and ensure users participate on the 
platform responsibly. We are clear and transparent about what our 
standards are, and we seek to apply them to all of our users 
consistently. The political affiliation of the user generating the 
content has no bearing on content removal assessments.
    Regarding content that is harmful to children, Facebook's Community 
Standards prohibit coordinating harm and criminal activity, including 
posting content that sexually exploits or endangers children. When we 
become aware of apparent child exploitation, we report it to the 
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (``NCMEC''), in 
compliance with applicable law. We work hard to identify and remove 
such content; over the past three years, we've found over 99 percent of 
the violating content we actioned before users reported it to us. And 
we certainly think it is important to make sure that platforms are 
serious about the illegal activity on their platforms.
    Facebook supported SESTA/FOSTA, and we were very pleased to be able 
to work successfully with a bipartisan group of Senators on a bill that 
protects women and children from the harms of sex trafficking. We would 
welcome the opportunity to work with the Committee on proposals to 
modify Section 230 in ways that focus on bad actors, while being 
mindful not to disincentivize platforms from trying to find the illegal 
activity in the first place.

    Question 12. Does Section 230s ``otherwise objectionable'' catchall 
offer immunity for content moderation decisions motivated by political 
bias?
    If the ``otherwise objectionable'' catchall does not offer such 
immunity, what limiting principle supports the conclusion that the 
catchall does not cover politically-biased moderation?
    If the ``otherwise objectionable'' catchall does offer such 
immunity now, how would you rewrite Section 230 to deny immunity for 
politically-biased content moderation while retaining it for moderation 
of content that is harmful to children?
    Answer. Please see the response to your previous question.

    Question 13. Are your terms of service easy to understand and 
transparent about what is and is not permitted on your platform?
    Answer. We believe that people should have clear, simple 
explanations of how online services work and use personal information. 
In June 2019, we updated our Terms of Service to clarify how Facebook 
makes money and better explain the rights people have when using our 
services. The updates did not change any of our commitments or 
policies--they solely explained things more clearly. These updates are 
also part of our ongoing commitment to give people more transparency 
and control over their information.
    When it comes to content moderation, we strive to enforce our 
policies consistently, without regard to political affiliation.

    Question 14. What notice and appeals process do you provide users 
when removing or labeling third-party speech?
    Answer. We strive to enforce our policies consistently, without 
regard to political affiliation. Suppressing content on the basis of 
political viewpoint or preventing people from seeing what matters most 
to them directly contradicts Facebook's mission and our business 
objectives. Content reviewers assess content based on our Community 
Standards. We have made our detailed reviewer guidelines public to help 
people understand how and why we make decisions about the content that 
is and is not allowed on Facebook.
    We also make appeals or ``disagree with decision'' feedback 
available for certain types of content that is removed from Facebook 
when we have resources to review the appeals or feedback. We recognize 
that we sometimes make enforcement errors on both what we allow and 
what we remove, and that mistakes may cause significant concern for 
people. That's why we need to allow the option to request review of the 
decision when we can. This type of feedback will also allow us to 
continue improving our systems and processes so we can work with our 
partners and content reviewers to prevent similar mistakes in the 
future.
    Facebook also recognizes that we should not make so many important 
decisions about free expression and safety on our own. With our size 
comes a great deal of responsibility and while we have always taken 
advice from experts to inform our policies and on how best to keep our 
platforms safe, until now, we have made the final decisions about what 
should be allowed on our platforms and what should be removed. And 
these decisions often are not easy to make--many judgments do not have 
obvious, or uncontroversial, outcomes and yet they may have significant 
implications for free expression.
    That's why we have created and empowered a new group, the Oversight 
Board, to exercise independent judgment over some of the most difficult 
and significant content decisions. In doing so, we've sought input from 
both critics and supporters of Facebook. We expect this Oversight Board 
to make some decisions that we, at Facebook, will not always agree 
with--but that's the point: they are autonomous in their exercise of 
independent judgment. Facebook will implement the Board's decisions 
unless doing so could violate the law, and will respond constructively 
and in good faith to policy guidance put forth by the Board.
    The board won't be able to hear every case we or the public might 
want it to hear, but we look forward to working with the board to 
ensure that its scope grows over time. As it does, we know the board 
will play an increasingly important role in setting precedent and 
direction for content policy at Facebook. And in the long term, we hope 
its impact extends well beyond Facebook, and serves as a springboard 
for similar approaches to content governance in the online sphere.

    Question 15. What redress might a user have for improper content 
moderation beyond your internal appeals process?
    Answer. Please see the response to your previous question.

    Question 16. In what way do your terms of service ensure against 
politically-biased content moderation and in what way do your terms of 
service limit your ability to moderate content on your platform?
    Answer. Please see the responses to your Questions 13 and 14.

    Question 17. How would you rewrite your terms of service to protect 
against politically-biased content moderation?
    Answer. Please see the responses to your Questions 13 and 14.

    Question 18. Do you think that removing content inconsistent with 
your terms of service and public representations is removal of content 
``in good faith''?
    Answer. Please see the responses to your Questions 8, 13, and 14.

    Question 19. As it stands, Section 230 has been interpreted not to 
grant immunity if a publishing platform ``ratifies'' illicit activity. 
Do you agree? How do you think ``ratification'' should be defined?
    Answer. Section 230 protects platforms from liability related to 
content created by others, not by itself. Platforms do not (and should 
not) lose Section 230 protection for content created by others simply 
because they choose to speak for themselves in certain circumstances.

    Question 20. Do you agree that a platform should not be covered by 
Section 230 if it adds its own speech to third-party content?
    Answer. Please see the response to your previous question.

    Question 21. When a platform adds its own speech, does it become an 
information content provider under Section 230(f)(3)?
    Answer. Please see the response to your Question 19.

    Question 22. Should algorithms that promote or demote particular 
viewpoints be protected by Section 230? Why or why not?
    Answer. On Facebook, people see posts from their friends, Pages 
they've chosen to follow, and Groups they've joined, among others, in 
their News Feed. On a given day, the number of eligible posts in a 
user's Feed inventory can number in the thousands, so we use an 
algorithm to personalize how this content is organized. The goal of the 
News Feed algorithm is to predict what pieces of content are most 
relevant to the individual user, and rank (i.e., order) those pieces of 
content accordingly every time a user opens Facebook, to try and bring 
those posts that are the most relevant to a person closer to the top of 
their News Feed. This ranking process has four main elements: the 
available inventory (all of the available content from the people, 
Pages, and Groups a person has chosen to connect with); the signals, or 
data points, that can inform ranking decisions (e.g., who posted a 
particular piece of content); the predictions we make, including how 
likely we think a person is to comment on a story, share with a friend, 
etc.; and a relevancy score for each story. We've also taken steps to 
try and minimize the amount of divisive news content people see in News 
Feed, including by reducing the distribution of posts containing 
clickbait headlines.
    As for our content moderation, we are clear and transparent about 
what our standards are, and we apply them to all of our users. We are a 
platform for ideas across the political and ideological spectrum, and 
we moderate content according to our published Community Standards in 
order to keep users on the platform safe, reduce objectionable content, 
and ensure users participate on the platform responsibly.
    The debate about Section 230 shows that people of all political 
persuasions are unhappy with the status quo. People want to know that 
companies are taking responsibility for combatting harmful content--
especially illegal activity--on their platforms. They want to know that 
when platforms remove content, they are doing so fairly and 
transparently. And they want to make sure that platforms are held 
accountable.
    Section 230 made it possible for every major Internet service to be 
built and ensured important values like free expression and openness 
were part of how platforms operate. Changing it is a significant 
decision. However, we believe Congress should update the law to make 
sure it's working as intended. We support the ideas around transparency 
and industry collaboration that are being discussed in some of the 
current bipartisan proposals, and we look forward to a meaningful 
dialogue about how we might update the law to deal with the problems we 
face today.

    Question 23. Do you think the use of an individual company's 
algorithms to amplify the spread of illicit or harmful materials like 
online child sexual exploitation should be protected by Section 230?
    Answer. Facebook's Community Standards prohibit coordinating harm 
and criminal activity, including posting content that sexually exploits 
or endangers children. When we become aware of apparent child 
exploitation, we report it to the National Center for Missing and 
Exploited Children (NCMEC), in compliance with applicable law. We work 
hard to identify and remove such content; over the past three years, 
we've found over 99 percent of the violating content we actioned before 
users reported it to us. And we certainly think it is important to make 
sure that platforms are serious about addressing the illegal activity 
on their platforms.
    Facebook supported SESTA/FOSTA, and we were very pleased to be able 
to work successfully with a bipartisan group of Senators on a bill that 
protects women and children from the harms of sex trafficking. We would 
welcome the opportunity to work with the Committee on proposals to 
modify Section 230 in ways that focus on bad actors, while being 
mindful not to disincentivize platforms from trying to find the illegal 
activity in the first place.

    Question 24. Should platforms that knowingly facilitate or 
distribute Federal criminal activity or content be immune from civil 
liability? Why or why not?
    Answer. Please see the responses to your Questions 11, 12, 22, and 
23. Facebook has a variety of policies that prohibit the use of our 
platform for illegal activity or to share illegal content, including 
our policy against coordinating harm or publicizing crime, prohibitions 
on the sale of illegal goods, IP protections, and our policy against 
child sexual abuse material. We enforce these policies through a 
combination of human and automated review. We will continue working to 
improve our systems for finding violating content across a variety of 
categories, including illegal activity. As we did in the case of SESTA/
FOSTA, and as indicated above, we would welcome the opportunity to work 
with the Committee on proposals to modify Section 230 in ways that 
focus on bad actors who intentionally facilitate wrongdoing, while 
being mindful not to disincentivize platforms from trying to find the 
illegal activity in the first place.

    Question 25. If your company has actual knowledge of content on 
your platform that incites violence, and your company fails to remove 
that content, should Federal law immunize your company from any claims 
that might otherwise be asserted against your company by victims of 
such violence? Are there limitations or exceptions to such immunity 
that you could propose for consideration by the Committee?
    Answer. Please see the responses to your Questions 22 and 23. 
Facebook prohibits incitement to violence on our platform. We remove 
content, disable accounts, and work with law enforcement when we 
believe there is a genuine risk of physical harm or direct threat to 
public safety.

    Question 26. Should platforms that are willfully blind to Federal 
criminal activity or content on their platforms be immune from civil 
liability? Why or why not?
    Answer. Please see the responses to your Questions 22 and 23. We 
certainly think it is important to make sure that platforms are serious 
about addressing the illegal activity on their platforms. Facebook has 
a variety of policies that prohibit the use of our platform for illegal 
activity or to share illegal content, including our policy against 
coordinating harm or publicizing crime, prohibitions on the sale of 
illegal goods, IP protections, and our policy against child sexual 
abuse material. We enforce these policies rigorously through a 
combination of human and automated review.
                                 ______
                                 
    Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Jerry Moran to 
                            Mark Zuckerberg
    Question 1. How much money does your company spend annually on 
content moderation in general?
    Answer. We're spending as much--if not more--on safety and security 
as the entire revenue of our company at the time of our IPO earlier 
this decade. And we now have over 35,000 people working in this area, 
about 15,000 of whom review content.

    Question 2. How many employees does your company have that are 
involved with content moderation in general? In addition, how many 
outside contractors does your company employ for these purposes?
    Answer. As discussed in the response to your Question 1, we have 
over 35,000 people working on safety and security, about 15,000 of whom 
review content. The majority of our content reviewers are people who 
work full-time for our partners and work at sites managed by these 
partners. We have a global network of partner companies so that we can 
quickly adjust the focus of our workforce as needed. This approach 
gives us the ability to, for example, make sure we have the right 
language or regional expertise. Our partners have a core competency in 
this type of work and are able to help us adjust as new needs arise or 
when a situation around the world warrants it.

    Question 3. How much money does your company currently spend on 
defending lawsuits stemming from users' content on your platform?
    Answer. Defending lawsuits related to users' content on our 
platform requires a substantial amount of resources, including 
litigation costs and employee time, both in the U.S. and elsewhere.

    Question 4. Without Section 230s liability shield, would your legal 
and content moderation costs be higher or lower?
    Answer. Broadly speaking, Section 230 does two things. First, it 
encourages free expression. Without Section 230, platforms could 
potentially be held liable for everything people say. Platforms would 
likely moderate more content to avoid legal risk and would be less 
likely to invest in technologies that enable people to express 
themselves in new ways. Second, it allows platforms to moderate 
content. Without Section 230, platforms could face liability for doing 
even basic moderation, such as removing hate speech and harassment that 
impact the safety and security of their communities. Repealing Section 
230 entirely would likely substantially increase many companies' costs 
associated with legal challenges and content moderation.

    Question 5. How many liability lawsuits have been filed against 
your company based on user content over the past year?
    Answer. Please see the response to your Question 3.

    Question 6. Please describe the general breakdown of categories of 
liability, such as defamation, involved in the total number of lawsuits 
over the past year.
    Answer. Lawsuits based on user content may include claims that we 
took down content improperly, or that we left up content that we should 
have taken down (for example, because it was allegedly illegal, 
defamatory, or otherwise harmful).

    Question 7. Of the total number of liability lawsuits based on user 
content, how many of them did your company rely on Section 230 in its 
defense?
    Answer. We don't have a precise number. We may invoke Section 230 
in our defense when a claim seeks to treat Facebook as the publisher or 
speaker of information provided by a user or other entity.

    Question 8. Of the liability lawsuits based on user content in 
which your company relies on Section 230 in its defense, what 
categories of liability in each of these lawsuits is your company 
subject to?
    Answer. Please see the responses to your Questions 6 and 7.

    Question 9. In a defamation case based on user content, please 
describe the typical procedural steps your company takes to litigate 
these claims.
    Answer. The lawsuits the company faces--and therefore the 
procedural steps the company takes to defend them--vary based on the 
nature of the claims, facts alleged, relevant legal and procedural 
standards, and fora, among other factors.

    Question 10. Of the claims that have been dismissed on Section 230 
grounds, what is the average cost of litigation?
    Answer. The costs of litigation are often substantial, even when 
the suits are dismissed on Section 230 grounds.

    Question 11. I understand the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) 
contains similar intermediary liability protections that Section 230 
established domestically. The recent trade deal with Japan also 
included similar provisions.
    If Congress were to alter Section 230, do you expect litigation or 
free trade agreement compliance issues related to the United States 
upholding trade agreements that contain those provisions?
    Answer. Facebook is not in a position to comment on the type of 
litigation described in this question.

    Question 12. How does the inclusion of Section 230-like protections 
in the aforementioned trade deals affect your business operations in 
the countries party to said trade deals? Do you expect fewer defamation 
lawsuits and lower legal costs associated with intermediary liability 
in those countries due to these trade deals?
    Answer. It's too early to tell. These countries and their 
respective legal systems implement and enforce international agreements 
differently and we have yet to see how they will do so here.

    Question 13. In countries that do not have Section 230-like 
protections, are your companies more vulnerable to litigation or 
liability as a result?
    Answer. In countries that do not have laws analogous to Section 
230, Facebook has faced litigation based on content moderation 
decisions or seeking to hold Facebook responsible for content posted by 
our users. These cases involve substantial litigation costs.

    Question 14. How do your content moderation and litigation costs 
differ in these countries compared to what you might expect if Section 
230-like protections were in place?
    Answer. Please see the response to your previous question.

    Question 15. As American companies, does Section 230s existence 
provide you any liability protection overseas in countries that do not 
have similar protections for tech companies?
    Answer. Unless specified in trade agreements, or unless overseas 
courts apply California law, we are not aware of any liability 
protection that Section 230 provides in countries other than the U.S.

    Question 16. To differing extents, all of your companies rely on 
automated content moderation tools to flag and remove content on your 
platforms.
    What is the difference in effectiveness between automated and human 
moderation?
    Answer. To enforce our Community Standards, we have introduced 
tools that allow us to proactively detect and remove certain violating 
content using advances in technology, including artificial 
intelligence, machine learning, and computer vision. We do this by 
analyzing specific examples of bad content that have been reported and 
removed to identify patterns of behavior. Those patterns can be used to 
teach our software to proactively identify similar content.
    These advances in technology mean that we can now remove bad 
content more quickly, identify and review more potentially harmful 
content, and increase the capacity of our review team. To ensure the 
accuracy of these technologies, we constantly test and analyze our 
systems, technology, and AI to ensure accuracy. All content goes 
through some degree of automated review, and we use human reviewers to 
check some content that has been flagged by that automated review or 
reported by people that use Facebook. We also use human reviewers to 
perform reviews of content that was not flagged or reported by people 
to check the accuracy and efficiency of our automated review systems. 
The percentage of content that is reviewed by a human varies widely 
depending on the type and context of the content, and we don't target a 
specific percentage across all content on Facebook.

    Question 17. What percentage of decisions made by automated content 
moderation systems are successfully appealed, and how does that compare 
to human moderation decisions?
    Please describe the limitations and benefits specific to automated 
content moderation and human content moderation.
    Answer. For information about automated and human content 
moderation, please see the response to your previous question.
    With respect to appeals, we release our Community Standards 
Enforcement Report (available at https://transparency.facebook.com/
community-standards-enforcement) on a quarterly basis to report on our 
progress and demonstrate our continued commitment to making Facebook 
safe and inclusive. This report shares metrics on how Facebook is 
performing in preventing and removing content that violates our 
Community Standards. We also share data in this report on our process 
for appealing and restoring content to correct mistakes in our 
enforcement decisions.

    Question 18. In your written testimonies, each of you note the 
importance of tech companies being transparent with their users.
    Have you already, or do you plan to make public the processes that 
your automated moderation system undertakes when making decisions about 
content on your platform?
    Given the complexity of the algorithms that are now governing a 
portion of the content across your platforms, how have you or how do 
you plan to explain the functions of your automated moderation systems 
in a simple manner that users can easily understand?
    Answer. An algorithm is a formula or set of steps for solving a 
particular problem. At Facebook, we use algorithms to offer customized 
user experiences and to help us achieve our mission of building a 
global and informed community. For example, we use algorithms to help 
generate and display search results (see https://about.fb
.com/news/2018/11/inside-feed-how-search-works/), to prioritize the 
content people follow with their personalized News Feed (see https://
about.fb.com/news/2018/05/inside-feed-news-feed-ranking/), and to serve 
ads that may be relevant to them.
    As a company, we are committed to helping our users understand how 
we use algorithms. We publish a series of blog posts called News Feed 
FYI (see https://about.fb.com/news/category/news-feed-fyi/) that 
highlight major updates to News Feed and explain the thinking behind 
them. Also, in 2019, we launched a feature called ``Why am I seeing 
this post?'' (see https://about.fb.com/news/2019/03/why-am-i-seeing-
this/). This feature directly responded to user feedback asking for 
more transparency around why certain content appears in News Feed and 
easier access to News Feed controls. Through their News Feed 
Preferences and our See First tool, users can choose to see posts from 
certain friends and Pages higher up in their News Feed. Controls also 
include Snooze, which keeps the content from a selected person, Page, 
or Group out of a user's News Feed for a limited time.
    We also maintain a blog focused exclusively on our artificial 
intelligence work at https://ai.facebook.com/. Most recently, we 
published a series of posts on our use of artificial intelligence to 
help protect users from harmful content:

   How we use AI to help detect misinformation (https://
        ai.facebook.com/blog/heres-how-were-using-ai-to-help-detect-
        misinformation/)

   How we train AI to detect hate speech (https://
        ai.facebook.com/blog/training-ai-to-detect-hate-speech-in-the-
        real-world/)

   How AI is getting better at detecting hate speech (https://
        ai.facebook.com/blog/how-ai-is-getting-better-at-detecting-
        hate-speech/)

   How we use super-efficient AI models to detect hate speech 
        (https://ai.facebook
        .com/blog/how-facebook-uses-super-efficient-ai-models-to-
        detect-hate-speech/)

    Question 19. How has COVID-19 impacted your company's content 
moderation systems?
    Is there a greater reliance on automated content moderation?
    Please quantify how content moderation responsibilities have 
shifted between human and automated systems due to COVID-19.
    Answer. Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, we've worked to keep both 
our workforce and the people who use our platforms safe. In March, we 
announced that we would temporarily send our content reviewers home. 
Since then we've made some changes to keep our platform safe during 
this time, including increasing the use of automation, carefully 
prioritizing user reports, and temporarily altering our appeals 
process. We also asked some of our full-time employees to review 
content related to real-world harm like child safety, suicide, and 
self-injury.

    Question 20. Last year, the Department of Justice's Antitrust 
Division held a workshop that brought together academics and executives 
from leading companies, including buyers and sellers of advertising 
inventory. The discussion explored the practical considerations that 
industry participants face and the competitive impact of technological 
developments such as digital and targeted advertising in media markets, 
including dynamics between local broadcast and online platforms for 
advertisement expenditures.
    Separately, the FCC has attempted to update its local broadcast 
ownership rules following its 2018 quadrennial review, including 
permitting the ownership of two TV stations in local markets. However, 
this recent attempt by the FCC to modernize the local media marketplace 
has been halted by the Third Circuit's decision to reject the FCC's 
update of broadcast ownership restrictions.
    For purposes of understanding your companies' general views on the 
local media marketplace, do your companies compete with local broadcast 
stations for digital advertising revenue?
    Do you think Federal regulations determining acceptable business 
transactions in local media marketplaces should be updated to account 
for this evolving and increasing competition for digital advertising 
purchases?
    Answer. The advertising sector is incredibly dynamic, and 
competition for advertising spend is increasingly fierce. Companies 
have more options than ever when deciding where to advertise. Unlike a 
few decades ago, when companies had more limited options, today there 
are more choices, different channels and platforms, and hundreds of 
companies offering them.
    Facebook competes for advertisers' budgets with online and offline 
advertisers and with a broad variety of advertising players. This 
includes the intense competitive pressure that Facebook faces for 
advertising budgets from offline channels (such as print, radio, and 
broadcast), established digital platforms (such as Google, Amazon, 
Twitter, and Pinterest), and newer entrants that have attracted a large 
user base from scratch (such as Snap and TikTok). The landscape is also 
highly dynamic, with offline advertising channels (such as television 
and radio) benefiting from industry-wide digitalization and new 
technologies to offer their own ad targeting and measurement products.
    Advertisers can and do shift spend in real time across ad platforms 
to maximize their return on investment. As a result of this competition 
and choice, advertisers spread their budgets across multiple outlets 
and channels, including Facebook.
    Facebook is able to provide nearly all of its consumer services 
free of charge because it is funded by advertising that is relevant and 
useful. Millions of Americans use Facebook to connect with the people, 
organizations, and businesses they care about. Research has shown that 
though Facebook offers these services at no cost, they offer 
significant value--a huge consumer surplus.

    Question 21. Earlier this year, you stated that due to increased 
reliance on automated review of some content due to COVID-19 means ``we 
may be a little less effective in the near term. . .''
    Please state the current status of your content moderation 
preparedness, especially in regard to your election preparations. Did 
Facebook experience content moderation difficulties during the election 
due to changes made due to COVID-19?
    Answer. We're gratified that, thanks to the hard work of election 
administrators across the country, the voting process went relatively 
smoothly. Facebook worked hard to do our part in protecting the 
integrity of the 2020 election, and we're proud of the work we've done 
to support our democracy. For example, we ran the largest voting 
information campaign in American history. Based on conversion rates we 
calculated from a few states we partnered with, we estimate that we 
helped 4.5 million people register to vote across Facebook, Instagram, 
and Messenger--and helped about 100,000 people sign up to be poll 
workers. We launched a Voting Information Center to connect people with 
reliable information on deadlines for registering and voting and 
details about how to vote by mail or vote early in person, and we 
displayed links to the Voting Information Center when people posted 
about voting on Facebook. More than 140 million people have visited the 
Voting Information Center on Facebook and Instagram since it launched. 
We are encouraged that more Americans voted in 2020 than ever before, 
and that our platform helped people take part in the democratic 
process.
    We also worked to tackle misinformation and voter suppression. We 
displayed warnings on more than 150 million pieces of content that our 
third-party fact-checkers debunked. We partnered with election 
officials to remove false claims about polling conditions, and we put 
in place strong voter suppression policies that prohibit explicit or 
implicit misrepresentations about how or when to vote, as well as 
attempts to use threats related to COVID-19 to scare people into not 
voting. We removed calls for people to engage in voter intimidation 
that used militarized language or suggested that the goal is to 
intimidate, exert control, or display power over election officials or 
voters. In addition, we blocked new political and issue ads during the 
final week of the campaign, as well as all political and issue ads 
after the polls closed on election night.
    We also instituted a variety of measures to help in the days and 
weeks after voting ended:

   We used the Voting Information Center to prepare people for 
        the possibility that it could take a while to get official 
        results. This information helped people understand that there 
        was nothing illegitimate about not having a result on election 
        night.

   We partnered with Reuters and the National Election Pool to 
        provide reliable information about election results. We 
        displayed this in the Voting Information Center, and we 
        notified people proactively as results became available. We 
        added labels to any post by a candidate or campaign trying to 
        declare victory before the results were in, stating that 
        official results were not yet in and directing people to the 
        official results.

   We attached informational labels to content that sought to 
        delegitimize the outcome of the election or discuss the 
        legitimacy of voting methods, for example, by claiming that 
        lawful methods of voting lead to fraud. This label provided 
        basic reliable information about the integrity of the election 
        and voting methods.

   We enforced our violence and harm policies more broadly by 
        expanding our definition of high-risk targets to include 
        election officials in order to help prevent any attempts to 
        pressure or harm them, especially while they were fulfilling 
        their critical obligations to oversee the vote counting.

   We strengthened our enforcement against militias, conspiracy 
        networks, and other groups that could have been used to 
        organize violence or civil unrest in the period after the 
        election. We removed thousands of these groups from our 
        platform.

    Since 2016, we've built an advanced system combining people and 
technology to review the billions of pieces of content that are posted 
to our platform every day. State-of-the-art AI systems flag content 
that may violate our policies, users report content to us they believe 
is questionable, and our own teams review content. We've also been 
building a parallel viral content review system to flag posts that may 
be going viral--no matter what type of content it is--as an additional 
safety net. This helps us catch content that our traditional systems 
may not pick up. We used this tool throughout this election, and in 
countries around the world, to detect and review Facebook and Instagram 
posts that were likely to go viral and take action if that content 
violated our policies.
    While the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt our content review 
workforce, we are seeing some enforcement metrics return to pre-
pandemic levels. Our proactive detection rates for violating content 
are up from Q2 across most policies, due to improvements in AI and 
expanding our detection technologies to more languages. Even with a 
reduced review capacity, we still prioritize the most sensitive content 
for people to review. We recently published our Community Standards 
Enforcement Report for the third quarter of 2020, available at https://
transparency.facebook.com/community-standards-enforcement.
    We also coordinated with state attorneys general and other federal, 
state, and local law enforcement officials responsible for election 
protection. If they identified potential voter interference, we 
investigated and took action where warranted. These efforts were part 
of our ongoing coordination with law enforcement and election 
authorities at all levels to protect the integrity of elections.

    Question 22. In your written testimony, you detail a number of 
steps Facebook is taking to ensure the 2020 General Election was not 
marred by misinformation or false claims. Additionally, according to a 
report in the Wall Street Journal, Facebook planned for possible unrest 
in the United States during and after the election. Part of this 
planning, according to the report, includes readying ``tools designed 
for. . .`at-risk' countries.''
    Please further detail what ``tools'' Facebook prepared to deploy 
during the election, including those described in your written 
testimony.
    Did Facebook deploy any of the above tools during the 2020 General 
Election? If so, please describe the tools used and the circumstances 
in which they were used.
    Please describe circumstances in the election that would have 
required the use of the tools you have detailed.
    Answer. Please see the response to your Question 21. We also 
developed temporary measures to address the challenge of uncertainty in 
the period after Election Day.
                                 ______
                                 
      Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Mike Lee to 
                            Mark Zuckerberg
    Question 1. Mr. Zuckerberg, during the hearing I asked each of the 
witnesses to provide me with one example of a high-profile person or 
entity from a liberal ideology that your company has censored and what 
particular action you took. In response, you told me that, ``I can get 
you a list.'' Could you please provide the list?
    Answer. As a general matter, when we identify or learn of content 
that violates our policies, we remove that content regardless of who 
posted it. The political affiliation of the user generating the content 
has no bearing on that content assessment. Rather, decisions about 
whether to remove content are based on our Community Standards, which 
direct all reviewers when making decisions. We seek to write actionable 
policies that clearly distinguish between violating and non-violating 
content, and we seek to make the review process for reviewers as 
objective as possible.
    In terms of moderation decisions, we have removed content posted by 
individuals and entities across the political spectrum. For example, we 
have taken down ads submitted on behalf of the Biden campaign and the 
Democratic National Committee, and organizations like the SEIU. We also 
have taken down ads submitted on behalf of the Trump campaign and the 
Republican National Committee, and organizations like the America First 
Action PAC.

    Question 2. Mr. Zuckerberg, after Twitter made the decision to 
start fact-checking President Trump's tweets, you noted your 
disagreement with the policy stating on May 28, 2020: ``I don't think 
that Facebook or Internet platforms in general should be arbiters of 
truth. Political speech is one of the most sensitive parts in a 
democracy, and people should be able to see what politicians say . . . 
In terms of political speech, again, I think you want to give broad 
deference to the political process and political speech.''\1\ I agree 
with this statement. But on September 3, 2020, you announced new 
policies fighting ``misinformation.'' How is blocking what you deem 
``misinformation'' consistent with your prior stance of wanting to give 
``broad deference'' to the political process and political speech?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Zuckerberg, Mark. 2020, May 28. Interview with Andrew Ross 
Sorkin, CNBC's ``Squawk Box,'' comments at 0:37. https://www.cnbc.com/
2020/05/28/zuckerberg-facebook-twitter-should-not-fact-check-political-
speech.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Answer. Freedom of expression is a founding principle for Facebook. 
Giving people a voice to express themselves has been at the heart of 
everything we do. We think people should be able to see for themselves 
what politicians are saying. We don't believe that it's an appropriate 
role for us to referee political debates and prevent a politician's 
speech from reaching its audience and being subject to public debate 
and scrutiny. That's why direct speech from politicians is generally 
not eligible for our third-party fact-checking program.
    Our commitment to free speech, however, does not mean that 
politicians can say whatever they want on Facebook. They can't spread 
misinformation about where, when, or how to vote, for example, or 
incite violence. And when a politician shares previously debunked 
content, including links, videos, and photos, we demote that content, 
display related information from fact-checkers, and reject its 
inclusion in advertisements. When it comes to ads, while we won't 
remove politicians' ads based solely on the outcome of a fact-check, we 
still require them to follow our Advertising Policies.
    On September 3, 2020, we announced additional steps to help secure 
the integrity of the U.S. elections by encouraging voting, connecting 
people to reliable information, and reducing the risks of post-election 
confusion. We did not change our policies regarding fact-checking 
direct speech from politicians as part of that announcement. For more 
information, please visit https://about.fb.com/news/2020/09/additional-
steps-to-protect-the-us-elections/.

    Question 3. Mr. Zuckerberg, last month Facebook tagged a Michigan 
ad that criticized Joe Biden and Senator Gary Peters as ``missing 
context.'' \2\ The next day the ad was shut down entirely.\3\ Facebook 
relied on a supposed ``fact-check'' from PolitiFact, which said that 
the ad makes ``predictions we can't fact-check.'' \4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ American Principles Project (@approject). 2020, Sept. 15. 
``Facebook just censored our PAC's $4 million ad campaign in Michigan . 
. .'' [Tweet]. https://twitter.com/approject/status/1305901992108318721
    \3\ Schilling, Terry (@schilling1776). 2020, Sept. 16. ``We 
received final word from @PolitiFact today that the @approject ads 
appeal has been rejected. Here's why . . .'' [Tweet]. https://
twitter.com/Schilling1776/status/1306302305508249603
    \4\ PolitiFact. 2020, Sept. 15. Ad watch: Conservative PAC claims 
Gary Peters would `destroy girls' sports'. https://www.politifact.com/
article/2020/sep/15/ad-watch-peters-supports-ending-discrimination-bas/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    a. Don't political ads by their very nature lack context?
    Answer. We do not allow advertisers to run ads that contain content 
that has been debunked by third-party fact-checkers, including content 
rated False, Partly False, Altered, or Missing Context. Third-party 
fact-checkers can review and rate public Facebook and Instagram posts, 
including ads, articles, photos, videos, and text-only posts. While 
Facebook is responsible for setting rating guidelines, the fact-
checkers independently review and rate content. Missing Context is an 
available rating option for fact-checkers for content that may mislead 
without additional information or context. For example, this rating may 
be used for: clips from authentic video or audio or cropping of 
authentic photos that lack the full context from the original content, 
but that have not otherwise been edited or manipulated; media edited to 
omit or reorder the words someone said that changes, but that does not 
reverse the meaning of the statement; hyperbole or exaggeration that is 
technically false but based on a real event or statement; content that 
presents a conclusion not supported by the underlying facts; claims 
stated as fact that are plausible but unproven; and more. For more 
information, please visit https://www.facebook.com/business/help/
341102040382165?id=673052479947730.

    b. Vice President Biden has run ads that say Donald Trump will 
defund Social Security,\5\ a statement PolitiFact rated ``Mostly 
False.'' \6\ Joe Biden has also run ads saying President Trump is 
``attack[ing] democracy itself'' \7\ and that the GOP are doing 
``everything they can to invalidate the election.'' \8\ It's my 
understanding that Facebook took no action against these ads. Can you 
explain this? Do you think these statements ``lack context''?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \5\ Joe Biden, Biden Victory Fund. 2020, Aug. 27-28. Donald Trump 
said that if he's re-elected, he'll defund Social Security--we can't 
let that happen . . . [Facebook Ad]. https://www.face
book.com/ads/library/?id=309439267043399
    \6\ PolitiFact. 2020, Aug. 12. Did Trump say he will terminate 
Social Security if re-elected? https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/
2020/aug/12/social-security-works/did-trump-say-he-will-terminate-
social-security-if/
    \7\ Joe Biden, Biden for President. 2020, Oct. 23-27. Donald Trump 
has repeatedly attacked democracy and those who fight for it . . . 
[Facebook Ad]. See in text and in video at 0:37. https://
www.facebook.com/ads/library/?id=767615284086821
    \8\ Joe Biden, Biden Victory Fund. 2020, Oct. 26-27. In the first 
debate, Donald Trump cast doubt on the validity . . . [Facebook Ad]. 
https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?id=11106684
66017273
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    Answer. As discussed in the response to your Question 2, direct 
speech from politicians, including advertisements, is generally not 
eligible for our third-party fact-checking program.

    Question 4. Mr. Zuckerberg, on October 14, Facebook spokesperson 
Andy Stone announced on Twitter that Facebook would be ``reducing its 
distribution'' \9\ of the NY Post article regarding Hunter Biden and 
Ukraine. He later noted that this was Facebook's ``standard process.'' 
\10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \9\ Stone, Andy (@andymstone). 2020, Oct. 14. While I will 
intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear . . . 
[Tweet]. https://twitter.com/andymstone/status/131639590247
9872000
    \10\ Stone, Andy (@andymstone). 2020 Oct. 14. This is part of our 
standard process as we laid out here . . . [Tweet] https://twitter.com/
andymstone/status/1316425399384059904
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    c. Does Facebook ``reduce distribution'' of every news article 
before your fact checker reviews it? If not, why in this case did you 
``reduce distribution'' of the NY Post article?
    d. What particular metrics do you use to ``reduce distribution'' of 
articles or publications prior to conducting a fact-check? And are 
these metrics publicly available?
    Answer. In 2019, we announced that if we identify signals that a 
piece of content is false, we will temporarily reduce its distribution 
in order to allow sufficient time for our independent, third-party 
fact-checkers to review and determine whether to apply a rating. Quick 
action is critical in keeping a false claim from going viral, and so we 
take this step to provide an extra level of protection against 
potential misinformation. These temporary demotions expire after seven 
days if the content has not been rated by an independent fact-checker.
    For the past several months, the U.S. intelligence community has 
urged voters, companies, and the Federal government to remain vigilant 
in the face of the threat of foreign influence operations seeking to 
undermine our democracy and the integrity of our electoral process. For 
example, the Director of National Intelligence, the Head of the FBI, 
and the bipartisan leaders of the Senate Select Committee on 
Intelligence reminded Americans about the threat posed by foreign 
influence operations emanating from Russia and Iran. Along with their 
public warnings, and as part of the ongoing cooperation that tech 
companies established with government partners following the 2016 
election, the FBI also privately warned tech companies to be on high 
alert for the potential of hack-and-leak operations carried out by 
foreign actors in the weeks leading up to November 3rd. We took these 
risks seriously.
    Regarding the October 14 New York Post story, given the concerns 
raised by the FBI and others, we took steps consistent with our 
policies to slow the spread of suspicious content and provide fact-
checkers the opportunity to assess it. However, at no point did we take 
any action to block or remove the content from the platform. People 
could--and did--read and share the Post's reporting while we had this 
temporary demotion in place. Consistent with our policy, after seven 
days, we lifted the temporary demotion on this content because it was 
not rated false by an independent fact-checker.

    Question 5. Mr. Zuckerberg, you've noted that Facebook is a 
``platform for all ideas.'' In response to Twitter's decision in 2017 
to block Sen. Blackburn's ad for the ad's pro-life language, your COO, 
Sheryl Sandberg, argued that Facebook would have let the ad run. She 
noted: ``When you cut off speech for one person, you cut off speech for 
all people.'' \11\ Does Facebook's censorship of the NY Post story 
equate to ``cutting off speech for all people''? And how is this 
consistent with your position that Facebook is a ``platform for all 
ideas''?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \11\ Sandberg, Sheryl. 2017, Oct. 17. Axios Exclusive Interview 
with Sheryl Sandberg, comments found at 7:31. https://www.axios.com/
exclusive-interview-with-facebooks-sheryl-sandberg-1513
306121-64e900b7-55da-4087-afee-92713cbbfa81.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Answer. As an initial matter, and as explained above, with respect 
to the New York Post story, we took steps consistent with our policies 
to slow the spread of suspicious content and provide fact-checkers the 
opportunity to assess it. At no point did we take any action to block 
or remove the content from the platform. People could--and did--read 
and share the Post's reporting while we had this temporary demotion in 
place. Consistent with our policy, after seven days, we lifted the 
temporary demotion on this content because it was not rated false by an 
independent fact-checker.
    Facebook is a platform for ideas across the political and 
ideological spectrum, but people also tell us they don't want to see 
misinformation. That's why we work to reduce the spread of viral 
misinformation on our platform by working with independent, third-party 
fact-checkers.

    Question 6. In 2017, the FCC passed the Restoring Internet Freedom 
Order, which reversed the FCC's net neutrality order. Facebook, Google, 
and Twitter each opposed that decision calling for a ``free and open 
internet.'' Let me be clear. I still support the FCC's decision to not 
regulate the Internet as a public utility under Title II. But Mr. 
Zuckerberg, I found your comments particularly interesting. In 2017, 
you noted: ``Net neutrality is the idea that the Internet should be 
free and open for everyone. If a service provider can block you from 
seeing certain content or can make you pay extra for it, that hurts all 
of us and we should have rules against it . . . If we want everyone in 
the world to have access to all the opportunities that come with the 
internet, we need to keep the Internet free and open.'' \12\ Again, I 
find the idea that we would regulate the Internet as a public utility 
to be bad policy, but you indicated that service providers that ``can 
block you from seeing certain content'' denigrate a free and open 
internet. By that logic, would you say that Facebook is now not 
contributing to a free and open Internet due to the blocking of certain 
viewpoints?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \12\ Zuckerberg, Mark. 2017, July 12. Today people across the U.S. 
are rallying together to save net neutrality . . . [Facebook Post]. 
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103878724831141
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Answer. Freedom of expression is one of our core values, and we 
believe that the Facebook community is richer and stronger when a broad 
range of viewpoints is represented. We are committed to encouraging 
dialogue and the free flow of ideas by designing our products to give 
people a voice. We also know that people will not come to Facebook to 
share and connect with one another if they do not feel that the 
platform is a safe and respectful environment. In that vein, we have 
Community Standards that are public and that outline what is and is not 
allowed on Facebook. Suppressing content on the basis of political 
viewpoint or preventing people from seeing what matters most to them is 
directly contrary to Facebook's mission and our business objectives.
    We base our policies on principles of voice, safety, dignity, 
authenticity, and privacy. Our policy development is informed by input 
from our community and from experts and organizations outside Facebook 
so we can better understand different perspectives on safety and 
expression, as well as the impact of our policies on different 
communities globally. Based on this feedback, as well as changes in 
social norms and language, our standards evolve over time.
    Decisions about whether to remove content are based on whether the 
content violates our Community Standards. Discussing controversial 
topics or espousing a debated point of view is not at odds with our 
Community Standards. In fact, we believe that such discussion is 
important in helping bridge division and promote greater understanding.

    Question 7. Congress is in the midst of a debate over future 
reforms to Section 230. This is an important discussion that Congress 
should have.
    a. In making decisions to moderate third-party content on your 
platform, do you rely solely on Section 230? In other words, could you 
still moderate third-party content without the protections of Section 
230?
b. If the provisions of Section 230 were repealed or severely limited, 
        how would your content moderation practices shift?
    Answer. Broadly speaking, Section 230 does two things. First, it 
encourages free expression. Without Section 230, platforms could 
potentially be held liable for everything people say. Platforms would 
likely moderate more content to avoid legal risk and would be less 
likely to invest in technologies that enable people to express 
themselves in new ways. Second, it allows platforms to moderate 
content. Without Section 230, platforms could face liability for doing 
even basic moderation, such as removing hate speech and harassment that 
impact the safety and security of their communities. Repealing Section 
230 entirely would likely substantially increase many companies' costs 
associated with legal challenges and content moderation.

    Question 8. How many content posts or videos are generated by 
third-party users per day on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube?
    c. How many decisions on average per day does your platform take to 
moderate content? Are you able to provide data on your takedown numbers 
over the last year?
    d. Do you ever make mistakes in a moderation decision? If so, how 
do you become aware of these mistakes and what actions do you take to 
correct them?
    e. What remedies or appeal process do you provide to your users to 
appeal an action taken against them? On average, how long does the 
adjudication take until a final action is taken? How quickly do you 
provide a response to moderation decision appeals from your customers?
    f. Can you provide approximate numbers, by month or week, for the 
times you tookdown, blocked, or tagged material from November 2019 to 
November 2020?
    Answer. Billions of pieces of content are posted to our platform 
every day. Content reviewers take action on content that is flagged 
after it is assessed against our Community Standards. Our Community 
Standards are global, and all reviewers use the same guidelines when 
assessing content. We seek to write actionable policies that clearly 
distinguish between violating and non-violating content, and we seek to 
make the assessment process for reviewers as objective as possible.
    We recognize that our policies are only as good as the strength and 
accuracy of our enforcement--and our enforcement is not perfect. We 
make mistakes because our processes involve both people and machines, 
and neither are infallible. We are always working to improve. One way 
in particular that we become aware of mistakes is through user 
feedback, such as when users appeal our content moderation decisions.
    Every week, we audit a sample of reviewer decisions for accuracy 
and consistency. We also audit our auditors. When a reviewer makes 
mistakes or misapplies our policies, we follow up with appropriate 
training and review the mistakes with our Community Operations team to 
prevent similar mistakes in the future.
    With respect to our appeals process, we generally provide our users 
with the option to disagree with our decision when we have removed 
their content for violating our policies or when they have reported 
content and we have decided it does not violate our policies. In some 
cases, we then re-review our decisions on those individual pieces of 
content.
    In order to request re-review of a content decision we made, users 
are often given the option to ``Request Review'' or to provide feedback 
by stating they ``Disagree with Decision.'' We try to make the 
opportunity to request this review or give this feedback clear, either 
via a notification or interstitial, but we are always working to 
improve.
    Transparency in our appeals process is important, so we now include 
in our Community Standards Enforcement Report how much content people 
appealed and how much content was restored upon appeal. Gathering and 
publishing those statistics keeps us accountable to the broader 
community and enables us to continue improving our content moderation. 
For more information, see https://transparency.face
book.com/community-standards-enforcement.
    Our Community Standards Enforcement Report also shares metrics on 
how Facebook is performing in preventing and removing content that 
violates our Community Standards. The report specifies how much content 
we took action on during the specified period, as well as how much of 
it we found before users reported it to us.

    Question 9. The first major case to decide the application of 
Section 230 was Zeran v. AOL.\13\ In Zeran, Judge Wilkinson recognized 
the challenges of conferring ``distributor liability'' to a website 
because of the sheer number of postings. That was 1997. If we imposed a 
form of ``distributor liability'' on your platforms that would likely 
mean that your platform would be liable for content if you acquired 
knowledge of the content. I think there is an argument to be made that 
you ``acquire knowledge'' when a user ``flags'' a post, video, or other 
form of content.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \13\ Kenneth M. Zeran v. America Online, Inc. 129 F. 3d 327 (4th 
Cir. 1997)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    g. How many ``user-generated'' flags do your companies receive 
daily?
    h. Do users ever flag posts solely because they disagree with the 
content?
    i. If you were liable for content that was ``flagged'' by a user, 
how would that affect content moderation on your platform?
    Answer. Facebook encourages users to report content to us that 
violates our Community Standards, including if it contains or relates 
to nudity, violence, harassment, terrorism, or suicide or self-injury. 
Facebook's Community Operations team receives millions of reports each 
week, and they work hard to review those reports and take action when 
content violates our policies. User reports are an important signal, 
and we rely on our community to help identify content that violates our 
policies. However, not every piece of reported content is determined to 
violate our policies upon review. In some cases, users may report posts 
because they disagree with the content or based on other objections 
that do not constitute violations of our Community Standards. In such 
cases, we give users control over what they see and who they interact 
with by enabling them to block, unfriend, or unfollow the other user.
    Facebook publishes a quarterly Community Standards Enforcement 
Report to track our progress; for more information regarding Facebook's 
content moderation efforts, please visit https://
transparency.facebook.com/community-standards-enforcement.
    Broadly speaking, Section 230 does two things. First, it encourages 
free expression. Without Section 230, platforms could potentially be 
held liable for everything people say. Platforms would likely moderate 
more content to avoid legal risk and would be less likely to invest in 
technologies that enable people to express themselves in new ways. 
Second, it allows platforms to moderate content. Without Section 230, 
platforms could face liability for doing even basic moderation, such as 
removing hate speech and harassment that impact the safety and security 
of their communities.

    Question 10. Section 230 is often used as a legal tool to have 
lawsuits dismissed in a pre-trial motion.
    j. How often is your company sued under a theory that you should be 
responsible for the content posted by a user of your platform? How 
often do you use Section 230 as a defense in these lawsuits? And 
roughly how often are those lawsuits thrown out?
    Answer. We do not have a precise number reflecting how often we're 
sued under different legal theories, but defending lawsuits related to 
users' content on our platform requires a substantial amount of 
resources, including litigation costs and employee time, both in the 
U.S. and elsewhere.
    We may invoke Section 230 in our defense against such suits when a 
claim seeks to treat Facebook as the publisher or speaker of 
information provided by a user or other entity.

    k. If Section 230 was eliminated and a case seeking to make your 
platform liable for content posted by a third party went to the 
discovery phase, roughly how much more expensive would that case be as 
opposed to its dismissal pre-discovery?
    Answer. Broadly speaking, Section 230 does two things. First, it 
encourages free expression. Without Section 230, platforms could 
potentially be held liable for everything people say. Platforms would 
likely moderate more content to avoid legal risk and would be less 
likely to invest in technologies that enable people to express 
themselves in new ways. Second, it allows platforms to moderate 
content. Without Section 230, platforms could face liability for doing 
even basic moderation, such as removing hate speech and harassment that 
impact the safety and security of their communities. Repealing Section 
230 entirely would likely substantially increase many companies' costs 
associated with legal challenges and content moderation.

    Question 11. Section 230s Good Samaritan provision contains the 
term ``otherwise objectionable.''
    l. How do you define ``otherwise objectionable''?
    m. Is ``otherwise objectionable'' defined in your terms of service? 
If so, has its definition ever changed? And if so, can you provide the 
dates of such changes and the text of each definition?
    n. In most litigation, a defendant relies on Section 230(c)(1) for 
editorial decisions. If a company could only rely on 230(c)(2) for a 
moderation decision (as has been discussed in Congress), how would that 
affect your moderation practices? And how would striking ``otherwise 
objectionable'' from 230(c)(2) further affect your moderation 
practices?
    Answer. As we understand it, ``otherwise objectionable,'' as the 
term is used in Section 230, is a standard that courts have interpreted 
for many years. At Facebook, our Community Standards--which are 
public--include restrictions around content that is harmful to members 
of our community, including bullying, harassment, hate speech, and 
incitement to violence.
    At Facebook, we are a platform for ideas across the political and 
ideological spectrum, and we moderate content according to our 
published Community Standards in order to keep users on the platform 
safe, reduce objectionable content, and ensure users participate on the 
1platform responsibly. We are clear and transparent about what our 
standards are, and we seek to apply them to all of our users 
consistently. The political affiliation of the user generating the 
content has no bearing on content removal assessments.
    Facebook's Community Standards prohibit coordinating harm and 
criminal activity, including posting content that sexually exploits or 
endangers children. When we become aware of apparent child 
exploitation, we report it to the National Center for Missing and 
Exploited Children (NCMEC), in compliance with applicable law. We work 
hard to identify and remove such content; over the past three years, 
we've found over 99 percent of the violating content we actioned before 
users reported it to us. And we certainly think it is important to make 
sure that platforms are serious about the illegal activity on their 
platforms.
    For example, Facebook supported SESTA/FOSTA, and we were very 
pleased to be able to work successfully with a bipartisan group of 
Senators on a bill that protects women and children from the harms of 
sex trafficking. We would welcome the opportunity to work with the 
Committee on proposals to modify Section 230 in ways that focus on bad 
actors who intentionally facilitate wrongdoing, while being mindful not 
to disincentivize platforms from trying to find the illegal activity in 
the first place.

    Question 12. Are your terms of service a legally binding contract 
with your users? How many times have you changed your terms of service 
in the past five years? What recourse do users of your platform have 
when you allege that they have violated your terms of service?
    Answer. We believe that people should have clear, simple 
explanations of how online services work and use personal information. 
In June 2019, we updated our Terms of Service to clarify how Facebook 
makes money and better explain the rights people have when using our 
services. The updates did not change any of our commitments or 
policies--they solely explained things more clearly. These updates are 
part of our ongoing commitment to give people more transparency and 
control over their information. June 2019 is the last time we updated 
our Terms.
                                 ______
                                 
    Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Ron Johnson to 
                            Mark Zuckerberg
    Question 1. During the hearing, in response to both Senator Cruz's 
line of questioning and mine, Mr. Dorsey claimed that Twitter does not 
have the ability to influence nor interfere in the election.
    a. Do you believe Facebook has the ability to influence and/or 
interfere in the election? To reiterate, I am not asking if you have 
the intent or have actively taken steps to influence/interfere, but 
rather if Facebook has the ability?
    Answer. It is the more than 160 million Americans who voted in this 
election that decided the election's outcome. We are proud that 
Facebook is one of the places that individuals could go to learn about 
candidates and issues, and about the electoral process more generally, 
and we take extremely seriously the responsibility that comes with 
these uses of our product.
    We took a number of steps to help protect the integrity of the 
democratic process, including combating foreign interference, bringing 
transparency to political ads, limiting the spread of misinformation, 
and--against the backdrop of a global pandemic--providing citizens 
access to reliable information about voting.
    We are confident in the actions that we took to protect the safety 
and security of this election. But it's also important for independent 
voices to weigh in. That's why we launched a new independent research 
initiative with more than a dozen academics to look specifically at the 
role Facebook and Instagram played in the election. The results--
whatever they may be--will be published next year, unrestricted by 
Facebook and broadly available. This research won't settle every debate 
about social media and democracy, but we hope that it will shed more 
light on the relationship between technology and our elections.

    b. If you claim that you do not have the ability to influence or 
interfere in the election, can you explain Facebook's rational for 
suppressing content that Facebook deems to be Russian misinformation on 
the basis that it influences the election?
    Answer. Inauthentic behavior, including foreign influence 
campaigns, has no place on Facebook. If we find instances of 
coordinated inauthentic behavior conducted on behalf of a foreign 
actor, regardless of whether or not such behavior targets a candidate 
or political party, we apply the broadest enforcement measures, 
including the removal of every on-platform property connected to the 
operation itself and the people and organizations behind it. We also 
report publicly about such takedowns in a monthly report, available at 
https://about.fb.com/news/tag/coordinated-inauthentic-behavior/.

    Question 2. In Senator Rosen's testimony, you stated that Congress 
could hold Facebook accountable by monitoring the percentage of users 
that see harmful content before Facebook acts to take it down. While 
this is important, it does not address the problem of Facebook biasedly 
and inconsistently enforcing content moderation policies of political 
speech.
    c. In regards to this issue, what role do you think Congress should 
have in holding Facebook accountable?
    d. Do you have an example of a mechanism by which Congress can 
currently hold Facebook accountable on this issue? If there are none, 
can you please at a minimum acknowledge that there are none?
    Answer. Facebook is a platform for ideas across the political and 
ideological spectrum. Suppressing content on the basis of political 
viewpoint directly contradicts Facebook's mission and our business 
objectives.
    We are committed to free expression and err on the side of allowing 
content. When we make a mistake, we work to make it right. And we are 
committed to constantly improving our efforts so we make as few 
mistakes as possible. Decisions about whether to remove content are 
based on whether the content violates our Community Standards, not 
political affiliation or viewpoint. Discussing controversial topics or 
espousing a debated point of view is not at odds with our Community 
Standards. We believe that such discussion is important in helping 
bridge division and promote greater understanding.
    We don't always get it right, but we try to be consistent. The 
reality is that people have very different ideas and views about where 
the line should be. Democrats often say that we don't remove enough 
content, and Republicans often say we remove too much. Indeed, people 
can reasonably disagree about where to draw the lines. We need a more 
accountable process that people feel is legitimate and that gives 
platforms certainty.

    Question 3. During a Senate Commerce Committee hearing in the 
Summer of 2019, I asked your company's representative about how the 
``suggestions for you'' feature decides which accounts should be 
prompted after a user follows a new account. My staff found at the time 
that, no matter which user was requesting to follow the Politico 
account, they were all prompted the same liberal suggestions such as 
Senator Sanders, Senator Warren, and MSNBC. The user had to scroll 
through dozens of suggested accounts before finding any semblance of a 
non-liberal publication, the Wall Street Journal.
    Following the hearing, I sent your company a letter asking why 
these suggestions were made based on your stated data policy which says 
the suggestions are based off of accounts that the user follows and 
likes. In your company's response it said, ``These suggestions are 
generated by Instagram automatically, using machine learning systems 
that consider a variety of signals, such as the accounts you follow and 
your likes. Our employees don't determine the ranking of any specific 
piece of content. . .''
    We later met in person to discuss this matter, and you changed your 
tune by saying that these suggestions are based on who follows and 
likes Politico's account, and not so much what the user likes and 
follows. You also made clear that POLITICO itself has nothing to do 
with which accounts are suggested when a user clicks to follow their 
account. It is Instagram that has control over that.
    e. Mr. Zuckerberg, you have claimed on multiple occasions that 
Facebook and Instagram are neutral platforms. However, more than a year 
later since the hearing in 2019, the suggested results for my staff 
continue to have the same liberal bias as they did then. Do you still 
contend that Facebook and Instagram are neutral platforms?
    Answer. Facebook is first and foremost a technology company. We do 
not create or edit the content that our users post on our platform. 
While we are a platform for ideas across the political and ideological 
spectrum, we do moderate content in good faith according to our 
published Community Standards in order to keep users on the platform 
safe, reduce objectionable content, and ensure users participate on the 
platform responsibly.
    Freedom of expression is one of our core values, and we believe 
that the Facebook community is richer and stronger when a broad range 
of viewpoints is represented. We are committed to encouraging dialogue 
and the free flow of ideas by designing our products to give people a 
voice. We also know that people will not come to Facebook to share and 
connect with one another if they do not feel that the platform is a 
safe and respectful environment. In that vein, we have Community 
Standards that outline what is and is not allowed on Facebook.
    Recommendations for accounts that a user may want to follow or like 
are based on a variety of signals, including the accounts that the user 
already follows and likes, and the other users that follow and like 
those accounts. These suggestions are generated automatically using 
machine learning systems. Facebook employees do not determine the 
rankings or recommendations for any specific piece of content.

    f. Does a publication, like Politico for example, have the ability 
to pay Facebook to be included more frequently in the ``suggestions for 
you'' feature?
    Answer. Publishers cannot pay to appear in the ``Suggested for 
You'' feature.
    As discussed in the letter you reference, the purpose of the 
``Suggested for You'' feature is to help people find accounts that may 
interest them. These suggestions are generated by Facebook and 
Instagram automatically, using machine learning systems that consider a 
variety of signals, such as the accounts people follow and their likes. 
Our employees don't determine the ranking of any specific account in 
Suggested for You.

    Question 4. During Mr. Dorsey's testimony he said that Twitter 
should ``enable people to choose algorithms created by 3rd parties to 
rank and filter their own content,'' in reference to Dr. Stephen 
Wolfram's research.
    g. Which of the methods described in his research and testimony 
have you deployed on your platform?
    h. What other methods would you like to see put in place?
i. What is preventing you from implementing more methods such as these?
    Answer. An algorithm is a formula or set of steps for solving a 
particular problem. At Facebook, we use algorithms to offer customized 
user experiences and to help us achieve our mission of building a 
global and informed community. For example, we use algorithms to help 
generate and display search results (see https://about.fb.com/news/
2018/11/inside-feed-how-search-works/), to determine the order of posts 
that are displayed in each person's personalized News Feed (see https:/
/about.fb.com/news/2018/05/inside-feed-news-feed-ranking/), and to 
serve ads that may be relevant to them.
    On Facebook, people see posts from their friends, Pages they've 
chosen to follow, and Groups they've joined, among others, in their 
News Feed. On a given day, the number of eligible posts in a user's 
Feed inventory can number in the thousands, so we use an algorithm to 
personalize how this content is organized. The goal of the News Feed 
algorithm is to predict what pieces of content are most relevant to the 
individual user, and rank (i.e., order) those pieces of content 
accordingly every time a user opens Facebook, to try and bring those 
posts that are the most relevant to a person closer to the top of their 
News Feed. This ranking process has four main elements: the available 
inventory (all of the available content from the people, Pages, and 
Groups a person has chosen to connect with); the signals, or data 
points, that can inform ranking decisions (e.g., who posted a 
particular piece of content); the predictions we make, including how 
likely we think a person is to comment on a story, share with a friend, 
etc.; and a relevancy score for each story, which informs its position 
in News Feed.
    We frequently make changes to the algorithms that drive News Feed 
ranking in an effort to improve people's experience on Facebook. For 
example, in 2018, we responded to feedback from our community that 
public content--posts from businesses, brands, and media--was crowding 
out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other. 
As a result, we moved from focusing only on helping users find relevant 
content to helping them have more meaningful social interactions. This 
meant that users began seeing more content from their friends, family, 
and Groups. We also reduce the distribution of some problematic types 
of content, including content that users may find spammy or low-
quality, such as clickbait headlines, misinformation as confirmed by 
third-party fact-checkers, and links to low-quality webpages like ad 
farms.
    To help people on Facebook better understand what they see from 
friends, Pages, and Groups in News Feed, including how and why that 
content is ranked in particular ways, we publish a series of blog posts 
called News Feed FYI (see https://about.fb.com/news/category/news-feed-
fyi/), which highlight major updates to News Feed and explain the 
thinking behind them. Also, in 2019, we launched a feature called ``Why 
am I seeing this post?'' (see https://about.fb.com/news/2019/03/why-am-
i-seeing-this/). This feature directly responded to user feedback 
asking for more transparency around why certain content appears in News 
Feed and easier access to News Feed controls. Through their News Feed 
Preferences, users can choose to see posts from certain friends and 
Pages higher up in their News Feed. Controls also include Snooze, which 
keeps the content from a selected person, Page, or Group out of a 
user's News Feed for a limited time.
    Users who do not wish to consume ranked News Feed also have access 
to a control to view content purely chronologically from those they 
follow in the `Most Recent' Feed view (see https://www.facebook.com/
help/218728138156311). Additionally, we promoted a series of 
educational initiatives and campaigns to help people learn about the 
technology that underlies our various products and features, which 
includes AI and machine learning, through our series called ``Inside 
Feed'' (see https://about.fb.com/news/category/inside-feed/).

    Question 5. Do you agree that Facebook competes with local 
newspapers and broadcasters for local advertising dollars?
    Answer. The advertising sector is incredibly dynamic, and 
competition for advertising spend is increasingly fierce. Companies 
have more options than ever when deciding where to advertise. Unlike a 
few decades ago, when companies had more limited options, today there 
are more choices, different channels and platforms, and hundreds of 
companies offering them.
    Facebook competes for advertisers' budgets with online and offline 
advertisers and with a broad variety of advertising players. This 
includes the intense competitive pressure that Facebook faces for 
advertising budgets from offline channels (such as print, radio, and 
broadcast), established digital platforms (such as Google, Amazon, 
Twitter, and Pinterest), and newer entrants that have attracted a large 
user base from scratch (such as Snap and TikTok). The landscape is also 
highly dynamic, with offline advertising channels (such as television 
and radio) benefiting from industry-wide digitalization and new 
technologies to offer their own ad targeting and measurement products.
    Advertisers can and do shift spend in real time across ad platforms 
to maximize their return on investment. As a result of this competition 
and choice, advertisers spread their budgets across multiple outlets 
and channels, including Facebook.
    Facebook is able to provide nearly all of its consumer services 
free of charge because it is funded by advertising that is relevant and 
useful. Millions of Americans use Facebook to connect with the people, 
organizations, and businesses they care about. Research has shown that 
though Facebook offers these services at no cost, they offer 
significant value--a huge consumer surplus.

    j. Should Congress allow local news affiliates, such as local 
newspapers and local broadcast stations, to jointly negotiate with 
Facebook for fair market compensation for the content they create when 
it is distributed over your platform?
    Answer. The antitrust laws promote competition and innovation, and 
they have stood the test of time. The laws are flexible, and they can 
meet the challenges of today.
    Mobile technology has fundamentally changed the way people discover 
and consume news, and this has resulted in real challenges for 
publishers. We understand these challenges and have worked with 
publishers to adapt to digital transformation. But how news is 
distributed on Facebook warrants further discussion. News organizations 
voluntarily post their content on Facebook because it helps them reach 
new and larger audiences, and ultimately those audiences drive 
additional revenue for them.
    To date, we have built tools to help publishers increase their 
subscribers by driving people from Facebook links to publisher 
websites. Among other benefits, Facebook provides publishers with free, 
organic distribution of news (and other content), which grows the 
audience and revenue for news publishers; customized tools and products 
to help news publishers monetize their content; and initiatives to 
assist publishers to innovate with online news content, along with 
bringing indirect value to publishers such as brand awareness and 
community-building.
    Publishers are also able to decide when a reader sees a paywall on 
content they've found via Facebook. Publishers control the relationship 
with their readers with subscription payments taking place directly on 
their owned and operated websites. We do not take any cut of the 
subscription revenue because we want that money to go toward funding 
quality journalism. Helping publishers reach new audiences has been one 
of our most important goals.
    Beyond distribution and revenue tools already mentioned, we've 
focused on meaningful collaboration with publishers. In 2017, we 
launched the Facebook Journalism Project (see https://www.facebook.com/
journalismproject), an initiative focused on building innovative and 
sustainable solutions to support journalism. In 2019, we announced a 
$300 million commitment (see https://www.facebook.com/journalism
project/facebook-supports-local-news) to news programs, partnerships, 
and content--with a specific focus on local news. And later that year 
we launched Facebook News (see https://www.facebook.com/news), a 
section of Facebook dedicated solely to reliable and informative news 
content.
    During the COVID-19 pandemic, we announced a $100 million 
investment (see https://www.facebook.com/journalismproject/coronavirus-
update-news-industry-support) to support the news industry--$25 million 
in emergency grant funding for local news through the Facebook 
Journalism Project, and $75 million in additional marketing spend to 
move money over to news organizations around the world.
    We've also focused on supporting the global fact-checking 
community's work--we partnered with the Independent Fact-Checking 
Network to launch a $1 million grant program (see https://
www.facebook.com/journalismproject/coronavirus-grants-fact-checking) to 
increase their capacity during this time.
                                 ______
                                 
   Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Maria Cantwell to 
                            Mark Zuckerberg
    Foreign Disinformation. Facebook/Instagram, Twitter, and Google/
YouTube have each taken concrete steps to improve defensive measures 
through automated detection and removal of fake accounts at creation; 
increased internal auditing and detection efforts; and established or 
enhanced security and integrity teams who can identify leads and 
analyze potential networks engaging in coordinated inauthentic 
behavior.
    Social media companies have hired a lot of staff and assembled 
large teams to do this important work and coordinate with the FBI led 
Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF).
    Small companies in the tech sector do not have the same level or 
expertise or resources, but they face some of the same and growing 
threats.
    Likewise, public awareness and understanding of the threats foreign 
actors like Russia pose is key to helping fight back against them.

    Question 1. What specific steps are you taking to share threat 
information with smaller social media companies that do not have the 
same level of resources to detect and stop those threats?
    Answer. We work with others in the industry to limit the spread of 
violent extremist content on the Internet. For example, in 2017, we 
established the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) with 
others in the industry with the objective of disrupting terrorist abuse 
on digital platforms. Since then, the consortium has grown and 
collaborates closely on critical initiatives focused on tech 
innovation, knowledge-sharing, and research.

    Question 2. Intel Chairman Schiff has highlighted the need for 
social media companies to increase transparency about how social media 
companies have stopped foreign actors disinformation and influence 
operations. Where are the gaps in public disclosures of this 
information and what specific actions are you taking to increase 
transparency about malign foreign threats you have throttled?
    Answer. When we find instances of coordinated inauthentic behavior 
conducted on behalf of a government entity or by a foreign actor, in 
which the use of fake accounts is central to the operation, we apply 
the broadest enforcement measures, including the removal of every on 
platform property connected to the operation itself and the people and 
organizations behind it. We regularly share our findings about the 
networks we find and remove for coordinated inauthentic behavior.
    Our teams continue to focus on finding and removing deceptive 
campaigns around the world--whether they are foreign or domestic. We 
have shared information about our findings with law enforcement, 
policymakers, and industry partners. And we publish regular reports on 
the coordinated inauthentic behavior we detect and remove from our 
platforms. Our October 2020 report can be found at https://
about.fb.com/news/2020/11/october-2020-cib-report/.

    Addressing Stop Hate for Profit Recommendations. The Stop Hate for 
Profit, Change the Terms, and Free Press coalition--all committed to 
combating racism, violence, and hate online--have called on social 
media platforms to adopt policies and take decisive actions against 
toxic and hateful activities.
    This includes finding and removing public and private groups 
focused on white supremacy, promoting violent conspiracies, or other 
hateful content; submitting to regular, third party, independent audits 
to share information about misinformation; changing corporate policies 
and elevating a civil rights to an executive level position.

    Question 3. Mr. Zuckerberg, you have taken some steps to address 
these recommendations from the organizations that have made it their 
mission to get Facebook to take a stronger role in stopping hate on 
your platform, which I appreciate. Will you commit to continuing to 
meet with the experts at these anti-hate organizations to learn how to 
more quickly detect, remove, and stop hateful speech?
    Answer. In developing and iterating on our policies, including our 
policy specific to hate speech, we consult with outside academics and 
experts from across the political spectrum and around the world and we 
look forward to doing so in the future.

    Kenosha Wisconsin Violence. On August 25th, a man from Illinois 
traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin armed with an assault rifle and fatally 
shot Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, and injured another person, 
who were protesting the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black resident, 
which left him paralyzed.
    In the wake of these tragic shootings, we learned that a para-
military group called the Kenosha Guard Militia, a group that organized 
on Facebook, called on followers to ``take up arms'' and ``defend'' the 
city against ``evil thugs''. This event post had been flagged 455 times 
by Facebook users, yet Facebook did not take down the group's page 
until after these lives were already lost.
    While the Illinois shooter may not have been a member of the 
Kenosha Guard Militia, this brings up a very important point--that hate 
spread on social media platforms can lead to real life violence.
    In May of this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook 
had completed internal research that said its internal algorithms 
``exploit the human brain's attraction to divisiveness'', which could 
allow Facebook to feed more divisive content to gain user attention and 
more time on the platform. In response, the Journal reported that you 
buried the research and did little to address it because it ran counter 
to other Facebook initiatives.
    Sowing divisions in this country and further polarizing public 
discourse is dangerous, and can have deadly consequences.

    Question 4. Mr. Zuckerberg, you admitted it was a mistake to not to 
remove the Kenosha Guard page and event that encouraged violence. But 
you knew at the time that your algorithms help fuel the flames of these 
para-military organizations by amplifying divisiveness. It should have 
been an easy decision to remove the content. What do you believe is 
Facebook's responsibility to stop amplification of divisive content? Do 
you have concerns that Facebook is helping to divide our country?
    Answer. Under our Violence and Incitement policy, we remove 
content, disable accounts, and work with law enforcement when we 
believe there is a genuine risk of physical harm or direct threats to 
public safety. We also try to consider the language and context in 
order to distinguish casual statements from content that constitutes a 
credible threat to public or personal safety.
    Over the last several years we've continued to update and refine 
our Violence and Incitement policy. The most recent update to the 
policy was made after the events in Kenosha in August. In this update, 
we developed a framework whereby we can identify certain locations that 
are more at risk for violence or intimidation by the threat of 
violence, the same as we identify schools, polling places, and houses 
of worship, and remove more implicit calls and statements to bring 
weapons to that location. This policy could have meant the Kenosha 
Guard Event Page violated our Violence and Incitement policy had it 
been live at the time, but either way, the Kenosha Guard Page and the 
Event Page it hosted violated our policy addressing Militarized Social 
Movements, and the militia group's main Page was removed on that basis.
    Indeed, earlier in August, we updated our policies to address 
militia organizations a week before the horrible events in Kenosha, and 
since then, we have identified over 600 groups that we consider 
militarized social movements and banned them from operating Pages, 
Groups, and Instagram accounts for their organizations. Following the 
violence that took place in Kenosha, we removed the shooter's Facebook 
and Instagram account and took action against organizations and content 
related to Kenosha. We have found no evidence that suggests the shooter 
followed the Kenosha Guard Page or that he was invited to the Event 
Page they organized.

    Russian Election Interference. The U.S. Intelligence community 
found that foreign actors including Russia tried to interfere in the 
2016 election and used social media platforms among other influence 
operations.
    In 2017, the FBI established the Foreign Influence Task Force 
(FITF), which works closely with state and local partners to share 
information on threats and actionable leads.
    The FBI has also established relationships with social media 
companies to enable rapid sharing of threat information. Social media 
companies independently make decisions regarding the content of their 
platforms.
    The U.S. Intelligence Community warned that Russia was using a 
range of active measures to denigrate former Vice President Joe Biden 
in the 2020 election. They also warned about Iran and China.
    Social media companies remain on the front lines of these threats 
to our democracy.

    Question 5. What steps are you taking to prevent amplification of 
false voter fraud claims after the 2020 presidential election and for 
future elections? What challenges do you face trying to prevent foreign 
actors who seek to influence our elections?
    Answer. We're gratified that, thanks to the hard work of election 
administrators across the country, the voting process went relatively 
smoothly. Facebook worked hard to do our part in protecting the 
integrity of the 2020 election, and we're proud of the work we've done 
to support our democracy. For example, we ran the largest voting 
information campaign in American history. Based on conversion rates we 
calculated from a few states we partnered with, we estimate that we 
helped 4.5 million people register to vote across Facebook, Instagram, 
and Messenger--and helped about 100,000 people sign up to be poll 
workers. We launched a Voting Information Center to connect people with 
reliable information on deadlines for registering and voting and 
details about how to vote by mail or vote early in person, and we 
displayed links to the Voting Information Center when people posted 
about voting on Facebook. More than 140 million people have visited the 
Voting Information Center on Facebook and Instagram since it launched. 
We are encouraged that more Americans voted in 2020 than ever before, 
and that our platform helped people take part in the democratic 
process.
    We also worked to tackle misinformation and voter suppression. We 
displayed warnings on more than 150 million pieces of content that our 
third-party fact-checkers debunked. We partnered with election 
officials to remove false claims about polling conditions, and we put 
in place strong voter suppression policies that prohibit explicit or 
implicit misrepresentations about how or when to vote, as well as 
attempts to use threats related to COVID-19 to scare people into not 
voting. We removed calls for people to engage in voter intimidation 
that used militarized language or suggested that the goal was to 
intimidate, exert control, or display power over election officials or 
voters. In addition, we blocked new political and issue ads during the 
final week of the campaign, as well as all political and issue ads 
after the polls closed on election night.
    We also instituted a variety of measures to help in the days and 
weeks after voting ended:

   We used the Voting Information Center to prepare people for 
        the possibility that it could take a while to get official 
        results. This information helped people understand that there 
        was nothing illegitimate about not having a result on election 
        night.

   We partnered with Reuters and the National Election Pool to 
        provide reliable information about election results. We 
        displayed this in the Voting Information Center, and we 
        notified people proactively as results became available. We 
        added labels to any post by a candidate or campaign trying to 
        declare victory before the results were in, stating that 
        official results were not yet in and directing people to the 
        official results.

   We attached informational labels to content that sought to 
        delegitimize the outcome of the election or discuss the 
        legitimacy of voting methods, for example, by claiming that 
        lawful methods of voting lead to fraud. This label provided 
        basic reliable information about the integrity of the election 
        and voting methods.

   We enforced our violence and harm policies more broadly by 
        expanding our definition of high-risk targets to include 
        election officials, in order to help prevent any attempts to 
        pressure or harm them, especially while they were fulfilling 
        their critical obligations to oversee the vote counting.

   We strengthened our enforcement against militias, conspiracy 
        networks, and other groups that could have been used to 
        organize violence or civil unrest in the period after the 
        election. We removed thousands of these groups from our 
        platform.

    Since 2016, we've built an advanced system combining people and 
technology to review the billions of pieces of content that are posted 
to our platform every day. State-of-the-art AI systems flag content 
that may violate our policies, users report content to us they believe 
is questionable, and our own teams review content. We've also been 
building a parallel viral content review system to flag posts that may 
be going viral--no matter what type of content it is--as an additional 
safety net. This helps us catch content that our traditional systems 
may not pick up. We used this tool throughout this election, and in 
countries around the world, to detect and review Facebook and Instagram 
posts that were likely to go viral and took action if that content 
violated our policies.
    For more on our work to remove deceptive campaigns around the 
world--whether foreign or domestic--please see the response to your 
Question 2.

    Question 6. How the U.S. Government improved information sharing 
about threats from foreign actors seeking to interfere in our elections 
since 2016? Is information that is shared timely and actionable? What 
more can be done to improve the cooperation to stop threats from bad 
actors?
    Answer. We work closely with law enforcement, regulators, election 
officials, researchers, academics, and civil society groups, among 
others, to strengthen our platform against election interference and 
the spread of misinformation. This engagement is incredibly important--
we can't do this alone, and we have also worked to strengthen our 
relationships with government and outside experts in order to share 
information and bolster our security efforts.
    With respect to our election protection work, we engaged with state 
attorneys general and other federal, state, and local law enforcement 
officials responsible for election protection. When they identified 
potential voter interference, we investigated and took action if 
warranted, and we have established strong channels of communication to 
respond to any election-related threats.

    Question 7. How are you working with civil society groups like the 
University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public and Stanford 
Internet Observatory and Program?
    Answer. We believe that there is a lot to learn from this election, 
and we're committed to making sure that we do. Earlier this year, we 
announced a partnership with a team of independent external academics 
to conduct objective and empirically grounded research on social 
media's impact on democracy. We want to better understand whether 
social media makes us more polarized as a society, or if it largely 
reflects the divisions that already exist; if it helps people become 
more informed about politics, or less; or if it affects people's 
attitudes towards government and democracy, including whether and how 
they vote. We hope that the insights these researchers develop will 
help advance society's understanding of the intersection of technology 
and democracy and help Facebook learn how we can better play our part.
    Facebook is working with a group of seventeen independent 
researchers who are experts in the fields of elections, democracy, and 
social media. Social Science One facilitated the start of the project, 
and two of its committee chairs, Talia Stroud and Joshua A. Tucker, 
serve as cochairs of this project. They selected researchers who 
represent a variety of institutions, disciplines, areas of expertise, 
and methodological traditions. Facebook did not select the researchers 
and is taking measures to ensure that they operate independently.
    Three principles guide our work and will continue to do so as we 
move ahead: independence, transparency, and consent.

   Independence: The external researchers won't be paid by 
        Facebook, and they won't answer to Facebook either. Neither the 
        questions they've asked nor the conclusions they draw will be 
        restricted by Facebook. We've signed the same contracts with 
        them that we do with other independent researchers who use our 
        data (and those contracts are publicly posted on Social Science 
        One's website).

   Transparency: The researchers have committed to publish 
        their findings in academic journals in open access format, 
        which means they will be freely available to the public. 
        Facebook and the researchers will also document study plans and 
        hypotheses in advance through a preregistration process and 
        release those initial commitments upon publication of the 
        studies. This means that people will be able to check that we 
        did what we said we would--and didn't hide any of the results. 
        In addition, to allow others to run their own analyses and 
        further check our homework, we plan to deliver de-identified 
        data on the studies we run. We have also invited Michael 
        Wagner, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, to document 
        and publicly comment on our research process as an independent 
        observer.

   Consent: We are asking for the explicit, informed consent 
        from those who opt to be part of research that analyzes 
        individual-level data. This means research participants will 
        consent to the use of their data and confirm that they 
        understand how and why their data will be used.

    Additionally, as part of our studies, we will also analyze 
aggregated user data on Facebook and Instagram to help us understand 
patterns. The studies--and our consent language--were reviewed and 
approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB) to ensure they adhere 
to high ethical standards.

    Question 8. How are you raising social media users' awareness about 
these threats? What more can be done? How do you ensure the actions you 
take do not cross the line into censorship of legitimate free speech?
    Answer. With respect to our work to remove deceptive campaigns 
around the world--whether foreign or domestic--please see the response 
to your Question 2.
    With respect to our work around misinformation more generally, 
people often tell us they don't want to see misinformation. People also 
tell us that they don't want Facebook to be the arbiter of truth or 
falsity. That's why we work with over 80 independent third-party fact-
checkers who are certified through the non-partisan International Fact-
Checking Network (IFCN) to help identify and review false news. If 
content is deemed by a fact-checker to be False, Altered, or Partly 
False, according to our public definitions, its distribution will be 
reduced, and it will appear lower in News Feed. We also implement an 
overlaid warning screen on top of factchecked content. People who try 
to share the content will be notified of the fact-checker's reporting 
and rating, and they will also be notified if content they have shared 
in the past has since been rated false by a fact-checker.
    We also want Facebook to be a place where people can discover more 
news, information, and perspectives, and we are working to build 
products that help. Through our News Feed algorithm, we work hard both 
to actively reduce the distribution of clickbait, sensationalism, and 
misinformation and to boost news and information that keeps users 
informed, and we know the importance to users of staying informed about 
their local communities.
    At Facebook, we connect people with reliable information about 
important issues. For example, since the pandemic started, we have 
worked to connect people with authoritative health sources through a 
number of different methods, such as redirecting people to health 
authorities if they searched for COVID-19 on Facebook or Instagram, and 
launching a COVID-19 Information Center on Facebook, which acts as a 
central place for people to get the latest news, information from 
health authorities, resources, and tips to stay healthy and safe. 
Between January and June, we directed over 2 billion people globally to 
resources and health authorities through our COVID-19 Information 
Center and pop-ups on Facebook and Instagram, with over 600 million 
people clicking through to learn more. In May, more than 25 million 
people in the U.S. visited the COVID-19 Information Center. More than 
18 million people visited the COVID-19 Information Center in June and 
more than 14 million people in July.
    When it came to the election, we launched a Voting Information 
Center to connect people with reliable information on deadlines for 
registering and voting and details about how to vote by mail or vote 
early in person, and we displayed links to the Voting Information 
Center when people posted about voting on Facebook. More than 140 
million people have visited the Voting Information Center on Facebook 
and Instagram since it launched.
    Additionally, we launched a Climate Science Information Center on 
Facebook to provide persistent access to global, regional, and local 
authoritative information about climate change and its effects. The 
Center features resources from the world's leading climate 
organizations and clear steps people can take to combat climate change. 
We're working with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 
and their global network of climate science contributors to include 
facts, figures, and data. Contributors include the UN Environment 
Programme (UNEP), The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 
(NOAA), and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). We'll also 
include posts from relevant sources to highlight climate science news.

    Foreign Disinformation & Russian Election Interference. Since four 
years ago, our national security agencies and the private sector have 
made improvements to address foreign cyber and influence efforts that 
target our electoral process. However, there still needs to be more 
public transparency about foreign disinformation.
    We need to close any gaps to stop any foreign disinformation about 
the 2020 election and disinformation in future elections. We cannot 
allow the Russians or other foreign actors to try to delegitimize 
election results or exacerbate political divisions any further.

    Question 9. What more could be done to maximize transparency with 
the public about suspected foreign malign activity?
    Answer. Please see the response to your Question 2.

    Question 10. How could you share more information about foreign 
disinformation threats among the private sector tech community and 
among social media platforms and with smaller companies?
    Answer. Please see the response to your Question 1.

    Question 11. What should the U.S. Government be doing to promote 
information sharing on threats and to increase lawful data-sharing 
about suspected foreign malign activity?
    Answer. Information sharing among the industry and the government 
has improved over the past few years, and we work closely with law 
enforcement, industry partners, and civil society. That said, the 
industry would benefit from a clear legal framework regarding data 
sharing in the context of investigating inauthentic and harmful 
influence operations.
    We continuously look for ways to enhance our collaboration with the 
industry and the security research community while ensuring that we put 
the right checks in place to protect people's information, because we 
know that inauthentic behavior is not limited to a specific type of 
technology or service. The better we can be at working together with 
industry and outside security researchers, the better we'll do by our 
community.

    Rohingya/Myanmar. In 2018, Facebook was weaponized against to whip 
up hate against the Muslim minority--the Rohingya. Myanmar held a 
general election last month. Prior to that election, there were 
concerns about the integrity of that election.

    Question 12. What did you do and how are you continuing to make 
sure social media is not abused by any foreign or domestic actors to 
distort the electoral process in Myanmar and other countries?
    Answer. We have invested heavily in people, technology, and 
partnerships over the past several years to examine and address the 
abuse of Facebook in Myanmar, and we have repeatedly taken action 
against violent actors and bad content on Facebook in Myanmar. We've 
also built a team that is dedicated to Myanmar. The ethnic violence 
happening in Myanmar is horrific, and we don't want our services to be 
used to spread hate, incite violence, or fuel tension on the ground.
    Our approach to this problem, like the problem itself, is 
multifaceted, but our purpose is clear: to reduce the likelihood that 
Facebook will be used to facilitate offline harm. Our tactics include 
identifying and removing fake accounts; finding and removing violent 
actors; building better tools and technology that allow us to 
proactively find bad content; evolving our policies; and continuing to 
build partnerships and programs on the ground.

    Impact of S. 4534. As you are aware, Chairman Wicker and two of our 
Republican colleagues have offered legislation to amend Section 230 to 
address, among other issues, what they call `repeated instances of 
censorship targeting conservative voices.''
    That legislation would make significant changes to how Section 230 
works, including limiting the categories of content that Section 230 
immunity would cover and making the legal standard for removal of 
content more stringent. Critics of the Chairman's bill, S. 4534, 
suggest that these changes would inhibit companies' ability to remove 
false or harmful content from their platforms.

    Question 13. I would like you to respond yes or no as to whether 
you believe that bills like the Chairman's would make it more difficult 
for Facebook to remove the following types of content--

   Bullying?

   Election disinformation?

   Misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19?

   Foreign interference in U.S. elections?

   Efforts to engage in platform manipulation?

   Hate speech?

   Offensive content directed at vulnerable communities or 
        other dehumanizing content?

    Answer. Broadly speaking, Section 230 is a foundational law that 
allows us to provide our products and services to users. At a high 
level, Section 230 does two things. First, it encourages free 
expression. Without Section 230, platforms could potentially be held 
liable for everything people say. Without this protection, platforms 
would likely remove more content to avoid legal risk and would be less 
likely to invest in technologies that enable people to express 
themselves in new ways. Second, it allows platforms to remove harmful 
content. Without Section 230, platforms could face liability for doing 
even basic moderation, such as removing bullying and harassment that 
impact the safety and security of their communities. Repealing Section 
230 entirely would likely substantially increase many companies' costs 
associated with legal challenges and content moderation.

    Combating ``Garbage'' Content. Santa Clara University Law Professor 
Eric Goldman, a leading scholar on Section 230, has argued that the 
Online Freedom and Viewpoint Diversity Act (S. 4534) wants Internet 
services to act as ``passive'' receptacles for users' content rather 
than content curators or screeners of ``lawful but awful'' third-party 
content.
    He argues that the bill would be counterproductive because we need 
less of what he calls ``garbage'' content on the Internet, not more. 
Section 230 lets Internet services figure out the best ways to combat 
online trolls, and many services have innovated and invested more in 
improving their content moderation functions over the past few years.
    Professor Goldman specifically points out that the bill would make 
it more difficult for social media companies to remove ``junk science/
conspiracy theories, like anti-vax content or quack COVID19 cures.''

    Question 14. Would S. 4534--and similar bills--hurt efforts by 
Facebook to combat online trolls and to fight what Professor Goldman 
calls ``lawful but awful . . . garbage'' content?
    Answer. Please see the response to your Question 13.

    The FCC's Capitulation to Trump's Section 230 Strategy. The 
Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, announced 
recently that he would heed President Trump's call to start a 
rulemaking to ``clarify'' certain terms in Section 230.
    And reports suggest that the President pulled the renomination of a 
sitting FCC Commissioner due to his concerns about that rulemaking, 
replacing him with a nominee that helped develop the Administration's 
petition that is the foundation of this rulemaking. This capitulation 
to President Trump by a supposedly independent regulatory agency is 
appalling.
    It is particularly troubling that I--and other members of this 
committee--have been pressing Chairman Pai to push the envelope to 
interpret the agency's existing statutory authority to, among other 
things, use the E-Rate program to close the homework gap, which has 
only gotten more severe as a result of remote learning, and to use the 
agency's existing authority to close the digital divide on Tribal 
lands. And we expressed serious concern about Chairman Pai's move to 
repeal net neutrality, which the FCC majority based upon a highly 
conservative reading of agency's statutory authority.
    In contrast, Chairman Pai is now willing to take an expansive view 
of the agency's authority when asked to support the President's 
pressure campaign against social media in an attempt not to fact check 
or label the President's posts.

    Question 15. What are your views on Chairman Pai's announced 
rulemaking and the FCC's legal analysis of section 230? Would you agree 
that his approach on this issue is in tension with his repeal of the 
essential consumer protections afforded by the net neutrality rules?
    Answer. Please see the response to your Question 13.

    Addressing Bad Actors. I have become increasingly concerned with 
how easy it is for bad actors to use social media platforms to achieve 
their ends, and how Facebook has been too slow to stop it. For example, 
a video touting antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a ``cure'' for 
COVID was eventually taken down this summer--but not after garnering 17 
million views on Facebook.
    In May, the watchdog group Tech Transparency Project concluded that 
white supremacist groups are ``thriving'' on Facebook, despite 
assurances that Facebook does not allow such groups on its platform.
    These are obviously troubling developments, especially in light of 
the millions of Americans that rely on your services. You have to do 
better.
    That said, I am not sure that modifying Section 230 is the solution 
for these and other very real concerns about your industry's behavior.

    Question 16. From your company's perspective, would modifying 
Section 230 prevent bad actors from engaging in harmful conduct?
    Answer. Please see the response to your Question 13.

    Question 17. What do you recommend be done to address the concerns 
raised by the critics of Section 230?
    Answer. Section 230 made it possible for every major Internet 
service to be built and ensured important values like free expression 
and openness were part of how platforms operate. Changing it is a 
significant decision. However, we believe Congress should update the 
law to make sure it's working as intended. We support the ideas around 
transparency and industry collaboration that are being discussed in 
some of the current bipartisan proposals, and we look forward to a 
meaningful dialogue about how we might update the law to deal with the 
problems we face today.

    Potential Impacts of Changes to Section 230. Section 230 has been 
foundational to the development of the Internet of today. Most believe 
that absent Section 230, we would not have the massive, worldwide 
public forum the Internet provides.
    Of course, we all understand that this forum may not be an 
unmitigated good, but it is equally true that Internet is a far more 
vibrant place than traditional media, because of the ability of users 
to contribute their thoughts and content.

    Question 18. How do you expect that Facebook would react when faced 
with increased possibility of litigation over user-submitted content?
    Answer. Defending lawsuits related to users' content on our 
platform requires a substantial amount of resources, including 
litigation costs and employee time, both in the United States and 
elsewhere.
    The costs of litigation are often substantial, even when the suits 
are dismissed on Section 230 grounds.

    Enforcement of Facebook's Content Policies. Mr. Zuckerberg, 
Facebook has rules prohibiting the promotion of violence and the spread 
of certain false claims. However, these rules mean nothing without 
consistent enforcement.
    The Wall Street Journal recently put Facebook's content moderation 
efforts to the test. The results were alarming.
    The Journal found that Facebook enforced its rules against 
misinformation and promoting violence inconsistently.
    In the test, the Journal flagged a large number of posts that 
appeared to violate Facebook's own rules, but it turned out that 
Facebook's content review system left lots of rule-violating material 
online.
    In many instances, Facebook did not review content flagged by the 
Journal within the 24-hour time period in which they promised to 
respond.

    Question 19. Mr. Zuckerberg, will you commit to improving 
Facebook's enforcement of its own content moderation policies? What 
steps are you taking to improve your content review technology and 
other practices?
    Answer. We have over 35,000 people working on safety and security, 
about 15,000 of whom review content. The majority of our content 
reviewers are people who work full-time for our partners and work at 
sites managed by these partners. We have a global network of partner 
companies so that we can quickly adjust the focus of our workforce as 
needed. This approach gives us the ability to, for example, make sure 
we have the right language or regional expertise. Our partners have a 
core competency in this type of work and are able to help us adjust as 
new needs arise or when a situation around the world warrants it.
    We have also introduced tools that allow us to proactively detect 
and remove certain violating content using advances in technology, 
including artificial intelligence, machine learning, and computer 
vision. We do this by analyzing specific examples of bad content that 
have been reported and removed to identify patterns of behavior. Those 
patterns can be used to teach our software to proactively identify 
similar content.
    These advances in technology mean that we can now remove bad 
content more quickly, identify and review more potentially harmful 
content, and increase the capacity of our review team. To ensure the 
accuracy of these technologies, we constantly test and analyze our 
systems, technology, and AI. All content goes through some degree of 
automated review, and we use human reviewers to check some content that 
has been flagged by that automated review or reported by people that 
use Facebook. We also use human reviewers to perform reviews of content 
that was not flagged or reported by people, to check the accuracy and 
efficiency of our automated review systems. The percentage of content 
that is reviewed by a human varies widely depending on the type and 
context of the content, and we don't target a specific percentage 
across all content on Facebook.

    Question 20. On average, how long does Facebook take to review 
content flagged by users?
    Answer. Most of the content we remove we find ourselves through 
automated systems. A significant portion of that is detected and 
removed immediately after it is uploaded. We work to remove this 
content as quickly as possible, though in some cases it may require 
human review to understand the context in which material was posted and 
to confirm if it violates our Community Standards.

    Question 21. Do you agree that Facebook should remove flagged 
content promoting violence or misinformation within 24 hours? Will you 
commit to speeding up Facebook's review process?
    Answer. We are proud of the work we have done to make Facebook an 
unwelcome place for those committed to acts of violence. In fact, our 
Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy has long been the 
broadest and most aggressive in the industry. And in August 2020, we 
expanded that policy to address militarized social movements and 
violence-inducing conspiracy networks, such as QAnon. The purpose of 
this policy is to prevent offline harm that may be related to content 
on Facebook, and so in the course of that work we contact law 
enforcement if we see imminent credible threats on the platform. We 
remove language that incites or facilitates serious violence. We also 
ban groups that proclaim a hateful and violent mission from having a 
presence on our apps, and we remove content that represents, praises, 
or supports them.
    As for misinformation, people often tell us they don't want to see 
it on our platforms. That's why we work with over 80 independent third-
party fact-checkers who are certified through the non-partisan 
International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) to help identify and review 
false news. If content is deemed by a fact-checker to be False, 
Altered, or Partly False, according to our public definitions, its 
distribution will be reduced, and it will appear lower in News Feed. We 
also implement an overlaid warning screen on top of content marked as 
false. People who try to share the content will be notified of the 
fact-checker's reporting and rating, and they will also be notified if 
content they have shared in the past has since been rated false by a 
fact-checker.
    We send content to independent third-party fact-checkers for 
review, but it is ultimately at their discretion to decide what to 
rate. The enqueued content is based on a number of signals, including 
machine learning-driven insights and false news reports by users, and 
we also allow third-party fact-checkers to enqueue content themselves.
    We do not share data on how long it takes to fact-check content or 
how many views a post gets on average before it's fact-checked because 
these numbers may vary depending on the content; for example, claims 
related to breaking news or a complex issue may take more time to 
verify than content that repeats previously debunked claims. We surface 
signals to our fact-checking partners to help them prioritize what to 
rate. For example, fact-checking partners can see the estimated number 
of shares a post has received in the past 24 hours, and how many users 
have flagged it as potentially false in their News Feed. We also 
recognize that thorough reporting can take time. This is one of the 
reasons that we work with independent fact-checking partners, whose 
work can involve calling primary sources, analyzing videos/images, 
consulting public data, and more. We continue to have an open dialogue 
with partners about how we could further improve efficiency. We are 
testing ways to group content in one place to make it easier for fact-
checking partners to find relevant content to review, faster.

    Online Disinformation. I have serious concerns about the unchecked 
spread of disinformation online. From false political claims to harmful 
health information, each day the problem seems to get worse and worse. 
And I do not believe that social media companies--who make billions of 
dollars from ads based in part on user views of this disinformation--
are giving this problem the serious attention that it deserves.

    Question 22. Do you agree that Facebook can and should do more to 
stop the spread of harmful online disinformation?
    Answer. Please see the response to your Question 21.

    Question 23. Can you commit that Facebook will take more aggressive 
steps to stop the spread of this disinformation? What specific 
additional actions will you take?
    Answer. Please see the response to your Question 21.

    Question 24. About ten years ago, Microsoft attempted to gain a 
position in the ad server market with their Atlas product. They failed, 
and Facebook acquired the Atlas business from Microsoft in 2013. At the 
time, you asserted that Facebook would be a dominant player in this 
sector, but by 2017 Facebook had discontinued Atlas and announced that 
you would be exiting the ad server business. Today, Google controls 
about 90 percent of this business. How did Google out-compete Microsoft 
and Facebook? Did Google offer a superior product? Did Google have 
better relationships in the industry? What did Microsoft and Facebook 
fundamentally misunderstand about the ad server business?
    Answer. Facebook invests heavily in research and development and 
seeks to continuously offer new products, as well as refine existing 
ones, in order to deliver innovative products and experiences to 
consumers. Facebook's goal in any acquisition is to maximize the use 
and benefit of the acquired company's assets in order to achieve the 
strategic need for which the acquisition was undertaken. Sometimes, an 
acquisition is not as successful as we hoped, and we make the business 
decision to discontinue the product or service.

    Trump Administration Records. Over the course of nearly four years, 
President Trump and senior officials in his administration have 
routinely used social media to conduct government business, including 
announcing key policy and personnel decisions on those platforms. In 
addition, many believe that President Trump and his senior aides have 
used social media to engage in unethical and sometimes illegal conduct.
    For example, Special Counsel Mueller cited several of President 
Trump's tweets as evidence of potentially obstructive conduct, and 
senior White House aides such as Kellyanne Conway and Ivanka Trump have 
been cited for violations of the Hatch Act and the misuse of position 
statute based on their use of Twitter in the conduct of their 
government jobs. Meanwhile, it appears that on several occasions 
Twitter has changed or ignored its rules and policies in ways that have 
allowed administration officials to continue using the platform to 
violate the rules for government employees and other Twitter users.
    While government officials are legally obligated to preserve 
presidential and Federal records created or stored on social media 
platforms, this administration's actions cast serious doubts on whether 
they will comply with those obligations, and in many instances, they 
have already failed to do so. Facebook could play a vital role in 
ensuring that the historical record of the Trump administration is 
accessible to the American public,
    Congress, and other government institutions so that people are 
``able to see and debate'' the ``words and actions'' of the Trump 
presidency as well as future presidential administrations.

    Question 25. Please describe what steps, if any, Facebook has taken 
to ensure that Facebook content--including posts and direct messages--
published, sent, or received by Trump administration officials on 
Facebook accounts used for official government business are collected 
and preserved by your company.
    Answer. We comply with our obligations under the law to preserve 
content posted on Facebook.
    We disclose account records in accordance with our terms of service 
and applicable law.

    Question 26. Please describe what steps, if any, Facebook has taken 
to ensure that the National Archives and Records Administration can 
obtain and preserve all Facebook content--including posts and direct 
messages--posted, sent, or received by Trump administration officials 
on Facebook accounts used for official government business.
    Answer. Please see the response to your previous question.

    Question 27. Please describe what steps, if any, Facebook has taken 
to ensure that the White House can preserve all Facebook content--
including posts and direct messages--posted, sent, or received by Trump 
administration officials on Facebook accounts used for official 
government business.
    Answer. Please see the response to your Question 25.

    Question 28. Will you commit to ensuring that all Facebook 
content--including posts and direct messages--posted, sent, or received 
by Trump administration officials on Facebook accounts used for 
official government business are collected and preserved by your 
company?
    Answer. Please see the response to your Question 25.

    Question 29. How much time does an average user spend on your 
service if they see a news article on their timeline in that session, 
compared to a user who does not see a news article in their session? In 
what percentage of user sessions do users interact with external news 
content?
    Answer. We know that one of the biggest issues social networks face 
is that, when left unchecked, people will engage disproportionately 
with more sensationalist and provocative content. At scale this type of 
content can undermine the quality of public discourse and lead to 
polarization. In our case, it can also degrade the quality of our 
services. Our research suggests that no matter where we draw the line 
for what is allowed, as a piece of content gets close to that line, 
people will engage with it more on average--even when they tell us 
afterwards they don't like the content. That is why we've invested 
heavily and have taken steps to try and minimize the amount of divisive 
news content people see in News Feed, including by reducing the 
distribution of posts containing clickbait headlines.
    On Facebook, people see posts from their friends, Pages they've 
chosen to follow, and Groups they've joined, among others, in their 
News Feed. On a given day, the number of eligible posts in a user's 
Feed inventory can number in the thousands, so we use an algorithm to 
personalize how this content is organized. The goal of the News Feed 
algorithm is to predict what pieces of content are most relevant to the 
individual user, and rank (i.e., order) those pieces of content 
accordingly every time a user opens Facebook, to try and bring those 
posts that are the most relevant to a person closer to the top of their 
News Feed. This ranking process has four main elements: the available 
inventory (all of the available content from the people, Pages, and 
Groups a person has chosen to connect with); the signals, or data 
points, that can inform ranking decisions (e.g., who posted a 
particular piece of content); the predictions we make, including how 
likely we think a person is to comment on a story, share with a friend, 
etc.; and a relevancy score for each story, which informs its position 
in News Feed.
    We frequently make changes to the algorithm that drives News Feed 
ranking in an effort to improve people's experience on Facebook. For 
example, in 2018, we responded to feedback from our community that 
public content--posts from businesses, brands, and media--was crowding 
out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other. 
As a result, we moved from focusing only on helping people find 
relevant content to helping them have more meaningful social 
interactions. This meant that people began seeing more content from 
their friends, family, and Groups. We also reduce the distribution of 
some problematic types of content, including content that users may 
find spammy or low-quality, such as clickbait headlines, misinformation 
as confirmed by third-party fact-checkers, and links to low-quality 
webpages like ad farms.

    Question 30. What are the clickthrough rates on your labelling on 
disputed or fact-checked content related to civic integrity, either 
when content is hidden or merely labelled? What metrics do you use to 
gauge the effectiveness of labelling? Please share typical numerical 
values of the metrics you describe.
    Answer. Facebook works with third-party fact-checkers to review and 
rate the accuracy of content. Content across Facebook and Instagram 
that has been rated false or altered is prominently labeled so people 
can better decide for themselves what to read, trust, and share. These 
labels are shown on top of false and altered photos and videos, 
including on top of Stories content on Instagram, and link out to the 
assessment from the fact-checker.
    We have studied the impact of labels when it comes to COVID-19 
misinformation. During March and April 2020, we displayed warnings on 
about 50 million posts related to COVID-19 on Facebook, based on around 
7,500 articles by our independent fact-checking partners. When people 
saw those warning labels, 95 percent of the time they did not go on to 
view the original content.

    Question 31. Mr. Zuckerberg, I understand that Facebook is paying 
some publishers for their content. But, there is very little 
transparency about this process. Would you explain to us your 
methodology for paying newspapers? How are you determining who to pay 
in the U.S.? Will you provide clear information to the marketplace that 
explains your methodology? Will you list all of the publishers you pay?
    Answer. Mobile technology has fundamentally changed the way people 
discover and consume news, and this has resulted in real challenges for 
publishers. We understand these challenges and have worked with 
publishers to adapt to digital transformation. But how news is 
distributed on Facebook warrants further discussion. News organizations 
voluntarily post their content on Facebook because it helps them reach 
new and larger audiences, and ultimately those audiences drive 
additional revenue for them.
    To date, we have built tools to help publishers increase their 
subscribers by driving people from Facebook links to publisher 
websites. Among other benefits, Facebook provides publishers with free, 
organic distribution of news (and other content), which grows the 
audience and revenue for news publishers; customized tools and products 
to help news publishers monetize their content; and initiatives to 
assist publishers to innovate with online news content, along with 
bringing indirect value to publishers such as brand awareness and 
community building.
    Publishers are also able to decide when a reader sees a paywall on 
content they've found via Facebook. Publishers control the relationship 
with their readers, with subscription payments taking place directly on 
their owned and operated websites. We do not take any cut of the 
subscription revenue because we want that money to go toward funding 
quality journalism. Helping publishers reach new audiences has been one 
of our most important goals.
    Beyond the distribution and revenue tools already mentioned, we've 
focused on meaningful collaboration with publishers. In 2017, we 
launched the Facebook Journalism Project (https://www.facebook.com/
journalismproject), an initiative focused on building innovative and 
sustainable solutions to support journalism. In 2019 we announced a 
$300 million commitment (https://www.facebook.com/journalismpro
ject/facebook-supports-local-news) to news programs, partnerships, and 
content--with a specific focus on local news. And later that year we 
launched Facebook News (https://www.facebook.com/news), a section of 
Facebook dedicated solely to authoritative and informative news 
content.
    During the COVID-19 pandemic, we announced a $100 million 
investment (https://www.facebook.com/journalismproject/coronavirus-
update-news-industry-support) to support the news industry--$25 million 
in emergency grant funding for local news through the Facebook 
Journalism Project, and $75 million in additional marketing spend to 
move money over to news organizations around the world.
    We've also focused on supporting the global fact-checking 
community's work--we partnered with the Independent Fact-Checking 
Network to launch a $1 million grant program (https://www.facebook.com/
journalismproject/coronavirus-grants-fact-checking) to increase their 
capacity during this time.
                                 ______
                                 
    Response to Written Question Submitted by Hon. Amy Klobuchar to 
                            Mark Zuckerberg
    Political Ads. Facebook and Google have committed to voluntarily 
implement some measures of the Honest Ads Act, like requiring 
disclosures and creating an ad library for political ads, but have 
never truly lived up to some requirements, such as fully disclosing 
which categories of users ads are targeting. The full disclosures of 
targeting based on sensitive categories, like perceived race, 
ethnicity, or partisan affiliation is critical, because Russia targeted 
African Americans more than any other group in 2016. Intelligence 
officials have also repeatedly confirmed Russia is interfering in the 
2020 elections and using online platforms to do so.

    Question 1. Will your company voluntarily implement all the 
provisions of the Honest Ads Act, including fully disclosing which 
groups of people are being targeted by political ads in a way that does 
not compromise user privacy?
    Answer. Facebook is committed to transparency for all ads, 
including ads with political content. That's why we've endorsed the 
Honest Ads Act and have taken many steps laid out in the bill even 
though it hasn't passed yet.
    Facebook believes that people should be able to easily understand 
why they are seeing ads, who paid for them, and what other ads those 
advertisers are running. Our Ad Library is a unique tool to shine a 
light on political and social issue ads--a public archive that allows 
people to see all the ads politicians and campaigns are running on 
Facebook and Instagram and those that have run in the past. This is an 
important step in making political ads more transparent and advertisers 
more accountable: the public can see every ad served to anyone in an 
easily searchable database.
    Earlier this year, we announced changes to provide more 
transparency over who is using ads to try to influence voters and to 
give people more control over the ads they see:

   View audience size in the Ad Library: We've added ranges for 
        Potential Reach, which is the estimated target audience size 
        for each political, electoral, or social issue ad, so you can 
        see how many people an advertiser wanted to reach with every 
        ad.

   Better Ad Library search and filtering: We've added the 
        ability to search for ads with exact phrases, better grouping 
        of similar ads, and adding several new filters to better 
        analyze results--e.g. audience size, dates, and regions 
        reached. This allows for more efficient and effective research 
        for voters, academics, or journalists using these features.

   Control over Custom Audiences from a list: We rolled out a 
        control to let people choose how an advertiser can reach them 
        with a Custom Audience from a list. These Custom Audiences are 
        built when an advertiser uploads a hashed list of people's 
        information, such as e-mails or phone numbers, to help target 
        ads. This control is available to all people on Facebook and 
        applies to all advertisers, not just those running political or 
        social issue ads. People have always been able to hide all ads 
        from a specific advertiser in their Ad Preferences or directly 
        in an ad. But now they are able to stop seeing ads based on an 
        advertiser's Custom Audience from a list--or make themselves 
        eligible to see ads if an advertiser used a list to exclude 
        them.

   See fewer political ads: Seeing fewer political and social 
        issue ads is a common request we hear from people. That's why 
        we added a new control that will allow people to see fewer 
        political and social issue ads on Facebook and Instagram. This 
        feature builds on other controls in Ad Preferences we've 
        released in the past, like allowing people to see fewer ads 
        about certain topics or remove interests.
                                 ______
                                 
 Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Richard Blumenthal to 
                            Mark Zuckerberg
    For the following questions, please provide information about your 
firm's content moderation decisions related to election misinformation 
and civic integrity covering the 2020 election period.

    Question 1. Please describe what processes were used to make 
decisions about labeling or taking down organic and paid content 
related to elections or civic integrity.
    Answer. During the 2020 election, Facebook was committed to doing 
our part to help ensure everyone had the chance to make their voice 
heard. That meant helping people register and vote, clearing up 
confusion about the election, and taking steps to reduce the chances of 
election related violence and unrest.
    We partnered with election officials to remove false claims about 
polling conditions and displayed warnings on more than 150 million 
pieces of election-related content after review by our independent, 
third-party fact-checkers. We put in place strong voter suppression 
policies prohibiting explicit or implicit misrepresentations about how 
or when to vote, as well as attempts to use threats related to COVID-19 
to scare people into not voting. We also removed calls for people to 
engage in poll watching that used militarized language or suggested 
that the goal was to intimidate, exert control, or display power over 
election officials or voters, and we filtered civic groups out of 
recommendations.
    As the ballots were counted, we deployed additional measures that 
we announced in advance of the election to help people stay informed 
and to provide reliable information. We partnered with Reuters and the 
National Election Pool to provide reliable information about election 
results in the Voting Information Center and notified people 
proactively as results became available. We added labels to posts about 
voting by candidates from both parties to direct people to reliable 
information. We also attached an informational label to content that 
sought to delegitimize the outcome of the election or discuss the 
legitimacy of voting methods. We provided reliable information to 
combat election and voting misinformation, such as displaying ``Facts 
About Voting'' in users' News Feed and as part of the Voting 
Information Center, including emphasizing the longstanding 
trustworthiness of mail-in voting, and other assessments from non-
partisan experts designed to counter false claims about the election.
    When it comes to ads, we blocked new political and issue ads during 
the final week of the campaign, given the limited time for candidates 
to contest new claims; we rejected ads that made premature declarations 
of victory or sought to delegitimize the election; and we temporarily 
blocked all political and social issue ads after the polls closed to 
reduce opportunities for confusion and abuse.

    Question 2. How many posts were reported or identified as 
potentially containing election misinformation or violations of civic 
integrity policies?
    Answer. We partnered with election officials to remove false claims 
about polling conditions, ultimately removing 120,000 pieces of content 
on Facebook and Instagram for violating our voter interference 
policies, and we displayed warnings on more than 150 million pieces of 
election-related content after review by our independent, third-party 
fact-checkers. We also removed calls for people to engage in poll 
watching that used militarized language or suggested that the goal was 
to intimidate, exert control, or display power over election officials 
or voters, and we filtered civic groups out of recommendations.
    Additionally, we launched a Voting Information Center to connect 
people with reliable information on deadlines for registering and 
voting and details about how to vote by mail or vote early in person, 
and we displayed links to the Voting Information Center when people 
posted about voting on Facebook. More than 140 million people visited 
the Voting Information Center on Facebook and Instagram since it 
launched.

    Question 3. How many posts had enforcement action taken for 
containing election misinformation or violations of civic integrity 
policies?
    Answer. Please see the responses to your Questions 1 and 2.

    Question 4. Who did your firm consult to draft and implement 
election misinformation and civic integrity policies?
    Answer. We work closely with law enforcement, regulators, election 
officials, researchers, academics, and civil society groups, among 
others, to strengthen our platform against election interference and 
the spread of misinformation. This engagement is incredibly important--
we can't do this alone, and we have also worked to strengthen our 
relationships with government and outside experts in order to share 
information and bolster our security efforts.
    With respect to our election protection work, we engaged with state 
attorneys general and other federal, state, and local law enforcement 
officials responsible for election protection. When they identified 
potential voter interference, we investigated and took action if 
warranted. And we have established strong channels of communication to 
respond to any election-related threats.
    We also consulted with civil rights experts and community members 
regarding our voter suppression and intimidation policies. For example, 
in May 2018, we began a civil rights audit led by Laura Murphy, a 
highly respected civil rights and civil liberties leader. Her work has 
helped us build upon crucial election-related efforts, such as 
expanding our policy prohibiting voter suppression.
    Finally, when it comes to misinformation, including election-
related misinformation, we work with over 80 independent, third-party 
fact-checkers who are certified through the nonpartisan International 
Fact-Checking Network (``IFCN'') to help identify and review false 
news. If content is deemed by a fact-checker to be false or partly 
false, its distribution will be reduced, and it will appear lower in 
News Feed. We also implement an overlaid warning screen on top of 
content marked as false. People who try to share the content will be 
notified of the fact-checker's reporting and rating, and they will also 
be notified if content they have shared in the past has since been 
rated false by a fact-checker.

    Question 5. Who made final decisions about labeling or taking down 
a post related to election misinformation or civic integrity? Who did 
that person or those persons consult?
    Answer. Our content reviewers moderate content based on our 
Community Standards. We have made our detailed reviewer guidelines 
public to help people understand how and why we make decisions about 
the content that is and is not allowed on Facebook.
    When it comes to misinformation, as discussed in the answer to your 
Question 4, we work with independent, third-party fact-checkers to help 
reduce the spread of false news and other types of viral 
misinformation. Third-party fact-checkers are responsible for rating 
content, and Facebook is responsible for evaluating the consequences of 
those ratings. If content is deemed by a fact-checker to be false or 
partly false, its distribution will be reduced, and it will appear 
lower in News Feed. We also implement an overlaid warning screen on top 
of content marked as false and notify users who try to share the 
content (or who have shared it in the past).

    Question 6. Does a different or specialize process exist for 
content from Presidential candidates, and if so, how does that process 
for review differ from the normal review?
    Answer. Our Community Standards apply to all content, and we assess 
everyone under those Standards. Since 2016, we've also had a 
newsworthiness policy. First, we make a holistic determination about 
whether content falls within our newsworthiness policy. In the case of 
politicians' speech, for example, we presume a public interest value 
but will still evaluate it against the risk of harm. Second, the 
newsworthiness exception only applies to organic content; all ads, 
including those posted by politicians, must still comply with both our 
Community Standards and our Advertising Policies. Third, decisions to 
apply the newsworthiness policy often involve extensive internal 
deliberation and are made with low frequency. In 2019, for example, we 
made only fifteen newsworthiness exceptions for politicians globally, 
only one of which applied to a U.S. politician. More often, our 
newsworthiness policy has allowed for images that depict war or famine 
or attempt to raise awareness of issues like indigenous rights.
    When it comes to speech from politicians, we don't believe that 
it's an appropriate role for us to referee political debates and 
prevent a politician's speech from reaching its audience and being 
subject to public debate and scrutiny. Speech from candidates and 
elected officials is some of the most scrutinized speech in our 
society, and we believe people should decide what is credible, not tech 
companies. That's why direct speech from politicians is not eligible 
for our independent, third-party fact-checking program. We have had 
this policy on the books for more than two years now, posted publicly 
on our site under our fact-checking program policies. This policy 
applies equally to all candidates for Federal public office, including 
presidential candidates.
    Our policies don't mean that politicians can say whatever they want 
on Facebook. They can't spread misinformation about where, when, or how 
to vote, for example, or incite violence. And when a politician shares 
previously debunked content, including links, videos, and photos, we 
demote that content, display related information from fact-checkers, 
and reject its inclusion in advertisements. When it comes to ads, while 
we won't remove politicians' ads based solely on the outcome of a fact-
check, we still require them to follow our Advertising Policies.

    Question 7. Based on enforcement actions taken, there a discernible 
difference in engagement between a labeled post and unlabeled posts? 
Please provide any supporting information.
    Answer. As discussed in further detail in the response to your 
Question 8, Facebook works with third-party fact-checkers to review and 
rate the accuracy of content. Content across Facebook and Instagram 
that has been rated False or Altered is prominently labeled so people 
can better decide for themselves what to read, trust, and share. These 
labels are shown on top of false and altered photos and videos, 
including on top of Stories content on Instagram, and they link out to 
the assessments from the fact-checkers.
    We have studied the impact of labels when it comes to COVID-19 
misinformation.
    During March and April 2020, we displayed warnings on about 50 
million posts related to COVID-19 on Facebook, based on around 7,500 
articles by our independent fact-checking partners. When people saw 
those warning labels, 95 percent of the time they did not go on to view 
the original content.

    Question 8. What was the average time to add a misinformation label 
to a post?
    Answer. People often tell us they don't want to see misinformation. 
That's why we work with over 80 independent, third-party fact-checkers 
who are certified through the non-partisan International Fact-Checking 
Network (``IFCN'') to help identify and review false news. If content 
is deemed by a fact-checker to be false or partly false, its 
distribution will be reduced, and it will appear lower in News Feed. We 
also implement an overlaid warning screen on top of content marked as 
false. People who try to share the content will be notified of the 
fact-checker's reporting and rating and they will also be notified if 
content they have shared in the past has since been rated false by a 
fact-checker.
    We send content to independent, third-party fact-checkers for 
review, but it is ultimately at their discretion to decide what to 
rate. The enqueued content is based on a number of signals, including 
machine learning-driven insights and false news reports by users, and 
we also allow third-party fact-checkers to enqueue content themselves.
    We do not share data on how long it takes to fact-check content or 
how many views a post gets on average before it's fact-checked because 
these numbers may vary depending on the content; for example, claims 
related to breaking news or a complex issue may take more time to 
verify than content that repeats previously debunked claims. We surface 
signals to our fact-checking partners to help them prioritize what to 
rate. For example, fact-checking partners can see the estimated number 
of shares a post has received in the past 24 hours, and how many users 
have flagged it as potentially false in their News Feed. We also 
recognize that thorough reporting can take time--this is one of the 
reasons that we work with independent fact-checking partners, whose 
work can involve calling primary sources, analyzing videos/images, 
consulting public data, and more. We continue to have an open dialogue 
with partners about how we could further improve efficiency. We are 
testing ways to group content in one place to make it easier for fact-
checking partners to more quickly find relevant content to review.

    For the following questions, please provide information about your 
firm's content moderation decisions related hate speech, election 
interference, civic integrity, medical misinformation, or other harmful 
misinformation over the previous year.

    Question 9. How many pieces of content were reported by users to 
the platform related to hate speech, election interference, civic 
integrity, and medical misinformation, broken down by category?
    Answer. To track our progress and demonstrate our continued 
commitment to making Facebook safe and inclusive, we release our 
Community Standards Enforcement Report (available at https://
transparency.facebook.com/community-standards-enforcement) on a 
quarterly basis. This report shares metrics on how Facebook is 
performing in preventing and removing content that violates certain 
Community Standards, including: adult nudity and sexual activity, 
bullying and harassment, child nudity and sexual exploitation of 
children, terrorism, organized hate, fake accounts, hate speech, 
regulated goods, spam, suicide and self-injury, and violent and graphic 
content. We also share data in this report on our process for appealing 
and restoring content to correct mistakes made in our enforcement 
decisions.
    In the first three quarters of 2020, Facebook removed over 54 
million pieces of content for violating our hate speech policy. Of that 
violating content we actioned, we identified the vast majority before 
users reported it--almost 95 percent in the second and third quarters 
of 2020. When it comes to election-related misinformation, we partnered 
with election officials to remove false claims about polling conditions 
and displayed warnings on more than 150 million pieces of content after 
review by our independent, third-party fact-checkers. And for COVID-19-
related misinformation, in the second quarter of 2020, we displayed 
warnings on approximately 98 million pieces of content on Facebook 
worldwide based on COVID-19-related debunking articles written by our 
fact-checking partners. In the U.S., we displayed misinformation 
warning screens associated with fact-checks related to COVID-19 on over 
13 million pieces of content in the U.S. in March; over 15 million in 
April; over 13 million in May; over 9.7 million in June; and over 9.3 
million in July.

    Question 10. How many pieces of content were automatically 
identified or identified by employees related to hate speech, election 
interference, civic integrity, and medical misinformation, broken down 
by category?
    Answer. Please see the response to your previous question.

    Question 11. Of the content reported or flagged for review, how 
many pieces of content were reviewed by humans?
    Answer. Most of the content we remove we find ourselves through 
automated systems. A significant portion of that is detected and 
removed immediately after it is uploaded. We work to remove this 
content as quickly as possible, though in some cases it may require 
human review to understand the context in which material was posted and 
to confirm if it violates our Community Standards.

    Question 12. How many pieces of content were subject to enforcement 
action? Please provide a break down for each type of enforcement action 
taken for each category.
    Answer. Please see the response to your Question 9.

    Question 13. For content subject to enforcement action due to 
violation of hate speech rules, please identify how many pieces of 
content targeted each type of protected category (such as race or 
gender) covered by your rules. Do you track this information?
    Answer. We do not allow hate speech on Facebook. We define hate 
speech as violent or dehumanizing speech, statements of inferiority, 
calls for exclusion or segregation based on protected characteristics, 
or slurs. These characteristics include race, ethnicity, national 
origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender, 
gender identity, and serious disability or disease. When the intent is 
clear, we may allow people to share someone else's hate speech content 
to raise awareness or discuss whether the speech is appropriate to use, 
to use slurs self referentially in an effort to reclaim the term, or 
for other similar reasons. More information about our hate speech 
enforcement is available at https://transparency.facebook
.com/communitystandards-enforcement#hate-speech.
                                 ______
                                 
   Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Edward Markey to 
                            Mark Zuckerberg
    Question 1. Mr. Zuckerberg, Laura W. Murphy and the Relman Colfax 
firm completed a two-year civil rights audit of Facebook in July 2020. 
In a blog post, Facebook's Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg, 
stated that Facebook will not follow every recommendation made in the 
audit. Please identify the specific audit recommendations that Facebook 
will and will not follow. Please also provide a timeline for 
implementation of the recommendations that Facebook will follow.
    Answer. There are no quick fixes to the issues and recommendations 
the Auditors have surfaced. Becoming a better company requires a deep 
analysis of how we can strengthen and advance civil rights at every 
level of our company. That is what this audit has been--but it is the 
beginning of the journey, not the end.
    Over the course of the audit process, we have made significant 
progress in a number of critical areas. But the auditors have been 
extremely candid with their feedback, urging us to go further in a 
range of areas. We have already started to put some of the Auditors' 
recommendations into place, including:

   We're beginning the process of bringing civil rights 
        expertise in-house, starting with a commitment to hire a civil 
        rights leader who will continue to push us on these issues 
        internally, and embedding staff with civil rights expertise on 
        core teams.

   We've expanded our voter suppression policies since the 2016 
        and 2018 elections so that we now prohibit threats that voting 
        will result in law enforcement consequences and attempts at 
        coordinated interference, both of which have been known to 
        intimidate and demobilize voters.

   We included a link that directs people to our Voting 
        Information Center on all posts about voting, including those 
        from politicians, the goal being that we help make sure people 
        have accurate, real-time information about voting processes in 
        their districts.

   We attached an informational label to content that discusses 
        the legitimacy of the election or claims that lawful methods of 
        voting like mail-in ballots led to fraud. This label provided 
        reliable information about the integrity of the election and 
        voting methods.

   We extended the protections we had in place for voting to 
        the U.S. 2020 census by adopting a robust census interference 
        policy, which benefited from the Auditors' input and months of 
        consultation with the U.S. Census Bureau, civil rights groups, 
        and census experts.

   We've gone beyond existing hate speech protections to ban 
        ads that are divisive and include fear-mongering statements.

   We have taken meaningful steps to build a more diverse and 
        inclusive workforce, committing to bring on 30 percent more 
        people of color, including 30 percent more Black people, in 
        leadership positions.

   We announced a $100 million investment in Black-owned small 
        businesses, Black creators, and nonprofits that serve the Black 
        community in the U.S., and a commitment to spend at least $100 
        million with Black-owned businesses, toward a goal of $1 
        billion in annual spend with diverse suppliers by the end of 
        2021.

    We continue to review seriously the recommendations made by the 
Auditors and invest in ongoing civil rights infrastructure and long-
term change.

    Question 2. Mr. Zuckerberg, children and teens are a uniquely 
vulnerable population online, and a comprehensive Federal privacy law 
should provide them with heightened data privacy protections. Do you 
agree that Congress should prohibit online behavioral advertising, or 
``targeted marketing'' as defined in S. 748, directed at children under 
the age of 13?
    Answer. We are committed to protecting the privacy and safety of 
minors who use our services, and we've adapted our services to do so. 
For example, we've adopted more limited privacy settings for minors, 
and restrictions on features they can use, who they can connect with, 
and the content they can see (including ads). Additionally, Facebook 
does not allow children under the age of 13 on its service and does not 
collect data about children under 13 that would trigger parental 
consent or notification.
    We look forward to working with your office on this legislation in 
the next Congress.
                                 ______
                                 
    Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Gary Peters to 
                            Mark Zuckerberg
    Question 1. In the hearing, we discussed how Facebook is working 
with law enforcement to disrupt real world violence stemming from 
activity on your platform. How many threats has Facebook proactively 
referred to local or state law enforcement prior to being approached 
for a preservation request?
    Answer. We have a long history of working successfully with the 
DOJ, the FBI, and other government agencies to address a wide variety 
of threats to our platform. We reach out to law enforcement whenever we 
see a credible threat of imminent harm, including threats of self-harm. 
We have been able to provide support to authorities around the world, 
including in cases where law enforcement has been able to disrupt 
attacks and prevent harm.
    We cooperate with governments in other ways, too. For example, as 
part of official investigations, government officials sometimes request 
data about people who use Facebook. We have strict processes in place 
to handle these government requests, and we disclose account records in 
accordance with our terms of service and applicable law. We also have 
law enforcement response teams available around the clock to respond to 
emergency requests.
    We will take steps to preserve account records in connection with 
official criminal investigations for 90 days pending our receipt of 
formal legal process. Law enforcement may submit formal preservation 
requests through Facebook's Law Enforcement Online Request System 
(https://www.facebook.com/records) or by mail. We also publish regular 
transparency reports that provide details on global government requests 
and our responses at https://transparency.facebook.com/government-data-
requests.

    Question 2. In the hearing, I asked you about a recent report that 
an internal Facebook researcher found in 2016 that ``64 percent of all 
extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools.'' When I 
asked you about that research, you said you were ``not familiar with 
that specific study.'' However, audio from a recent Facebook meeting 
recorded you criticizing the story internally to employees. Please 
explain your response at the hearing. Are you now aware of that 
specific study?
    Answer. Mr. Zuckerberg did not immediately recall the study you 
were referencing. We apologize for the confusion.
    The study in question was not produced by the team whose primary 
role at the company focuses on groups that commit violence and spread 
disinformation, so it's not the best lens through which to understand 
our work in those areas.
    And the story's suggestion that we buried research on this topic or 
didn't act on it is false. The reality is we didn't adopt some of the 
product suggestions cited in the story because we pursued alternatives 
that we believe are more effective. For example, in 2018, we responded 
to feedback from our community that public content--posts from 
businesses, brands, and media--was crowding out the personal moments 
that lead us to connect more with each other. As a result, we moved 
from focusing only on helping users find relevant content to helping 
them have more meaningful social interactions. This meant that users 
began seeing more content from their friends, family, and Groups. We 
also reduce the distribution of some problematic types of content, 
including content that users may find spammy or low-quality, such as 
clickbait headlines and links to low-quality webpages like ad farms.
    We also fund research on misinformation and polarization to better 
understand the impact of our products; for example, in February we 
announced an additional $2 million in funding for independent research 
on this topic.
    We are proud of the work we have done to make Facebook an unwelcome 
place for those committed to acts of violence. In fact, our Dangerous 
Individuals and Organizations policy has long been the broadest and 
most aggressive in the industry. And in August 2020, we expanded that 
policy to address militarized social movements and violence-inducing 
conspiracy networks, such as QAnon. The purpose of this policy is to 
prevent offline harm that may be related to content on Facebook, and so 
in the course of that work we contact law enforcement if we see 
imminent credible threats on the platform. Accordingly, we remove 
language that incites or facilitates serious violence. We also ban 
groups that proclaim a hateful and violent mission from having a 
presence on our apps, and we remove content that represents, praises, 
or supports them.
    Moving fast to find and remove dangerous organizations, including 
terrorist and hate groups, takes significant investment in both people 
and technology. At Facebook, we have tripled the size of our teams 
working in safety and security since 2016 to over 35,000 people--
including teams that review reports of hate speech and content that 
praises, supports, or represents hate groups. We also have several 
hundred people who exclusively or primarily focus on countering 
dangerous organizations as their core responsibility. This group 
includes former academics who are experts on counterterrorism, former 
prosecutors and law enforcement agents, investigators and analysts, and 
engineers.
    Four years ago, we developed a playbook and a series of automated 
techniques to detect content related to terrorist organizations such as 
ISIS, al Qaeda, and their affiliates. We've since expanded these 
techniques to detect and remove content related to other terrorist and 
hate groups. We're now able to detect text embedded in images and 
videos in order to understand its full context, and we've built media-
matching technology to find content that's identical or near identical 
to photos, videos, text, and even audio that we've already removed. 
When we started detecting hate organizations, we focused on groups that 
posed the greatest threat of violence at that time, and we've now 
expanded to detect more groups tied to different hate-based and violent 
extremist ideologies and using different languages. In addition to 
building new tools, we've also adapted strategies from our 
counterterrorism work, such as leveraging off-platform signals to 
identify dangerous content on Facebook and implementing procedures to 
audit the accuracy of our AI's decisions over time.
    We understand, however, that simply working to keep violence off 
Facebook is not an adequate solution to the problem of online content 
tied to violent extremism, particularly because bad actors can leverage 
a variety of platforms and operate offline as well. While we work 24/7 
to identify, review, and remove violent extremist content, our efforts 
do not stop there. We believe our partnerships with other companies, 
civil society, researchers, and governments are crucial to combating 
this threat. For example, our P2P Global Digital Challenge, which 
engages university students around the world in competitions to create 
social media campaigns and offline strategies to challenge hateful and 
extremist narratives, has launched over 600 counter speech campaigns 
from students in 75 countries, engaged over 6,500 students, and reached 
over 200 million people. We have also developed the Redirect Initiative 
to connect people searching for violent extremist material with offline 
organizations dedicated to helping people disconnect from extremist 
groups. The program is active now in four countries, including the 
U.S., where we have partnered with Life After Hate, an organization 
founded by former violent extremists, to help people disconnect from 
white supremacist groups.

    Question 2a. What is the current percentage of extremist group 
joins due to Facebook recommendation tools?
    Answer. Groups that represent hate organizations, terrorist 
organizations, militarized social movements, and violence-inducing 
conspiracy networks have no place on our platform, and we remove them 
when our technology or content review and investigative teams identify 
them.
    Additionally, Pages and Groups that repeatedly violate other 
Community Standards or repeatedly share things found false by third-
party fact-checkers are not eligible to appear in recommendations 
surfaces. We also apply a number of restrictions on accounts that 
violate these same rules, including by removing them from 
recommendations and limiting their ability to use surfaces like Live, 
if the account has not yet reached the threshold of violations at which 
we would remove the account entirely.

    Question 2b. What policy and algorithm changes has Facebook made to 
reduce facilitation of extremist group recruitment since that time, and 
how effective have those changes been? Please share any data 
demonstrating the impacts of such changes.
    Answer. Please see the responses to your Questions 2 and 2(a).

    Question 3. Following the 2016 election, Facebook informed users 
that they had interacted with Russian disinformation, but this was a 
one-time occurrence around a very specific set of content. Do you think 
that Facebook users have a right to know if they've been exposed to 
content that your own policies have deemed so dangerous that you have 
removed it?

    Question 3a. Facebook allows notifications by text, desktop pop-up, 
e-mail, and through the app. Facebook also has the capability to notify 
users if they have seen or interacted with content that content 
moderators have deemed harmful disinformation or extremist--this was 
demonstrated after the 2016 election. Why does Facebook not do this 
with other content that it has removed due to violations of your 
community standards?
    Answer. Notifying users about content that was subsequently removed 
could have additional harmful consequences by re-exposing those users 
to hate speech, terrorism, or other types of harmful content that 
violates our Community Standards. For example, studies have shown that 
re-exposure to disinformation--even if condemnatory--can sometimes 
reinforce the original false message. We do generally notify users 
about subsequently removed content they did not post but had interacted 
with when the content poses a serious risk that the user could cause 
greater harm to themselves if not notified about its subsequent 
removal. Therefore, for instance, we warn users who interacted with 
harmful misinformation about COVID-19 that was later removed, so they 
don't mistakenly act on that misinformation.
    Facebook also notifies users when they interact with information 
that has been rated false by a third-party fact-checker. We work with 
independent, third-party fact-checkers to help reduce the spread of 
false news and other types of viral misinformation on our platform. If 
content is deemed by a fact-checker to be false or partly false, its 
distribution will be reduced, and it will appear lower in News Feed. We 
also implement an overlaid warning screen on top of content marked as 
false. People who try to share the content will be notified of the 
fact-checker's reporting and rating, and they will also be notified if 
content they have shared in the past has since been rated false by a 
fact-checker. We also take action against Pages and domains that 
repeatedly share or publish content that is rated false. Such Pages and 
domains will see their distribution reduced as the number of offenses 
increases, including their eligibility for recommendations and ability 
to advertise and monetize. Finally, Pages and domains that repeatedly 
publish or share false news will also lose their ability to register as 
a News Page on Facebook, and if a registered News Page repeatedly 
shares false news, its News Page registration will be revoked.

    Question 4. A recent article highlighted that five states--Georgia, 
Oregon, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan--have the highest risk of 
increased militia activity around the elections, including everything 
from demonstrations to violence. Has Facebook taken concrete steps to 
identify pages or groups that are promoting violence in these states 
specifically and to proactively remove that content?
    Answer. We remove content calling for or advocating violence, and 
we ban organizations and individuals that proclaim a violent mission. 
Because we saw growing movements that, while not necessarily directly 
organizing violence, have celebrated violent acts, shown that they have 
weapons and suggest they will use them, or have individual followers 
with patterns of violent behavior, we expanded our Dangerous 
Individuals and Organizations policy to address militia groups as well 
as other organizations and movements that have demonstrated significant 
risks to public safety, including QAnon. In the first two months since 
we expanded our policy to address these groups and movements, we 
identified over 600 militarized social movements, removing about 2,400 
Pages, 14,200 Groups, and about 1,300 Instagram accounts they 
maintained. In addition, we've removed about 1,700 Pages, 5,600 Groups, 
and about 18,700 Instagram accounts representing QAnon. For more 
information, please visit https://about.fb.com/news/2020/08/addressing-
movements-and-organizations-tied-to-violence/.

    Question 4a. How many people/users have to see this kind of content 
before Facebook decides to take it down?
    Answer. We have designated more than 600 militarized social 
movements based solely on the behavior of the entities themselves. When 
we find groups, Instagram accounts, or Pages that violate our policies 
against militarized social movements and violence-inducing conspiracy 
networks, we take action regardless of the number of users who have 
interacted with them.

    Question 4b. Why did Facebook allow more than 360,000 individuals 
to join the ``STOP THE STEAL'' group before removing it for violating 
your community standards?
    Answer. Facebook stands for giving people a voice, and it was 
important to us that everyone could make their voice heard during the 
election. We announced a series of policies in advance to help support 
the integrity of the election. For example, we put in place strong 
voter suppression policies prohibiting explicit or implicit 
misrepresentations about how or when to vote, as well as attempts to 
use threats related to COVID-19 to scare people into not voting. We 
also removed calls for people to engage in poll watching that used 
militarized language or suggested that the goal was to intimidate, 
exert control, or display power over election officials or voters.
    When it came to the ``Stop the Steal'' group, we took down the 
group within about 24 hours. We removed the group because it was 
organized around the delegitimization of the election process, and we 
saw worrying calls for violence from some members of the group.

    Question 5. Buzzfeed recently reported that, in discussing unrest 
around the 2020 election, you told Facebook employees ``once we're past 
these events, and we've resolved them peacefully, I would not expect 
that we continue to adopt more policies that are restricting of 
content.'' Unfortunately, the threat of domestic terrorism will not 
evaporate after this election cycle. Will Facebook continue to review 
and rigorously enforce its existing community standards to stop the 
calls for violence and other extremist content beyond the election 
season and for as long as the threats persist?
    Answer. Yes. Terrorists, terrorist content, and hate speech in all 
forms--including white supremacy and violent extremist content--have no 
place on Facebook, and have always been prohibited. That will not 
change. If we find content that praises or supports terrorists, violent 
extremists, or their organizations, we remove it. Indeed, of the 
content that we remove on this basis, we detect the vast majority of it 
before anyone reports it. In the first three quarters of 2020, we took 
action on over 24 million pieces of terrorism content, and we 
identified over 99 percent of that content before users reported it to 
us. In the same time, we took action on over 12 million pieces of 
content tied to hate organizations, and we now detect over 97 percent 
of that content before users report it to us.
    Additionally, as discussed in the response to your Question 4(a), 
even before the election, we strengthened our enforcement against 
militias, violence-inducing conspiracy networks, and other groups that 
could be used to organize violence. We expanded our policy because we 
saw growing movements that, while not necessarily directly organizing 
violence, have celebrated violent acts, shown that they have weapons 
and suggest they will use them, or have individual followers with 
patterns of violent behavior. We remain committed to enforcing this 
policy going forward.

    Question 6. Facebook's community standards often draw the line at 
specific threats of violence for the removal of content, rather than 
conspiracy theories that may set the predicate for radicalization and 
future action. When it comes to conspiracy theories and misinformation, 
Facebook often chooses not to remove content, but rather to reduce the 
spread and to attach warnings. What testing or other analysis has 
Facebook done that shows your work to reduce the spread of 
disinformation and misinformation is effective?
    Answer. As discussed in the response to your Question 4, we are 
committed to combating violent voices that spread misinformation and 
conspiracy theories. In August 2020, we expanded our Dangerous 
Individuals and Organizations policy to address militarized social 
movements and violence-inducing conspiracy networks, such as QAnon. 
Since then, we've identified over 600 militarized social movements, 
removing about 2,400 Pages, 14,200 Groups, and about 1,300 Instagram 
accounts they maintained. We've also removed about 1,700 Pages, 5,600 
Groups, and about 18,700 Instagram accounts representing QAnon.
    Additionally, we've long supported programs to empower users that 
want to push back on radicalization. This includes the Facebook Digital 
Challenge, the Online Civil Courage Initiative, and the Redirect 
Initiative, which we began with Life After Hate and now run in 4 
countries. Most recently, we began a broad campaign with the Asia 
Foundation to support these programs across Asia. Our Redirect 
Initiative model has most recently been used around QAnon. We are 
providing links to reliable information for people that search for 
QAnon-related terms, and for people who search for QAnon-linked terms 
like ``Save Our Children,'' we direct them to another set of links to 
legitimate child safety groups.
    Although it is too early to draw comprehensive conclusions about 
reductions in the spread of misinformation ahead of the 2020 U.S. 
presidential election, research from 2018 and 2019 conducted by 
researchers at the University of Michigan, Princeton University, 
University of Exeter, and Washington University at St. Louis offers 
encouraging findings about the scale and spread of misinformation since 
the 2016 U.S. elections. Namely:

   Fake news exposure fell dramatically from 2016 to 2018. 
        Researchers have found that there was a substantial decline (75 
        percent) in the proportion of Americans who visited fake news 
        websites during the 2018 midterm elections, relative to the 
        2016 elections.

   Also during the 2016-2018 period, Facebook's role in the 
        distribution of misinformation was dramatically reduced. To 
        determine Facebook's role in spreading false news, researchers 
        looked at the three websites people visited in the 30 seconds 
        before arriving at a fake news site. Between the fall of 2016 
        and the summer and fall of 2018, Facebook's role in referring 
        visits to fake news sites dramatically dropped.

    Question 7. It is clear that the existence of conspiracy theories, 
disinformation campaigns, and misinformation has led to violence, even 
if not specifically planned on your platform.
    Recently, Facebook has taken action against the QAnon conspiracy 
for this reason. While QAnon has led to numerous instances of violence 
in recent months and years, Facebook only banned it recently. Why did 
QAnon reach that threshold now, and how will Facebook address other 
conspiracies?

    Question 7a. Is there some set number of violent incidents that 
must occur before Facebook considers a group unfit for the platform?
    Answer. We remove any group that has proclaimed a violent mission 
or engaged in documented acts of terrorism. As discussed in the 
responses to your Questions 4 and 6, we recently expanded our Dangerous 
Individuals and Organizations policy to address organizations and 
movements that have demonstrated significant risks to public safety but 
do not meet the rigorous criteria to be designated as a dangerous 
organization and banned from having any presence on our platform. This 
includes militarized social movements and violence-inducing conspiracy 
networks, such as QAnon. While we will allow people to post content 
that supports these movements and groups, so long as they do not 
otherwise violate our content policies, we will restrict their ability 
to organize on our platform.
    Under this policy expansion, we impose restrictions to limit the 
spread of content from Facebook Pages, Groups, and Instagram accounts. 
We also remove Pages, Groups, and Instagram accounts where we identify 
indications of potential violence, including when they use veiled 
language and symbols particular to the movement to do so.
    We will take the following actions:

   Remove From Facebook: Pages, Groups, and Instagram accounts 
        representing these movements and organizations will be removed. 
        We will continue studying specific terminology and symbolism 
        used by supporters to identify the language used by these 
        groups and movements indicating violence and take action 
        accordingly.

   Reduce in Search: Hashtags and titles of Pages, Groups, and 
        Instagram accounts restricted on our platform related to these 
        movements and organizations will be limited in Search: they 
        will not be suggested through our Search Typeahead function and 
        will be ranked lower in Search results.

   Prohibit Use of Ads, Commerce Surfaces, and Monetization 
        Tools: Facebook Pages related to these movements will be 
        prohibited from running ads or selling products using 
        Marketplace and Shop. We also prohibit anyone from running ads 
        praising, supporting, or representing these movements.

   Prohibit Fundraising: We will prohibit nonprofits we 
        identify as representing or seeking to support these movements, 
        organizations, and groups from using our fundraising tools. We 
        will also prohibit personal fundraisers praising, supporting, 
        or representing these organizations and movements.

    Since this policy update, we've identified over 600 militarized 
social movements, removing about 2,400 Pages, 14,200 Groups, and about 
1,300 Instagram accounts they maintained. We've also removed about 
1,700 Pages, 5,600 Groups, and about 18,700 Instagram accounts 
representing QAnon.
    When it comes to QAnon in particular, we remove any Facebook Pages, 
Groups, and Instagram accounts representing QAnon. Additionally, when 
someone searches for terms related to QAnon on Facebook and Instagram, 
we will redirect them to credible resources from the Global Network on 
Extremism and Technology (GNET), which is led by Kings College in 
London. To address evidence that QAnon adherents are increasingly using 
the issue of child safety and hashtags like #savethechildren to recruit 
and organize, we also direct people to credible child safety resources 
when they search for certain child safety hashtags. These are the 
latest expansions of our Redirect Initiative to help combat violent 
extremism, through which we will direct people to resources that can 
help inform them of the realities of QAnon and its ties to violence and 
real-world harm.
    We will also continue to review content and accounts against all of 
our content policies in an effort to keep people safe. We will remove 
content from these movements that violate any of our policies, 
including those against fake accounts, harassment, hate speech, or 
inciting violence. Misinformation that does not put people at risk of 
imminent violence or physical harm but is rated false by third-party 
fact-checkers will be reduced in News Feed so fewer people see it. And 
any non-state actor or group that qualifies as a dangerous individual 
or organization will be banned from our platform. Our teams will also 
continue to study trends in attempts to skirt our enforcement so we can 
adapt. These movements and groups evolve quickly, and our teams will 
follow them closely and consult with outside experts so we can continue 
to enforce our policies against them.

    Question 8. When the Network Contagion Research Institute began 
mapping the spread of antigovernment ``boogaloo'' rhetoric on Facebook 
in early 2020, they saw advertisements to purchase items for boogaloo's 
desired civil war, including a boogaloo bag and themed weapon 
accessories. In a recent interview, the Institute's co-founder said 
``We realized the algorithms of Facebook have never met an apocalyptic, 
militant cult set on killing cops that they didn't like, and couldn't 
merchandise.'' Since the beginning of 2020, how much revenue did 
Facebook generate from ads purchased by, or targeting users engaging 
with, militia, boogaloo, or other extremist content?
    Will you provide the Committee with relevant data around user 
engagement with boogaloo and other extremist content?
    Have violent extremist groups used paid features of Facebook's 
various platforms? Do they buy ads?
    Answer. Facebook is committed to banning people from our platform 
who proclaim a violent mission. In June, Facebook designated as a 
dangerous organization a violent network associated with the boogaloo 
movement. As a result, this violent network is banned from having a 
presence on our platform and we remove content praising, supporting, or 
representing it. This network appeared to be based across various 
locations in the U.S., and the people within it engaged with one 
another on our platform. It actively promoted violence against 
civilians, law enforcement, and government officials and institutions. 
Members of this network also sought to recruit others within the 
broader boogaloo movement, sharing the same content online and adopting 
the same offline appearance as others in the movement to do so. For 
more information, please visit https://about.fb.com/news/2020/06/
banning-a-violent-network-in-the-us/.
    All of our normal content policies apply to advertisements and 
commerce pages like Marketplace and Shop. That means that dangerous 
organizations may not be praised, supported, or represented on those 
surfaces.

    Question 9. Once a group is designated under your Dangerous 
Individuals and Organizations policy, or any other Facebook policy, 
does Facebook stop them from purchasing ads, receiving targeted ads, 
being recommended to other users, creating new events, or inviting new 
members to join?
    Answer. A group designated under our Dangerous Individuals and 
Organizations policy may not use our platform for any purpose, nor may 
it be praised, supported, or represented on our platform. This is the 
most aggressive policy in the industry.

    Question 10. While I appreciate that Facebook continues to evolve 
and learn about threats of violence on the platform, would you agree 
that as groups evolve and change their tactics you will always be one 
step behind extremist groups that seek to use social media to recruit 
and plan violent acts? How do you address this problem?
    Answer. We face determined, well-funded adversaries who will never 
give up and regularly change tactics. We need to constantly adapt and 
improve. We do that by employing in-house experts, building scalable AI 
tools, and aggressively and systematically engaging outside partners, 
including others in industry, governments, and academic experts. We 
have several hundred people internally at Facebook whose primary job at 
Facebook deals with dangerous organizations, including many who are 
academic experts or former law enforcement or intelligence personnel. 
They track these movements as they evolve, and we adjust our 
enforcement as a result. We also think that building AI tools is a 
scalable way to identify and root out most content that violates our 
policies. We are making substantial investments in building and 
improving these tools. For example, today, more than 99 percent of the 
terrorism content we remove from Facebook is content we detect before 
anyone in our community has flagged it to us. We do this primarily 
through the use of automated systems like photo and video matching and 
text-based machine learning. We also use AI to help find child 
exploitation images, hate speech, discriminatory ads, and other 
prohibited content.
    We also work with others in the industry to limit the spread of 
violent extremist content on the Internet. For example, in 2017, we 
established the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) with 
others in the industry with the objective of disrupting terrorist abuse 
on digital platforms. Since then, the consortium has grown and 
collaborates closely on critical initiatives focused on tech 
innovation, knowledge sharing, and research.

    Question 11. When prioritizing which content to evaluate, Facebook 
does not always consider the amount of time that content is on the 
platform but rather the spread. While this may make sense for 
disinformation, where the threat lies in misleading the population, 
when dealing with content to inspire violence, who sees the content can 
be more important than how many. As we have seen time and again, lone 
actors inspired to violence can cause significant harm. How do you 
address this issue?
    Answer. Incitement to violence has no place on our platforms, 
regardless of who perpetrates it. Facebook is committed to keeping 
those who proclaim a violent mission off of our platforms. As soon as 
we identify content that violates our policies, we work to remove it. 
The time it takes between identifying the content and removing it may 
simply be a function of how long it takes to review the content--a 30 
minute video will take longer to review than a text post--and 
determining if the content in the context in which it's shared violates 
our policies. We want to make sure our content review teams have the 
time they need to review content and make an accurate decision. For 
instance, we may evaluate whether a post violates our hate speech 
policy for attacking someone based on race, religion, or gender 
identity, or whether the post is someone raising awareness and 
condemning the hate speech that was directed at them. But when we do 
have high confidence that something violates our policies, we deploy a 
range of technology and human expertise to remove the content before 
more people are likely to see it.
    In addition to taking down violating content, we focus most of our 
efforts on how often content that violates our policies is actually 
seen by someone. While content actioned describes how many things we 
took down, prevalence describes how much we haven't yet identified that 
people may still see. We measure this by periodically sampling content 
viewed on Facebook and then reviewing it to see what percent violates 
our community standards.
    Views of violating content that contains terrorism are very 
infrequent, and we remove much of this content before people see it. As 
a result, many times we do not find enough violating samples to 
precisely estimate prevalence. In the third quarter 2020, this was true 
for violations of our policies on terrorism, child nudity and sexual 
exploitation of children, suicide and self-injury, and regulated goods 
on Facebook and Instagram. In these cases, we can estimate an upper 
limit of how often someone would see content that violates these 
policies.
    In the third quarter of 2020, the upper limit was 0.05 percent for 
violations of our policy for terrorism on Facebook. This means that out 
of every 10,000 views of content on Facebook, we estimate no more than 
five of those views contained content that violated the policy.
    For more information about Facebook's efforts to detect and remove 
violent and extremist content from its platforms, please see the 
responses to your previous questions.
                                 ______
                                 
   Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Kyrsten Sinema to 
                            Mark Zuckerberg
    COVID-19 Misinformation. United States remains in the midst of a 
global pandemic. More than 227,000 Americans have died of COVID-19, 
including nearly 6,000 in my home state of Arizona. COVID has impacted 
the health, employment, and education of Arizonans, from large cities 
to tribal lands like the Navajo Nation. And at the time of this 
hearing, the country is facing another significant surge in cases.
    The persistent spread of COVID-19 misinformation on social media 
remains a significant concern to health officials. Digital platforms 
allow for inflammatory, dangerous, and inaccurate information--or 
outright lies--to spread rapidly. Sometimes it seems that 
misinformation about the virus spreads as rapidly as the virus itself. 
This misinformation can endanger the lives and livelihoods of 
Arizonans.
    Social distancing, hand washing, testing, contact tracing, and mask 
wearing should not be partisan issues, nor should they be the subject 
of online misinformation.

    Question 1. What has Facebook done to limit the spread of dangerous 
misinformation related to COVID-19 and what more can it do?
    Answer. As people around the world confront the unprecedented 
COVID-19 public health emergency, we want to make sure that our 
Community Standards protect people from harmful content and new types 
of potential abuse related to COVID-19. We're working to remove content 
that has the potential to contribute to real-world harm, including 
through our policies prohibiting the coordination of harm, hate speech, 
bullying and harassment, and misinformation that contributes to the 
risk of imminent violence or physical harm. Oftentimes, misinformation 
can cut across different types of abuse areas, for example, a racial 
slur could be coupled with a false claim about a group of people, and 
we'd remove it for violating our hate speech policy. So in addition to 
our misinformation policies, we have a number of other ways we might 
combat COVID-19 misinformation, such as:

   Under our Coordinating Harm policy, we remove content that 
        advocates for the spread of COVID-19, as well as content that 
        encourages or coordinates the physical destruction of 
        infrastructure, such as 5G masts, based on the false claim that 
        they played a role in the spread of COVID-19. This also 
        includes removing content coordinating in-person events or 
        gatherings when participation involves or encourages people 
        with COVID-19 to join.

   Under our Misinformation and Harm policy, we remove 
        misinformation that contributes to the risk of imminent 
        violence or physical harm. We have applied this policy to 
        harmful misinformation about COVID-19 since January. Between 
        March and October of this year, we removed more than 12 million 
        pieces of content on Facebook and Instagram globally for 
        containing misinformation that may lead to imminent physical 
        harm, such as content relating to fake preventative measures or 
        exaggerated cures.

   Under our Hate Speech policy, we are removing content that 
        states that people who share a protected characteristic such as 
        race or religion have the virus, created the virus, or are 
        spreading the virus. This does not apply to claims about people 
        based on national origin because we want to allow discussion 
        focused on national-level responses and effects (e.g., ``X 
        number of Italians have COVID-19''). We also remove content 
        that mocks people who share a protected characteristic such as 
        race or religion for having COVID-19. As reported in our 
        Community Standards Enforcement Report (CSER), content actioned 
        under our hate speech policy increased from 9.6 million pieces 
        of content in Q1 2020 to 22.1 million in Q3 2020. That 
        enforcement includes COVID-19-related content. Starting in Q1, 
        we made improvements to our proactive detection technology and 
        expanded automation to the Spanish, Arabic, and Indonesian 
        languages. In Q2, we followed up by expanding automation to the 
        English, Spanish, and Burmese languages, which helped us detect 
        and remove more content.

   Under our Bullying and Harassment policy, we remove content 
        that targets people maliciously, including content that claims 
        that a private individual has COVID-19, unless that person has 
        self-declared or information about their health status is 
        publicly available. As reported in our CSER, content actioned 
        under our bullying and harassment policy increased from 2.4 
        million in Q2 2020 to 3.5 million in Q3 2020, which includes 
        COVID-19-related content. After enforcement was impacted by 
        temporary workforce changes due to COVID-19, we regained some 
        review capacity in Q2 and Q3. We also increased our automation 
        abilities and made improvements to our proactive detection 
        technology for the English language.

    For misinformation that does not pose a safety risk but undermines 
the authenticity and integrity of our platform, we continue to work 
with our global network of independent, third-party fact-checking 
partners. Once a post is rated false or party false by a fact-checker 
on Facebook or Instagram, we reduce its distribution so fewer people 
see it, and we show warning labels and notifications to people who 
still come across content that has been rated, try to share it, or 
already have. Based on one fact-check, we're able to kick off 
similarity detection methods that identify duplicates of debunked 
stories and apply the same strong warning labels and demotions to those 
duplicates. In the second quarter of 2020, we displayed warnings on 
about 98 million pieces of content on Facebook worldwide based on 
COVID-19-related debunking articles written by our fact-checking 
partners.
    As the situation evolves, we are continuing to look at content on 
the platform, assess speech trends, and engage with experts, and we 
will provide additional policy guidance to our Community Standards when 
appropriate, to keep the members of our community safe during this 
crisis.

    Spreading Accurate Information. Arizonans need accurate, 
scientifically based information to help get through this pandemic. 
Many Arizonans get their news from sources such as Facebook. As a 
result, your companies can play a role in helping people receive 
accurate information that is relevant to their communities and can aid 
them in their decisions that keep their families healthy and safe.
    For example, earlier this month, the CDC issued a report 
illustrating that COVID-19 cases fell dramatically in Arizona after 
prevention and control measures were put into place. I shared this 
information on social media, and this is the type of information we 
should emphasize to help save lives.

    Question 2. What more can Facebook do to better amplify accurate, 
scientifically-based health information to ensure that Arizonans 
understand how best to protect themselves from the pandemic?
    Answer. Please see the response to your Question 1. We've also seen 
people turn to social media during this global health emergency, 
finding novel ways to stay connected and informed during these 
difficult times. And since the pandemic started, we have worked to 
connect people with reliable health sources through a number of 
different methods, such as redirecting people to health authorities if 
they search for COVID-19 on Facebook or Instagram, and launching a 
COVID-19 Information Center on Facebook which acts as a central place 
for people to get the latest news, information from health authorities, 
and resources and tips to stay healthy and safe. Between January and 
June, we directed over 2 billion people globally to resources and 
health authorities through our COVID-19 Information Center and pop-ups 
on Facebook and Instagram, with over 600 million people clicking 
through to learn more.

    Scientific Evidence-based COVID Information. Our best sources of 
information related to the pandemic are doctors, researchers, and 
scientists. We should be relying on their expertise to help stop the 
spread of the virus and help our country recover from its devastating 
impacts.

    Question 3. Who determines whether content on Facebook is 
scientifically supported and evidence based?
    Answer. We are working with health authorities and other experts to 
identify claims that are false and harmful, i.e., claims where, if 
someone believes the information, it could cause physical harm to them 
by increasing the likelihood of them getting or spreading the disease.
    We are also working to empower our fact-checking community during 
COVID-19. Our fact-checking program is a key piece of our multi-pronged 
strategy to reduce the spread of misinformation on our platforms. This 
is why, since January, we have taken a number of additional steps to 
support our fact-checking partners' work to debunk misinformation about 
COVID-19.

   Expanding our fact-checking network: We continue to expand 
        our fact-checking network around the world. Globally, we have 
        over 80 fact-checking partners, covering over 60 languages. In 
        the U.S., we have 10 partners.

   Grant program to support fact-checkers during COVID-19: In 
        March, we partnered with Poynter's International Fact-Checking 
        Network (IFCN) to launch a $1 million grant program to support 
        fact-checkers in their work around COVID-19. In addition to 
        providing critical funding that enables partners to maintain or 
        increase their capacity during this time, the grants also 
        support projects such as:

     Translation of fact-checks from native languages to 
            different languages;

     Multimedia production (such as videos, infographics, 
            podcasts) about COVID-19;

     Working with health experts for evidence-based and 
            scientific coverage;

     Audience development initiatives that use innovative 
            formats, such as offline or interactive communication, to 
            better reach people with reliable information; and

     Fact-checkers supporting public authorities with 
            reliable information for better communication about COVID-
            19.

    Since we launched this program, we have awarded grants to 21 fact-
checking organizations around the world, including PolitiFact in the 
U.S., who received a grant for video fact-checking on coronavirus.

    COVID Scams Arizonans and Americans have been inundated with 
fraudulent offers and scams, using social media to spread inaccurate 
information and perpetrate criminal scams. I've been using my own 
social media to help warn Arizonans about common scams related to 
economic assistance, false coronavirus ``cures'', and where they can 
report scams to Federal and state authorities.

    Question 4. What has Facebook done to limit the spread of scams and 
report criminal activity and what more can be done to protect seniors, 
veterans, and others who have been targeted by fraudsters?
    Answer. Facebook is supporting the global public health community's 
work to keep people safe and informed during the COVID-19 public health 
crisis. We're also working to address the long-term impacts by 
supporting industries in need and making it easier for people to find 
and offer help in their communities. We've been prioritizing ensuring 
everyone has access to accurate information, removing harmful content, 
supporting health and economic relief efforts, and keeping people 
connected.
    Under our Regulated Goods policy, we've also taken steps to protect 
against exploitation of this crisis for financial gain by banning 
content that attempts to sell or trade medical masks, hand sanitizer, 
surface-disinfecting wipes, and COVID-19 test kits. We also prohibit 
influencers from promoting these sales through branded content. From 
March through October 2020, we removed over 14 million pieces of 
content globally from Facebook and Instagram related to COVID-19 and 
which violated our medical supply sales standards. Of these, over 
370,000 were removed in the U.S.. In addition, between March and 
October of 2020, we removed more than 13 million pieces of content 
globally on Facebook and Instagram for containing misinformation that 
may lead to imminent physical harm, such as content relating to fake 
preventative measures or exaggerated cures. Of these, over 3 million 
were removed in the U.S.
    In removing content that has the potential to contribute to real-
world harm, we are also focusing on our policies related to commerce 
listings. We prohibit people from making health or medical claims 
related to COVID-19 in product listings on commerce surfaces, including 
those listings that guarantee a product will prevent someone from 
contracting COVID-19. We also prohibit the buying or selling of drugs 
and prescription products. When someone creates a listing on 
Marketplace, before it goes live, it is reviewed against our Commerce 
Policies using automated tools, and in some cases, further manual 
review. When we detect that a listing violates our policies, we reject 
it. We also have a dedicated channel for local governments to share 
listings they believe violate local laws.
                                 ______
                                 
    Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Jacky Rosen to 
                            Mark Zuckerberg
    Question 1. Adversaries like Russia continue to amplify 
propaganda--on everything from the election to the coronavirus to anti-
Semitic conspiracy theories--and they do it on your platform, 
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?

    Question 1a. Are you seeing foreign manipulation or amplification 
of white supremacist and anti-Semitic content, and if so, how are your 
algorithms stopping this? Are your algorithms dynamic and nimble enough 
to combat even better and more personalized targeting that can be 
harder to identify?
    Answer. Terrorists, terrorist content, and hate speech in all 
forms--including white supremacy and domestically based violent 
extremist content--have no place on Facebook. We prohibit content that 
incites violence, and we remove terrorists and posts that support 
terrorism whenever we become aware of them. We use a variety of tools 
in this fight against terrorism and violent extremism, including 
artificial intelligence, specialized human review, industry 
cooperation, and counterspeech training. Our definition of terrorism is 
agnostic to the ideology or political goals of a group, which means it 
includes everything from religious extremists and violent separatists 
to white supremacists and militant environmental groups. It is about 
whether they use violence or attempt to use violence to pursue those 
goals.
    Anti-Semitism is abhorrent and also has no place on our platform. 
Facebook removes any post that celebrates, defends, or attempts to 
justify the Holocaust. The same goes for any content that mocks 
Holocaust victims, accuses victims of lying about the atrocities, or 
advocates for violence against Jewish people in any way. We also 
updated our hate speech policy earlier this year to prohibit any 
content that denies or distorts the Holocaust.
    If we find instances of coordinated inauthentic behavior conducted 
on behalf of a foreign actor, we apply the broadest enforcement 
measures, including the removal of every on-platform property connected 
to the operation itself and the people and organizations behind it.
    We have also invested significantly in combating inauthentic 
behavior, whether it takes the form of individual fake accounts or 
broader coordinated networks. Over the past several years, our team has 
grown to over 200 people with expertise ranging from open-source 
research to threat investigations, cybersecurity, law enforcement and 
national security, investigative journalism, engineering, product 
development, data science, and academic studies in disinformation.

    Question 1b. Have you increased or modified your efforts to quell 
Russian disinformation in the wake of recently revealed efforts by 
Russia and Iran weaponize stolen voter data to exploit divisions in our 
nation? How have you or will you adjust your algorithms to reduce the 
influence of such content--knowing that these countries' newly obtained 
data will allow for even better targeting, making their deception 
harder to identify?
    Answer. When we find instances of coordinated inauthentic behavior 
conducted on behalf of a government entity or by a foreign actor, in 
which the use of fake accounts is central to the operation, we apply 
the broadest enforcement measures, including the removal of every on-
platform property connected to the operation itself and the people and 
organizations behind it. We regularly share our findings about the 
networks we find and remove for coordinated inauthentic behavior.
    Our teams continue to focus on finding and removing deceptive 
campaigns around the world, whether they are foreign or domestic. In 
October, we removed 14 networks of accounts, Pages, and Groups. Eight 
of them--from Georgia, Myanmar, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan--targeted 
domestic audiences in their own countries, and six networks--from Iran, 
Egypt, the U.S., and Mexico--focused on people outside of their 
countries. And this past March, we removed a network of 49 Facebook 
accounts, 69 Pages, and 85 Instagram accounts linked to activity we had 
previously removed and attributed to the Russian Internet Research 
Agency (IRA). We have shared information about our findings with law 
enforcement, policymakers, and industry partners. And we publish 
regular reports on the coordinated inauthentic behavior we detect and 
remove from our platforms. Our October 2020 report can be found at 
https://about.fb.com/news/2020/11/october-2020-cib-report/.
    We are making progress rooting out this abuse, but as we've said 
before, it's an ongoing effort.
    We're committed to continually improving to stay ahead. That means 
building better technology, hiring more people, and working closely 
with law enforcement, security experts, and other companies.

    Question 1c. Are you consulting outside groups to validate 
moderator guidelines on hate speech, including what constitutes anti-
Semitic content? Are you collecting data on hate speech content? If so, 
what are you doing with that data to combat hate speech on your 
platforms?
    Answer. In developing and iterating on our policies, including our 
policy specific to hate speech, we consult with outside academics and 
experts from across the political spectrum and around the world.
    We define hate speech as a direct attack on people based on what we 
call protected characteristics--race, ethnicity, national origin, 
religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender 
identity, and serious disability or disease. We also provide some 
protections for immigration status. We define an attack as violent or 
dehumanizing speech, statements of inferiority, and calls for exclusion 
or segregation. You can see more about these policies here: https://
www.facebook.com/communitystandards/objectionable_content/hate_speech.
    To track our progress and demonstrate our continued commitment to 
making Facebook safe and inclusive, we regularly release our Community 
Standards Enforcement Report (available at https://
transparency.facebook.com/community-standards-enforcement). This report 
shares metrics on how Facebook is performing in removing content that 
violates our Community Standards. We release a ``prevalence'' metric 
that estimates how much violating content in particular categories has 
been posted on the platform. We have recently added this prevalence 
metric for hate speech content. We also share data on our process for 
appealing and restoring content to correct mistakes in our enforcement 
decisions.

    Question 2. Recently, there have been high profile cybersecurity 
breaches involving private companies, government agencies, and even 
school districts--including in my home state of Nevada. A few months 
ago, a hacker subjected Clark County School District--Nevada's largest 
school district and our country's fifth largest, serving more than 
320,000 students--to a ransomware attack. In the tech industry, there 
was a notable breach of Twitter in July, when hackers were able to 
access an internal IT administrator tool used to manage accounts. 
Dozens of verified accounts with high follower counts--including those 
of President Obama, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos--were used to send out a 
tweet promoting a Bitcoin scam. What we learned from this breach is 
stunning . . . the perpetrators were inside the Twitter network in one 
form or another.

    Question 2a. How often do your staff attend cybersecurity training? 
Do you hire outside cybersecurity firms to look at your systems, 
offering a fresh look and catching overlooked flaws?
    Answer. Protecting the security of information on Facebook is at 
the core of how we operate. Security is built into every Facebook 
product, and we have dedicated teams focused on each aspect of data 
security. From encryption protocols for data privacy to machine 
learning for threat detection, Facebook's network is protected by a 
combination of advanced automated systems and teams with expertise 
across a wide range of security fields. Our security protections are 
regularly evaluated and tested by our own internal security experts and 
tools. We supplement this in some cases with independent contracted 
security evaluations, and more broadly with external security experts 
through our industry-leading Facebook Bug Bounty program, described in 
more depth below.
    Protecting a global community of billions of users involves a wide 
range of teams and functions, and our expectation is that those teams 
will continue to grow across the board. For example, we have 
information security, threat intelligence, and related engineering 
teams that are dedicated to traditional cybersecurity, including 
protecting people's accounts and information. We are continuing to 
expand these teams, along with other groups at Facebook working on 
security. Since 2011, we have also run an industry-leading and widely 
recognized bug bounty program where we encourage security researchers 
to responsibly disclose potential issues so we can fix the bugs. Our 
bug bounty program has been instrumental in helping us quickly detect 
new bugs, spot trends, and engage the best security talent outside of 
Facebook to help us keep the platform safe. Over the last several 
years, we have continued to innovate in this area by expanding the bug 
bounty program to include an industry-first data abuse bounty program, 
where researchers can report misuse of Facebook data, even where it may 
be happening off of our platform. As an additional check, we also have 
a so-called ``red team'' of internal security experts who plan and 
execute staged ``attacks'' on our systems. We then take the red team's 
findings and use them to build out protections to further strengthen 
our systems' security.
    With respect to training, new and existing Facebook employees are 
required to complete a computer-based training focusing on 
confidentiality and security. Topics covered include Facebook's key 
privacy principles, Facebook's policies, privacy laws and regulations, 
vendor security audits, privacy and security by design, the importance 
of ensuring user data is kept secure from unauthorized access, and 
general security awareness leading practices. The learning and 
development team performs weekly monitoring to ensure employees receive 
and take their required trainings.
    Facebook's Security Team conducts an annual, month-long security 
awareness campaign called ``Hack-tober.'' The month includes hacks, 
where the Security Team targets Facebook employees and where the 
employees target the Security Team, security scavenger hunts looking 
for bugs in code, presentations from internal and external speakers, 
and an internal security ``capture the flag.'' Facebook also encourages 
Security Team members to attend security conferences hosted outside the 
Company to increase awareness of environmental, regulatory, and 
technological changes that may impact system security and 
confidentiality.

    Question 3. The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a light on our 
Nation's digital divide and on the technological inequalities facing 
millions of American students, including those in Nevada. Lack of 
access to broadband disproportionately affects low-income communities, 
rural populations, and tribal nations--all of which are present in my 
state. In addition to broadband access, many students still do not have 
regular access to a computer or other connected device, making online 
learning incredibly difficult, and sometimes impossible.
    Facebook stepped up during the pandemic to help close the digital 
divide, including by offering many educational resources to help 
teachers and parents during the pandemic.

    Question 3a. As classes continue to meet online, or in a hybrid 
model, what more can Facebook do to help students and teachers?

    Question 3b. How does Facebook plan to remain engaged in K-12 
education after we get through the pandemic? In particular, what role 
can you play in closing not only the urban/rural divide, but also the 
racial divide in access to technologies and the Internet?
    Answer. The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of 
Internet connectivity. While many people have shifted their lives 
online, there are still more than 3.5 billion people, including more 
than 18 million Americans, who lack reliable Internet access. To help, 
we have partnered with the Information Technology Disaster Resource 
Center (ITDRC) and NetHope to provide Internet connectivity to 
communities most impacted by COVID-19. The goal of these partnerships 
is to better understand the unique barriers these communities face in 
getting online and to create the programs and infrastructure needed to 
increase the availability and affordability of high-quality Internet 
access.

   We're providing a $2 million grant to support ITDRC's 
        projectConnect initiative, which will help rural and 
        underserved communities in the U.S. gain access to the 
        internet. We're also sharing insights from Facebook Disease 
        Prevention Maps to help ITDRC better understand options for 
        Internet coverage in specific regions and more quickly 
        determine the type of support needed to address connectivity 
        challenges.

   We're providing a $260,000 grant to support NetHope's COVID-
        19 response. In addition, through sharing our Disease 
        Prevention Maps, we'll help NetHope identify the world's most 
        vulnerable and affected communities, including migrants and 
        refugees, in order to provide them with protective health 
        equipment and Internet connectivity kits.

    Question 4. One of my top priorities in Congress is supporting the 
STEM workforce and breaking down barriers to entering and succeeding in 
STEM fields. This includes ensuring we have a diverse STEM workforce 
that includes people of color and women. In the past several years, 
tech companies have begun releasing diversity reports and promising to 
do better at hiring Black and Latino workers, including women. In 
overall employment, Facebook is doing much better today in building a 
diverse workforce. However, in 2020, just 1.7 percent of Facebook's 
tech employees were Black, and only 4.3 percent were Latino, up 
slightly from 2019, but not substantially higher than six years ago in 
2014, despite the fact that the Latino population in the U.S. has 
surged during that time, including in Nevada.
    I know that tech companies in Nevada understand that by increasing 
the number of women and people of color in tech careers, we diversify 
the qualified labor pool that the U.S. relies on for innovation. This 
will help us maintain our global competitiveness and expand our 
economy, and I hope your companies redouble your efforts to this 
effect.

    Question 4a. Can you discuss the full set of 2020 data on women and 
the people of color who work at your companies, and would you please 
discuss what you are doing to increase these numbers in 2021?
    Answer. Diversity is extremely important to Facebook, and we 
recognize that we still have work to do. We value diversity because we 
understand that it leads to better decisions, better products, and 
better culture. It is also more reflective of our community on 
Facebook.
    Over the last seven years, Facebook has worked hard to make good on 
our commitment to diversity and inclusion. Our company has grown a lot. 
So has our approach. We are more focused than ever on creating a 
diverse workforce and supporting our people. They are the ones building 
better products and serving the communities on our platforms.
    Today, there are more people of diverse backgrounds and 
experiences, more people of color, more women in both technical and 
business roles, and more underrepresented people in leadership at 
Facebook. Most notably, we have achieved higher representation of women 
in leadership by focusing on hiring and growing female leaders within 
the company. Over the last several years, the majority of new female 
leaders were internally promoted. And importantly, even as we have 
grown, we have worked very hard on making Facebook a more welcoming, 
respectful workplace.
    Every year, Facebook publishes diversity data in a diversity 
report. Since 2014, when our strategic efforts began, we've made 
progress increasing the number of people from traditionally 
underrepresented groups employed at Facebook, but we recognize that we 
need to do more. In 2020, 37 percent of our workforce were women, up 
from 31 percent in 2014, and over 34 percent of our leadership are also 
women, up from 23 percent in 2014. We've almost doubled the percentage 
of Black employees--from 2 percent in 2014 to almost 4 percent in 2020, 
and we've increased the percentage of Hispanic employees from 4 percent 
in 2014 to over 6 percent in 2020. For more information, see https://
diversity.fb.com/read-report/.
    Looking forward, we are dedicated to prioritizing diverse hiring 
and are committed to our goal of having a company where, in the next 
five years, at least 50 percent of our workforce is comprised of women, 
people of color, and other underrepresented groups, and to increase 
people of color in leadership to 30 percent--including a 30 percent 
increase in Black leaders. When it comes to hiring, we have a diverse 
slate approach modeled after the Rooney Rule. This ensures that 
recruiters present qualified candidates from underrepresented groups to 
hiring managers looking to fill open roles, and it sets the expectation 
that hiring managers will consider candidates from underrepresented 
backgrounds when interviewing for an open position. We've seen steady 
increases in hiring rates for underrepresented people since we started 
testing this approach in 2015. We're also focused on increasing the 
diversity and inclusion capabilities of managers and leaders to build 
inclusive teams, departments, and organizations so that our products 
and community will benefit from the diverse perspectives of our people. 
We know that we still have a lot of work to do. We aren't where we need 
to be on diversity, but we are committed to improving, and we will work 
hard to get to where we know we need to be.

    Question 4b. What are you doing more broadly to support STEM 
education programs and initiatives for women and people of color, 
including young girls of color?
    Answer. In order to ensure that the next generation of tech 
innovators better reflects who we all are, it is critical that children 
from underrepresented communities be exposed to technology and computer 
science at the pre-secondary education level and remain engaged in 
those fields through high school and beyond.
    To that end, in 2012, we launched the Facebook Academy initiative, 
a six-week summer internship program for local teens near our 
headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Through that program, we have 
enrolled 100 high school students from our local communities.
    In 2015, we launched TechPrep, a resource hub created specifically 
for learners from underrepresented groups and their parents and 
guardians. It not only exposes students to computer science, but also 
introduces them to hundreds of different resources that fit their 
needs, based on age and skill level. TechPrep is available in both 
English and Spanish and enables students and their supporters to find 
local classes, workshops, and learning programs just by entering a zip 
code.
    We have created CodeFWD by Facebook, a free online education 
program that helps educators inspire underrepresented and female 4th-to 
8th-grade students to pursue computer programming. Teachers who 
participate in the program are eligible to receive a free coding robot 
and a classroom kit to further the learning process. We have 
participants from 43 states, including the Harlem Children's Zone, the 
Chicago Youth Center, Boys & Girls Clubs, and Latinitas, a charter 
school in Texas.
    In 2016, we announced a $15 million commitment to Code.org. This 
commitment has helped Code.org drive the development of curricula, 
public school teacher training, and student skills-building, 
particularly among traditionally underrepresented populations in 
engineering and computer science.
    Beyond the specific programming described above, we are continually 
investing in opportunities to bring computer science and STEM 
programming to middle-and high-school students. At the college and 
university level, we know that if we're going to hire people from a 
broader range of backgrounds, it's not enough to simply show up for 
recruiting events. We need to create practical training opportunities 
for these students to build on their academic experiences.
    Facebook University, our longest-running program in this area, is 
an eight-week paid internship program that enables students from 
underrepresented communities to get to know Facebook's people, 
products, and services by working across engineering, analytics, 
product design, operations, and global marketing solutions roles. 
Facebook University has graduated hundreds of students since its 
inception more than six years ago.
    We are also investing in partnerships with organizations that 
contribute to developing the long-term pool of talent such as Girls Who 
Code, Year Up, Ron Brown Scholars, T Howard Foundation, Posse 
Foundation, MLT, The Consortium, and Jopwell.
    We recently signed a partnership with CodePath.org, a non-profit 
whose goal is to ``eliminate educational inequity in technical 
education starting with college computer science (CS) education.'' This 
partnership will help CodePath reach 2,000 more computer science 
students at over 20 universities to increase students' preparation for 
the rigor of tech interviews at companies across the U.S. These include 
community colleges, HSIs, HBCUs, and other institutions that have 
traditionally attracted students of color.
    We have announced a new pilot program to bring Oculus Go units and 
virtual reality training to a number of HBCUs across the country, 
starting with Florida A&M. This will put technology and storytelling 
capabilities into the hands of students who will work alongside a team 
of professionals to create virtual campus tours for prospective 
students, for some of whom the cost of making a pre-enrollment visit is 
prohibitively expensive. This will not only help recruiting efforts but 
will also expose students at HBCUs to emerging technology.
    We have partnered with the UNCF to design courses for their HBCU CS 
Summer Academy. We will also continue to co-host the HBCU CS Faculty 
Institute, in partnership with UNCF's Career Pathways Initiative, as we 
have done since 2016. This program offers faculty important 
professional development opportunities.
    In our Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. offices, we have 
created Above and Beyond Computer Science, a volunteer-led program of 
Facebook engineers that helps prepare local college students for the 
technical interview process by reviewing computer science concepts and 
applied problem solving. Seventy percent of the students who have 
participated identify as from a population underrepresented in tech. 
Our focus is now on expanding the size of this initiative, including 
creating a remote, web-based pilot program.
    As part of our Engineer in Residence Program, Facebook software 
engineers teach indemand computer science coursework at historically 
Black-and Hispanic-serving institutions such as Morgan State 
University, Cal State Monterey Bay, and the New Jersey Institute of 
Technology, whose student populations are highly diverse. In addition 
to designing and teaching undergraduate computer science coursework 
customized for each university's unique context, Facebook Engineers in 
Residence also fulfill the responsibilities of an adjunct faculty 
member: hosting office hours, grading, managing teaching assistants, 
facilitating mock interviews, and providing networking and mentoring 
opportunities for students.
    For three years running, Facebook has also been the title sponsor 
of the ASBC HBCU College Festival, the Nation's largest such festival, 
organized by the Alfred Street Baptist Church and the ASBC Foundation. 
During the 2018 festival alone, 2,117 instant offers for admission to 
HBCUs were made, and $4.8 million in scholarships were awarded.

    Question 5. To continue being the most innovative country in the 
world, we need to maintain a workforce that can innovate. By 2026, the 
Department of Labor projects there will be 3.5 million computing-
related jobs, yet our current education pipeline will only fill 19 
percent of those openings. While other countries have prioritized STEM 
education as a national security issue, collaborating with non-profits 
and industry, the United States has mostly pursued an approach that 
does not meaningfully include such partnerships. The results of such a 
strategy are clear. A recent study found that less than half of K-12 
students are getting any cyber related education, despite a growing 
demand for cyber professionals, both in national security fields and in 
the private sector.

    Question 5a. What role can Facebook play in helping the United 
States boost its competitiveness in STEM fields, so that our economy 
can better compete with others around the globe?
    Answer. Please see the response to your Question 4(b).
                                 ______
                                 
              Facebook's Civil Rights Audit--Final Report
                              July 8, 2020
                           Table of Contents

About

Acknowledgements

Introduction by Laura W. Murphy

Chapter One: Civil Rights Accountability Structure

Chapter Two: Elections & Census 2020

Chapter Three: Content Moderation & Enforcement

Chapter Four: Diversity & Inclusion

Chapter Five: Advertising Practices

Chapter Six: Algorithmic Bias

Chapter Seven: Privacy
                                 ______
                                 
                      About the Civil Rights Audit
    This investigation into Facebook's policies and practices began in 
2018 at the behest and encouragement of the civil rights community and 
some members of Congress, proceeded with Facebook's cooperation, and is 
intended to help the company identify, prioritize, and implement 
sustained and comprehensive improvements to the way it impacts civil 
rights.
    The Audit was led by Laura W. Murphy, a civil rights and civil 
liberties leader, along with a team from civil rights law firm Relman 
Colfax, led by firm partner Megan Cacace.
    During the first six months of the audit, Laura W. Murphy 
interviewed and gathered the concerns of over 100 civil rights 
organizations. Over the course of the Audit's two year engagement, that 
number exceeded 100 organizations, hundreds of advocates and several 
members of Congress. The focus areas for the audit, which were informed 
by those interviews, were described in the first preliminary audit 
report, released in December 2018. That was followed by a second update 
in July 2019, which identified areas of increasing concern for the 
Auditors. This third report will be the Auditors' final analysis.
    The Civil Rights Audit is not an audit of Facebook's performance as 
compared to its tech industry peers. In some areas it may outperform 
peers with respect to civil rights, and in other areas, it may not. The 
Auditors are not privy to how other companies operate and therefore do 
not draw comparisons in this report. The scope of the work on the Audit 
was focused only on the U.S. and the core Facebook app (rather than 
Instagram, WhatsApp, or other Facebook, Inc. products).
                            Acknowledgements
    The Auditors would like to thank the Civil Rights Audit support 
team from Facebook: Lara Cumberland, Ashley Finch, Trustin Varnado, 
Soumya Venkat, Shana B. Edwards, and Ruchika Budhraja for facilitating 
our work with Facebook and for their intelligence, determination and 
commitment to this task. Also, we would like to thank the External 
Affairs team, especially Lindsay Elin and Monique Dorsainvil for their 
work getting the Audit off the ground and also for their intelligence, 
determination and commitment to the Audit as well. A special thanks to 
Sheryl Sandberg for her ongoing leadership and support throughout this 
important process over the last two years.
    The Auditors would like to acknowledge Dalia Hashad and Tanya Clay 
House, consultants to Laura Murphy & Associates.
    The Auditors would also like to thank the team from Relman Colfax, 
which included Stephen Hayes, Eric Sublett, Alexa Milton, Tanya Sehgal, 
and Zachary Best.
                    Introduction by Laura W. Murphy
    This report marks the end of a two-year audit process that started 
in May of 2018 and was led by me and supported by Megan Cacace, a 
partner at the civil rights law firm Relman Colfax (along with a team 
from Relman Colfax). The report is cumulative, building on two previous 
updates that were published in December 2018 and June 2019.
    The Audit began at the behest of civil rights organizations and 
members of Congress, who recognized the need to make sure important 
civil rights laws and principles are respected, embraced, and robustly 
incorporated into the work at Facebook.
    Civil rights groups have been central to the process, engaging 
tirelessly and consistently in the Audit effort. We interviewed and 
solicited input from over 100 civil rights and social justice 
organizations, hundreds of advocates and several members of Congress. 
These groups championed the Audit as a collaborative and less 
adversarial mechanism for effecting systemic change at Facebook. They 
pointed out that civil rights challenges emerge in almost every aspect 
of the company, from its products to its Community Standards and 
enforcement practices.
    At the outset, the groups identified the topics on which they 
wanted Facebook's greater focus, including voter suppression and voter 
information, building a civil rights accountability infrastructure, 
content moderation and enforcement (including hate speech and 
harassment), advertising targeting and practices, diversity and 
inclusion, fairness in algorithms and the civil rights implications of 
privacy practices. All of those topics are addressed in this final 
report--with varying degrees of depth because of time limitations--in 
addition to new topics we've added to the scope, including COVID-19 and 
the 2020 census.
    The Civil Rights Audit was not limited to racial justice issues. 
Civil rights are the rights of individuals to be free from unfair 
treatment or discrimination in the areas of education, employment, 
housing, credit, voting, public accommodations, and more--based on 
certain legally-protected characteristics identified in a variety of 
state and Federal laws. Those protected classes include race, sex, 
sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, national origin, 
religion, and age, among other characteristics. Our work applies to all 
of those groups. Our work also applies to every user of Facebook who 
will benefit from a platform that reduces discrimination, builds 
inclusion and tamps down on hate speech activity.
    When I first started on this project, there was no commitment to 
publish reports and top management was not actively engaged. With 
pressure from advocates, that changed. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl 
Sandberg deserves kudos for taking over as the point person for this 
work and developing important relationships with civil rights leaders. 
She also enlisted many other senior executives in this work, including 
CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Throughout the Audit process, Facebook had dozens 
of interactions with a broad array of civil rights leaders, resulting 
in more face-to-face contact with Facebook executives than ever before. 
This Audit enabled groundbreaking convenings with civil right leaders 
at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, CA, in Atlanta, GA and in 
Washington, DC.
    Many Facebook staff supported the work of Megan Cacace and myself 
(the Auditors). The Auditors were assigned a three-person full-time 
program management team, a partially dedicated team of 15+ employees 
across product, policy, and other functions--and the ongoing support of 
a team of Executives who, in addition to their full-time positions, sit 
on the Civil Rights Task Force. It is also worth noting that, since the 
Audit started, the External Affairs team that manages relationships 
with the civil rights community has grown in both size and resources.
    This collective effort yielded a number of positive outcomes for 
civil rights that we detail in the report.
The Seesaw of Progress and Setbacks
    The purpose of this Audit has always been to ensure that Facebook 
makes real and lasting progress on civil rights, and we do believe 
what's listed below illustrates progress. Facebook is in a different 
place than it was two years ago--some teams of employees are asking 
questions about civil rights issues and implications before launching 
policies and products. But as I've said throughout this process, this 
progress represents a start, not a destination.
    While the audit process has been meaningful, and has led to some 
significant improvements in the platform, we have also watched the 
company make painful decisions over the last nine months with real 
world consequences that are serious setbacks for civil rights.
    The Auditors believe it is important to acknowledge that the Civil 
Rights Audit was a substantive and voluntary process and that the 
company used the process to listen, plan and deliver on various 
consequential changes that will help advance the civil rights of its 
users, including but not limited to:

   Reaching a historic civil rights settlement in March 2019, 
        under which Facebook committed to implement a new advertising 
        system so advertisers running U.S. housing, employment, and 
        credit ads will no longer be allowed to target by age, gender, 
        or zip code--and Facebook agreed to a much smaller set of 
        targeting categories overall. Since then, the company has 
        delivered on its commitment and gone above and beyond the 
        settlement with additional transparency and targeting measures 
        that are outlined in the report.

   Expanding their voter suppression policies. When we started 
        the Audit process in 2018, Facebook had a voter suppression 
        policy in place, but it was more limited. At our urging, the 
        policy is now much more expansive and includes threats that 
        voting will result in adverse law enforcement consequences or 
        statements that encourage coordinated interference in 
        elections. In addition, the company adopted a new policy 
        prohibiting threats of violence relating to voting, voter 
        registration or the outcome of elections. Facebook has engaged 
        two voting rights expert consultants to work with and train the 
        policy, product, and operations teams responsible for enforcing 
        against voter suppression. Nonetheless, recent decisions about 
        Trump posts related to mail-in-ballots in Michigan and Nevada 
        on May 20 and California on May 26 threaten that progress and 
        permit others to use the platform to spread damaging 
        misinformation about voting. Several other voting changes are 
        identified in the elections chapter of the report.

   Creating a robust census interference policy. Facebook 
        developed robust policies to combat census interference. It has 
        worked closely with the civil rights community to help ensure 
        that the constitutionally mandated census count isn't tainted 
        by malicious actors spreading false information or engaging in 
        campaigns of intimidation designed to discourage participation. 
        Facebook has also engaged a census expert who consults with and 
        trains policy, product, and operations teams responsible for 
        enforcing against census suppression.

   Taking steps to build greater civil rights awareness and 
        accountability across the company on a long-term basis. 
        Facebook has acknowledged that no one on its senior leadership 
        team has expertise in civil rights. Thus, the Auditors are 
        heartened that Facebook has committed to hiring an executive at 
        the VP level to lead its work on civil rights. This person will 
        have expertise in civil rights law and policy and will be 
        empowered to develop processes for identifying and addressing 
        civil rights risks before products and policies are launched. 
        The Civil Rights VP will have dedicated program management 
        support and will work to build out a long-term civil rights 
        infrastructure and team. The company also committed to 
        developing and launching civil rights training for several 
        groups of employees, including the Civil Rights Task Force, 
        which is made up of senior leadership across key verticals in 
        the company. These commitments must be approached with urgency.

   Improved Appeals and Penalties process. Facebook adopted 
        several procedural and transparency changes to how people are 
        penalized for what they post on Facebook. For example, the 
        company has introduced an ``account status'' feature that 
        allows users to view prior Community Standards violations, 
        including which Community Standard was violated, as well as an 
        explanation of restrictions imposed on their account and 
        details on when the restrictions will expire.

   More frequent consultations with civil rights leaders. 
        Facebook leadership and staff has more consistently engaged 
        with leaders in the civil rights community and sought their 
        feedback, especially in the voting and census space.

   Changing various content moderation practices, including an 
        expanded policy that bans explicit praise, support and 
        representation of white nationalism and white separatism, and a 
        new policy that prohibits content encouraging or calling for 
        the harassment of others, which was a top concern of activists 
        who are often targeted by coordinated harassment campaigns. 
        Facebook also launched a series of pilots to combat hate speech 
        enforcement errors, a well-documented source of frustration for 
        activists and other users who condemn hate speech and violence 
        to be incorrectly kicked off the platform.

   Taking meaningful steps to create a more diverse and 
        inclusive senior leadership team and culture. It has, for 
        example, elevated the role of the Chief Diversity Officer to 
        report directly to the Chief Operating Officer and to play an 
        active role in key executive decision meetings--and to increase 
        the number of leadership positions held by people of color by 
        30 percent, including 30 percent more Black people, over the 
        next five years.

   Investing in diverse businesses and vendors. Facebook has 
        made commitments to partner with minority vendors and has made 
        more funding available for minority businesses and social 
        justice groups, including a recent announcement that it will 
        spend at least $100 million annually with Black-owned 
        suppliers. This is part of the company's effort to double 
        annual spending with U.S. companies certified as minority, 
        women, veteran, LGBTQ, or disabled-owned suppliers to $1 
        billion by the end of 2021. Facebook has also committed to 
        support a $100 million investment in Black-owned small 
        businesses, content creators and non-profits who use the 
        platform.

   Investing in a dedicated team to focus on studying 
        responsible Artificial Intelligence methodologies and building 
        stronger internal systems to address algorithmic bias.

   Implementing significant changes to privacy policies and 
        systems as a result of the Federal Trade Commission settlement 
        that includes a privacy review of every new or modified 
        product, service or practice before it is implemented.

    With each success the Auditors became more hopeful that Facebook 
would develop a more coherent and positive plan of action that 
demonstrated, in word and deed, the company's commitment to civil 
rights. Unfortunately, in our view Facebook's approach to civil rights 
remains too reactive and piecemeal. Many in the civil rights community 
have become disheartened, frustrated and angry after years of 
engagement where they implored the company to do more to advance 
equality and fight discrimination, while also safeguarding free 
expression. As the final report is being issued, the frustration 
directed at Facebook from some quarters is at the highest level seen 
since the company was founded, and certainly since the Civil Rights 
Audit started in 2018.
    The Auditors vigorously advocated for more and would have liked to 
see the company go further to address civil rights concerns in a host 
of areas that are described in detail in the report. These include but 
are not limited to the following:

   A stronger interpretation of its voter suppression 
        policies--an interpretation that makes those policies effective 
        against voter suppression and prohibits content like the Trump 
        voting posts--and more robust and more consistent enforcement 
        of those policies leading up to the U.S. 2020 election.

   More visible and consistent prioritization of civil rights 
        in company decision-making overall.

   More resources invested to study and address organized hate 
        against Muslims, Jews and other targeted groups on the 
        platform.

   A commitment to go beyond banning explicit references to 
        white separatism and white nationalism to also prohibit express 
        praise, support and representation of white separatism and 
        white nationalism even where the terms themselves are not used.

   More concrete action and specific commitments to take steps 
        to address concerns about algorithmic bias or discrimination.

    This report outlines a number of positive and consequential steps 
that the company has taken, but at this point in history, the Auditors 
are concerned that those gains could be obscured by the vexing and 
heartbreaking decisions Facebook has made that represent significant 
setbacks for civil rights.
    Starting in July of 2019, while the Auditors were embarking on the 
final phase of the audit, civil rights groups repeatedly emphasized to 
Facebook that their biggest concerns were that domestic political 
forces would use the platform as a vehicle to engage in voter and 
census suppression. They said that they did not want 2020 to be a 
repeat of 2016, the last presidential election, where minority 
communities--African Americans especially--were targeted for racial 
division, disinformation and voter suppression by Russian actors.
    The civil rights groups also knew that the Civil Rights Audit was 
not going to go on forever, and therefore, they sought a commitment 
from Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg that a robust civil rights 
infrastructure be put in place at Facebook.
    Soon after these civil rights priorities were relayed by the 
Auditors, in September of 2019 Facebook's Vice President of Global 
Affairs and Communications, Nick Clegg, said that Facebook had been and 
would continue to exempt politicians from its third-party fact checking 
program. He also announced that the company had a standing policy to 
treat speech from politicians as newsworthy that should be seen and 
heard and not interfered with by Facebook unless outweighed by the risk 
of harm. The civil rights community was deeply dismayed and fearful of 
the impact of these decisions on our democratic processes, especially 
their effect on marginalized communities. In their view, Facebook gave 
the powerful more freedom on the platform to make false, voter-
suppressive and divisive statements than the average user.
    Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, in his October 2019 speech at 
Georgetown University began to amplify his prioritization of a 
definition of free expression as a governing principle of the platform. 
In my view as a civil liberties and civil rights expert, Mark elevated 
a selective view of free expression as Facebook's most cherished value. 
Although the speech gave a nod to ``voting as voice'' and spoke about 
the ways that Facebook empowers the average user, Mark used part of the 
speech to double down on the company's treatment of politicians' 
speech.
    The Auditors have expressed significant concern about the company's 
steadfast commitment since Mark's October 2019 Georgetown speech to 
protect a particular definition of free expression, even where that has 
meant allowing harmful and divisive rhetoric that amplifies hate speech 
and threatens civil rights. Elevating free expression is a good thing, 
but it should apply to everyone. When it means that powerful 
politicians do not have to abide by the same rules that everyone else 
does, a hierarchy of speech is created that privileges certain voices 
over less powerful voices. The prioritization of free expression over 
all other values, such as equality and non-discrimination, is deeply 
troubling to the Auditors.
    Mark Zuckerberg's speech and Nick Clegg's announcements deeply 
impacted our civil rights work and added new challenges to reining in 
voter suppression.
    Ironically, Facebook has no qualms about reining in speech by the 
proponents of the anti-vaccination movement, or limiting misinformation 
about COVID -19, but when it comes to voting, Facebook has been far too 
reluctant to adopt strong rules to limit misinformation and voter 
suppression. With less than five months before a presidential election, 
it confounds the Auditors as to why Facebook has failed to grasp the 
urgency of interpreting existing policies to make them effective 
against suppression and ensuring that their enforcement tools are as 
effective as possible. Facebook's failure to remove the Trump voting-
related posts and close enforcement gaps seems to reflect a statement 
of values that protecting free expression is more important than other 
stated company values.
    Facebook's decisions in May of 2020 to let stand on three posts by 
President Trump, have caused considerable alarm for the Auditors and 
the civil rights community. One post allowed the propagation of hate/
violent speech and two facilitated voter suppression. In all three 
cases Facebook asserted that the posts did not violate its Community 
Standards. The Auditors vigorously made known our disagreement, as we 
believed that these posts clearly violated Facebook's policies. These 
decisions exposed a major hole in Facebook's understanding and 
application of civil rights. While these decisions were made ultimately 
at the highest level, we believe civil rights expertise was not sought 
and applied to the degree it should have been and the resulting 
decisions were devastating. Our fear was (and continues to be) that 
these decisions establish terrible precedent for others to emulate.
    The Auditors were not alone. The company's decisions elicited 
uproar from civil rights leaders, elected officials and former and 
current staff of the company, forcing urgent dialogues within Facebook. 
Some civil rights groups are so frustrated that Facebook permitted 
these Trump posts (among other important issues such as removing hate 
speech), that they have organized in an effort to enlist advertisers to 
boycott Facebook. Worse, some civil rights groups have, at this 
writing, threatened to walk away from future meetings with Facebook.
    While Facebook has built a robust mechanism to actively root out 
foreign actors running coordinated campaigns to interfere with 
America's democratic processes, Facebook has made policy and 
enforcement choices that leave our election exposed to interference by 
the President and others who seek to use misinformation to sow 
confusion and suppress voting.
    Specifically, we have grave concerns that the combination of the 
company's decision to exempt politicians from fact-checking and the 
precedents set by its recent decisions on President Trump's posts, 
leaves the door open for the platform to be used by other politicians 
to interfere with voting. If politicians are free to mislead people 
about official voting methods (by labeling ballots illegal or making 
other misleading statements that go unchecked, for example) and are 
allowed to use not-so-subtle dog whistles with impunity to incite 
violence against groups advocating for racial justice, this does not 
bode well for the hostile voting environment that can be facilitated by 
Facebook in the United States. We are concerned that politicians, and 
any other user for that matter, will capitalize on the policy gaps made 
apparent by the president's posts and target particular communities to 
suppress the votes of groups based on their race or other 
characteristics. With only months left before a major election, this is 
deeply troublesome as misinformation, sowing racial division and calls 
for violence near elections can do great damage to our democracy.
    Nonetheless, there has also been positive movement in reaction to 
the uproar. On June 5, 2020, Mark Zuckerberg committed to building 
products to advance racial justice, and promised that Facebook would 
reconsider a number of existing Community Standards, including how the 
company treats content dealing with voter suppression and potential 
incitement of violence. He also promised to create a voting hub to 
encourage greater participation in the November 2020 elections, and 
provide access to more authoritative voting information.
    On June 26, 2020 Mark announced new policies dealing with voting on 
topics ranging from prohibitions against inflammatory ads, the labeling 
of voting posts, guidance on voter interference policy enforcement, 
processes for addressing local attempts to engage in voter suppression 
and labeling and transparency on newsworthiness decisions. The Auditors 
examine these policies at greater length later in this report (in the 
Elections and Census 2020 Chapter), but simply put: these announcements 
are improvements, depending on how they are enforced--with the 
exception of the voting labels, the reaction to which was more mixed.
    Nevertheless, Facebook has not, as of this writing, reversed the 
decisions about the Trump posts and the Auditors are deeply troubled by 
that because of the precedent they establish for other speakers on the 
platform and the ways those decisions seem to gut policies the Auditors 
and the civil rights community worked hard to get Facebook to adopt.
Where we go from here
    Facebook has a long road ahead on its civil rights journey, and 
both Megan Cacace and I have agreed to continue to consult with the 
company, but with the audit behind us, we are discussing what the scope 
of that engagement will look like. Sheryl Sandberg will continue to 
sponsor the work at the company. Mark Zuckerberg said that he will 
continue to revisit its voter suppression policies, as well as its 
policies relating to calls for violence by state actors.
    These policies have direct and consequential implications for the 
U.S. presidential election in November 2020, and we will be watching 
closely. The responsibility for implementing strong equality, non-
discrimination and inclusion practices rests squarely with the CEO and 
COO. They have to own it and make sure that managers throughout the 
company take responsibility for following through.
    As we close out the Audit process, we strongly encourage the 
company to do three things:

   Seriously consider, debate and make changes on the various 
        recommendations that Megan Cacace and I have shared throughout 
        the final report, as well as in previous reports. In 
        particular, it's absolutely essential that the company do more 
        to build out its internal civil rights infrastructure. More 
        expertise is needed in-house, as are more robust processes that 
        allow for the integration of civil rights perspectives.

   Be consistent and clear about the company's commitment to 
        civil rights laws and principles. When Congress recently and 
        pointedly asked Facebook if it is subject to the civil rights 
        mandates of the Federal Fair Housing Act, it vaguely asserted, 
        ``We have obligations under civil rights laws, like any other 
        company.'' In numerous legal filings, Facebook attempts to 
        place itself beyond the reach of civil rights laws, claiming 
        immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. 
        On the other hand, leadership has publicly stated that ``one of 
        our top priorities is protecting people from discrimination on 
        Facebook.'' And, as a result of settling four civil rights 
        lawsuits, the company has embraced civil rights principles in 
        redesigning its advertising system to prevent advertisers from 
        discriminating. Thus, what the Auditors have experienced is a 
        very inconsistent approach to civil rights. Facebook must 
        establish clarity about the company's obligations to the spirit 
        and the letter of civil rights laws.

   Address the tension of civil rights and free speech head on. 
        Mark's speech at Georgetown seems to represent a turning point 
        for the company, after which it has placed greater emphasis on 
        free expression. But Megan and I would argue that the value of 
        non-discrimination is equally important, and that the two need 
        not be mutually exclusive. As a longtime champion of civil 
        rights and free expression I understand the crucial importance 
        of both. For a 21st century American corporation, and for 
        Facebook, a social media company that has so much influence 
        over our daily lives, the lack of clarity about the 
        relationship between those two values is devastating. It will 
        require hard balancing, but that kind of balancing of rights 
        and interests has been part of the American dialogue since its 
        founding and there is no reason that Facebook cannot harmonize 
        those values, if it really wants to do so.

    In publishing an update on our work in June 2019, I compared 
Facebook's progress to climbing a section of Mount Everest: the company 
had made progress, but had certainly not reached the summit. As I close 
out the Civil Rights Audit with this report, many in the civil rights 
community acknowledge that progress has been made, but many feel it has 
been inadequate. In our view Facebook has made notable progress in some 
areas, but it has not yet devoted enough resources or moved with 
sufficient speed to tackle the multitude of civil rights challenges 
that are before it. This provokes legitimate questions about Facebook's 
full-throated commitment to reaching the summit, i.e., fighting 
discrimination, online hate, promoting inclusion, promoting justice and 
upholding civil rights. The journey ahead is a long one that will 
require such a commitment and a reexamination of Facebook's stated 
priorities and values.
           Chapter One: Civil Rights Accountability Structure
    As outlined in the last audit report, the civil rights community 
has long recognized the need for a permanent civil rights 
accountability structure at Facebook. Facebook has acknowledged that it 
must create internal systems and processes to ensure that civil rights 
concerns based on race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, 
disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, and other 
categories are proactively identified and addressed in a comprehensive 
and coordinated way before products and policies are launched, rather 
than met with reactive, piecemeal, or ad hoc measures after civil 
rights impacts have already been felt. The Auditors strongly believe 
that respecting, embracing and upholding civil rights is both a moral 
and business imperative for such a large and powerful global social 
media company.
    For the duration of their engagement with Facebook, the Auditors 
have not just reviewed Facebook's policies and practices relating to 
civil rights, but have also vigorously elevated real-time civil rights 
concerns that they identified and/or that were raised by the civil 
rights community. The Auditors played a crucial role in encouraging 
Facebook to address those concerns. With the Audit coming to an end, 
calls for an effective civil rights infrastructure have only become 
louder.
    Last year, the company took important, initial steps toward 
building the foundation for a civil rights accountability structure. It 
created a Civil Rights Task Force led by Sheryl Sandberg, committed to 
providing civil rights training for employees, and agreed to add more 
civil rights expertise to its team. The Auditors and the civil rights 
community acknowledged Facebook's progress, but made it clear that more 
needed to be done. Improving upon accountability efforts initiated in 
2019 has been a critical focus for the Auditors since the last audit 
report, and Facebook agrees that having an infrastructure in place to 
support civil rights work long-term is critical now that the formal 
audit is over.
    This section provides updates on the commitments Facebook made in 
2019, and describes the progress Facebook has since made in continuing 
to build out its civil rights accountability infrastructure. It also 
identifies where the Auditors think Facebook has not gone far enough 
and should do more.
    While Facebook should be credited for the improvements it has made 
since the previous report the Auditors urge Facebook to continue to 
build out its civil rights infrastructure so that it effectively 
surfaces and addresses civil rights issues at a level commensurate with 
the scale and scope of Facebook's reach. Given the breadth and depth of 
Facebook's reach and its impact on people's lives, Facebook's platform, 
policies, and products can have significant civil rights implications 
and real-world consequences. It is critical that Facebook establish a 
structure that is equal to the task.
A. Update on Prior Commitments
    Last year, Facebook made four commitments to lay the foundation for 
a civil rights accountability structure: (1) create a Civil Rights Task 
Force designed to continue after the Audit ends; (2) cement Sheryl 
Sandberg's leadership of the Task Force; (3) onboard civil rights 
expertise; and (4) commit to civil rights training. Facebook is 
currently progressing on all four commitments.
    Led by Sheryl Sandberg, the Civil Rights Task Force continues to 
serve as a forum for leaders of key departments within the company to 
discuss civil rights issues, identify potential solutions, share 
lessons learned, and engage in cross-functional coordination and 
decision-making on civil rights issues. According to Facebook, the Task 
Force has discussed issues, including new policies and product 
features, stronger processes that the company could implement, and 
recent concerns raised by external stakeholders, including civil rights 
advocates. The membership of the Task Force has evolved over the last 
year; Facebook reports that it now includes both:

   Decision-makers and executives overseeing departments such 
        as Product, Advertising, Diversity & Inclusion, Legal, and 
        Policy and Communications.

   A cross-functional team of product and policy managers that 
        have been responsible for the implementation of several 
        commitments listed in the previous report as well as a subset 
        of new commitments made in this report. This group represents 
        various functions including key teams working on elections, 
        hate speech, algorithmic bias, and advertising.

    Facebook reports that since March 2019, members of the Task Force 
have consistently met on a monthly basis. The Task Force's efforts over 
the past year include:

   Supporting the development of Facebook's new census 
        interference policy by engaging with key questions regarding 
        the scope and efficacy of the policy.

   Engaging with the civil rights community in various forums 
        including Facebook's first ever public civil rights convening 
        in Atlanta in September 2019 and in working sessions with the 
        Auditors and sub-groups within the Task Force over the last 12 
        months.

   Driving cross-functional coordination across teams so that 
        Facebook could be more responsive to stakeholder requests and 
        concerns. For example, Facebook reports that in 2020 a subset 
        of the Task Force has met weekly with subject matter experts 
        from policy, product and operations to specifically address and 
        make progress on a set of voter suppression proposals suggested 
        by the Auditors.

   Advocating for and supporting all of the work behind the 
        Civil Rights Audit--and helping to remove internal barriers to 
        progress.

   Developing the strategy and implementation plan for several 
        of the key commitments outlined in this report, including the 
        implementation of Facebook's census policy and the new 
        commitments outlined in the Elections and Census Chapter below.

    Facebook also has begun to increase its in-house civil rights 
expertise. It has hired voting and census expert consultants, who are 
developing trainings for key employees and will be supporting efforts 
to prevent and address voting/census suppression and misinformation on 
the platform. In addition, Facebook has started to embed civil rights 
knowledge on core teams. As discussed in more detail below, the Audit 
Team maintains that bringing civil rights knowledge in-house is a 
critical component of the accountability structure and encourages 
Facebook to continue to onboard civil rights expertise.
    In an effort to better equip employees to identify and address 
civil rights issues, Facebook committed that key employees would 
undergo customized civil rights training. Civil rights law firm Relman 
Colfax and external voting rights and census experts are working with 
Facebook's internal Learning and Development team to develop and launch 
these trainings, which will be developed in 2020. The civil rights 
trainings include (1) core training on key civil rights concepts and 
applications that will be available to all employees; (2) in-depth 
census and voting-related trainings targeted to key employees working 
in that space; and (3) customized in-person civil rights training for 
groups of employees in pivotal roles, including members of the Civil 
Rights Task Force. (All of these trainings are in addition to the fair 
housing civil rights training Facebook will be receiving from the 
National Fair Housing Alliance as part of the settlement of the 
advertising discrimination lawsuits, discussed in the Advertising 
Chapter below.)
B. New Commitments and Developments
    Since the last Audit Report, Facebook is now committing to expand 
its existing accountability structure in several key ways.
    First, Facebook has created a senior (Vice President) civil rights 
leadership role--a civil rights expert who will be hired to develop and 
oversee the company's civil rights accountability efforts, and help 
instill civil rights best practices within the company. The civil 
rights leader is authorized and expected to:

   identify proactive civil rights priorities for the company 
        and guide the implementation of those priorities;

   develop systems, processes or other measures to improve the 
        company's ability to spot and address potential civil rights 
        implications in products and policies before they launch; and

   give voice to civil rights risks and concerns in 
        interactions with leadership, executives, and the Task Force.

    Unlike the Task Force, cross functional teams, and embedded 
employees with civil rights backgrounds who have other primary 
responsibilities, the civil rights leader's job will center around the 
leader's ability to help the company proactively identify and address 
civil rights issues.
    From the beginning, the civil rights leader will have dedicated 
cross-functional coordination and project management support, in 
addition to the support of Sheryl Sandberg, the Civil Rights Task Force 
and Facebook's External Affairs policy team, which works closely and 
has relationships with civil rights stakeholders and groups. Facebook 
will continue to engage Laura Murphy and outside civil rights counsel 
Relman Colfax on a consulting basis to provide additional civil rights 
guidance and resources. In addition to these initial resources, the 
civil rights leader will be authorized to assess needs within the 
company and build out a team over time.
    Second, Facebook has committed to developing systems and processes 
to help proactively flag civil rights considerations for its product 
and policy teams.
1. Policy Review
    Civil rights input is critical to Facebook's policy development 
process--the process by which Facebook writes new rules or updates 
existing ones to govern the type of content that is and is not 
permitted on the platform. To help ensure civil rights considerations 
are recognized and addressed in the policy development process, the 
civil rights leader will have visibility into the content policy 
development pipeline. In cases where a policy could have civil rights 
implications, the civil rights leader: (i) will be part of the working 
group developing that policy; and (ii) will have the opportunity to 
voice civil rights concerns directly to policy leadership before the 
policy is launched and when policy enforcement decisions that rely on 
cross-functional input are escalated internally.
2. Product Review
    An important element of an effective civil rights infrastructure is 
a system for identifying civil rights risks or considerations at the 
front end and throughout the product development process. Facebook is 
doing two things in this area:

 (i)  Civil Rights Screening: Through the Audit, Facebook has committed 
        to embedding civil rights screening criteria within certain 
        existing product review processes so that teams can better 
        identify and evaluate potential civil rights concerns. As a 
        starting point, the Auditors have worked to develop civil 
        rights issue-spotting questions that teams working on products 
        relating to advertising, election integrity, algorithmic 
        fairness, and content distribution (e.g., News Feed) will embed 
        into existing product review processes. Currently, all but one 
        of the product review processes these questions will be 
        inserted into are voluntary, rather than mandated reviews 
        required of all products. That being said, Facebook has 
        authorized the civil rights leader to look for ways to further 
        develop or improve civil rights screening efforts, and provide 
        input into review processes both to help make sure civil rights 
        risks are correctly identified and to assist teams in 
        addressing concerns raised.

(ii)  Responsible Innovation: Independent of the Audit, Facebook has 
        been building out a full-time, permanent team within the 
        Product organization that is focused on Responsible 
        Innovation--that is, helping to ensure that Facebook's products 
        minimize harm or negative impacts and maximize good or positive 
        impacts. The Responsible Innovation team's stated priorities 
        include: (a) developing trainings and tools that product teams 
        can use to identify and mitigate potential harms (including 
        civil rights impacts) early on in product development; (b) 
        helping employees understand where to go and what to do if 
        concerns are identified; (c) tracking potential harms 
        identified across products and supporting escalation paths to 
        help ensure risks are effectively addressed; and (d) engaging 
        with outside experts and voices to provide input and subject 
        matter expertise to help product teams integrate diverse 
        perspectives into their product development process.

    Facebook indicates that the Responsible Innovation team is growing 
but currently consists of engineers, researchers, designers, policy 
experts, anthropologists, ethicists, and diversity, equity, and 
inclusion experts. The Auditors met with key members of the team, and 
discussed the importance of avoiding civil rights harms in product 
development. The Responsible Innovation team is focusing on a handful 
of key issues or concepts as it builds out its infrastructure; fairness 
(which includes civil rights) is one of them, along with freedom of 
expression, inclusive access, economic opportunity, individual 
autonomy, privacy, and civic participation.
    While not limited to civil rights or designed as a civil rights 
compliance structure specifically, in the Auditors' view, Responsible 
Innovation is worth mentioning here because the trainings, tools, and 
processes that team is looking to build may help surface civil rights 
considerations across a wider set of products than the subset of 
product review processes into which Facebook has agreed to insert civil 
rights screening questions (as discussed above). The Auditors also 
recommend that Facebook add personnel with civil rights expertise to 
this team.
C. Recommendations from the Auditors
    The Auditors recognize Facebook's commitments as important steps 
forward in building a long-term civil rights accountability structure. 
These improvements are meaningful, but, in the Auditors' view, they are 
not sufficient and should not be the end of Facebook's progress.
1. Continue to Onboard Expertise
    In keeping with Facebook's 2019 commitment to onboard civil rights 
expertise, the Auditors recommend that Facebook continue to bring civil 
rights expertise in-house--especially on teams whose work is likely to 
have civil rights implications (such as elections, hate speech, 
advertising, algorithmic bias, etc.). In the Auditors' view, the more 
Facebook is able to embed civil rights experts onto existing teams, the 
better those teams will be at identifying and addressing civil rights 
risks, and the more civil rights considerations will be built into the 
company's culture and DNA.
2. Build Out the Civil Rights Leader's Team
    The Auditors also believe that the civil rights leader will need 
the resources of a team to meet the demands of the role, and allow for 
effective civil rights screenings of products and policies.
    To the first point, the Auditors believe a team is necessary to 
ensure the civil rights leader has the capacity to drive a proactive 
civil rights accountability strategy, as opposed to simply reacting to 
concerns raised externally or through review processes. There is a 
difference between working full-time (as members of the civil rights 
leader's team) on identifying and resolving civil rights concerns, and 
having civil rights be one component of a job otherwise focused on 
other areas (as is the case for members of the Civil Rights Task 
Force). While the Auditors recognize that Facebook has agreed to allow 
the civil rights leader to build a team over time, they are concerned 
that without more resources up front, the leader will be overwhelmed 
before there is any opportunity to do so. From the Auditors' vantage 
point, the civil rights leader's responsibilities--identifying civil 
rights priorities, designing macro-level systems for effective civil 
rights product reviews, participating in policy development, being 
involved in real-time escalations on precedential policy enforcement 
decisions, and providing guidance on civil rights issues raised by 
stakeholders--is far more than any one person can do successfully, even 
with support.
    To the second point, equipping the civil rights leader with the 
resources of a team would likely make civil rights review processes 
more successful. It would allow those reviews to be conducted and/or 
supervised by people with civil rights backgrounds who sit outside the 
product and policy teams and whose job performance depends on 
successfully flagging risks--as opposed to having reviews done by those 
with different job goals (such as launching products) which may not 
always align with civil rights risk mitigation. The Auditors believe 
that for review processes to be most effective, those conducting civil 
rights screens must be able (through internal escalation if necessary) 
to pause or stop products or policies from going live until civil 
rights concerns can be addressed. The civil rights leader (and those on 
his/her team) will be best equipped to do so because it is aligned with 
their job duties and incentives. Because the civil rights leader will 
not be able to personally supervise reviews effectively at the scale 
that Facebook operates (especially if further review processes are 
built out) a team seems mandatory.
3. Expand Civil Rights Product Review Processes
    The Auditors acknowledge that embedding civil rights considerations 
into existing (largely voluntary) product review processes relating to 
advertising, election integrity, algorithmic fairness, and News Feed is 
progress, and a meaningful step forward. But, as Facebook continues to 
develop its civil rights infrastructure, the Auditors recommend: (i) 
adopting comprehensive civil rights screening processes or programs 
that assess civil rights risks and implications across all products; 
and (ii) making such screens mandatory and able to require product 
changes.
    While Responsible Innovation is a positive development, it was not 
designed to replace a civil rights accountability infrastructure. The 
Responsible Innovation approach involves considering a host of 
dimensions or interests (which may be competing) and providing tools to 
help employees decide which interests should be prioritized and which 
should give way in making a given product decision. The framework does 
not dictate which dimensions need to be prioritized in which 
circumstances, and as a result, is not designed to ensure that civil 
rights concerns or impacts will be sufficient to require a product 
change or delay a product launch.
4. Require Civil Rights Perspective in Escalation of Key Content 
        Decisions
    Difficult content moderation questions--in particular those that 
involve gray areas of content policy or new applications not explicitly 
contemplated by existing policy language--are sometimes escalated to 
leadership. These ``escalations'' are typically reactive and time-
sensitive. But, as seen with recent decisions regarding President 
Trump's posts, escalations can have substantial and precedent-setting 
implications for how policies are applied in the future--including 
policies with significant civil rights impacts. To help prevent civil 
rights risks from being overlooked during this expedited 
``escalation,'' the Auditors recommend that the civil rights leader be 
an essential (not optional) voice in the internal escalation process 
for decisions with civil rights implications (as determined by the 
civil rights leader). To the Auditors, this means that the civil rights 
leader must be ``in the room'' (meaning in direct dialogue with 
decision-makers) when decisions are being made and have direct 
conversations with leadership.
5. Prioritize Civil Rights
    In sum, the Auditors' goal has long been to build a civil rights 
infrastructure at Facebook that ensures that the work of the Audit--the 
focused attention on civil rights concerns, and the company's 
commitment to listen, accept sometimes critical feedback, and make 
improvements--continues long after the formal Civil Rights Audit comes 
to a close. The Auditors recognizes that Facebook is on the path toward 
long-term civil rights accountability, but it is not there yet. We urge 
the company to build and infrastructure that is commensurate to the 
significant civil rights challenges the company encounters.
    The Auditors believe it is imperative that Facebook commit to 
building upon the foundation it has laid. It is critical that Facebook 
not only invest in its civil rights leader (and his or her team), in 
bringing on expertise, and in developing civil rights review processes, 
but it must also invest in civil rights as a priority. At bottom, all 
of these people, processes, and structures depend for their 
effectiveness on civil rights being vigorously embraced and championed 
by Facebook leadership and being a core value of the company.
                  Chapter Two: Elections & Census 2020
    With both a presidential election and a decennial census, 2020 is 
an incredibly important year for Facebook to focus on preventing 
suppression and intimidation, improving policy enforcement, and shoring 
up its defenses against coordinated threats and interference. As such, 
the Audit Team has prioritized Facebook's election and census policies, 
practices, and monitoring and enforcement infrastructure since the last 
report.
    The current COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on Americans' 
ability to engage in all forms of civic participation. Understandably, 
it has changed how elections and the census are carried out and has 
influenced the flow of information about how to participate in both. On 
social media, in particular, the pandemic has led candidates and 
elected officials to find new ways to reach their communities online, 
but it has also prompted misinformation and new tactics designed to 
suppress participation, making Facebook's preparation and 
responsiveness more important than ever.
    This chapter provides an update on Facebook's prior elections and 
census commitments (made in the June 2019 Audit Report), describes 
Facebook's response to the COVID-19 pandemic as it relates to elections 
and census, and details new commitments and developments. Facebook has 
made consequential improvements directed at promoting census and voter 
participation, addressing suppression, preventing foreign interference, 
and increasing transparency, the details of which are described below.
    This report is also transparent about the places where the Auditors 
believe that the company has taken harmful steps backward on 
suppression issues, primarily in its decision to exempt politicians' 
speech from fact checking, and its failure to remove viral posts, such 
as those by President Trump, that the Auditors (and the civil rights 
community) believe are in direct violation of the company's voter 
suppression policies.
A. Update on Prior Elections and Census Commitments
    In the June 2019 Audit Report, Facebook made commitments to develop 
or improve voting and census-related policies and build out its 
elections/census operations, resources, and planning. Updates on these 
commitments are provided below.
1. Policy Improvements

  (i)  Prohibiting Census Suppression and Interference. After listening 
        to repeated feedback and concern raised by stakeholders about 
        census interference on social media, in 2019, Facebook 
        committed to treating the 2020 census like an election, which 
        included developing and launching a census interference policy 
        designed to protect the census from suppression and 
        interference as the company has done for voting. Facebook made 
        good on its policy commitment. Through a months-long process 
        involving the Audit Team, the U.S. Census Bureau, civil rights 
        groups, and census experts, Facebook developed a robust census 
        interference policy, which was formally launched in December 
        2019.

     The census interference policy extends beyond mere 
        misrepresentations of how and when to fill out the census to 
        the types of threats of harm or negative consequences that 
        census experts identify as particularly dangerous and 
        intimidating forms of suppression--especially when targeted (as 
        they often are) toward specific communities. This new policy is 
        supported by both proactive detection technology and human 
        review, and violating content is removed regardless of who 
        posts it. Notably, the policy applies equally to content posted 
        by politicians and any other speakers on the platform.

     Specifically, Facebook's new census interference policy prohibits:

        Misrepresentation of the dates, locations, times and 
            methods for census participation;

        Misrepresentation of who can participate in the census 
            and what information and/or materials must be provided in 
            order to participate;

        Content stating that census participation may or will 
            result in law enforcement consequences;

        Misrepresentation of government involvement in the 
            census, including that an individual's census information 
            will be shared with another government agency; and

        Calls for coordinated interference that would affect an 
            individual's ability to participate in the census 
            (enforcement of which often requires additional information 
            and context).

     Many in the civil rights community and the U.S. Census Bureau 
        lauded the policy. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human 
        Rights described it as industry leading: ``the most 
        comprehensive policy to date to combat census interference 
        efforts on its platform,'' and the Census Bureau thanked 
        Facebook for the policy and its efforts to ``ensure a complete 
        and accurate 2020 Census.'' Others celebrated the policy while 
        taking a cautionary tone. Rashad Robinson of Color of Change 
        said, ``Facebook is taking an important step forward by 
        attempting to promote an accurate Census count, but success 
        will depend on consistent enforcement and implementation [. . 
        .] This updated policy is only as good as its enforcement and 
        transparency, which, to be clear, is an area that Facebook has 
        failed in the past.''

     Enforcement of the policy had an early setback, but according to 
        Facebook, has since improved. In March 2020, an ad was posted 
        by the Trump Campaign that appeared to violate the new census 
        interference policy, but it took Facebook over 24 hours to 
        complete its internal escalation review and reach its final 
        conclusion that the ad did, in fact, violate the new policy and 
        should be removed. The delay caused considerable concern within 
        the civil rights community (and among the Auditors)--concern 
        that Facebook's enforcement would negate the robustness of the 
        policy. After the incident, however, Facebook conducted an 
        internal assessment to identify what went wrong in its 
        enforcement/escalation process and make corrections. While 
        Facebook developed its census interference policy with expert 
        input, it is difficult to anticipate in advance all the 
        different ways census interference or suppression content could 
        manifest. Because the violating content in the ad took a form 
        that had not been squarely anticipated, Facebook's removal of 
        the ad was delayed. After this initial enforcement experience, 
        Facebook focused attention on ensuring that its enforcement 
        scheme is sufficiently nimble to promptly address interference 
        and suppression manifested in unanticipated ways.

     Since then, Facebook has identified and removed a variety of 
        content under the policy, including false assertions by 
        multiple public figures that only citizens may participate in 
        the census. Facebook has also demonstrated an improved ability 
        to adapt to unanticipated circumstances: as described in more 
        detail below, it has proactively identified and removed 
        violating content using the COVID-19 pandemic to suppress or 
        interfere with census participation--content which Facebook 
        could not have anticipated at the time the census interference 
        policy was developed.

(ii)  Policy Updates to Prevent Voter Intimidation. Since the 2016 
        election, Facebook has expanded its voter suppression policy to 
        prohibit:

        Misrepresentation of the dates, locations, and times, 
            and methods for voting or voter registration;

        Misrepresentation of who can vote, qualifications for 
            voting, whether a vote will be counted, and what 
            information and/or materials must be provided in order to 
            vote; and

        Threats of violence relating to voting, voter 
            registration, or the outcome of an election.

     The June 2019 Audit Report acknowledged, however, that further 
        improvements could be made to prevent intimidation and 
        suppression, which all too often is disproportionately targeted 
        to specific communities. Facebook committed to exploring 
        further policy updates, specifically updates directed at voter 
        interference and inflammatory ads.

     Since the last report, Facebook has further expanded its policies 
        against voter intimidation to now also prohibit:

        Content stating that voting participation may or will 
            result in law enforcement consequences (e.g., arrest, 
            deportation, imprisonment);

        Calls for coordinated interference that would affect an 
            individual's ability to participate in an election 
            (enforcement of which often requires additional information 
            and context); and

        Statements of intent or advocacy, calls to action, or 
            aspirational or conditional statements to bring weapons to 
            polling places (or encouraging others to do the same).

     These policy updates prohibit additional types of intimidation and 
        threats that can chill voter participation and stifle users 
        from exercising their right to vote.

  (iii)  Expansion of Inflammatory Ads Policy. In the June 2019 report, 
        Facebook committed to further refining and expanding the 
        Inflammatory Ads policy it adopted in 2018. That policy 
        prohibits certain types of attacks or fear-mongering claims 
        made against people based on their race, religion, or other 
        protected characteristics that would not otherwise be 
        prohibited under Facebook's hate speech policies. When the 
        policy was first adopted, it prohibited claims such as 
        allegations that a racial group will ``take over'' or that a 
        religious or immigrant group as a whole represents a criminal 
        threat.

        Facebook expanded its Inflammatory Ads policy (which 
            goes beyond its Community Standards for hate speech) on 
            June 26, 2020 to also prohibit ads stating that people 
            represent a ``threat to physical safety, health or 
            survival'' based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, 
            religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, 
            gender, gender identity, serious disease or disability, or 
            immigration status. Content that would be prohibited under 
            this policy include claims that a racial group wants to 
            ``destroy us from within'' or that an immigrant group ``is 
            infested with disease and therefore a threat to health and 
            survival of our community.'' The Auditors recognize this 
            expansion as progress and a step in the right direction. 
            The Auditors believe, however, that this expansion does not 
            go far enough in that it is limited to physical threats; it 
            still permits advertisers to run ads that paint minority 
            groups as a threat to things like our culture or values 
            (e.g., claiming a religious group poses a threat to the 
            ``American way of life.'' The Auditors are concerned that 
            allowing minority groups to be labeled as a threat to 
            important values or ideals in targeted advertising can be 
            equally dangerous and can lead to real-world harms, and the 
            Auditors urge Facebook to continue to explore ways to 
            expand this policy.

        As part of the same policy update, Facebook will also 
            prohibit ads with statements of inferiority, expressions of 
            contempt, disgust or dismissal and cursing when directed at 
            immigrants, asylum seekers, migrants, or refugees. (Such 
            attacks are already prohibited based on race, gender, 
            ethnicity, religious affiliation, caste, gender identity, 
            sexual orientation, and serious disease or disability.) The 
            Auditors believe this is an important and necessary policy 
            expansion, and are pleased that Facebook made the change.

(iv)  Don't Vote Ads Policy & Don't Participate in Census Ads Policy. 
        Through the Audit, Facebook committed in 2019 to launching a 
        ``Don't Vote Ads Policy''--a policy designed to prohibit ads 
        targeting the U.S. expressing suppressive messages encouraging 
        people not to vote, including the types of demobilizing ads 
        that foreign actors targeted to minority and other communities 
        in 2016. Facebook launched that policy in September 2019.

        In keeping with its commitment to civic groups and the 
            Census Bureau to treat the 2020 census like an election, 
            Facebook also created a parallel policy prohibiting ads 
            designed to suppress participation in the census through 
            messages encouraging people not to fill it out. Facebook 
            launched the parallel ``Don't Participate in Census Ads 
            Policy'' at the same time in September 2019.

        Together, these new ads policies prohibit ``ads 
            targeting the U.S. that portray voting or census 
            participation as useless or meaningless and/or advise users 
            not to vote or participate in a census.''
2. Elections & Census Operations, Resources, and Planning

    After the 2018 midterm elections, civil rights groups were 
encouraged by the operational resources Facebook placed in its war 
room, but expressed great concern that the war room capability was 
created just 30 days prior to Election Day in 2018. With that concern 
in mind, the Auditors urged Facebook to take a more proactive posture 
for the 2020 elections, and in the June 2019 Audit Report, Facebook 
communicated its plan to stand up a dedicated team focused on U.S. 
Elections and Census, supervised by a single manager in the U.S.

  (i)  24/7 Detection and Enforcement. In the lead up to the 2020 
        election and census, Facebook put dedicated teams and 
        technology in place 24/7 to detect and enforce its rules 
        against content that violates the voting and census 
        interference policies. The teams bring together subject matter 
        experts from across the company--including employees in threat 
        intelligence, data science, software engineering, research, 
        community operations and legal.

        Facebook reports that having these fully dedicated 
            teams in place allows them to: (1) conduct real-time 
            monitoring to find and quickly remediate potential harm, 
            including content that violates the company's policies on 
            voter suppression or hate speech; (2) investigate problems 
            quickly and take action when warranted; and (3) track 
            trends in adversarial behavior and spikes in volume that 
            are observed on the platform.

        Facebook's 24/7 detection and enforcement is further 
            supplemented by its Election Operations Center (``EOC'') 
            (formerly known as the war room), which allows for 
            increased coordination and rapid response when content 
            volumes and escalations are higher than normal (e.g., in 
            the days leading up to a presidential primary election). 
            The EOC was assembled during this election cycle for each 
            democratic presidential debate and has been in operation 
            for all primary elections. The company has used the debates 
            and primary season to refine playbooks and protocols for 
            improved operations.

        Prior to COVID-19 EOC personnel would come together in 
            the same physical rooms, but since the outbreak Facebook 
            has shifted to a virtual model, where the same teams 
            coordinate in real-time by video conference. Facebook 
            asserts that the groundwork laid prior to COVID-19 (e.g., 
            playbooks and protocols) have been important in ensuring 
            that remote work conditions have not had a negative impact 
            on the EOC's effectiveness.

  (ii)  New Partnerships. To enhance its elections and census 
        operations and resources, Facebook has also created new 
        partnerships. On the census side, Facebook has been working 
        closely with the Census Bureau to help ensure a fair and 
        accurate census, sharing information during weekly calls to 
        discuss emerging threats and to coordinate efforts to disrupt 
        attempted census interference. Facebook has also partnered with 
        the Census Bureau, civil rights groups, and non-profit 
        organizations with expertise reaching under-represented 
        communities to allow for increased monitoring and reporting of 
        Facebook content that appears to violate the company's census-
        related policies. Facebook provided these partners with tools 
        and training to enable them to monitor the platform in real 
        time for census interference and suppression, and flag content 
        that may violate Facebook's policies for review by Facebook's 
        operations team.

        Facebook has a similar program of partnership on the 
            voting side--partnering with voting rights and election 
            protection organizations and outfitting them with training 
            and Facebook tools that allow partners to conduct platform-
            wide searches, track content spreading online, and flag 
            potentially violating content. Content flagged by these 
            partners as violating can then be reviewed by trained 
            reviewers at Facebook. Facebook has expanded this program 
            for 2020, extending the opportunity to participate to more 
            than 30 voting rights and election protection groups.

        As stated in the 2019 audit report, Facebook continues 
            to engage with secretaries of state, elections directors, 
            and national organizing bodies such as the National 
            Association of Secretaries of State and the National 
            Association of State Election Directors. Facebook works 
            with these offices and organizations to help track 
            violating content and misinformation related to elections 
            and the census, so teams can review and take appropriate 
            action. The company also works directly with election 
            authorities to connect people with accurate information 
            about when and how to vote. Connecting people to accurate 
            voting information is especially critical in light of 
            COVID-19's impact on the 2020 election.

        Facebook has provided each of these reporting partners 
            (census protection groups, voting rights and election 
            protection groups, and state election officials) access to 
            CrowdTangle, (a free social media monitoring tool owned by 
            Facebook) to help them quickly identify misinformation and 
            voter and census interference and suppression. CrowdTangle 
            surfaces content from elected officials, government 
            agencies, colleges and universities, as well as local media 
            and other public accounts. They have also created several 
            public live displays that anyone can use, for example, a 
            display that shows what U.S. presidential candidates are 
            posting on Facebook and Instagram in one dashboard. In 
            addition to the 2020 presidential candidates, CrowdTangle 
            allows anyone to track what Senators, Representatives in 
            the House and Governors are posting on both their official 
            and campaign Pages.

  (iii)  Expert Consultants and Training. In response to concerns that 
        knowledge of civil rights, voting rights, the census process, 
        and forms of suppression and intimidation is critical to policy 
        development and enforcement strategies, Facebook agreed in 2019 
        to hire a voting rights consultant and a census consultant to 
        provide guidance and training to voting/census policy and ads 
        teams, content review supervisors, and those on internal 
        escalation teams in advance of the census and 2020 elections. 
        The training would cover topics such as the history of voter/
        census suppression, examples of suppression, and Facebook's 
        voting and census policies and escalation protocols. In 
        addition to training, the consultants would provide guidance on 
        policy gaps, surface voting/census related concerns raised by 
        external groups, and help advise the company in real time as 
        tricky voting/census-related questions are escalated 
        internally.

        Facebook has hired and onboarded Franita Tolson and 
            Justin Levitt as expert voting rights consultants, and for 
            the company's expert census consultant, it is working with 
            Beth Lynk from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human 
            Rights. Franita Tolson is a Professor at the USC Gould 
            School of Law, and focuses on voting rights, election law, 
            and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Justin Levitt 
            served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil 
            Rights of the U.S. Department of Justice, with voting 
            rights as one of his primary areas of focus. He is now a 
            Professor at Loyola School of Law. Beth Lynk is the Census 
            Counts Campaign Director at the Leadership Conference on 
            Civil and Human Rights.

        These three consultants have met with relevant internal 
            teams and begun preparing trainings. Beth Lynk will provide 
            supplemental training and ongoing guidance as Facebook 
            continues to enforce its census interference policy. 
            Franita Tolson is in the process of preparing a voting 
            training, which will be delivered in July 2020. Aside from 
            preparing trainings, the consultants will provide voting-
            related guidance to Facebook on an ongoing basis, including 
            support for the Election Operations Center.

        While the Auditors were disappointed that it took 
            longer than anticipated to hire and onboard expert 
            consultants, the Auditors also acknowledge that the delay 
            was due, in large part, to the fact that it took longer 
            than expected to compile a sufficiently large pool of 
            qualified applicants to conduct a thorough and inclusive 
            hiring process. While Facebook has thoughtfully engaged 
            with external voting rights and census advocates, the 
            Auditors believe that by not onboarding and embedding the 
            consulting experts before the end of 2019, as was 
            originally planned, Facebook lost meaningful opportunities 
            to integrate their guidance and advice into their policy 
            and enforcement decision-making process.
B. Response to COVID-19 Pandemic and Impact on Elections/Census
    The COVID-19 pandemic has had a monumental impact on our country 
and the world, and will likely continue to do so for some time. In 
addition to impacting lives, jobs, and our daily existences, the 
pandemic will have ripple effects on elections, voting, and the 
census--the full implications of which are not yet certain. 
Accordingly, while not a planned Audit Report topic, because of COVID-
19's potential impact on voting and the census, an update on Facebook's 
COVID response in these areas is warranted.
Impact on Voter/Census Suppression & Enforcement
    As the pandemic spread, Facebook recognized the possibility of new 
forms of voter and census suppression relating to the virus. Facebook 
focused resources on detecting such content and proactively provided 
content reviewers with clear enforcement guidance on how its policies 
applied to COVID to ensure that violating content would be removed. For 
example, Facebook took steps to ensure that content reviewers were 
trained to remove, as violations of Facebook's voter and census 
interference policies, false statements that the election or census had 
been cancelled because of COVID-19.
    Facebook has detected and removed various forms of suppressive 
content related to COVID, such as false statements about the timing of 
elections or methods for voting or participating in the census. 
Facebook says that from March to May 2020, it removed more than 100,000 
pieces of Facebook and Instagram content in the U.S. (a majority of 
which were COVID-related) for violating its voter interference 
policies--virtually all of which were removed proactively before being 
reported.
    While Facebook closed many of its physical content review locations 
as a result of the pandemic and sent contract content reviewers home 
for their own safety (while continuing to pay them), Facebook has made 
clear this shift should not negatively impact its ability to enforce 
elections and census-related policies. Facebook indicates that unlike 
some other policies, the content reviewers that help enforce Facebook's 
elections and census policies include full-time Facebook employees (in 
addition to contract reviewers) who are able to work remotely. 
Facebook's elections and census policies are also enforced in part via 
proactive detection, which is not impacted by the closing of content 
review sites.
    Because COVID-19 has resulted in changes to election times and 
voting methods, Facebook has focused on both removing voting 
misinformation and proactively disseminating correct voting 
information. This includes providing notices (via banners in News Feed) 
to users in areas where voting by mail is available to everyone, or 
where there have been last-minute changes to the election. For example, 
when the Ohio Primary was postponed at the last minute due to COVID-19 
concerns, Facebook worked with the Ohio Secretary of State's office and 
ran a notification at the top of the News Feeds of Ohio users on the 
original election date confirming that the election had been moved and 
providing a link to official Ohio elections information. Where election 
deadlines have been changed, Facebook has been incorporating those 
changes into its voting products and reminders so that users receive 
registration or election day information on the correct, updated dates.
    In order to prevent suppression and provide access to accurate 
information, Facebook has committed to continuing to focus attention 
and resources on COVID-19's implications for elections and the census. 
The company represents that it will continue to work with state 
election officials as they make plans for the fall, recognizing that 
COVID is likely to impact fall general elections as well.
C. New Elections/Census Developments and Commitments
    Since the last report, Facebook has made a number of improvements 
and new commitments related to promoting census and voter 
participation, addressing suppression, preventing foreign interference, 
and increasing transparency. These developments are detailed below.
1. Promoting Census Participation
    Facebook has taken a number of steps to proactively promote census 
participation. Because this is the first year that all households can 
complete the census online, Facebook has a new opportunity to spread 
awareness of the census and encourage participation. Working in 
partnership with the U.S. Census Bureau and other non-profits, Facebook 
launched notifications in the two weeks leading up to Census Day that 
appeared at the top of Facebook and Instagram feeds, reminding people 
to complete the census and describing its importance. The notifications 
also included a link to the Census Bureau's website to facilitate 
completion of the census. Between Facebook and Instagram, more than 11 
million people clicked on the notification link to access the Census 
Bureau's website where the census could be completed.
    Facebook has provided training to organizations leading get-out-
the-count outreach to under-represented and hard to count communities, 
as well as state and local governments, on how to best to leverage 
Facebook tools to encourage census participation. Facebook also 
committed $8.7M (in the form of monetary and ad credit donations) with 
the goal of supporting census coalitions conducting outreach to 
undercounted communities--African American, Latinx, Youth, Arab 
American, Native American, LGBTQ+, and Asian American communities and 
people with disabilities--to ensure an accurate count and broad 
national reach. Facebook recognizes that this support has likely been 
even more important to organizations as they shifted to digital 
outreach strategies and engagement in light of COVID-19. Facebook 
states that donations supported work intending to highlight the 
importance of completing the census, and provide information about how 
to get counted, and therefore were directed toward actions such as 
phone banking, peer-to peer messaging, and digital and media 
engagement.
2. Promoting Civic Participation
    Facebook has a host of products and programs focused on promoting 
civic participation. It has stated that it coordinates closely with 
election authorities to provide up-to-date information to its users.

  (i)  Election Day Reminders. On Election Day and the days leading up 
        to it, Facebook is reminding people about the election with a 
        notification at the top of their News Feed. These notices also 
        encourage users to make a post about voting and connect them to 
        election information. Facebook is issuing these reminders for 
        all elections that are municipal-wide or higher and cover a 
        population of more than 5,000 (even in years where there are no 
        national elections) and globally for all nationwide elections 
        considered free or partly-free by Freedom House (a trusted 
        third party entity that evaluates elections worldwide).

  (ii)  Facebook Voter Registration Drives. Facebook launches voter 
        registration reminders via top-of-Feed notifications that 
        provide voter registration information and deadlines, and 
        connect people directly to their state government's voter 
        registration websites (where online registration is available; 
        if online registration is not available, it links to a trusted 
        third-party website, such as TurboVote). These notices also 
        allow people to encourage their friends to register to vote via 
        custom News Feed tools.

  (iii)  Voting Information Center and Voter Participation Campaigns. 
        On June 17, Facebook announced its planned Voting Information 
        Center, which the company hopes will give millions of people 
        accurate information about voting and voting registration. The 
        company has set the goal of helping 4 million voters register 
        this year using Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, and also use 
        the Voting Information Center to help people get to the polls. 
        Facebook's goal is double the estimated 2 million people they 
        helped register in both 2018 and 2016.

        Facebook surveyed potential voters and 62 percent said 
            they believe people will need more information on how to 
            vote this year than they needed in previous elections 
            (presumably due to the impact of COVID-19 on voting). The 
            Voting Information Center is modeled after the COVID-19 
            information center that the company deployed to connect 
            users to trusted information from health authorities about 
            the pandemic.

        Facebook intends to include in the Voting Information 
            Center, information about registering to vote, or 
            requesting an absentee or mail-in ballot, depending on the 
            rules in their state, as well as information on early 
            voting. Facebook reports that people will also be able to 
            see local election alerts from their officials about 
            changes to the voting process, and will include information 
            about polling locations and ID requirements.

        Facebook is working with state election officials and 
            other experts to ensure the Voting Information Center 
            accurately reflects the latest information in each state. 
            (Notably, the civil rights community is wary of Facebook 
            relying solely on state election officials for accurate, 
            up-to-date information; both recent and historical examples 
            of state election officials not providing accurate 
            information on Election Day underscore why the civil rights 
            community has urged Facebook to also partner with non-
            partisan election protection organizations.) The 
            information highlighted in the Voting Information Center 
            will change to meet the needs of voters through different 
            phases of the election like registration periods, deadlines 
            to request a vote-by-mail ballot, the start of early 
            voting, and Election Day.

        Starting this summer, Facebook will put the Voting 
            Information Center at the top of people's Facebook and 
            Instagram feeds. Facebook expects more than 160 million 
            people in the U.S. will see the Voting Information Center 
            from July through November.

        The civil rights community's response to Facebook's 
            announcement of the Voting Information Center was measured. 
            While they generally viewed it as a positive development, 
            they were clear that it does not make up for the company's 
            seeming failure to enforce its voter suppression policies 
            (as described in Section E.1 below) and recent decisions 
            that allow viral posts labeling officially issued ballots 
            illegal to remain up. In order for users to see the 
            information in the Voting Information Center, they have to 
            take an affirmative step of navigating to the Center or 
            clicking on a link. They have to be affirmatively looking 
            for voting information, whereas viral suppressive content 
            is delivered right to users' or shown in their News Feeds. 
            For many users who view false statements from politicians 
            or viral voting misinformation on Facebook, the damage is 
            already done; without knowing that the information they've 
            seen is false, they may not have reason to visit the Voting 
            Information Center or seek out correct information.

  (iv)  Vote-By-Mail Reminders. In response to COVID, Facebook added an 
        additional product that gives people information about key 
        vote-by-mail deadlines. Typically, this product is sent prior 
        to a state's vote-by-mail ballot request deadline in states 
        where every eligible voter in the state is able to request an 
        absentee ballot. The reminder links to more information about 
        vote by mail and encourages people to share the information 
        with their friends.

  (v)  Sponsoring MediaWise's MVP First-time Voter Program. Facebook is 
        sponsoring MediaWise's program to train first-time voters on 
        media literacy skills in order to make them more informed 
        voters when they go to the polls this November. MediaWise's 
        program includes a voter's guide, in-person (pre-COVID) and 
        virtual training and awareness campaigns. This program has 
        reached 8 million first time voters since January 2020, and 
        will continue to reach additional first-time voters in the lead 
        up to the general election.

  (vi)  Partnering with Poynter to Launch MediaWise for Seniors. Older 
        Americans are increasingly engaged on social media, and as a 
        result, they're exposed to more potential misinformation and 
        false news stories. In June 2020, the Poynter Institute 
        expanded its partnership with Facebook to launch the MediaWise 
        for Seniors program. The purpose of this program is to teach 
        older people key digital media literacy and fact-checking 
        skills--including how to find reliable information and spot 
        inaccurate information about the presidential election as well 
        as COVID-19--to ensure they make decisions based on fact and 
        not fiction. Facebook reports that through this partnership, 
        MediaWise will host a series of Facebook Lives teaching media 
        literacy, working with Poynter's PolitiFact, create two 
        engaging online classes for seniors on Poynter's e-learning 
        platform, News University, and launch a social media campaign 
        teaching MediaWise tips across platforms.
3. Labeling Voting Posts
    Civil rights groups have expressed considerable concern about 
potential voting misinformation on the platform, especially in light of 
Facebook's exemption of politicians from fact-checking. In light of 
these concerns, civil rights groups have urged Facebook to take steps 
to cabin the harm from voting misinformation.
    Facebook announced on June 26, 2020 that posts about voting would 
receive a neutrally worded label that does not opine on the accuracy of 
the post's content, but directs users to the Voting Information Center 
for accurate voting information. In other words, the label is not 
placed on just content that is demobilizing (e.g., posts encouraging 
people not to vote) or content that is likely to be misinformation or 
at the edge of what Facebook's policies permit, but instead inserts the 
label on voting-related content. Facebook reports that this label will 
be placed on posts that discuss voting, including posts connecting 
voting with COVID-19, as well as posts that are about the election but 
do not use those terms (e.g., posts containing words such as ballots, 
polling places, poll watchers, election day, voter fraud, stolen 
election, deadline to register, etc.).
    The reaction to Facebook's new labeling program within the civil 
rights community (and among the Auditors) was mixed. On the one hand, 
they recognize the need to ensure access to correct voting information 
and value the dissemination of correct information, particularly at a 
time when confusion about voting and the U.S. presidential election may 
be rampant. On the other hand, there is concern that labeling all 
voting-related posts (both those that are accurate and those that are 
spreading misinformation) with neutral language will ultimately be 
confusing to users and make it more difficult for them to discern 
accurate from misleading information. While Facebook has asserted that 
it will remove detected content that violates its voter interference 
policy, regardless of whether it has a label, civil rights groups 
remain wary that Facebook could view the labeling as reducing its 
responsibility to aggressively enforce its Voter Interference Policy--
that the company may not have a sense of urgency in removing false 
information regarding voting methods or logistics because those posts 
will already have a label directing users to the Voting Information 
Center. The Auditors have stressed that the new voting labels do not 
diminish the urgency for Facebook to revisit its interpretation of what 
constitutes ``misrepresentations of methods for voting'' under its 
Voter Interference Policy. For example, voting labels will not 
alleviate the harm caused by narrow readings of that policy that allow 
content such as posts falsely alleging that official ballots are 
illegal. These types of false statements sow suppression and confusion 
among voters and should be taken down, not merely given a label. 
Further, because of the likely saturation of labels--the frequency with 
which users may see them--there is concern that users may quickly 
ignore them and, as a result, the labels will ultimately not be 
effective at cabining the harm caused by false voter information. 
Facebook states it is researching and exploring the best way to 
implement the labeling program to maximize traffic to the Voting 
Information Center without oversaturating users. Facebook has 
represented to the Auditors it will observe how people interact with 
labels and updateits analysis to increase the labeling program's 
effectiveness.
4. Voter Suppression Improvements
  (i)  Voter Interference Policy Enforcement Guidance. In December 
        2019, Facebook expanded its Voter Interference Policy to 
        prohibit content that indicates that voting will result in law 
        enforcement consequences. On June 26, 2020, Facebook issued 
        further guidance clarifying what that provision prohibits. 
        Specifically, Facebook made clear that assertions indicating 
        that ICE or other Federal immigration enforcement agencies will 
        be at polling places are prohibited under the policy (even if 
        those posts do not explicitly threaten deportation or arrest). 
        The Auditors believe this clarification is an important one, as 
        it signals that Facebook recognizes that messages warning of 
        surveillance of the polls by law enforcement or immigration 
        officials sends the same (suppressive) message as posts that 
        explicitly use words like ``arrest'' or ``deportation.''

  (ii)  Process for Addressing Local Suppression. Civil rights groups 
        encouraged Facebook to do more to address one common form of 
        voter suppression: targeted, false claims about conditions at 
        polling places that are designed to discourage or dissuade 
        people from voting, or trick people into missing their 
        opportunity to vote. This form of localized suppression 
        includes things like false claims that a polling place is 
        closed due to defective machines or that a voting location has 
        been moved. (The purpose being to influence would-be voters not 
        to go to their polling place to vote.) Facebook recognizes that 
        if these statements are false they could unfairly interfere 
        with the right to vote and would be in violation of its policy. 
        The challenge historically, has been determining the veracity 
        of localized content in a timely manner. Facebook has since 
        begun exploring ways to distinguish between false claims about 
        voting conditions that are suppressive, and accurate statements 
        about problems at polling places that people (including voting 
        rights advocates or election protection monitors) should be 
        aware of.

        In June 2020, Facebook announced that it has committed 
            to a process for evaluating the accuracy of statements 
            about polling conditions and removing those statements that 
            are confirmed to be false and violating its policies. 
            Specifically, Facebook announced that it will continue 
            working with state election authorities, including in the 
            72 hours prior to Election Day, when voter interference is 
            most likely and also most harmful, to confirm or refute the 
            accuracy of the statements, and remove them when they are 
            confirmed false. Facebook's expert voting rights 
            consultants will also be available to share relevant 
            regional and historical factors in real-time to help ensure 
            the company approaches enforcement decisions with full 
            awareness and context. The civil rights community (and the 
            Auditors) view this as a positive step forward that could 
            help reduce the amount of suppressive content on the 
            platform. The Auditors and the civil rights community have 
            some concern, however, that state election officials may 
            not always provide accurate and timely information; indeed 
            some state election officials have, at times, participated 
            in suppression efforts, ignored them, or provided 
            inaccurate information about voting conditions. 
            Accordingly, the Auditors have recommended that Facebook 
            supplement their process with other sources of reliable 
            information on polling conditions including non-partisan 
            election protection monitors and/or reliable news sources.
5. Improving Proactive Detection
    Time is of the essence during elections, and civil rights groups 
have pushed for Facebook's prompt enforcement of its voting policies to 
minimize the impact of voter-suppressive content. Facebook has directed 
their enforcement teams to look for new tactics while also accounting 
for tactics seen on its platforms in past elections. In 2020, with the 
support of its voting rights consultants and the Auditors, Facebook's 
enforcement teams are also being familiarized with common off-platform 
tactics from past elections (including tactics used in paper flyers, e-
mails, and robocalls) to target communities of color and race and 
language minorities.
    For example in Philadelphia in 2008, flyers posted near Drexel 
University incorrectly warned that police officers would be at polling 
places looking for individuals with outstanding arrest warrants or 
parking tickets. If a similar hoax were to be disseminated on Facebook 
or Instagram in 2020, this would be a direct violation of Facebook's 
Voter Interference Policy, prohibiting ``content stating that voting 
participation may result in law enforcement consequences (e.g., arrest, 
deportation, imprisonment).'' The Auditors believe expanding its 
proactive detection to account for a broader set of historical examples 
should allow Facebook to more rapidly identify more content that 
violates its existing policies, and better protect communities targeted 
by voter suppression on its platforms.
6. User Reporting & Reporter Appeals
  (i)  User Reporting. Facebook gives users the option to report 
        content they think goes against the Community Standards. In 
        2018, Facebook added a new option for users to specifically 
        report ``incorrect voting information'' they found on Facebook 
        during the U.S. midterm elections. As Facebook's Voter 
        Interference Policy has evolved to include additional 
        prohibitions beyond incorrect voting information, the Auditors 
        advocated for Facebook to update this reporting option to 
        better reflect the content prohibited under Facebook's Voter 
        Interference Policy. Facebook has accepted the Auditors' 
        recommendation and as of June 2020, the reporting option for 
        users now reads ``voter interference,'' which better tracks the 
        scope of Facebook's policy.

        While the Auditors are pleased that Facebook has 
            updated its reporting options to better capture the scope 
            of content prohibited under Facebook's Voter Interference 
            Policy, the Auditors are concerned that this form of 
            reporting is extremely limited. Currently, content reported 
            by users as voter interference is only evaluated and 
            monitored for aggregate trends. If user feedback indicates 
            to Facebook that the same content or meme is being posted 
            by multiple users and is receiving a high number of user 
            reports, only then will Facebook have the content reviewed 
            by policy and operational teams. This means that most posts 
            reported as ``voter interference'' are not sent to human 
            content reviewers to make a determination if posts should 
            stay up or be taken down.

        Facebook justifies this decision by citing its findings 
            during the 2018 midterms, that an extremely low number of 
            reports reviewed by its human reviewers were found to be 
            violating its voter interference policy. In 2018, Facebook 
            observed the vast majority of content reported as 
            ``incorrect voting information'' were not posts that 
            violated Facebook's voting policies, but instead were posts 
            by people expressing different political opinions. Facebook 
            reports that during the 2018 midterms, over 90 percent of 
            the content Facebook removed as violating its voter 
            suppression policy (as it existed at the time) was detected 
            proactively by its technology before a user reported it. 
            Ahead of the 2020 election, Facebook states that it was 
            concerned that sending all reported voter interference 
            content for human review could unintentionally slow its 
            review process and reduce its ability to remove suppressive 
            content by diverting reviewers from assessing and removing 
            content more likely to be violating (i.e., content 
            proactively detected by Facebook or content flagged to 
            Facebook by voting rights groups) to reviewing user reports 
            that Facebook says have in the past often been non-
            violating and unactionable.

        As stated previously in the New Partnerships section of 
            this chapter (Section A.2.ii), Facebook indicated it has 
            expanded its program partnering with voting rights 
            organizations, which provides a dedicated channel for 
            partner organizations to flag potentially violating voter 
            interference content. Facebook recognizes these 
            organizations possess unique expertise and in some 
            instances may surface complex or nuanced content missed by 
            its proactive detection. Facebook states that reports 
            generated from this program in combination with regular 
            inputs from its voting rights consultants will allow it to 
            identify new trends and developments in how suppressive 
            content appears on its platform, and continuously improve 
            its overall detection and enforcement strategy.

        Even if Facebook's proactive detection has improved in 
            some ways, the Auditors remain concerned that Facebook's 
            technology may not effectively anticipate and identify all 
            forms of voter suppression that would be in violation of 
            its policies, especially forms that are new, unique, or do 
            not follow the same patterns as 2018. And, statistics on 
            what percentage of content Facebook removed was initially 
            flagged by proactive detection technology, of course, do 
            not indicate whether or how much content that actually 
            violated Facebook's policy was not detected and therefore 
            allowed to stay up. Further, because Facebook's Voter 
            Interference Policy has expanded since 2018, the Auditors 
            are concerned that some forms of content prohibited under 
            the current policy may be more nuanced and context-
            specific, making it more difficult to accurately detect 
            with proactive detection technology. Because online voter 
            suppression and misinformation pose such a grave risk to 
            elections, the Auditors believe that it is insufficient and 
            highly problematic to not send user reports of ``voter 
            interference'' content to human reviewers. The Auditors 
            believe that not routing user reports to content reviewers 
            likely creates a critical gap in reporting for Facebook, a 
            gap that is unreasonable for Facebook to expect can be 
            filled by reports from partner organizations (with other 
            obligations and already limited resources), even if 
            external partners are experts in voter suppression.

  (ii)  Reporter Appeals. Facebook's decision not to send user-reported 
        voter interference content to human reviewers has downstream 
        effects on the ability of users to appeal reported content that 
        is not taken down. In order for content to be eligible for 
        appeal it must first be reviewed by Facebook and given a formal 
        determination as to whether or not it violates Community 
        Standards. As stated above, posts reported as potentially 
        violating Facebook's Voter Interference Policy are treated as 
        ``user feedback'' and are not formally assessed for violation 
        (unless the post is also detected as potentially violating by 
        Facebook). Given the significant harm that can be caused by 
        voter interference content--including suppression and 
        interference with users' ability to exercise their right to 
        vote--the Auditors believe it is critical that there be a way 
        to report and subsequently appeal potential missed violations 
        to further ensure that violating suppressive content gets taken 
        down. Further, content decisions that are unappealable cannot 
        be appealed to the Oversight Board (for more details on the 
        Oversight Board, see the Content Moderation & Enforcement 
        chapter) by users once it is operational. This makes it 
        impossible for election or census-related content to be 
        reviewed by the Oversight Board, thereby excluding a critically 
        important category of content--one that can impact the very 
        operation of our democratic processes. The Auditors believe 
        such exclusion is deeply problematic and must be changed.
7. Increased Capacity to Combat Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior
    The last report included an update on Facebook's efforts to combat 
``information operations'' or coordinated inauthentic behavior, which 
are coordinated, deceptive efforts to manipulate or disrupt public 
debate, including surrounding elections. The danger of such coordinated 
deceptive activity was illustrated in powerful detail in 2016, when 
foreign actors engaged in coordinated, deceptive campaigns to influence 
the U.S. election, including targeting communities of color with 
demobilizing content. Since 2016, Facebook has built out a team of over 
200 people globally--including experts in cybersecurity, disinformation 
research, digital forensics, law enforcement, national security and 
investigative journalism--that is focused on combating these 
operations.
    Since the last Audit Report, Facebook states that it has continued 
to devote energy and resources to combating these threats and has built 
out its strategies for detecting coordinated inauthentic behavior. 
Facebook has adopted a three-pronged approach focused on detecting and 
removing: (1) violating content; (2) known bad actors; and (3) 
coordinated deceptive behavior. In other words:

   Facebook states that it removes suppressive content that 
        violates Facebook policy regardless of who posts it;

   Facebook attempts to identify and remove representatives of 
        groups that have been banned from the platform (like the IRA) 
        regardless of what they post; and

   Facebook attempts to detect and dismantle coordinated 
        efforts to deceive through fake accounts, impersonation, or use 
        of bots or other computer-controlled accounts.

    The purpose of these three strategies is to have the flexibility to 
catch these information operations, understanding that tactics are 
likely to evolve and change as bad actors attempt to evade detection.
    Using this strategy, Facebook recently took down a network of 
accounts based in Ghana and Nigeria that was operating on behalf of 
individuals in Russia. The network used fake accounts and coordinated 
activity to operate Pages ostensibly run by nonprofits and to post in 
Groups. In 2016, Russian actors used fake accounts to build audiences 
with non-political content targeting issues relevant to specific 
communities, and then pivoted to more explicitly political or 
demobilizing messages. Here, this network of accounts was identified 
and removed when they appeared to be attempting to build their 
audiences--posting on topics such as black history, celebrity gossip, 
black fashion, and LGBTQ issues--before the accounts could pivot to 
possibly demobilizing messages. Facebook reported that it removed 49 
Facebook accounts, 69 Pages, and 85 Instagram accounts as part of this 
enforcement action.
    Facebook's systems are also used to detect coordinated deceptive 
behavior--no matter where it is coming from, including the United 
States. Facebook recently reported taking down two domestic networks 
engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior, resulting in the removal 
of 35 Facebook accounts, 24 pages, and 7 Groups. These networks posted 
on topics relating to U.S. politics including the presidential election 
and specific candidates, as well as COVID-19 and hate speech and/or 
conspiracy theories targeting Asian Americans.
    While it is concerning that information operations continue to be a 
threat that is often targeted at particular communities, the Auditors 
are encouraged by Facebook's response and reported investment of time 
and resources into increasing their detection capabilities.
8. New Voting/Census Landing Page
    Facebook has a number of different policies that touch on voting, 
elections, or census-related content, but not all of the policies live 
within the same section of the Community Standards. As a result, it can 
be difficult for civil rights groups (or users generally) who are 
trying to understand what voting/census-related content is permitted 
(and what is not) to easily review the relevant policies and understand 
where the lines are.
    Both the Auditors and civil rights groups urged Facebook to provide 
more clarity and make voting/census related policies more accessible. 
Facebook agreed. Facebook is developing a landing page where all the 
different policy, product, and operational changes the company has 
implemented to prevent voter and census suppression are detailed in one 
place--additionally this page would include clarifications of how the 
policies fit together and answers to frequently asked questions.
D. Political Ads Transparency Updates for Ads About Social Issues, 
        Elections or Politics
    Since the last report, Facebook has adopted several new 
transparency measures and made additional improvements to its public Ad 
Library. These updates are described in more detail below.
1. Policy Update
    In 2019, Facebook updated its Policy on Social Issues, Elections or 
Politics to require authorizations in order to run ads related to the 
census. These ads are included in the Ad Library for transparency.
2. Labeling for Shared Ads
    Facebook requires ads about social issues, elections or politics to 
indicate the name of the person or entity responsible for the ad 
through a disclaimer displayed when the ad is shown. However, when a 
user subsequently shared or forwarded an ad, neither the ``Sponsored'' 
designation nor the disclaimer designation used to follow the ad once 
it was shared, leaving viewers of the shared ad without notice that the 
content was originally an ad, or indication of the entity responsible 
for the ad. Civil rights advocates and others had expressed concern 
that this loophole could undermine the purpose of the labeling by 
allowing circumvention of transparency features, and leaving users 
vulnerable to manipulation. Facebook has now closed this loophole. Ads 
that are shared will retain their transparency labeling.
3. More Accessible Ad Information and Options to See Fewer Political, 
        Electoral, and Social Issue Ads
    Facebook has also developed new transparency features for these ads 
that compile and display relevant information and options all in one 
place. Since 2018, users have been able to click on political, 
electoral, or social issue ads to access information about the ad's 
reach, who was shown the ad, and the entity responsible for the ad, but 
now users can additionally see information about why they received the 
ad--that is, which of the ad targeting categories selected by the 
advertiser the user fell into.
    In addition, the same pop-up that appears by clicking on an ad now 
gives users more control over the ads they see. Users now have the 
opportunity to opt into seeing fewer ads about social issues, elections 
or politics. Alternatively, users can block future ads from just the 
specific advertiser responsible for a given ad or adjust how they are 
reached through customer lists (e.g., disallow advertisers from showing 
ads to them based on this type of audience list or make themselves 
eligible to see ads if an advertiser used a list to exclude them).
4. Ad Library Updates
    Since 2018, Facebook has maintained a library of ads about social 
issues, elections or politics that ran on the platform. These ads are 
either classified as being about social issues, elections or politics 
or the advertisers self-declare that the ads require a ``Paid for by'' 
disclaimer. The last audit report announced updates and enhancements 
Facebook had made to the Ad Library to increase transparency and 
provide more information about who is behind each ad, the advertiser's 
prior spending, and basic information about the ad's audience. However, 
the civil rights community has continued to urge Facebook to both 
improve the Ad Library's search functionality and provide additional 
transparency (specifically information regarding targeting of political 
ads) so that the Ad Library could be a more effective tool for 
identifying patterns of suppression and misinformation.
    Since the last report, Facebook has made a number of additional 
updates to the Ad Library in an effort to increase transparency and 
provide useful data to researchers, advocates, and the public 
generally. These improvements include:

   Potential Reach & Micro-Targeting: The Ad Library now 
        permits users to search and filter ads based on the estimated 
        audience size, which allows researchers to identify and study 
        ads intended for smaller, more narrowly defined audiences. This 
        new search function should make it easier to uncover efforts to 
        ``micro-target'' smaller, specifically identified communities 
        with suppressive or false information.

   Sorting Ad Search Results: When users run searches on the Ad 
        Library, they can now sort their results so that the ads with 
        the most impressions (i.e., the number of times an ad was seen 
        on a screen) appear first, allowing researchers to focus their 
        attention on the ads that have had the most potential impact. 
        Or, if recency is most important, ad search results can instead 
        be sorted to appear in order of when the ad ran.

   Searching by State/Region: While the Ad Library has 
        contained information about the state(s) in which a given ad 
        ran since 2018, that information used to only be available by 
        clicking on an individual ad. Facebook has updated its search 
        functionality so that users interested in the ads that have run 
        in a specific state or group of states can limit their searches 
        to just those areas.

   Grouping Duplicate Ads: Advertisers often run the same ad 
        multiple times targeted at different audiences or issued on 
        different dates. When reviewing search results, users searching 
        the Ad Library previously had to wade through all the duplicate 
        ads--making it tedious and difficult to sort through search 
        results. Facebook has now added a feature that groups duplicate 
        ads by the same advertiser together so that it is easier to 
        distinguish duplicates from distinct ads and duplicate versions 
        of the same ad can be reviewed all at once.

   Ads Library Report Updates: In addition to these updates to 
        the Ad Library, Facebook also updated its Ads Library Report to 
        provide additional categories of information, including 
        aggregate trend information showing the amount presidential 
        candidates have spent on Facebook ads over time (either in 
        aggregate or breaking down spend by date) and as well as 
        searchable spend information for other (non-presidential) 
        candidates.

    By improving searching options and identifying ads that are 
targeted to smaller audiences, these updates to some extent advance the 
civil rights community's goals of making the Ad Library a useful tool 
for uncovering and analyzing voter suppression and misinformation 
targeted at specific communities. Facebook has asserted that privacy 
risks could be potentially created by sharing additional information 
about the audiences targeted for political ads, such as ZIP codes, or 
more granular location information of those receiving the ads. Due to 
this limiting factor, the current Ad Library updates do not fully 
respond to the civil rights community's assertions that such 
information is critical to identifying and addressing patterns of 
online voter suppression. Civil rights groups have provided Facebook 
with specific suggestions about ways to provide transparency without 
sacrificing privacy, ands continue to recommend that Facebook explore 
and commit to privacy-protective ways to provide more visibility into 
the targeting criteria used by advertisers so that the Ad Library can 
be a more effective tool for shedding light on election manipulation, 
suppression, and discrimination.
E. Additional Auditor Concerns
1. Recent Troubling Enforcement Decisions
    The Auditors are deeply concerned that Facebook's recent decisions 
on posts by President Trump indicate a tremendous setback for all of 
the policies that attempt to ban voter suppression on Facebook. From 
the Auditors' perspective, allowing the Trump posts to remain 
establishes a terrible precedent that may lead other politicians and 
non-politicians to spread false information about legal voting methods, 
which would effectively allow the platform to be weaponized to suppress 
voting. Mark Zuckerberg asserted in his 2019 speech at Georgetown 
University that ``voting is voice'' and is a crucial form of free 
expression. If that is the case, then the Auditors cannot understand 
why Facebook has allowed misrepresentations of methods of voting that 
undermine Facebook's protection and promotion of this crucial form of 
free expression.
    In May 2020, President Trump made a series of posts in which he 
labeled official, state-issued ballots or ballot applications 
``illegal'' and gave false information about how to obtain a ballot. 
Specifically, his posts included the following statements:

   ``State of Nevada ``thinks'' that they can send out illegal 
        vote by mail ballots, creating a great Voter Fraud scenario for 
        the State and the U.S. They can't! If they do, ``I think'' I 
        can hold up funds to the State. Sorry, but you must not cheat 
        in elections''

   ``Michigan sends absentee ballots to 7.7 million people 
        ahead of Primaries and the General Election. This was done 
        illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of 
        State . . .'' (Note: reference to absentee ``ballots'' was 
        subsequently changed to ``ballot applications'')

   ``There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be 
        anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be 
        robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & 
        fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending 
        Ballots to millions of people, anyone living in the state, no 
        matter who they are or how they got there, will get one . . .''

    On its face, Facebook's voter interference policy prohibits false 
misrepresentations regarding the ``methods for voting or voter 
registration'' and ``what information and/or materials must be provided 
in order to vote.'' The ballots and ballot applications issued in 
Nevada and Michigan were officially issued and are current, lawful 
forms of voter registration and participation in those states. In 
California, ballots are not being issued to ``anyone living in the 
state, no matter who they are.'' In fact, in order to obtain a mail-in 
ballot in California one has to register to vote.
    Facebook decided that none of the posts violated its policies. 
Facebook read the Michigan and Nevada posts to be accusations by 
President Trump that state officials had acted illegally, and that 
content challenging the legality of officials is allowed under 
Facebook's policy. Facebook deemed the California post to be non-
violating of its provision for ``misrepresentation of methods for voter 
registration.'' Facebook cited that people often use short-hand to 
describe registered voters (e.g., ``Anyone who hasn't cast their ballot 
yet, needs to vote today.''). It wasn't clear to Facebook that the 
post--which said ``anyone living in the state, no matter who they are'' 
would get a ballot when, in fact, only those who registered would get 
one--was purposefully and explicitly stating ``you don't have to 
register to get a ballot,'' and therefore was determined to be non-
violating.
    The Auditors vehemently expressed their views that these posts were 
prohibited under Facebook's policy (a position also expressed by 
Facebook's expert voting consultant), but the Auditors were not 
afforded an opportunity to speak directly to decision-makers until the 
decisions were already made.
    To the civil rights community, there was no question that these 
posts fell squarely within the prohibitions of Facebook's voter 
interference policy. Facebook's constrained reading of its policies was 
both astounding and deeply troubling for the precedents it seemed to 
set. The civil rights community identified the posts as false for 
labeling official ballots and voting methods illegal. They explained 
that for an authoritative figure like a sitting President to label a 
ballot issued by a state ``illegal'' amounted to suppression on a 
massive scale, as it would reasonably cause recipients of such official 
ballots to hesitate to use them. Persons seeing the President's posts 
would be encouraged to question whether they would be doing something 
illegal or fraudulent by using the state's ballots to exercise their 
right to vote.
    Civil rights leaders viewed the decision as opening the door to all 
manners of suppressive assertions that existing voting methods or 
ballots--the very means through which one votes--are impermissible or 
unlawful, sowing suppression and confusion among voters. They were 
alarmed that Facebook had failed to draw any line or distinction 
between expressing opinions about what voting rules or methods states 
should (or should not) adopt, and making false factual assertions that 
officially issued ballots are fraudulent, illegal, or not issued 
through official channels. Civil rights leaders expressed concern that 
the decision sent Facebook hurtling down a slippery slope, whereby the 
facts of how to vote in a given state or what ballots will be accepted 
in given jurisdiction can be freely misrepresented and obscured by 
being labeled unlawful or fraudulent.
    Similarly, the civil rights community viewed the California post as 
a straightforward misrepresentation of how one gets a ballot--a 
misrepresentation that if relied upon would trick a user into missing 
his or her opportunity go obtain a ballot (by failing to register for 
one). That is the very kind of misrepresentation that Facebook's policy 
was supposed to prohibit. As elections approach and updates are made to 
voting and voter registration methods due to COVID-19, both the civil 
rights groups and the Auditors worry that Facebook's narrow policy 
interpretation will open the floodgates to suppression and false 
statements tricking people into missing deadlines or other 
prerequisites to register or vote.
    In response to the press coverage around these decisions, Mark 
Zuckerberg has reasserted publicly that platforms should not be 
``arbiters of truth.'' To civil rights groups, those comments suggested 
the renunciation of Facebook's Voter Interference Policy; Facebook 
seemed to be celebrating its refusal to be the ``arbiter of truth'' on 
factual assertions regarding what methods of voting are permitted in a 
state or how one obtains a ballot--despite having a policy that 
prohibits factual misrepresentations of those very facts.
    Two weeks after these decisions, and following continuing criticism 
from members of Congress, employees, and other groups, Mark Zuckerberg 
announced that the company would agree to review the company's policies 
around voter suppression ``to make sure [Facebook is] taking into 
account the realities of voting in the midst of a pandemic.'' 
Zuckerberg warned, however, that while the company is committing to 
review its voter suppression policies, that review is not guaranteed to 
result in changes. Facebook also announced that it would be creating a 
voting hub (modeled after the COVID-19 hub it created) that would 
provide authoritative and accurate voting information, as well as tools 
for registering to vote and encouraging others to do the same.
    The Auditors strongly encourage Facebook to expeditiously revise or 
reinterpret its policies to ensure that they prohibit content that 
labels official voting methods or ballots as illegal, fraudulent, or 
issued through unofficial channels, and that Facebook prohibit content 
that misrepresents the steps or requirements for obtaining or 
submitting a ballot.
2. Announcements Regarding Politicians' Speech
    In Fall 2019, Facebook made a series of announcements relating to 
speech by politicians. These included a September 2019 speech (and 
accompanying Newsroom Post) in which Nick Clegg, Vice-President for 
Global Affairs and Communications, stated that Facebook does not 
subject politicians' speech to fact-checking, based on the company's 
position that it should not ``prevent a politician's speech from 
reaching its audience and being subject to public debate and 
scrutiny.'' Facebook asserts that the fact-checking program was never 
intended to police politicians' speech. This public moment in September 
2019 brought increased attention and scrutiny to Facebook's standing 
guidance to its fact-checking partners that politicians' direct 
statements were exempt from fact-checking. In that same speech, Clegg 
described Facebook's newsworthiness policy, by which content that 
otherwise violates Facebook's Community Standards is allowed to remain 
on the platform. Clegg clarified that in balancing the public's 
interest in the speech against potential harm to determine whether to 
apply the newsworthiness exception, politicians' speech is presumed to 
meet the public interest prong of Facebook's newsworthy analysis. That 
is, politicians' speech will be allowed (and not get removed despite 
violating Facebook's content policies) unless the content could lead to 
real world violence or the harm otherwise outweighs the public's 
interest in hearing the speech.
    These announcements were uniformly criticized in the civil rights 
community as being dangerously incongruent with the realities of voter 
suppression. In short, the civil rights community expressed deep 
concern because politicians have historically been some of the greatest 
perpetrators of voter suppression in this country. By continuing to 
exempt them from fact-checking at a time when politicians appear to be 
increasingly relying on using misinformation, and giving them a 
presumption of newsworthiness in favor of allowing their speech to 
remain up, the civil rights community felt like Facebook was inviting 
opportunities for increased voter suppression.
    The Auditors shared the civil rights community's concerns and 
repeatedly (and vigorously) expressed those concerns directly to 
Facebook. Facebook has not made any clarifications on the scope of its 
definition for politicians nor has it made adjustments to its exemption 
of politicians from fact-checking. However, with respect to its 
newsworthiness policy, Facebook insists the most common application for 
its newsworthiness treatment is content that is violating but 
educational and important for the public's awareness (e.g., images of 
children suffering from a chemical weapons attack in Syria). Facebook 
has since informed the Auditors that over the last year it has only 
applied ``newsworthiness'' to speech posted by politicians 15 times 
globally, with only 1 instance occurring in the United States.
    Facebook has since clarified that voter interference and census 
interference as defined under the Coordinating Harm section of the 
Community Standards are exempt from the newsworthiness policy--meaning 
they would not stay up as newsworthy even if expressed by a 
politician--and newsworthiness does not apply to ads. After continued 
engagement by the Auditors and civil rights groups, Facebook recently 
extended the exemption from newsworthiness to Facebook's policies 
prohibiting threats of violence for voting or registering to vote and 
statements of intent or advocating for people to bring weapons to 
polling places. There is one voting-related policy where the exemption 
does not apply. Content could potentially stay up as ``newsworthy'' 
even if it violates Facebook policy prohibiting calls for people to be 
excluded from political participation based on their race, religion or 
other protected characteristics (e.g., ``don't vote for X Candidate 
because she's Black'' or ``keep Muslims out of Congress''). While the 
Auditors agree with Facebook's decision not to allow content violating 
these other voting policies to stay up as newsworthy, the Auditors 
urged Facebook to take the same position when politicians violate its 
policies by making calls for exclusion from political participation on 
the basis of protected characteristics, and are deeply concerned that 
Facebook has not done so. The Auditors believe that this exemption is 
highly problematic and demonstrates a failure to adequately protect 
democratic processes from racial appeals by politicians during 
elections.
    The Auditors continue to have substantial concern about these 
policies and their potential to be exploited to target specific 
communities with false information, inaccurate content designed to 
perpetuate and promote discrimination and stereotypes, and/or for other 
targeted manipulation, intimidation, or suppression. While Facebook has 
made progress in other areas related to elections and the Census, to 
the Auditors, these political speech exemptions constitute significant 
steps backward that undermine the company's progress and call into 
question the company's priorities.
    Finally, in June 2020, Facebook announced that it would start being 
more transparent about when it deems content ``newsworthy'' and makes 
the decision to leave up otherwise violating content. Facebook reports 
that it will now be inserting a label on such content informing users 
that the content violates Community Standards but Facebook has left it 
up because it believes the content is newsworthy and that the public 
interest value of the content outweighs its risk of harm.
    Setting aside the Auditors' concerns about the newsworthiness 
policy itself (especially its potential application to voting-related 
content), the Auditors believe this move toward greater transparency is 
important because it enables Facebook to be held accountable for its 
application of the policy. By labeling content left up as newsworthy, 
users will be able to better understand how often Facebook is applying 
the policy and in what circumstances.
            Chapter Three: Content Moderation & Enforcement
    Content moderation--what content Facebook allows and removes from 
the platform--continues to be an area of concern for the civil rights 
community. While Facebook's Community Standards prohibit hate speech, 
harassment, and attempts to incite violence through the platform, civil 
rights advocates contend that not only do Facebook's policies not go 
far enough in capturing hateful and harmful content, they also assert 
that Facebook unevenly enforces or fails to enforce its own policies 
against prohibited content. Thus harmful content is left on the 
platform for too long. These criticisms have come from a broad swath of 
the civil rights community, and are especially acute with respect to 
content targeting African Americans, Jews, and Muslims--communities 
which have increasingly been targeted for on- and off-platform hate and 
violence.
    Given this concern, content moderation was a major focus of the 
2019 Audit Report, which described developments in Facebook's approach 
to content moderation, specifically with respect to hate speech. The 
Auditors focused on Facebook's prohibition of explicit praise, support, 
or representation of white nationalism and white separatism. The 
Auditors also worked on a new events policy prohibiting calls to action 
to bring weapons to places of worship or to other locations with the 
intent to intimidate or harass. The prior report made recommendations 
for further improvements and commitments from Facebook to make specific 
changes.
    This section provides an update on progress in the areas outlined 
in the prior report and identifies additional steps Facebook has taken 
to address content moderation concerns. It also offers the Auditors' 
observations and recommendations about where Facebook needs to focus 
further attention and make improvements, and where Facebook has made 
devastating errors.
A. Update on Prior Commitments
    As context, Facebook identifies hate speech on its platform in two 
ways: (1) user reporting and (2) proactive detection using technology. 
Both are important. As of March 2019, in the last audit report, 
Facebook reported that 65 percent of hate speech that it removed was 
detected proactively, without having to wait for a user to report it. 
With advances in technology, including in artificial intelligence, 
Facebook reports as of March 2020 that 89 percent of removals were 
identified by its technology before users had to report it. Facebook 
reports that it removes some posts automatically, but only when the 
content is either identical or near-identical to text or images 
previously removed by its content review team as violating Community 
Standards, or where content very closely matches common attacks that 
violated policies. Facebook states that automated removal has only 
recently become possible because its automated systems have been 
trained on hundreds of thousands of different examples of violating 
content and common attacks. Facebook reports that, in all other cases 
when its systems proactively detect potential hate speech, the content 
is still sent to its review teams to make a final determination. 
Facebook relies on human reviewers to assess context (e.g., is the user 
using hate speech for purposes of condemning it) and also to assess 
usage nuances in ways that artificial intelligence cannot.
    Facebook made a number of commitments in the 2019 Audit Report 
about steps it would take in the content moderation space. An update on 
those commitments and Facebook's follow-through is provided below.
1. Hate Speech Pilots
    The June 2019 Audit Report described two ongoing pilot studies that 
Facebook was conducting in an effort to help reduce errors in 
enforcement of its hate speech policies: (1) hate speech reviewer 
specialization; and (2) information-first guided review.
    With the hate speech reviewer specialization pilot, Facebook was 
examining whether allowing content reviewers to focus on only a few 
types of violations (rather than reviewing each piece of content 
against all of Facebook's Community Standards) would yield more 
accurate results, without negatively impacting reviewer well-being and 
resilience. Facebook completed its initial six-month long pilot, with 
pilot participants demonstrating increased accuracy in their decisions, 
and fewer false positives (erroneous decisions finding a violation when 
the content does not actually go against Community Standards). While 
more needs to be done to study the long-term impacts of reviewer 
specialization on the emotional well-being of moderators, Facebook 
reported that participants in the pilot indicated they preferred 
specialization to the regular approach, and that attrition among pilot 
participants was generally lower than average for content reviewers at 
the same review site.
    Given those results, Facebook will explore a semi-specialization 
approach in the future where reviewers will specialize on a subset of 
related policy areas (e.g., hate speech, bullying, and harassment) in 
order to significantly reduce pressure on reviewers to know and enforce 
on all policy areas. Facebook is choosing to pursue semi-specialization 
instead of specialization in any given Community Standard area to limit 
the amount of time that any reviewer spends on a single violation type 
to reduce risks of reviewer fatigue and over-exposure to the same kind 
of graphic or troubling content. At the same time, the company 
continues to build out its tools and resources supporting reviewer 
well-being and resiliency. Facebook reports that it is also working on 
establishing a set of well-being and resiliency metrics to better 
evaluate which efforts are most effective so that the company's future 
efforts can be adjusted to be made more effective, if necessary.
    The other pilot, Facebook's information-first guided review pilot, 
was designed to evaluate whether modifying the tool content reviewers 
use to evaluate content would improve accuracy. The standard review 
tool requires reviewers to decide whether the content is violating 
first, and then note the basis for the violation. Under the pilot, the 
order was reversed: reviewers are asked a series of questions that help 
them more objectively arrive at a conclusion as to whether the content 
is violating.
    Facebook completed a successful pilot of the information-first 
guided approach to content review, with positive results. Facebook 
states that content reviewers have found the approach more intuitive 
and easier to apply. Because switching to information-first guided 
review required creating new review tools, training, and workflows, 
Facebook felt the need to fully validate the approach before 
operationalizing it on a broader scale. Having now sufficiently tested 
the approach, Facebook plans to switch to information-first review for 
all content flagged as hate speech in North America, and then continue 
to expand to more countries and regions, and more categories of 
content. While COVID-19 has impacted the availability of content 
reviewers and capacity to train reviewers on the new approach, Facebook 
indicates it is working through those issues and looking to continue 
its progress toward more widespread adoption of the information-first 
approach.
2. Content Moderator Settlement
    It is important to note that civil rights organizations have 
expressed concern about the psychological well-being of content 
reviewers, many of whom are contractors, who may be exposed to 
disturbing and offensive content. Facebook recently agreed to create a 
$52 million fund, accessible to a class of thousands of U.S. workers 
who have asserted that they suffered psychological harm from reviewing 
graphic and objectionable content. The fund was created as part of the 
settlement of a class action lawsuit brought by US-based moderators in 
California, Arizona, Texas and Florida who worked for third party firms 
that provide services to Facebook.
    In the settlement, Facebook also agreed to roll out changes to its 
content moderation tools designed to reduce the impact of viewing 
harmful images and videos. Specifically, Facebook will offer moderators 
customizable preferences such as muting audio by default and changing 
videos to black and white when evaluating content against Community 
Standards relating to graphic violence, murder, sexual abuse and 
exploitation, child sexual exploitation, and physical abuse.
    Moderators who view graphic and objectionable content on a regular 
basis will also get access to weekly, one-on-one coaching sessions with 
a licensed mental health professional. Workers who request an expedited 
session will get access to a licensed mental health professional within 
the next working day, and vendor partners will also make monthly group 
coaching sessions available to moderators.
    Other changes Facebook will require of those operating content 
review sites include:

   Screening applicants for resiliency as part of the 
        recruiting and hiring process;

   Posting information about psychological support resources at 
        each moderator's workstation; and

   Informing moderators of Facebook's whistleblower hotline, 
        which may be used to report violations of workplace standards 
        by their employers.
3. Changes to Community Standards
    In the last report, the Auditors recommended a handful of specific 
changes to the Community Standards in an effort to improve Facebook's 
enforcement consistency and ensure that the Community Standards 
prohibited key forms of hateful content.
    The Auditors recommended that Facebook remove humor as an exception 
to its prohibition on hate speech because humor was not well-defined 
and was largely left to the eye of the beholder--increasing the risk 
that the exception was applied both inconsistently and far too 
frequently. Facebook followed through on that commitment. It has 
eliminated humor as an exception to its prohibition on hate speech, 
instead allowing only a narrower exception for content meeting the 
detailed definition of satire. Facebook defines satire as content that 
``includes the use of irony, exaggeration, mockery and/or absurdity 
with the intent to expose or critique people, behaviors, or opinions, 
particularly in the context of political, religious, or social issues. 
Its purpose is to draw attention to and voice criticism about wider 
societal issues or trends.''
    The Auditors also recommended that Facebook broaden how it defined 
hate targeted at people based on their national origin to ensure that 
hate targeted at people from a region was prohibited (e.g., people from 
Central America, the Middle East, or Southeast Asia) in addition to 
hate targeting people from specific countries. Facebook made that 
change and now uses a more expansive definition of national origin when 
applying its hate speech policies.
4. Updated Reviewer Guidance
    In the last report, Facebook committed to providing more guidance 
to reviewers to improve accuracy when it comes to content condemning 
the use of slurs or hate speech. Recognizing that too many mistakes 
were being made removing content that was actually condemning hate 
speech, Facebook updated its reviewer guidelines to clarify the 
criteria for condemnation to make it clearer and more explicit that 
content denouncing or criticizing hate speech is permitted. Facebook 
reports that these changes have resulted in increased accuracy and 
fewer false positives where permissible content is mistakenly removed 
as violating.
B. New Developments & Additional Recommendations
1. Hate Speech Enforcement Developments
    In addition to completing the pilots discussed in the last Audit 
Report, Facebook made a number of other improvements designed to 
increase the accuracy of its hate speech enforcement. For example, 
Facebook made the following changes to its hate speech enforcement 
guidance and tools:

  (i)  Improved Reviewer Tools. Separate and apart from the commitments 
        Facebook made as part of the content reviewer settlement, the 
        company has further upgraded the tool reviewers use to evaluate 
        content that has been reported or flagged as potentially 
        violating. The review tool now highlights terms that may be 
        slurs or references to proxies (stand-ins) for protected 
        characteristics to more clearly bring them to reviewers' 
        attention. In addition, when a reviewer clicks on the 
        highlighted term, the reviewer is provided additional context 
        on the term, such as the definition, alternative meanings/
        caveats, term variations, and the targeted protected 
        characteristic. The purpose of these changes is to help make 
        potentially violating content more visible, and provide 
        reviewers with more information and context to enable them to 
        make more accurate determinations. Facebook plans to build 
        tooling to assess whether and to what extent these changes 
        improve reviewer accuracy.

  (ii)  Self-Referential Use of Slurs. While Facebook's policies have 
        always permitted the self-referential use of certain slurs to 
        acknowledge when communities have reclaimed the use of the 
        slur, Facebook reports that it recently refined its guidelines 
        on self-referential use of slurs. Specifically, Facebook 
        indicates that it provided content reviewers with policy 
        clarifications on the slur uses that have historically been 
        most confusing or difficult for content reviewers to accurately 
        evaluate. Separately, Facebook reports that it clarified what 
        criteria must be present for the use of a slur to be treated as 
        a permissible ``self-referential'' use. These refinements were 
        made to increase accuracy, especially with respect to users' 
        self-referential posts.
2. Oversight Board
    The June 2019 Report described Facebook's commitment to establish 
an Oversight Board independent of Facebook that would have the capacity 
to review individual content decisions and make determinations as to 
whether the content should stay up or be removed--determinations which 
would be binding on Facebook (unless implementing the determination 
could violate the law). While the concept and creation of the Oversight 
Board was independent of the Audit, Facebook nevertheless requested 
that the Auditors provide input on the structure, governance, and 
composition of the board. Facebook states that its Oversight Board 
charter was the product of a robust global consultation process of 
workshops and roundtables in 88 different countries, a public proposal 
process, and consultations with over 2,200 stakeholders, including 
civil rights experts. The charter, which was published in September 
2019, describes the Board's function, operation, and design. Facebook 
also commissioned and published a detailed human rights review of the 
Oversight Board in order to inform the Board's final charter, bylaws, 
and operations, and create a means for ensuring consistency with human 
rights-based approaches.
    Once the charter was published, Facebook selected 4 co-chairs of 
the Board. Those co-chairs and Facebook then together selected the next 
16 Board members. All 20 members were announced in May 2020. Looking 
ahead, in partnership with Facebook, the Board will select an 
additional 20 members. Once the initial Board reaches its 40 members, 
the Board's Membership Committee will have the exclusive responsibility 
of selecting members to fill any vacancies and to grow the Board beyond 
40 members, if they so choose. All members, once selected by Facebook 
and the Board, are formally appointed by the Trustees who govern the 
Oversight Board Trust (the independent entity established to maintain 
procedural and administrative oversight over the Board). Facebook 
compiled feedback and recommendations on Board member composition and 
selection process from external partners, consultants, and Facebook 
employees; and through a Recommendations Portal that the company 
initiated in September 2019 to allow individual members of the public 
to make recommendations. In the future, the Recommendations Portal will 
be the sole mechanism by which the Board will receive recommendations 
about potential new members.
    The Auditors were repeatedly consulted during the process of 
building the initial slate of Board members and strongly advocated for 
the Board's membership to be diverse, representative, and inclusive of 
those with expertise in civil rights. While the Auditors did not have 
input into all Board member selections or veto power over specific 
nominees, the inclusion of diverse views and experiences, human rights 
advocates, and civil rights experts are positive developments that help 
lend the Board credibility in the Auditors' view.
3. Appeals & Penalties
(i) Appeals.
    In 2018, Facebook launched a process allowing users to 
        appeal content decisions. The process allows for appeals by 
        both the person that posted content found to violate Community 
        Standards and by users who report someone else's content as 
        violating. Still, Facebook users have felt that the company's 
        appeals system was opaque and ineffective at correcting errors 
        made by content moderators. The Auditors have met with several 
        users who explained that they felt that they landed in 
        ``Facebook jail'' (temporarily suspended from posting content) 
        in a manner that they thought was discriminatory and wrongly 
        decided because of errors made by Facebook content moderators. 
        After continued criticism, including by the civil rights 
        community, Facebook committed in the 2019 Audit Report to 
        improving the transparency and consistency of its appeals 
        decision-making.

    As a result, Facebook has made a number of changes to its 
        appeals system and the notices provided to users explaining 
        their appeal options. These changes include providing: (a) 
        better notice to users when a content decision has been made; 
        (b) clearer and more transparent explanations as to why the 
        content was removed (or not removed); and (c) the opportunity 
        for users to make more informed choices about whether they want 
        to appeal the content decision. Specifically, Facebook has 
        changed many of the interface and message screens that users 
        see throughout the appeals process to provide more 
        explanations, context, and information.

    Facebook also reports that it studies the accuracy of 
        content decisions and seeks to identify the underlying causes 
        of reviewer errors--whether they be policy gaps, deficiencies 
        in guidance or training, or something else. Facebook is 
        exploring whether adjustments to the structure of its appeals 
        process could improve accuracy while still being operational on 
        the massive scale at which Facebook operates.
(ii) Appeals Recommendations
   Voter/Census Interference Policy appeals: the details of 
        this recommendation were presented in the User Reporting & 
        Reporter Appeals section of the Elections & Census chapter.

   Appeals data: Facebook's Community Standards Enforcement 
        Report details by policy area how much content was appealed, 
        and how much content was restored after appeals. While this 
        transparency is useful, Facebook should do more with its 
        appeals data. The company should more systematically examine 
        its appeals data by violation type and use these insights to 
        internally assess where the appeals process is working well, 
        where it may need additional resources, and where there may be 
        gaps, ambiguity, or unanticipated consequences in policies or 
        enforcement protocols. For example, if the data revealed that 
        decisions on certain categories of hate speech were being 
        overturned on appeal at a disproportionate rate, Facebook could 
        use that information to help identify areas where reviewers 
        need additional guidance or training.

   Description of Community Standards: As part of the 
        enforcement and appeals user experience described above, 
        Facebook has done more to inform users that content was taken 
        down and to describe the Community Standard that was violated. 
        While the increased transparency is important, the Auditors 
        have found that Facebook's descriptions of the Community 
        Standards are inconsistent. For example:

     In some contexts, Facebook describes the hate speech 
            policy by saying, ``We have these standards to protect 
            certain groups of people from being described as less than 
            human.''

     In other circumstances (such as describing violations 
            by groups), Facebook describes the hate speech policy as 
            ``content that directly attacks people based on their race, 
            ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual 
            orientation, sex, gender or gender identity, or serious 
            disabilities or diseases.''

     And in the contexts of violations by a page, Facebook 
            describes hate speech as ``verbal abuse directed at 
            individuals.''

    In some cases Facebook reports that these differences are driven by 
        Facebook's attempt to give users a description of the specific 
        subsection of the policy that they violated to help improve 
        user understanding and better explain the appeals process. In 
        other instances, however, the differences are driven by 
        inconsistent use of language across different products (e.g., 
        Groups, Pages). This is problematic because using inconsistent 
        language to describe the relevant policy may create confusion 
        for users trying to understand what Facebook's policies 
        prohibit and whether/how their content may have violated those 
        policies. Such confusion leaves Facebook susceptible to 
        criticism around the consistency of its review.

    The Auditors recommend that Facebook ensure its Community Standards 
        are described accurately and consistently across different 
        appeals contexts (e.g., appeals regarding an individual post, a 
        violation by a group, a violation by a page, etc.)

   Frequently Reported Accounts: The high-volume nature of 
        Facebook's content moderation review process means that when an 
        account attracts an unusually large number of reports, some of 
        those reports are likely to result in at least some content 
        being found to violate the Community Standards--even if the 
        content is unobjectionable. Anti-racism activists and other 
        users have reported being subjected to coordinated reporting 
        attacks designed to exploit this potential for content 
        reviewing errors. Those users have reported difficulty managing 
        the large number of appeals, resulting in improper use 
        restrictions and other penalties.

    Facebook's current appeal system does not address the particular 
        vulnerabilities of users subjected to coordinated reporting 
        campaigns (e.g., reporting everything a user posts in the hope 
        that some will be found violating and subject the user to 
        penalties).

   The Auditors recommend that Facebook adopt mechanisms to 
        ensure that accounts that receive a large number of reports, 
        and that are frequently successful upon appeal, are not 
        subjected to penalties as a result of inaccurate content 
        moderation decisions and coordinated reporting campaigns.
(iii) Penalties.
    Facebook's penalty system--the system for imposing consequences on 
        users for repeatedly violating Facebook's Community Standards--
        has also been criticized for lacking transparency or notice 
        before penalties are imposed, and leaving users in ``Facebook 
        jail'' for extended periods seemingly out of nowhere. The 
        company has faced criticism that penalties often seem 
        disproportionate and to come without warning.

    Since the last Audit Report, Facebook has made significant changes 
        to its penalty system. To provide users greater context and 
        ability to understand when a violation might lead to a penalty, 
        Facebook has created an ``account status'' page on which users 
        can view prior violations (including which Community Standard 
        was violated) and an explanation of any restrictions imposed on 
        their account as a result of those violations (including when 
        those restrictions expire). Facebook similarly improved the 
        messaging it sends to users to notify them that a penalty is 
        being imposed--adding in details about the prior violations 
        that led to the imposition of the penalty and including further 
        explanation of the specific restrictions being imposed. 
        Facebook has also begun informing users that further penalties 
        will be applied in the future if they continue to violate its 
        standards. Facebook is in the process of rolling out these new 
        features, which the Auditors believe will be a helpful resource 
        for users and will substantially increase transparency.

    After the horrific attack in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019, 
        Facebook took steps to understand what more the company could 
        do to limit its services from being used to cause harm or 
        spread hate. Two months after the terrorist attack, the company 
        imposed restrictions on the use of Facebook Live such that 
        people who commit any of its most severe policy violations such 
        as terrorism, suicide, or sexual exploitation, will not be 
        permitted to use the Live feature for set periods of time. 
        While these restrictions will not alleviate the fears about 
        future live streaming of horrific events, they are an important 
        step.

    Taken together, the Auditors believe that these changes to 
        Facebook's appeals and penalties processes are important 
        improvements that will improve transparency, and reduce 
        confusion and some of the resulting frustration. In the 
        Auditors' view, however, there are additional improvements that 
        Facebook should make.
(iv) Penalties Recommendation.
    Transparency: As noted above, Facebook has partially implemented 
        increased transparency in the form of additional user messaging 
        identifying the reasons behind a penalty at the time it is 
        imposed, including the specific underlying content violations. 
        However, in some settings users still receive earlier versions 
        of the penalty messaging, which do not provide the user with 
        context regarding the underlying content violations that led to 
        the penalty.

    The Auditors recommend that Facebook fully implement this 
        additional user messaging across all products, interfaces, and 
        types of violations.
4. Harassment
    The civil rights community has expressed great concern that 
Facebook is too often used as a tool to orchestrate targeted harassment 
campaigns against users and activists. The Auditors have asked Facebook 
to do more to protect its users and prevent large numbers of users from 
flooding individual activists with harassing messages and comments. In 
the June 2019 report, the Auditors flagged a number of ways to better 
address and protect against coordinated harassment, including:

   Expressly prohibiting attempts to organize coordinated 
        harassment campaigns;

   Creating features allowing for the bulk reporting of content 
        as violating or harassing; and

   Improving detection and enforcement of coordinated 
        harassment efforts.

    This section describes the steps Facebook has taken to more 
effectively prohibit and combat harassment on the platform, and 
identifies areas for further improvement. Due to time constraints 
caused by the Auditors being pulled into address intervening events or 
provide input on time-sensitive challenges (as well as the COVID-19 
crisis), the Auditors and Facebook were unable to conduct a detailed, 
comprehensive assessment of Facebook's harassment infrastructure as was 
done on hate speech in the 2019 report or as was done on Appeals and 
Penalties in this report. As a result, the Auditors cannot speak 
directly to the effectiveness of the changes Facebook has implemented 
over the last year, which are described here. However, the Auditors 
felt it was still important to describe these changes for purposes of 
transparency, and to flag the specific areas where the Auditors believe 
there is more work to be done.
    On the policy side, Facebook has now adopted the Auditors' 
recommendation to ban content that explicitly calls for harassment on 
the platform, and will begin enforcement in July 2020. This policy 
update responds to concerns raised by the civil rights community 
regarding Facebook being too reactive and piecemeal in responding to 
organized harassment. In addition, Facebook has begun working with 
human rights activists outside the U.S. to better understand their 
experiences and the impact of Facebook's policies from a human rights 
perspective, which could ultimately lead to recommendations for 
additional policy, product, and operational improvements to protect 
activists.
    On the enforcement side, Facebook reports it has built new tools to 
detect harassing behavior proactively, including detection of language 
that is harassing, hateful, or sexual in nature. Content surfaced by 
the technology is sent to specialized operations teams that take a two-
pronged approach, looking both at the content itself and the cluster of 
accounts targeting the user. Facebook reports using these tools to 
detect harassment against certain categories of users at a heightened 
risk of being attacked (e.g., journalists), but is exploring how to 
scale application and enforcement more broadly to better mitigate the 
harm of organized harassment for all users, including activists.
    When it comes to bulk reporting of harassment, however, Facebook 
has made less tangible progress. Last year the Auditors recommended 
that Facebook develop mechanisms for bulk reporting of content and/or 
functionality that would enable a targeted user to block or report 
harassers en masse, rather than requiring individual reporting of each 
piece of content (which can be burdensome, emotionally draining, and 
time-consuming). In October 2018, Facebook launched a feature that 
allowed people to hide or delete multiple comments at once from the 
options menu of their post, but did not allow multiple comments to be 
reported as violating. The feature is no longer available due to 
negative feedback on the user experience. Facebook reports that it is 
exploring a reboot of this feature and/or other product interventions 
that could better address mass harassment--which may or may not be 
coordinated. A feature was recently launched on Instagram that allows 
users to select up to 25 comments and then delete comments or block the 
accounts posting them in bulk; the Auditors believe that Facebook 
should explore doing something similar because it is important that 
Facebook users are able to report comments in bulk so that harassers 
(including those not expressly coordinating harassment campaigns with 
others) face penalties for their behavior.
5. White Nationalism
    In the last Audit Report, the Auditors restrained their praise for 
Facebook's then-new ban on white nationalism and white separatism 
because, in the Auditors' view, the policy is too narrow in that it 
only prohibits content expressly using the phrase(s) ``white 
nationalism'' or ``white separatism,'' and does not prohibit content 
that explicitly espouses the very same ideology without using those 
exact phrases. At that time, the Auditors recommended that Facebook 
look to expand the policy to prohibit content which expressly praises, 
supports, or represents white nationalist or separatist ideology even 
if it does not explicitly use those terms. Facebook has not made that 
policy change.
    Instead, Facebook reports that it is continuing to look for ways to 
improve its handling of white nationalist and white separatist content 
in other ways. According to the company, it has 350 people who work 
exclusively on combating dangerous individuals and organizations, 
including white nationalist and separatist groups and other organized 
hate groups. This multi-disciplinary team brings together subject 
matter experts from policy, operations, product, engineering, safety 
investigations, threat intelligence, law enforcement investigations, 
and legal.
    Facebook further notes that the collective work of this cross-
functional team has resulted in a ban on more than 250 white 
supremacist organizations from its platform, and that the company uses 
a combination of AI and human expertise to remove content praising or 
supporting these organizations. Through this process, Facebook states 
that it has learned behavioral patterns in organized hate and terrorist 
content that make them distinctive from one another, which may aid in 
their detection. For example, Facebook has observed that violations for 
organized hate are more likely to involve memes while terrorist 
propaganda is often dispersed from a central media arm of the 
organization and includes formalized branding. Facebook states that 
understanding these nuances may help the company continue to improve 
its detection of organized hate content. In its May 2020 Community 
Standards Enforcement Report, Facebook reported that in the first three 
months of 2020, it removed about 4.7 million pieces of content 
connected to organized hate--an increase of over 3 million pieces of 
content from the end of 2019. While this is an impressive figure, the 
Auditors are unable to assess its significance without greater context 
(e.g., the amount of hate content that is on the platform but goes 
undetected, or whether hate is increasing on the platform overall, such 
that removing more does not necessarily signal better detection).
    Facebook has also said that it is able to take more aggressive 
action against dangerous individuals and organizations by working with 
its Threat Intelligence and Safety Investigations team, who are 
responsible for combating coordinated inauthentic behavior. The team 
states that it uses signals to identify if a banned organization has a 
presence on the platform and then proactively investigates associated 
accounts, Pages and Groups--removing them all at once and taking steps 
to protect against recidivist behavior.
    That being said, the civil rights community continues to express 
significant concern with Facebook's detection and removal of extremist 
and white nationalist content and its identification and removal of 
hate organizations. Civil rights advocates continue to take issue with 
Facebook's definition of a ``dangerous organization,'' contending that 
the definition is too narrow and excludes hate figures and hate 
organizations designated by civil rights groups that track such content 
on social media. Furthermore, civil rights groups have challenged the 
accuracy and effectiveness of Facebook's enforcement of these policies; 
for example, a 2020 report published by the Tech Transparency Project 
(TTP) concluded that more than 100 groups identified by the Southern 
Poverty Law Center and/or Anti-Defamation League as white supremacist 
organizations had a presence on Facebook.
    Because Facebook uses its own criteria for designating hate 
organizations, they are not in agreement with the hate designation of 
organizations that are identified by the TTP report. In some ways 
Facebook's designations are more expansive (e.g., Facebook indicates it 
has designated 15 US-based white supremacist groups as hate 
organizations that are not so-designated by the Southern Poverty Law 
Center or Anti-Defamation League) and in some ways civil rights groups 
feel that Facebook's designations are under inclusive.
    Of course, even if a group is not formally designated, it still 
must follow Facebook's content policies which can result in the removal 
of individual posts or the disabling of Pages if they violate Community 
Standards. In other words, an organization need not meet Facebook's 
definition of a hate organization for the organization's Page to be 
disabled; the Page can be disabled for containing hate symbols, hate 
content, or otherwise violating Community Standards. However, for the 
very same reasons that Facebook designates and removes whole 
organizations, civil rights groups contend that piecemeal removal of 
individuals posts or even Pages, while helpful, is insufficient for 
groups they think should be removed at the organizational level.
    In addition, while Facebook announced in 2019 that searches for 
white supremacist terms would lead users to the page for Life After 
Hate (a group that works to rehabilitate extremists), the report also 
found that this redirection only happened a fraction of the time--even 
when searches contained the words ``Klu Klux Klan.'' Facebook indicates 
that the redirection is controlled by the trigger words selected by 
Facebook in collaboration with Life After Hate and that ``Klu Klux 
Klan'' is on the list and that should have triggered redirection. The 
Auditors are heartened that Facebook has already begun an independent 
evaluation of its redirection program and the Auditors encourage 
Facebook to assess and expand capacity (including redirecting to 
additional organizations if needed) to better ensure users who search 
for extremist terms are more consistently redirected to rehabilitation 
resources.
    The TTP report also noted how Facebook's ``Related Pages'' feature, 
which suggests other pages a person might be interested in, could push 
users who engage with white supremacist content toward further white 
supremacist content. While Facebook indicates that it already considers 
a page or group's history of Community Standards violations in 
determining whether that page or group is eligible to be recommended to 
users, the Auditors urge Facebook to further examine the impact of the 
feature and look into additional ways to ensure that Facebook is not 
pushing users toward extremist echo chambers.
    At bottom, while the Auditors are encouraged by some of the steps 
Facebook is taking to detect and remove organized hate, including white 
nationalist and white separatist groups, the Auditors believe the 
company should be doing more. The company has not implemented the 
Auditors' specific recommendation that it work to prohibit expressly--
even if not explicit--references to white nationalist or white 
separatist ideology. The Auditors continue to think this recommendation 
must be prioritized, even as the company expands its efforts to detect 
and remove white nationalist or separatist organizations or networks. 
In addition, the Auditors urge Facebook to take steps to ensure its 
efforts to remove hate organizations and redirect users away from 
(rather than toward) extremist organizations efforts are working as 
effectively as possible, and that Facebook's tools are not pushing 
people toward more hate or extremist content.
6. COVID-19 Updates
    Facebook has taken a number of affirmative and proactive steps to 
identify and remove harmful content that is surfacing in response to 
the current COVID-19 pandemic. How COVID-19 is handled by Facebook is 
of deep concern to the civil rights community because of the disease's 
disproportionate impact on racial and ethnic groups, seniors, people 
who are incarcerated or in institutionalized settings, and the LGBTQ 
community among other groups. COVID-19 has also fueled an increase in 
hate crimes, scapegoating and bigotry toward Asians and people of Asian 
descent, Muslims and immigrants, to name a few. Lastly, civil rights 
groups are concerned that minority groups have been targeted to receive 
COVID-19 misinformation.
    Since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a 
public health emergency in January, Facebook has taken aggressive steps 
to remove misinformation that contributes to the risk of imminent 
physical harm. (While the company does not typically remove 
misinformation, its Community Standards do allow for removal of 
misinformation that contribute to the risk of imminent violence or 
physical harm.) Relying on guidance from external experts, such as the 
WHO and local health authorities to identify false claims, Facebook has 
removed false claims about: the existence or severity of COVID-19, how 
to prevent COVID-19, how COVID-19 is transmitted (such as false claims 
that some racial groups are immune to the virus), cures for COVID-19, 
and access to or the availability of essential services. The list of 
specific claims removed has evolved, with new claims being added as new 
guidance is provided by experts.
    Facebook has also started showing messages in News Feed to people 
who have interacted with (e.g., liked, reacted, commented on, shared) 
harmful misinformation about COVID-19 that was later removed as false. 
The company uses these messages to connect people to the WHO's COVID-19 
mythbuster website that has authoritative information.
    Facebook also updated its content reviewer guidance to make clear 
that claims that people of certain races or religions have the virus, 
created the virus, or are spreading the virus violate Facebook's hate 
speech policies. Facebook has similarly provided guidance that content 
attempting to identify individuals as having COVID-19 violates 
Facebook's harassment and bullying Community Standards.
    Facebook's proactive moderation of content related to COVID-19 is, 
in the Auditors' view, commendable, but not without concerns. Ads that 
have patently false COVID-19 information have been generated and not 
captured by Facebook's algorithm. The strength of its strong policies 
is not only measured in words, but also how well those policies are 
enforced. Nonetheless, the Auditors strongly recommend that Facebook 
take lessons from its COVID-19 response (such as expanding the staff 
devoted to this effort, a commitment to public education and vigorously 
strengthening and enforcing its policies) and apply them to other 
areas, like voter suppression, to improve its content moderation and 
enforcement.
7. Additional Auditor Concerns and Recommendations
(i) Recent Troubling Content Decisions.
    The civil rights community found Facebook's recent enforcement 
        decision finding content posted by President Trump to be 
        outside the scope of its Violence and Incitement Policy 
        dangerous and deeply troubling because it reflected a seeming 
        impassivity toward racial violence in this country.

    Facebook's Violence and Incitement Community Standard is intended 
        to ``remove language that incites or facilitates serious 
        violence.'' The policy prohibits ``threats that could lead to 
        death'' including ``calls for high-severity violence,'' 
        ``statements of intent to commit violence,'' and ``aspirational 
        or conditional statements to commit high-severity violence.'' 
        The policy also prohibits ``statements of intent or advocacy or 
        calls to action or aspirational or conditional statements to 
        bring weapons to locations.''

    In the midst of nationwide protests regarding police violence 
        against the Black community, President Trump posted statements 
        on Facebook and Twitter that:

                ``These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George 
                Floyd, and I won't let that happen. Just spoke to 
                Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is 
                with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume 
                control but, when the looting starts, the shooting 
                starts.''

    The phrase, ``when the looting starts the shooting starts'' is not 
        new. A Florida police chief famously used the phrase in the 
        1960s when faced with civil rights unrest to explain that 
        lethal force had been authorized against alleged looters.

    In contrast to Twitter, which labeled the post as violating its 
        policy against glorifying violence, Facebook deemed the post 
        non-violating of its policies and left it up. Facebook's stated 
        rationale was the post served as a warning about impending 
        state action and its Violence and Incitement policy does not 
        prohibit such content relating to ``state action.'' Facebook 
        asserted that the exception for state action had long predated 
        the Trump posts. Mark Zuckerberg later elaborated in a meeting 
        with employees that although the company understood the ``when 
        the looting starts, the shooting starts'' phrase referred to 
        excessive policing but that the company did not think it had a 
        ``history of being read as a dog whistle for vigilante 
        supporters to take justice into their own hands.''

    The civil rights community and the Auditors were deeply troubled by 
        Facebook's decision, believing that it ignores how such 
        statements, especially when made by those in power and targeted 
        toward an identifiable, minority community, condone vigilantism 
        and legitimize violence against that community. Civil rights 
        advocates likewise viewed the decision as ignoring the fact 
        that the ``state action'' being discussed--shooting people for 
        stealing or looting--would amount to unlawful, extrajudicial 
        capital punishment. In encounters with criminal conduct, police 
        are not authorized to randomly shoot people; they are trained 
        to intercept and arrest, so that individuals can be prosecuted 
        by a court of law to determine their guilt or innocence. Random 
        shooting is not a legitimate state use of force. Facebook 
        articulated that under its policy, threats of state use of 
        force (even lethal force) against people alleged to have 
        committed crimes are permitted. The idea that those in 
        positions of authority could wield that power and use language 
        widely interpreted by the public to be threatening violence 
        against specific groups (thereby legitimizing targeted attacks 
        against them) seemed plainly contrary to the letter and spirit 
        of the Violence and Incitement Policy. Externally, that reading 
        could not be squared with Mark Zuckerberg's prior assurances 
        that it would take down statements that could lead to ``real 
        world violence'' even if made by politicians.

    The Auditors shared the civil rights community's concerns, and 
        strongly urged Facebook to remove the post, but did not have 
        the opportunity to speak directly to any decision-makers until 
        after Facebook had already decided to leave it up.

    As with the company's decisions regarding President Trump's recent 
        voting-related posts, the external criticism of this decision 
        was far from limited to the civil rights community. Some 
        Facebook employees posted public messages disagreeing with the 
        decision and staged a virtual walkout. Several former employees 
        of the company published a joint letter criticizing the 
        decision--warning that, ``We know the speech of the powerful 
        matters most of all. It establishes norms, creates a permission 
        structure, and implicitly authorizes violence, all of which is 
        made worse by algorithmic amplification.'' Members of the House 
        Committee on Homeland Security sent a letter demanding an 
        explanation for the decision, explaining ``There is a 
        difference between being a platform that facilitates public 
        discourse and one that peddles incendiary, race-baiting 
        innuendo guised as political speech for profit.''

    After the company publicly left up the looting and shooting post, 
        more than five political and merchandise ads have run on 
        Facebook sending the same dangerous message that ``looters'' 
        and ``ANTIFA terrorists'' can or should be shot by armed 
        citizens. These have ranged from ads by Congressional candidate 
        Paul Broun referring to this AR-15 rifle as a ``liberty 
        machine'' and urging its use against ``looting hordes from 
        Atlanta'', to T-shirts depicting guns saying ``loot this'' or 
        targets to be used as shooting practice for when ``looters'' 
        come. To be clear, Facebook agreed these ads violated their 
        policies (ads for T-shirts or targets are clearly not 
        ``warnings about state action''). Facebook ultimately removed 
        the ads after they were brought to Facebook's attention, 
        although only after the ads collectively received more than two 
        hundred thousand impressions. The civil rights community 
        expressed concern that the ads illustrated how Facebook's 
        public decision to permit the President's looting and shooting 
        post could have ripple effects that magnify the impact of the 
        decision and further spread its violent messages on the 
        platform. The fact that these violating ads calling for 
        violence were not initially caught and taken down by Facebook's 
        content reviewers is also concerning to the Auditors.

    Facebook has since announced a willingness to revisit its Violence 
        and Incitement Policy and the scope of its exception for 
        threats of state action. As of this writing, it is unclear 
        whether that revisiting will result in any policy or 
        enforcement changes, and if so, what those changes will be. 
        However, to many in the civil rights community the damage has 
        already been done--the trust that the company will interpret 
        and enforce its policies in ways that reflect a prioritization 
        of civil rights has been broken.
(ii) Polarization.
    The civil rights groups and members of Congress also have questions 
        about Facebook's potential role in pushing people toward 
        extreme and divisive content. A number of them have flagged an 
        article in the Wall Street Journal that asserts that Facebook 
        leadership ``shut down efforts to make the site less divisive'' 
        and ``largely shelved'' internal research on whether social 
        media increases polarization. Additionally, the Chairman of the 
        House Intelligence Committee said on June 18, 2020, ``I'm 
        concerned about whether social media platforms like YouTube, 
        Facebook, Instagram and others, wittingly or otherwise, 
        optimize for extreme content.

    These technologies are designed to engage users and keep them 
        coming back, which is pushing us further apart and isolating 
        Americans into information silos.'' The Chairman further 
        expressed concern about how Facebook's algorithm works and 
        whether it prioritizes engagement and attention in a manner 
        that rewards extreme and divisive content.

    Facebook argues that the Wall Street Journal article used isolated 
        incidents where leadership chose not to approve a possible 
        intervention to make the argument that Facebook doesn't care 
        about polarization in general. Facebook reports it has 
        commissioned internal & external research, which have informed 
        several measures the company has taken to fight polarization. 
        Examples include:

   Recalibrating News Feed. In 2018, Facebook changed News Feed 
        ranking to prioritize posts from friends and family over news 
        content. Additionally, Facebook reports reducing clickbait 
        headlines, reducing links to spam and misleading posts, and 
        improving comment rankings to show people higher quality 
        information.

   Growth of Its Integrity Team. Facebook has spent the last 
        four years building a global integrity team that addresses 
        safety and security issues, including polarization. This 
        dedicated team was not in place when some of the internal 
        research referenced was produced.

   Restricting Recommendations. If Pages and Groups repeatedly 
        share content that violates Facebook's Community Standards, or 
        is rated false by fact-checkers, Facebook reports that it 
        reduces those Pages' distribution, and removes them from 
        recommendations.

    The Auditors do not believe that Facebook is sufficiently attuned 
        to the depth of concern on the issue of polarization and the 
        way that the algorithms used by Facebook inadvertently fuel 
        extreme and polarizing content (even with the measures above). 
        The Auditors believe that Facebook should do everything in its 
        power to prevent its tools and algorithms from driving people 
        toward self-reinforcing echo chambers of extremism, and that 
        the company must recognize that failure to do so can have 
        dangerous (and life-threatening) real-world consequences.
(iii) Hate Speech Data & Analysis.
    The Auditors recommend that Facebook compile data and further study 
        how hate speech manifests on the platform against particular 
        protected groups to enable it to devote additional resources to 
        understanding the form and prevalence of different kinds of 
        hate on the platform, its causes (e.g., policy gaps, global 
        enforcement trends or training issues, etc.), and to identify 
        potential remedial steps the company could take.

    Currently, when content reviewers remove content for expressing 
        hate against a protected group or groups, Facebook does not 
        capture data as to the protected group(s) against whom the hate 
        speech was directed. Similarly, when users report content as 
        violating hate speech policies, they do not have a way to note 
        which protected class(es) are being attacked in the post. 
        Without this information, Facebook lacks specific metrics for 
        evaluating and understanding: (1) the volume of hate broken 
        down by the group targeted, (2) whether there are categories of 
        attacks on particular groups that are prevalent but not 
        consistently removed, (3) whether there is a gap in policy 
        guidance that has resulted in hate attacks against one 
        religion, race, gender identity, falling through the cracks, 
        based on the particular way those attacks manifested, etc.

    Because the data would focus on the content of posts and the 
        reasons that content violates Facebook's hate speech policies 
        (rather than anything about the users reporting or posting it), 
        the Auditors are confident that this kind of data collection 
        need not involve collection of any data on users or otherwise 
        implicate privacy concerns.

    Facebook and the Auditors have repeatedly heard concerns from civil 
        rights groups that particular forms of hate are prevalent on 
        the platform but the absence of data for analysis and study 
        seems to undercut efforts to document and define the problem, 
        identify its source, and explore potential mitigation.

    Take anti-Muslim hate speech, for example. For years the civil 
        rights community has expressed increasing alarm at the level of 
        anti-Muslim hate speech on (and off) the platform. While 
        Christchurch was an inflection point for the Muslim community 
        and its relationship to Facebook, the community's concerns with 
        Facebook existed long before and extend beyond that tragedy. 
        From the organization of events designed to intimidate members 
        of the Muslim community at gathering places, to the prevalence 
        of content demonizing Islam and Muslims, and the use of 
        Facebook Live during the Christchurch massacre, civil rights 
        advocates have expressed alarm that Muslims feel under siege on 
        Facebook--and have criticized Facebook for not doing enough to 
        address it. (Of course, this is not to say that Muslims are 
        alone in experiencing persistent hate on the platform or the 
        sense that they are under attack. Indeed, hate speech and 
        efforts to incite violence targeting African Americans, Jews, 
        Asians and the LGBTQ and LatinX communities, to name a few, 
        have gained national attention in recent months. But, Facebook 
        has not yet publicly studied or acknowledged the particular 
        ways anti-Muslim bigotry manifests on its platform in the same 
        manner it has discussed its root cause analysis of hate speech 
        false positives removals of the posts of African American users 
        and publicly launched pilots to test potential remedies).

    Facebook's existing policy prohibits attacks against people based 
        on their religion, including those disguised as attacks against 
        religious concepts (e.g., attacks against ``Islam'' which use 
        pronouns like ``they'' or depict people). However, reports from 
        civil rights groups and anecdotal examples suggest that these 
        kinds of attacks persist on the platform and may seem to be 
        more frequent than attacks mentioning Christianity, Judaism, or 
        other religious concepts, making Facebook's distinction between 
        attacks targeted at people versus concepts all the more blurry 
        (and potentially problematic) when it comes to anti-Muslim 
        sentiment.

    Having data on the prevalence of anti-Muslim hate speech on the 
        platform, what kinds of content is being flagged as anti-Muslim 
        hate speech, and what percentage and types of content is being 
        removed as anti-Muslim hate speech would be incredibly useful 
        in defining the issue and identifying potential remedies. The 
        Auditors recommend that Facebook (1) capture data on which 
        protected characteristic is referenced by the perpetrator in 
        the attacking post, and then (2) study the issue and evaluate 
        potential solutions or ways to better distinguish between 
        discussion of religious concepts and dehumanizing or hateful 
        attacks masquerading as references to religious concepts or 
        ideologies.

    Facebook's events policy provides another illustration of the need 
        for focused study and analysis on particular manifestations of 
        hate. Facebook policy prohibits both calls to bring weapons to 
        houses of worship (including mosques) and calls to bring 
        weapons to other religious gatherings or events to intimidate 
        or harass people. Civil rights groups have expressed ongoing 
        concern that Facebook's enforcement of its events policy is too 
        slow, often pointing to an August 2019 incident in which 
        efforts to organize intimidation at the Islamic Society of 
        North America's annual convening in Houston, Texas took just 
        over 24 hours to remove. Facebook agrees that 24 hours is too 
        long and acknowledges that the Houston incident represents an 
        enforcement misstep. Facebook should study the incident to 
        pinpoint what went wrong and update protocols to ensure faster 
        enforcement in the future. The Auditors believe having an 
        effective expedited review process to remove such content 
        quickly is critical given its potential for real-world harm, 
        and that such post-incident analysis assessments are vital to 
        that end. In the midst of nationwide protests, it is all the 
        more important that Facebook get its events policy enforcement 
        and expedited review process right--to ensure that people 
        cannot use Facebook to organize calls to arms to harm or 
        intimidate specific groups.

    For that reason, the Auditors recommend that Facebook gather data 
        on its enforcement of its events policies to identify how long 
        it takes Facebook to remove violating content (and whether 
        those response times vary based on the type of content or group 
        targeted). Those kinds of metrics can be critical to 
        identifying patterns, gaps, or areas for improvement.

    Of course, the civil rights community's concerns with hate on 
        Facebook are not limited to anti-Muslim bigotry. And as we've 
        seen with the COVID-19 pandemic and recent incidents of racism 
        that have captured national (and international) attention, new 
        manifestations and targets of hate speech can arise all the 
        time, which, in the Auditors' view, only reinforces the need to 
        capture data so that new spikes and trends can be identified 
        quickly and systematically.

    At bottom, the Auditors recommend that Facebook invest in further 
        study and analysis of hate on the platform and commit to taking 
        steps to address trends, policy gaps, or enforcement issues it 
        identifies. It is important that Facebook understand how 
        different groups are targeted for hate, how well Facebook is 
        alerting content reviewers to the specific ways that violating 
        content manifests against certain groups, to more quickly 
        identify and remove attempts to organize events designed to 
        intimidate and harass targeted groups, and where Facebook could 
        focus its improvement efforts. For many forms of hate, 
        including anti-Muslim bigotry, documenting and publicly 
        acknowledging the issue is an important first step to studying 
        the issue and building solutions. For that reason, the Auditors 
        not only recommend that Facebook capture, analyze, and act on 
        this data as described above, but that it also include in its 
        Community Standards Enforcement Report more detailed 
        information about the type of hate speech being reported and 
        removed from the platform, including information on the groups 
        being targeted.
                 Chapter Four: Diversity and Inclusion
    As the Nation becomes more attuned to systemic exclusion and 
inequities, companies should recognize diversity and inclusion as 
paramount and they should expect to be held accountable for their 
success (or failure) to embody these principles. In recent weeks, the 
tragedies and ensuing protests against police violence and systemic 
racism have led to a wave of corporate statements against the racism 
and injustice facing communities of color. For some, these expressions 
of solidarity ring hollow from companies whose workforce and leadership 
fail to reflect the diversity of this country or whose work 
environments feel far from welcoming or inclusive to underrepresented 
groups. The civil rights community hopes that these company commitments 
to doing ``better'' or ``more'' start with actual, concrete progress to 
further instill principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion in 
corporate America and Silicon Valley. Progress includes more diverse 
workforces at every level and inclusive environments with structures in 
place to promote equity and remove barriers. It includes a path to C-
Suite or senior leadership posts for people of color (in roles that are 
not limited to diversity officer positions as is often the case in 
corporate America), and company-wide recognition that diversity and 
inclusion is a critical function of all senior leadership and managers 
(rather than the responsibility of those in underrepresented groups). 
This chapter provides a window into the status of diversity and 
inclusion at Facebook--its stated goals, policies, and programs--
contextualized through the lens of concerns that have been raised in 
the civil rights community.
    The civil rights community has long expressed concern regarding 
diversity and inclusion at Facebook--from staff and contractors (like 
those who are content reviewers), to senior management, and outside 
vendors or service providers that are used by the company to furnish 
everything from supplies to financial services. These concerns are 
multi-faceted. Civil rights groups have raised alarms about the 
relative dearth of people of color, older workers, people with 
disabilities, women, and other traditionally underrepresented 
minorities (``URMs'') (including African Americans, Hispanic, Native 
Americans and Pacific Islanders) at Facebook--across multiple positions 
and levels, but particularly in technical roles and in leadership 
positions. Civil rights leaders have characterized the current numbers 
for Hispanic and African American staff as abysmal across every 
category (e.g., technical roles, non-technical roles, management, 
etc.). Because of this lack of representation, civil rights groups have 
advocated for Facebook to do more to grow a strong and effective 
recruiting pipeline bringing underrepresented minorities into the 
company. Aside from recruiting and hiring, civil rights advocates also 
have challenged Facebook to ensure that those underrepresented 
minorities hired are retained, included, and promoted to positions of 
leadership--so that experiences of isolation or exclusion by URM 
employees do not lead to attrition reducing already low employment 
numbers. Concerns about the URM employee experience have been 
heightened in recent years following public memos and posts from 
current or former employees alleging experiences with bias, exclusion, 
and/or microaggressions.
    The House Committee on Financial Services summarized many of these 
concerns in a public memo issued in advance of its 2019 hearing on 
Facebook in which it stated:

   ``Facebook's 2019 diversity report highlights the company's 
        slow progress with diversity metrics. From 2018 to 2019, 
        Facebook reported less than a one percent increase in the total 
        number of female employees. A majority of its employees are 
        white (44 percent) and Asian (43 percent), with less than 13 
        percent of its total workforce representative of African 
        Americans, Hispanics and other ethnic groups combined. 
        Facebook's corporate board of directors and senior leadership 
        are mostly comprised of white men, with the first appointment 
        of an African American female in April 2019.\1\ Facebook 
        provides statistics on its supplier diversity, including 
        spending $404.3 million in 2018 with diverse suppliers, an 
        increase of more than $170 million from the previous year.\2\ 
        However, the report does not provide details on the total 
        amount of spending with all suppliers nor has the company 
        published specific data on its use of diverse-owned financial 
        services firms, such as investment with diverse asset managers 
        or deposits with minority-owned depository institutions.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The Auditors note that this has since changed. There are now 
two African American women on Facebook's board of directors.
    \2\ The Auditors note that Facebook has updated these figures in 
its recently released annual supplier diversity report which is 
referenced below.

    In light of these concerns, the Audit Team has spent time drilling 
down on Facebook's diversity and inclusion strategy, programs, and 
practices. The Audit Team has met with policy and program leaders at 
the company, several members of the Diversity & Inclusion team, a small 
group of employees who lead Facebook Resource Groups (FBRGs), as well 
as the executives who sponsor those groups. This section reviews the 
Auditors observations, and acknowledges both the progress and the areas 
for improvement.
    The Auditors have been pleased with recent announcements and 
changes by the company--they are both critical and signal a strong 
commitment to recognizing the importance of diversity and inclusion in 
all aspects of company operations. These include:

   Elevating the role of the Chief Diversity Officer to report 
        directly to the COO and sit in on all management team meetings 
        led by either the CEO or COO.

   A diverse supplier commitment of $1 billion in 2021 and 
        every year thereafter. As part of that commitment, Facebook 
        committed to spending at least $100 million annually with 
        Black-owned suppliers.

   A commitment to have 50 percent of Facebook's workforce be 
        from underrepresented communities by the end of 2023. (Facebook 
        defines URM to include: women, people who are Black, Hispanic, 
        Native American, or Pacific Islander, people with two or more 
        ethnicities, people with disabilities, and veterans.) And, over 
        the next five years, a commitment to have 30 percent more 
        people of color, including 30 percent more Black people, in 
        leadership positions.

    Training 1 million members of the Black community, in addition to 
giving 100,000 scholarships to Black students working toward digital 
skills certifications. Facebook's goal in making this commitment is to 
ensure people have the opportunity to develop the skills necessary to 
succeed as we adjust to the COVID-19 world.
    Increasing Facebook's previous $100 million global grant commitment 
by an additional $75 million available to Black-owned businesses in the 
U.S. and to non-profits who support Black communities--as well as $25 
million to Black creators to help amplify their stories on Facebook.
    The resources that Facebook has committed over the last seven years 
to develop new Diversity & Inclusion projects, initiatives and programs 
(which are described in detail below) are noteworthy. In at least some 
of these areas, the company has made progress. Yet, as Facebook 
leadership has publicly acknowledged, there is more work to do.
    As a part of the Audit process, the Auditors had conversations with 
a small group of employees in winter 2019 who lead the company resource 
groups representing the URM populations. (Because the Auditors only had 
access to a small group of employees, comprehensive employee surveys or 
interviews were outside the scope of this Audit.) While employees did 
share positive sentiments on feeling empowered to build community, 
these conversations were primarily designed to elicit their general 
concerns and recommendations for approaches to improve the experience 
of URM populations at Facebook. Given the concerns expressed publicly 
by current and former employees, the Auditors wanted to include some 
themes of feedback here. The Auditors emphasize that the themes 
outlined here only reflect some of the views expressed by a small group 
of employees and are not to be construed as the views of all of the 
members of the Facebook Resource groups, or employees at large. Themes 
that emerged in the Auditors' conversations included:

   a concern about the lack of representation in senior 
        management and the number of people of color (with the 
        exception of Asians and Asian Americans) in technical roles;

   concerns about the performance evaluation process being 
        consistently applied;

   a lack of recognition for the time URM employees spent on 
        mentoring and recruiting other minorities to work at Facebook--
        this feedback was particularly pronounced with resource group 
        leaders who are also managers;

   a greater sense of isolation because of their limited 
        numbers compared to the overall workforce, especially in 
        technical roles;

   a lack of awareness of all the internal programs available 
        to report racial bias and/or discrimination;

   a desire to have more of a say in policies and products that 
        affect their communities;

   a desire to see more data about rates of attrition.

    To be sure, many of these diversity and inclusion issues are not 
unique to Facebook. Other tech companies and social media platforms 
have similarly low representation of URMs, and have similarly faced 
criticism for failing to bring employment opportunities to minority 
communities or foster inclusive environments where URMs stay and 
succeed. A recent report (Internet Association Inaugural Diversity & 
Inclusion Benchmark Report) highlights the lack of progress throughout 
the tech industry. Civil rights leaders continue to press the business 
case for inclusion and argue that diversity is a source of competitive 
advantage and an enabler of growth in a demographically changing 
society.
    However, the fact that this is an industry-wide issue, does not 
absolve Facebook of its responsibility to do its part. Indeed, given 
the substantial role that Facebook plays in the tech industry and the 
outsized influence it has on the lives of millions of Americans and 
billions of users worldwide, it is particularly important for Facebook 
to maintain a diverse and inclusive workforce from top to bottom. The 
civil rights community and members of Congress are concerned that 
Facebook is not doing enough in that regard.
    There is a strongly held belief by civil rights leaders that a 
diverse workforce is necessary and complementary to a robust civil 
rights infrastructure. That widely held belief was elevated by the 
House Committee on Energy and Commerce in its hearing on ``Inclusion in 
Tech: How Diversity Benefits All Americans.'' Without meaningful 
diversity or the right people in decision making, companies may not be 
able to account for blind spots and biases.
    That said, having people of color in leadership roles is not the 
same as having people who have been deeply educated and experienced in 
understanding civil rights law and policy. People of color and civil 
rights expertise are not interchangeable. Treating them as such risks 
both reducing people of color to one-dimensional representatives of 
their race or national origin and unfairly saddling them with the 
responsibility, burden, and emotional labor of identifying civil rights 
concerns and advocating internally for them to be addressed. Facebook 
needs to continue to both drive meaningful progress on diversity and 
inclusion and build out its civil rights infrastructure, including 
bringing civil rights expertise in-house.
    This chapter proceeds in five parts. First, it explains the 
strategies animating Facebook's diversity and inclusion programs and 
the company's D & I resources. Second, it describes the trajectory of 
Facebook's employment figures and discusses Facebook's hiring goals. 
Third, it summarizes relevant programs and initiatives intended to 
advance the company's D & I goals. Fourth, it offers the Auditors' 
observations on Facebook's internal D & I efforts and suggested 
improvements. Fifth, it discusses the status of Facebook's partner, 
vendor, and supplier diversity efforts and provides the Auditors' 
observations on those efforts.
1. Facebook's Diversity & Inclusion Strategy & Resources
    Facebook's diversity and inclusion program began in earnest in 
2014, when it hired its first Global Chief Diversity Officer to define 
Facebook's diversity and inclusion strategy and begin to build out a 
diversity and inclusion department at the company. Facebook states that 
its ultimate objective in pursuing diversity and inclusion efforts is 
to make better products and policies by leveraging employees' different 
perspectives, skills and experience. With that goal in mind, diversity 
and inclusion strategies are aimed at:

   increasing the number of employees from underrepresented 
        groups;

   building fair and inclusive systems for employee performance 
        and development, including cultivating an environment that 
        promotes employee retention of talent and leverages different 
        perspectives, and implementing processes that support all 
        people in their growth; and

   integrating D & I principles into company-wide systems.

    The Auditors are not taking a position of support or opposition to 
these diversity strategies but are merely sharing what Facebook says it 
is doing. Facebook reports that it has created a number of programs and 
initiatives to generate progress on diversity and inclusion, which are 
outlined in Section 3 below.
    When it comes to D & I at Facebook, the Auditors understand that 
the D & I team is strongly resourced (although the Auditors are not 
privy to exact budget numbers). It is also supported by approximately 
40 members of the People Analytics team including data scientists, 
sociologists, social scientists, race and bias experts, and the People 
Growth team (whose expertise is in talent planning and career 
development). Furthermore, with its Global Chief Diversity Officer now 
sitting on Facebook's executive management team and (as of June 2020) 
reporting directly to Sheryl Sandberg, there is at least an increased 
opportunity to integrate diversity and inclusion considerations into 
decision-making.
2. Facebook's Workforce Figures and Hiring Goals
    The figures Facebook published in its 2019 Diversity Report show 
Black and Hispanic employees make up 3.8 percent and 5.2 percent of 
employees across all positions, respectively, 1.5 percent and 3.5 
percent of employees in technical roles, 8.2 percent and 8.8 percent of 
employees in business and sales roles, and 3.1 percent and 3.5 percent 
of employees in senior leadership roles. While Asian employees 
represent 43 percent of the workforce (and 52 percent of employees in 
technical roles), they represent only 24.9 percent of senior leadership 
roles.
    Although Facebook has a long way to go, there are signs of 
progress. Facebook points out that there has been substantial change 
within individual subgroups and in specific roles. The company's latest 
published employment statistics show that since 2014 they have 
increased the number of Black women at Facebook by over 40x and the 
number of Black men by over 15x. This is spanning a period in which the 
overall company's growth was only 6.5x. This is good news even while 
the overall percentages remain small. On the non-technical side, 
Facebook has increased the percentage of Black people from 2 percent to 
8 percent.
    Facebook has also increased the representation of women from 31 
percent of its population in 2014 to 37 percent in 2019 with the 
numbers in leadership over the same period moving from 23 percent to 33 
percent women. In the technical realm, the company's most significant 
growth has been seen among women, who represented only 15 percent of 
people in technical roles in 2014 but increased to 23 percent by 2019.
    In 2020, Facebook will report that 8 percent of its U.S. workforce 
self-identified as LGBTQA+ (based on a 54 percent response rate), 
noting a 1 percent rise in representation from 2016, which is the first 
year that the company began collecting and publishing this data. 
Facebook's representation of veteran workers in the U.S. has remained 
relatively steady at 2 percent between 2018 and 2020. As for people 
with disabilities, Facebook will report that 3.9 percent of its U.S. 
workforce identified as being a person with a disability in 2020, which 
is the first year this data is being shared. (Facebook does not 
publicly report statistics on older workers. Figures for this category 
are absent from this report due to lack of access to data, not 
deprioritization by the Auditors.)
    The Auditors' view into the 2020 numbers suggests that this 
trajectory of increasing representation generally continues in 2020.
    Facebook also recently committed to a goal of diversifying its 
employee base such that by 2024 at least 50 percent of Facebook 
employees will be women, people who are Black, Hispanic, Native 
American, Pacific Islanders, people with two or more ethnicities, 
people with disabilities, and veterans (referred to as the ``50 in 5'' 
goal). (Currently 43 percent of Facebook's workforce fall into these 
categories.) In establishing this goal, Facebook aims to double the 
number of women it employs globally and the number Black and Hispanic 
employees working in the US. While the goal is ambitious, Facebook 
reports that it was set to signal commitment, help focus the company's 
efforts, and drive results. Facebook asserts that in order to set the 
company up for success, the company instituted the 50 in 5 goal only 
after building out its D & I, Human Resources, Learning & Development, 
Analytics and Recruiting teams and strategies, and taking steps to 
build out its internal infrastructure by, for example, starting to 
evaluate senior leaders on their effectiveness at meeting D&I goals. 
This goal (and the principle of representation it reflects) has been 
embraced by civil rights leaders.
    On June 18 of this year, Facebook further enhanced its 50 in 5 goal 
by announcing that it would aim to increase the number of people of 
color in leadership positions over the next years by 30 percent, 
including increasing the representation of Black employees in such 
roles by 30 percent. The Auditors recognize that diversity in 
leadership is important and view these goals as important steps forward 
to be achieved.
    The Auditors believe in public goal setting for the recruitment of 
URMs, and recognize that these aspirations are important signals of the 
desire for diversity. However, the Auditors are wary that it would send 
a problematic message if Facebook does not come close enough to meeting 
its goals. The Auditors would like to know more about how the 
commitment to these goals has changed behavior or prompted action, and 
how the company plans to ensure representation of each sub-group in 
these goals. The Auditors were unable to poll leaders on this topic, 
but would like to see continued public commitments to and discussion of 
these goals by the Facebook senior leadership team.
    The Auditors recognize that workforce statistics are not a 
sufficient or meaningful metric for providing transparency into the 
current state of inclusion at Facebook, and a sense of whether and to 
what extent Facebook has created an inclusive environment. The absence 
of helpful measures of equity or inclusion at Facebook is not intended 
to suggest that those goals are subordinate or insignificant but merely 
reflect the Auditors' lack of access to such data or resources.
3. Details on Facebook's Diversity and Inclusion Programs & Systems
    The D & I strategy the company has adopted (and refined) since 2014 
has three main components which operate simultaneously and build off 
each other: (i) recruiting (ii) inclusion; and (iii) the integration of 
D & I principles into company-wide systems.
    By design, not all of Facebook's programs are housed within the 
diversity and inclusion or human resources departments; a number of 
them are in education and civic engagement partnerships, based on the 
company's belief that that for D & I to become a core component of 
company operations it must be embedded into all systems rather than 
stand alone. Some of these programs are relatively longstanding (e.g., 
five years old) and some have been rolled out within the last year. 
These programs, which are intended to address short, medium, and long-
term goals, are described in more detail below. The Auditors recount 
these efforts not for the purpose of supporting (or critiquing) any 
particular initiative, but to provide transparency into what Facebook 
is doing.
    In the Auditors' view, these programs and initiatives demonstrate 
that Facebook is investing in D & I and taking concrete steps to help 
create a diverse and inclusive culture. At the same time, the Auditors 
maintain that there are additional steps that Facebook can and should 
take to ensure that the benefits of these programs are fully realized. 
The Auditors' recommendations and observations about potential areas 
for improvement or growth are set out in Section 4.
(i) Recruiting.
    The goal of Facebook's recruiting policies and programs are to 
        recruit and hire candidates from diverse backgrounds--
        understanding that Facebook cannot build a diverse culture 
        without diverse representation.

    Facebook has instituted a number of programs and commitments 
        designed to increase diversity in hiring. For example, Facebook 
        introduced the ``Diverse Slate Approach'' as a pilot in 2015, 
        which sets the ``expectation that candidates from under-
        represented backgrounds be considered when interviewing for an 
        open position.'' Akin to the ``Rooney Rule'' in the National 
        Football League, the idea is to promote diverse hiring by 
        ensuring that a more diverse set of candidates are given 
        careful consideration. As applied to Facebook, the company 
        states that for every competitive hire (e.g., not for an 
        internal lateral transfer to an open position), hiring managers 
        are expected to interview qualified candidates from groups 
        currently underrepresented in the position. The purpose of the 
        strategy is to focus recruiters' attention on diversifying the 
        candidate pool and push hiring managers to ensure they have 
        truly considered a range of qualified talent before making a 
        hiring decision. Facebook asserts that it has seen increases in 
        diversity with the application of the strategy (without causing 
        significant hiring delays). Facebook has now adopted the 
        Diverse Slate Approach globally and also applied it to open 
        positions on its Board of Directors in 2018. Facebook does not, 
        however, tie executive pay to achieving diversity metrics and 
        that is something it may want to consider to accelerate its 
        ability to meet targets.

    In addition, as discussed above, Facebook has also set aggressive 
        hiring goals of 50 percent representation in five years, 
        prioritizing hiring at the leadership levels and in technical 
        functions. (Although it remains to be seen whether Facebook 
        will meet those goals.)

    Part of diversifying hiring has also included efforts to look 
        outside of Silicon Valley for qualified candidates. Facebook 
        states that it is recruiting talent from more than 300 schools 
        across the United States for entry level jobs (including from 
        HSIs and HBCUs) and from thousands of companies globally across 
        multiple industries for experienced hires.

    In addition to hiring, Facebook has adopted a host of programs and 
        initiatives designed to build out the pipeline of 
        underrepresented minorities into tech jobs. The target 
        audiences for these programs range from post-graduate level 
        students to college students, high school students, and even 
        elementary-school age children and their families or 
        caregivers. These programs include, for example:

   Engineer in Residence: Facebook engineers are embedded on 
        university campuses at institutions with high minority 
        enrollment (including HBCUs and HSIs) to design and teach 
        undergraduate computer science courses and extracurricular 
        programs to provide underrepresented groups with access to 
        innovative computer science curricula and programming.

   Facebook University: an 8-week summer training program where 
        college freshmen intern at Facebook across roles in 
        engineering, analytics, product design, operations, and sales 
        and advertising, with the goal of building connections between 
        students from underrepresented communities and Facebook.

   Align Program: Facebook is sponsoring Northeastern 
        University's Align Program, which helps non-computer science 
        graduates, especially those from traditionally underrepresented 
        groups, change careers to transition to computer science.

   Co-Teaching AI: Facebook's Artificial Intelligence (AI) team 
        has partnered with Georgia Tech to co-create and co-teach an AI 
        course designed to help diversify exposure to the AI field.

   Above & Beyond CS Program: A 10-week program designed for 
        college juniors and seniors from underrepresented groups to 
        help prepare students in computer science fields for the 
        technical interviews that are an integral part of the hiring 
        process for these jobs.

   CodeFWD: Facebook provides a free online program to 
        educators and non-profit organizations designed to allow them 
        to introduce students in grades 4 through 8 to computer 
        programming. After completing the program, the educators and 
        organizations can apply to receive additional resources like 
        programmable robots to provide further coding opportunities to 
        their students.

   TechPrep: Facebook provides a free online resource hub (in 
        English, Spanish, and Portuguese) to help students ages 8-25 
        and their parents or guardians learn what computer science is, 
        what jobs are available to computer programmers, and how to get 
        started learning to code.
(ii) Inclusive Programming.

    The goal of Facebook's inclusion efforts is to ensure Facebook 
        employees--especially members of under-represented groups--feel 
        seen, heard, and valued. These initiatives range from 
        community-building opportunities and resources to trainings and 
        tools for managing or addressing bias and promoting inclusion.

    Facebook's community building opportunities and resources include:

   Facebook Resource Groups (FBRGs): These are inclusive groups 
        that anyone who works at Facebook can join, which are focused 
        on underrepresented and marginalized communities, and provide 
        professional development, community support, and opportunities 
        to build connections with other group members and engage on 
        important issues.

   Community Summits: Facebook also supports its 
        underrepresented workforce through annual gatherings or 
        community summits that bring together people who work at 
        Facebook across the globe and provide a forum for various 
        communities to gather, share and grow.

    Facebook has also developed and deployed a number of trainings 
        intended to advance its inclusion goals. These include its 
        Managing Bias and Managing Inclusion trainings, which provide 
        tools and practical skills designed to help limit the impact of 
        biases (including unconscious ones) and promote inclusion 
        within teams and in day-to-day interactions, and a ``Be the 
        Ally'' training, which provides guidance to help employees 
        support each other and take steps to counteract examples of 
        exclusion or bias they observe. Additional guidance in this 
        area is included in the onboarding training managers undergo as 
        well as Facebook's Managing a Respectful Workplace training. 
        Facebook also offers a ``Design for Inclusion'' training which 
        Facebook describes as a multi-day immersive workshop for senior 
        leaders in the company that focuses on exploring the root 
        causes of inequities that influence decision-making, and works 
        towards creating a more inclusive and innovative company 
        culture. While these trainings have been available to all 
        employees for years, Managing Bias, manager onboarding and 
        Managing a Respectful Workplace are now mandatory.

    Along with developing its suite of trainings, in 2019 Facebook 
        created a new tool for anonymously reporting microaggressions 
        as well as positive examples of allyship or supportive 
        behaviors that have an impact on day-to-day life at Facebook. 
        The tool, called the ``Micro-Phone,'' provides employees (and 
        contingent workers) an outlet for sharing these experiences, 
        and gives Facebook insight into common themes and trends. 
        Facebook states that it includes insights from the Micro-Phone 
        in reports regularly provided to senior leadership (to flag 
        issues and push for implementation of D & I action plans), and 
        uses Micro-Phone lessons to inform trainings and help build D & 
        I and HR strategies

(iii)  The Integration of Diversity and Inclusion Principles into 
        Company-Wide Systems. The third component of Facebook's 
        diversity and inclusion strategy is focused on integrating a D 
        & I lens into processes, policies and products. That is, 
        building out internal systems to help promote consistent 
        implementation of D & I policies and practices, and looking for 
        ways to ensure Facebook considers and accounts for diverse 
        experiences and perspectives in developing policies and 
        products.

    For example, Facebook has examined its performance review process 
        to look for ways that bias or stereotyped assumptions could 
        seep in, and is making changes to the process to try to 
        counteract those risks. These changes include requiring mid-
        cycle performance conversations designed to provide more 
        uniform opportunities for direct communication (rather than 
        presumptions) and more consistent feedback. Similarly, Facebook 
        has adopted scorecards to better hold department leaders 
        accountable for implementing the company's diversity and 
        inclusion policies; Facebook states that department leaders 
        will be given clear criteria (e.g., their team's consistent use 
        of the Diverse Slate Approach, consistent and quality career 
        conversations with direct reports, ensuring that their teams 
        complete the Facebook's trainings on bias, inclusion, and 
        allyship, etc.), and be assessed against that criteria.

    In addition, Facebook is in the early stages of developing a plan 
        to better integrate into its policy and product development 
        process consideration of how different policies and products 
        will impact, speak to, or work for people across a wide 
        spectrum of experiences, identities, and backgrounds. To that 
        end, Facebook has begun piloting this strategy by inserting the 
        Chief Diversity Officer into product and policy discussions. To 
        begin formalizing that integration, Facebook recently announced 
        that it has moved the Chief Diversity Officer within Facebook's 
        organizational structure so that the role now directly reports 
        to COO Sheryl Sandberg. With this change, Facebook states that 
        it intends to involve the Chief Diversity Officer in high-level 
        decision-making affecting products, business, and policy on a 
        more consistent basis. Facebook also recently hired a full-time 
        employee to focus on this D & I integration work. Facebook 
        indicates its next goal is to determine how to build up the 
        concept into a systemic and scalable approach, as opposed to 
        more ad-hoc injections of D & I team members into policy or 
        product decision-making processes.
4. Auditors' Observations Regarding Facebook's Internal D & I Efforts
    Overall, the constant change in diversity and inclusion at 
Facebook--driven by the development of new projects and initiatives and 
the expansion of existing programming--reflects ongoing innovation and 
interest in D & I. The Auditors further believe that Facebook's new 
focus on D & I integration and ensuring greater accountability in the 
application of D & I policies and strategies through things like 
leadership scorecards are steps in the right direction.
    To identify issues and assess program effectiveness, Facebook 
reports that the company uses quantitative and qualitative assessments, 
feedback from surveys and regular focus groups with under-represented 
people, coupled with established third-party research. The Auditors 
urge Facebook to make at least some of this data and feedback public 
(in its annual Diversity Report) so that the civil rights community and 
the general public can better understand the effectiveness of the 
company's myriad programs and initiatives. However, because the 
Auditors are not privy to this data or feedback, the Auditors cannot 
speak to the effectiveness of any particular program or initiative. 
Further, while the Auditors did not have an opportunity to conduct 
surveys or interviews of employees, in their discussions with employees 
they observed a disconnect between the experiences described by a 
number of the employee resource group representatives and the diversity 
and inclusion policies, practices, and initiatives described by 
Facebook. The Auditors have made a number of recommendations based on 
conversations with ERG representations and company leadership.

  (i)  Comprehensive study. Anecdotal accounts the Auditors heard 
        suggest that efforts to instill inclusive practices or ensure 
        consistent application of diversity-enhancing policies may have 
        not yet taken hold on a systemic level. These observations 
        signal that a more comprehensive (both quantitative and 
        qualitative) study of how consistently Facebook's diversity and 
        inclusion-based policies or strategies are being applied 
        internally would be valuable.

      The Auditors believe that continuing to develop data and metrics 
        for assessing the effectiveness of its inclusion, and D & I 
        integration efforts is critical to evaluating and guiding 
        Facebook's D & I strategy. While Facebook publishes its 
        employment figures annually in its diversity report, those 
        figures primarily speak to Facebook's hiring and recruiting 
        efforts--they do not offer a clear illustration of whether/how 
        Facebook's initiatives, policies, trainings, and tools designed 
        to advance inclusion and D & I integration have impacted 
        employee experiences or have translated to progress in 
        cultivating a culture of inclusion. These additional metrics 
        would provide critical insight in those areas. Further, the 
        results could help Facebook identify where it may need to 
        refocus attention and consider ways to revise, expand, improve, 
        and/or redesign their existing programs

  (i)  Continued improvement on infrastructure.

      The Auditors encourage Facebook to continue to invest in building 
        out systems and internal infrastructure to make sure diversity 
        and inclusion strategies are prioritized, applied with 
        consistency, embedded in everyday company practices, and 
        ultimately create an inclusive culture.

      For example, the Auditors believe that practices such as the 
        consistent application of the Diverse Slate Approach and 
        exhibiting inclusive behavior are metrics upon which all 
        employees, managers, and executives (not just senior leaders) 
        should be evaluated in performance reviews. (As of 2019, senior 
        leaders started to be given goals against the Diverse Slate 
        Approach and Inclusion metrics, which is progress, but the 
        Auditors believe is not enough.). Given the company's ongoing 
        exponential growth, and its diffuse and siloed organizational 
        structure, and the other pressures that employees face to 
        innovate and get products to market quickly, focusing on 
        accountability, consistency, and D & I integration seems 
        critical for diversity and inclusion practices to be 
        effectively adopted at scale. It is important for managers and 
        employees to be deeply familiar with tools and practices 
        designed to impact the culture at Facebook and create a more 
        inclusive environment.

      (Given the COVID-19 pandemic and Facebook's recent announcement 
        that remote work will continue indefinitely for many employees, 
        Facebook should assess whether adjustments need to be made to 
        inclusion and D & I integration strategies to account for the 
        impact of prolonged remote work--especially on efforts to 
        instill community, combat URM isolation, and ensure consistency 
        in feedback, mentoring, and application of D & I strategies 
        across the board.)

  (ii)  Stronger Communication.

      Based on the Auditors' observations and conversations, one of the 
        unfortunate side effects of this development and expansion is 
        that programs can sometimes be siloed and diffuse, which can 
        result in a lack of awareness of different initiatives, how 
        they fit together, and what needs to be done to advance them. 
        As an initial step, the Auditors believe that describing all of 
        Facebook's diversity and inclusion programs and initiatives in 
        a single user-friendly resource, and explaining how the 
        programs all fit together, and the strategies behind them would 
        help address information gaps and focus conversations. (This 
        report does not substitute for such a resource because it is 
        merely an outline of Facebook's efforts and is not exhaustive.)

      Both in the civil rights community and inside Facebook, 
        conversations about how to improve diversity and inclusion at 
        the company can be more targeted if there is greater 
        transparency and clarity about what Facebook is currently doing 
        (and not doing) and what Facebook's policies are--as compared 
        with employees' lived experiences.
5. Partner, Vendor, and Supplier Diversity
    The civil rights community has criticized Facebook for not doing 
enough to ensure that the vendors and service providers it chooses to 
partner with reflect the diversity of our society. They contend that 
partnering with more diverse vendors, media companies, and law and 
financial management firms is also good business, as it promotes 
innovation and brings new audiences, perspectives, and ideas to the 
table.
    Facebook launched its supplier diversity program in late 2016 with 
the goal of helping diverse suppliers do business with Facebook and 
with the people and communities that Facebook connects. Through the 
program, Facebook has sought to increase its use of vendors owned by 
racial and ethnic minorities, women, members of the LGBT community, 
veterans, and people with disabilities. In July 2020, Facebook reported 
spend of $515 million with certified diverse suppliers in 2019--a 40 
percent increase over 2018 ($365M)--bringing its cumulative spend to 
over $1.1 billion since the launch of these efforts.
    In June 2020, Facebook set a new goal: to spend at least $1 billion 
with diverse suppliers starting in 2021 and continuing each year 
thereafter. As part of that goal, the company committed to spending at 
least $100 million per year with Black-owned suppliers.
    Because vendor decisions are diffuse rather than centralized in a 
single team, changing the way Facebook makes vendor decisions required 
building a tool that would promote more diverse choices at scale. 
Facebook has now developed an internal vendor portal to facilitate 
selection of diverse-owned companies when Facebook teams are looking 
for vendors for everything from office supplies to coffee to cables for 
data centers.
    With its rapid expansion (and the large-scale construction projects 
accompanying such expansion), Facebook is now turning its attention to 
diversifying its construction contracting for both primary contracts 
and subcontracts. Working in partnership with its Global Real Estate 
and Facilities team, Facebook states that it has established aggressive 
internal goals for increasing opportunities and awarding competitive 
contracts to diverse suppliers starting with general contractors and 
directly sourced professional services (e.g., architects, interior 
design, fixtures, furnishing and equipment). In addition, Facebook 
indicates it will launch its Tier 2 (subcontractor) reporting program 
in 2020, which will require eligible Facebook contractors to report 
their direct subcontracting with diverse suppliers on a quarterly 
basis. This will include key categories of spend like construction, 
facilities operations, marketing and events, where the prime supplier 
relies heavily on subcontracted suppliers to deliver the scope of work 
for which Facebook engaged them. Facebook states that it will also 
strengthen its contract language and program to more affirmatively 
encourage and support prime suppliers in identifying and contracting 
with qualified diverse subcontractors.
    Facebook has also made commitments to increase diversity and 
inclusion within consumer marketing. The consumer marketing team works 
with hundreds of creative supply chain vendors a year to create 
marketing and advertising campaigns for Facebook and its family of 
apps. The consumer marketing team has committed to increasing diversity 
and inclusion in the following areas within their supply chain: 
supplier diversity (owner/operator), on camera talent, key production 
crew roles including photographer, director, first assistant director 
editor, director of photography, visual effects artist, audio mixer and 
colorist. To implement this commitment Facebook has taken steps such 
as:

   Prioritizing diversity in selecting vendors to work on 
        projects.

   Partnering with the non-profit Free the Work, pledging to 
        always consider/bid at least one female director every time 
        there is a commercial production over $500K.

   Creating an economic pipeline program for production 
        assistants.

   Tracking the production commitments across our external 
        agencies and internal teams on a quarterly basis to ensure 
        accountability.

    Facebook has also taken steps to require diversity when engaging 
other service providers, such as outside legal counsel. When Facebook 
hires outside law firms, it now requires that those firms staff its 
Facebook projects with teams that are at least one-third diverse 
(meaning racial or ethnic minorities, women, people with disabilities, 
or members of the LGBT community). Facebook's outside counsel 
agreements also require that diverse team members be given meaningful 
roles and responsibilities, such as being the day-to-day contact with 
Facebook, leading presentations, or having a speaking role at court 
hearings.
    In 2019, Facebook launched an annual survey of its top 40 law firms 
(by spend) it engages as outside counsel to evaluate the firms' 
performance in meeting these diversity requirements. Facebook 
celebrated the firm with the highest score and is directing all firms, 
especially low-scoring firms to improve. (Facebook has indicated that 
penalties, including cancellation of outside counsel contracts, were 
not imposed but may be imposed in the future should firms persist in 
failing to meet expectations for diversity.) In addition to these 
diversity commitments, Facebook is starting to build partnerships with 
law firms to promote greater diversity in the legal profession through 
programs designed to provide greater opportunities for law students 
from diverse backgrounds.
    In the Auditors' opinion, Facebook has demonstrated less progress 
on the financial management side. Facebook has faced strong criticism 
from the civil rights community (and members of Congress) regarding the 
lack of diversity of its asset managers and financial services 
providers. During testimony before the House Financial Services 
Committee in 2019, Mark Zuckerberg was grilled about Facebook's asset 
management and whether sufficient attention has been paid to the 
diversity of Facebook's asset management firms. Of the 10 investment 
management firms Facebook works with, one is self-identified (but not 
certified) as female owned, and none are minority-owned.
    Facebook states that its engagements with financial institutions 
center around capital markets activities (share repurchases) and 
investment management. The company notes that in 2020, it hired a 
diverse firm to execute share repurchases on their behalf. Facebook 
also engaged a diverse consulting firm to conduct a search for diverse 
investment managers capable of meeting the company's needs. Facebook 
indicates that the results of this search are being used to develop an 
RFP, with the intent to hire qualified vendors.
6. Auditors' Observations
    Facebook has made important progress in some areas, especially its 
vendor diversity program. But, it can and should do more. Its efforts 
to expand construction-related contracting with diverse-owned companies 
is a step in the right direction. Given that millions of businesses use 
Facebook products and services, Facebook could also do more to enable 
diverse-owned companies to be identified and surfaced through 
Facebook's products to provide more visibility for those seeking to 
partnership with diverse-owned companies. With respect to outside 
counsel engagements, including updating its contracts to require 
diverse representation and meaningful participation are positive, 
affirmative steps. The Auditors encourage Facebook to continue to 
explore ways to give those words meaning by ensuring that firms that 
fall short of these obligations are held accountable. On the financial 
management side, Facebook should redouble its efforts to engage with 
more diverse companies. While Facebook states that many of its 
financial needs are limited and therefore do not result in significant 
financial gains for asset management firms, engaging with diverse 
institutions can have positive impacts that are not reducible or 
limited to brokerage fees earned.
                  Chapter Five: Advertising Practices
    When so much of our world has moved online, Facebook's advertising 
tools can have a significant impact. They can help small businesses 
find new customers and build their customer base, and can enable 
nonprofits and public service organizations to get important 
information and resources to the communities that need them the most. 
They also can determine whether one learns of an advertised, available 
job, housing, or credit opportunity, or does not. While recognizing 
that there are positive uses for advertising tools, the civil rights 
community has long been concerned that Facebook's advertising tools 
could be used in discriminatory ways.
    Over the last few years, several discrimination lawsuits were filed 
against Facebook alleging that its ad tools allowed advertisers to 
choose who received their ads and, in doing so, permitted advertisers 
to discriminate by excluding people from seeing ads for housing, 
employment, or credit opportunities based gender, race, age, and other 
personal characteristics. In March 2019, Facebook settled 
discrimination lawsuits brought by the National Fair Housing Alliance, 
Communications Workers of America, the American Civil Liberties Union, 
and private parties.
    The June 2019 Audit Report described five major changes Facebook 
was making to its ad targeting system to prevent Facebook's ad tools 
from being used for discrimination. This chapter provides updates on 
Facebook's progress implementing these five commitments, describes new 
developments, and identifies areas for further analysis and 
improvement.
    First, Facebook agreed to build a separate advertising flow for 
creating U.S. housing, employment, and credit (``HEC'') opportunity ads 
on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger with limited targeting options. 
Facebook states that it fulfilled this commitment in December 2019 when 
this flow became mandatory across all the tools businesses use to buy 
ads on Facebook. When an advertiser identifies their ad as offering 
housing, employment or credit, they are not permitted to target based 
on gender, age, or any interests that appear to describe people of a 
certain race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability 
status, or other protected class. They are also prohibited from 
targeting ads based on narrow location options, including ZIP code 
(which can correlate with protected class given residential segregation 
patterns). Facebook has made Lookalike targeting unavailable to 
advertisers using the HEC flow (Lookalike targeting is when an 
advertiser provides Facebook a customer list and Facebook identifies 
users who are similar to those on the list who are then targeted for 
advertising). Instead of Lookalike targeting, Facebook states that 
advertisers using the HEC flow are only able to create Special Ad 
Audiences--audiences selected based on similarities in online behavior 
and activity to those on a customer list but without considering age, 
gender, ZIP code or FB group membership.
    There has been some criticism or skepticism as to whether and how 
effectively Facebook will ensure that HEC ads are actually sent through 
the restricted flow (as opposed to sneaking into the old system where 
protected class targeting options remain available). Facebook indicates 
that it uses a combination of automated detection and human review to 
catch advertisers that may attempt to circumvent these restrictions. As 
part of its settlement, Facebook has committed to continuous refinement 
of the automated detection system so it is as effective as possible.
    Second, Facebook committed to providing advertisers with 
information about Facebook's non-discrimination policy and requiring 
them to certify that they will comply with the policy as a condition of 
using Facebook's advertising tools. Although Facebook's Terms and 
Advertising Policies had contained prohibitions against discrimination 
even before the settlement, that policy was not widely known or well-
enforced. Facebook updated its ``Discriminatory Practices'' ad policy 
in June, 2019 to state: ``Any United States advertiser or advertiser 
targeting the United States that is running credit, housing or 
employment ads, must self identify as a Special Ad Category, as it 
becomes available, and run such ads with approved targeting options.'' 
Before certifying, advertisers are directed to Facebook's non-
discrimination policy, and are shown examples illustrating what ad 
targeting behavior is permitted and not permitted under the policy. 
Advertisers are also provided with external links where they can find 
more information about complying with non-discrimination laws.
    Facebook began asking advertisers to certify compliance with its 
non-discrimination policy in 2018, but in 2019 it made the 
certification mandatory and began requiring all advertisers to comply. 
Facebook reports that since late August 2019, all advertisers must 
certify compliance with the non-discrimination policy; those who 
attempt to place an ad but have not yet completed the certification 
receive a notice preventing their ad from running until the 
certification is complete. Facebook designed the certification 
experience in consultation with outside experts to underscore the 
difference between acceptable ad targeting and ad discrimination.
    Third, Facebook committed to building a section in its Ad Library 
for U.S. housing ads that includes all active ads for housing (sale or 
rental), housing-related financing (e.g., home mortgages), and related 
real estate transactions (e.g., homeowners' insurance or appraisal 
services). The purpose of this section is to help ensure that all 
housing ads are available to everyone (including non-Facebook users), 
regardless whether a user was in the advertiser's intended audience for 
the ad or actually received the ad. The Library is searchable by the 
name of the Page running an ad or the city or state to which the ad is 
targeted. The housing section of Facebook's Ad Library went live on 
December 4, 2019. Facebook reports that the Library now contains all 
active housing opportunity ads targeted at the U.S. that started 
running or were edited on or after that date.
    In addition to following through on the commitments discussed in 
the last report, Facebook also expanded on those commitments by 
agreeing to extend all of these changes to Canada by the end of the 
year.
    Facebook committed in the June 2019 Audit Report to go above and 
beyond its obligations as part of its settlement of the discrimination 
cases and build Ad Library sections for employment and credit ads too. 
Like the housing section, Facebook agreed to also make all active ads 
for job opportunities or credit offers (e.g., credit card or loan ads) 
available to everyone, including non-Facebook users. Facebook reports 
that it is actively building the employment and credit sections of the 
Ad Library now, and plans to launch them by the end of the year.
    Fourth, Facebook committed to engage the National Fair Housing 
Alliance to conduct a training for key employees with advertising-
related responsibilities on fair housing and fair lending laws. 
Facebook indicates that the National Fair Housing Alliance is in the 
process of developing the training (in partnership with Facebook's 
Learning and Development team), and expects to deliver the training in 
early 2021. Given the importance of understanding these issues, the 
Auditors would like to see more than one training take place, whether 
through periodic refresher training, or training updates, or some other 
training format.
    Fifth, while Facebook did not make any specific commitments in the 
last report regarding its algorithmic system for delivering ads, it did 
agree to engage academics, researchers, civil rights and privacy 
advocates, and other experts to study the use of algorithms by social 
media platforms. Part of that commitment included studying the 
potential for bias in such systems. While concepts of discrimination 
and bias have long been applied to models, advancements in the 
complexity of algorithms or machine learning models, along with their 
increasingly widespread use, have led to new and unsettled questions 
about how best to identify and remedy potential bias in such 
complicated systems. Facebook reports that since the last report it has 
participated in several ongoing engagements, including:

   Creating a series of ``Design Jams'' workshops through 
        Facebook's Trust Transparency and Control (TTC) Labs 
        initiative, in which stakeholders from industry, civil society 
        and academia focused on topics like algorithmic transparency 
        and fairness both in the advertising context and more broadly. 
        Facebook states that more such workshops are planned over the 
        coming months.

   Conducting roundtable discussions and consultations with 
        stakeholders (e.g., The Center for Democracy and Technology, 
        The Future of Privacy Forum) on ways of advancing both 
        algorithmic fairness and privacy--many approaches to measuring 
        fairness in algorithms require collecting or estimating 
        additional sensitive data about people, such as their race, 
        which can raise privacy and other concerns. Facebook reports 
        that it is working to better understand expectations and 
        recommendations in this area.

    Facebook also agreed to meet regularly with the Plaintiffs in the 
lawsuits and permit them to engage in testing of Facebook's ad platform 
to ensure reforms promised under the settlements are implemented 
effectively. Both of these commitments are underway.
    While Facebook deserves credit for implementing these prior 
advertising commitments, it is important to note that these 
improvements have not fully resolved the civil rights community's 
discrimination concerns. Most of the changes Facebook made in 2019 
focused on the targeting of ads and the choices advertisers were making 
on the front end of the advertising process; civil rights advocates 
remain concerned about the back end of Facebook's advertising process: 
ad delivery.
    In March 2019, the Department of Housing and Urban Development 
(HUD) filed charges against Facebook alleging not only that Facebook's 
ad targeting tools allow for discrimination, but that Facebook also 
discriminated in delivering ads (choosing which of the users within an 
ad's target audience should be shown a given ad) in violation of fair 
housing laws. That charge remains pending.
    Furthermore, in December 2019, Northeastern University and the non-
profit Upturn released a new study of Facebook's advertising system 
that was carried out after the 2019 targeting restrictions were put 
into place. The study suggested that Facebook's Special Ad Audiences 
algorithms may lead to biased results despite the removal of protected 
class information.
    In addition to the efforts referenced above, Facebook has said that 
it is continuing to invest in approaches to studying and addressing 
such issues, and is consulting with experts globally to help refine its 
approach to algorithmic fairness generally and concerns related to ads 
delivery in particular. The Auditors believe that it is critical that 
Facebook's expert consultations include engagement with those who have 
specific expertise in civil rights, bias, and discrimination concepts 
(including specifically fair housing, fair lending, and employment 
discrimination), and their application to algorithms. More details on 
Facebook's work can be found in the Algorithmic Bias section of this 
report.
    From the Auditors' perspective, participating in stakeholder 
meetings and engaging with academics and experts is generally positive, 
but it does not reflect the level of urgency felt in the civil rights 
community for Facebook to take action to address long-standing 
discrimination concerns with Facebook's ad system--specifically ad 
delivery. The civil rights community views the most recent Upturn study 
as further indication that the concern they have been expressing for 
years--that Facebook's ad system can lead to biased or discriminatory 
results--may be well-placed. And while civil rights advocates certainly 
do not want Facebook to get it wrong when it comes to data about 
sensitive personal characteristics or measuring algorithmic fairness, 
they are concerned that it is taking Facebook too long to get it 
right--and harm is being done in the interim.
                     Chapter Six: Algorithmic Bias
    Algorithms, machine-learning models, and artificial intelligence 
(collectively ``AI'') are models that make connections or identify 
patterns in data and use that information to make predictions or draw 
conclusions. AI is often presented as objective, scientific and 
accurate, but in many cases it is not. Algorithms are created by people 
who inevitably have biases and assumptions, and those biases can be 
injected into algorithms through decisions about what data is important 
or how the algorithm is structured, and by trusting data that reflects 
past practices, existing or historic inequalities, assumptions, or 
stereotypes. Algorithms can also drive and exacerbate unnecessary 
adverse disparities. Oftentimes by repeating past patterns, inequality 
can be automated, obfuscating and perpetuating inequalities. For 
example, as one leading tech company learned, algorithms used to screen 
resumes to identify qualified candidates may only perpetuate existing 
gender or racial disparities if the data used to train the model on 
what a qualified candidate looks like is based on who chose to apply in 
the past and who the employer hired; in the case of Amazon the 
algorithm ``learned'' that references to being a woman (e.g., attending 
an all-female college, or membership in a women's club) was a reason to 
downgrade the candidate.
    Facebook uses AI in myriad ways, such as predicting whether someone 
will click on an ad or be interested in a Facebook Group, whether 
content is likely to violate Facebook policy, or whether someone would 
be interested in an item in Facebook's News Feed. However, as 
algorithms become more ubiquitous in our society it becomes 
increasingly imperative to ensure that they are fair, unbiased, and 
non-discriminatory, and that they do not merely magnify pre-existing 
stereotypes or disparities. Facebook's algorithms have enormous reach. 
They can impact whether someone will see a piece of news, be shown a 
job opportunity, or buy a product; they influence what content will be 
proactively removed from the platform, whose account will be challenged 
as potentially inauthentic, and which election-related ads one is 
shown. The algorithms that Facebook uses to flag content as potential 
hate speech could inadvertently flag posts that condemn hate speech. 
Algorithms that make it far more likely that someone of one age group, 
one race or one sex will see something can create significant 
disparities--with some people being advantaged by being selected to 
view something on Facebook while others are disadvantaged.
    When it comes to algorithms, assessing fairness and providing 
accountability are critical. Because algorithms work behind the scenes, 
poorly designed, biased, or discriminatory algorithms can silently 
create disparities that go undetected for a long time unless systems 
are in place to assess them. The Auditors believe that it is essential 
that Facebook develop ways to evaluate whether the artificial 
intelligence models it uses are accurate across different groups and 
whether they needlessly assign disproportionately negative outcomes to 
certain groups.
A. Responsible AI Overview
    Given the critical implications of algorithms, machine-learning 
models, and artificial intelligence for increasing or decreasing bias 
in technology, Facebook has been building and growing its Responsible 
Artificial Intelligence capabilities over the last two years. As part 
of its Responsible AI (RAI) efforts, Facebook has established a multi-
disciplinary team of ethicists, social and political scientists, policy 
experts, AI researchers and engineers focused on understanding fairness 
and inclusion concerns associated with the deployment of AI in Facebook 
products. The team's goal is to develop guidelines, tools and processes 
to help promote fairness and inclusion in AI at Facebook, and make 
these resources widely available across the entire company so there is 
greater consistency in approaching questions of AI fairness.
    During the Audit process, the Auditors were told about Facebook's 
four-pronged approach to fairness and inclusion in AI at Facebook: (1) 
creating guidelines and tools to identify and mitigate unintentional 
biases; (2) piloting a fairness consultation process; (3) participating 
in external engagement; and (4) investing in diversity of the Facebook 
AI team. Facebook's approach is described in more detail below, along 
with and observations from the Auditors.
1. Creating guidelines and tools to identify and mitigate unintentional 
        biases that can arise when the AI is built and deployed.
    There are a number of ways that bias can unintentionally appear in 
the predictions an AI model makes. One source of bias can be the 
underlying data used in building and training the algorithm; because 
algorithms are models for making predictions, part of developing an 
algorithm involves training it to accurately predict the outcome at 
issue, which requires running large data sets through the algorithm and 
making adjustments. If the data used to train a model is not 
sufficiently inclusive or reflects biased or discriminatory patterns, 
the model could be less accurate or effective for groups not 
sufficiently represented in the data, or could merely repeat 
stereotypes rather than make accurate predictions. Another source of 
potential bias are the decisions made and/or assumptions built in to 
how the algorithm is designed. To raise awareness and help avoid these 
pitfalls, Facebook has developed and continues to refine guidelines as 
well as a technical toolkit they call the Fairness Flow.
    The Fairness Flow is a tool that Facebook teams use to assess one 
common type of algorithm. It does so in two ways: (1) it helps to flag 
potential gaps, skews, or unintended problems with the data the 
algorithm is trained on and/or instructions the algorithm is given; and 
(2) it helps to identify undesired or unintended differences in how 
accurate the model's predictions are for different groups or subgroups 
and whether the algorithms settings (e.g., margins of error) are in the 
right place. The guidelines Facebook has developed include guidance 
used in applying the Fairness Flow.
    The Fairness Flow and its accompanying guidelines are new processes 
and resources that Facebook has just begun to pilot. Use of the 
Fairness Flow and guidelines is voluntary, and they are not available 
to all teams. While the Fairness Flow has been in development longer 
than the guidelines, both are still works in progress and have only 
been applied a limited number of times. That said, Facebook hopes to 
expand the pilot and extend the tools to more teams in the coming 
months.
    Facebook identified the following examples of how the guidelines 
and Fairness Flow have been initially used:

   When Facebook initially built a camera for its Portal 
        product that automatically focuses the camera around people in 
        the frame, it realized the tracking did not work as well for 
        certain genders and skin tones. In response, Facebook relied on 
        its guidelines to build representative test datasets across 
        different skin tones and genders. Facebook then used those data 
        sets on the algorithm guiding the camera technology to improve 
        Portal's effectiveness across genders and skin tones.

   During the 2019 India general elections, in order to assist 
        human reviewers in identifying and removing political 
        interference content, Facebook built a model to identify high 
        risk content (for example, content that discussed civic or 
        political issues). Facebook used the Fairness Flow tool to 
        ensure that the model's predictions as to whether content was 
        civil/political were accurate across languages and regions in 
        India. (This is important because systematically 
        underestimating risk for content in a particular region or 
        language, would result in fewer human review resources being 
        allocated to that region or language than necessary.)
2. Piloting a fairness consultation process.
    Facebook has also begun to explore ways to connect the teams 
building Facebook's AI tools and products to those on Facebook's 
Responsible AI team with more expertise in fairness in machine 
learning, privacy, and civil rights. Beginning in December 2019, 
Facebook began piloting a fairness consultation process, by which 
product teams who have identified potential fairness, bias, or privacy-
related concerns associated with a product they are developing can 
reach out to a core group of employees with more expertise in these 
areas for guidance, feedback, or a referral to other employees with 
additional subject matter expertise in areas such as law, policy, 
ethics, and machine learning.
    As part of this pilot effort, a set of issue-spotting questions was 
developed to help product teams and their cross-functional partners 
identify potential issues with AI fairness or areas where bias could 
seep in, and flag them for additional input and discussion by the 
consultative group. Once those issues are discussed with the core 
group, product teams either proceed with development on their own or 
continue to engage with the core group or others on the Responsible AI 
team for additional support and guidance.
    This emerging fairness consultation process is currently only a 
limited pilot administered by a small group of employees, but is one 
way Facebook has begun to connect internal subject matter experts with 
product teams to help issue spot fairness concerns and subsequently 
direct them to further resources and support. (Part of the purpose of 
the pilot is to also identify those areas where teams need support but 
where internal guidance and expertise is lacking or underdeveloped so 
that the company can look to bring-in or build such expertise.) As a 
pilot, this is a new and voluntary process, rather than something that 
product teams are required to complete. But, Facebook asserts that its 
goal is to take lessons from these initial consultations and use them 
to inform the development of longer-term company processes and provide 
more robust guidance for product teams. In other words, part of the 
purpose of the pilot is to better understand the kinds of questions 
product teams have, and the kind of support that would be most 
effective in assisting teams to identify and resolve potential sources 
of bias or discrimination during the algorithm development process.
3. Participating in external engagement.
    Because AI and machine learning is an evolving field, questions are 
constantly being raised about how to ensure fairness, non-
discrimination, transparency, and accountability in AI systems and 
tools. Facebook recognizes that it is essential to engage with multiple 
external stakeholders and the broader research communities on questions 
of responsible AI.
    Facebook reports that it has been engaging with external experts on 
AI fairness issues in a number of ways, including:

   Facebook co-founded and is deeply involved in the 
        Partnership on AI (PAI), a multistakeholder organization that 
        seeks to develop and share AI best practices. Facebook states 
        that it is active in PAI working groups around fair, 
        transparent, and accountable AI and initiatives including 
        developing documentation guidelines to enable greater 
        transparency of AI systems, exploring the role of gathering 
        sensitive user data to enable testing for algorithmic bias and 
        discrimination, and engaging in dialogue with civil society 
        groups about facial recognition technologies.

   Facebook reports that in January 2020 that it sent a large 
        delegation including engineers, product managers, researchers, 
        and policy staff to the Fairness, Transparency, and 
        Accountability Conference, the leading conference on fairness 
        in machine learning, in order to connect with multidisciplinary 
        academic researchers, civil society advocates, and industry 
        peers and discuss challenges and best practices in the field.

   Facebook is part of the expert group that helped formulate 
        the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development's 
        (OECD) AI principles which include a statement that ``AI 
        systems should be designed in a way that respects the rule of 
        law, human rights, democratic values and diversity.'' Facebook 
        states that it is now working with the OECD Network of Experts 
        on AI to help define what it means to implement these 
        principles in practice.

   Trust Transparency and Control (TTC) Labs is an industry 
        collaborative created to promote design innovation that helps 
        give users more control of their privacy. TTC Labs includes 
        discussion of topics like algorithmic transparency, but 
        Facebook states that it is exploring whether and how to expand 
        these conversations to include topics of fairness and 
        algorithmic bias.

    Through these external engagements, Facebook reports that it has 
begun exploring and debating a number of important topics relating to 
AI bias and fairness. For example, Facebook has worked with, and 
intends to continue to seek input from, experts to ensure that its 
approaches to algorithmic fairness and transparency are in line with 
industry best practices and guidance from the civil rights community. 
Even where laws are robust, and even among legal and technical experts, 
there is sometimes disagreement on what measures of algorithmic bias 
should be adopted--and approaches can sometimes conflict with one 
another. Experts are proposing ways to apply concepts like disparate 
treatment and disparate impact discrimination, fairness, and bias to 
evaluate machine learning models at scale, but consensus has not yet 
been reached on best practices that can be applied across all types of 
algorithms and machine-learning models.
    Similarly, Facebook has been considering questions about whether 
and how to collect or estimate sensitive data. Methods to measure and 
mitigate bias or discrimination issues in algorithms that expert 
researchers have developed generally require collecting or estimating 
data about people's sensitive group membership. In this way, the 
imperative to test and address bias and discrimination in machine 
learning models along protected or sensitive group lines can trigger 
the need to have access to, or estimate, sensitive or demographic data 
in order to perform those measurements. Indeed, this raises privacy, 
ethical, and representational questions like:

   Who should decide whether this sensitive data should be 
        collected?

   What categories of data should private companies collect (if 
        any)?

   When is it appropriate to infer or estimate sensitive data 
        about people for the purpose of testing for discrimination?

   How should companies balance privacy and fairness goals?

    These questions are not unique to Facebook: they apply to any 
company or organization that has turned to machine learning, or 
otherwise uses quantitative techniques to measure or mitigate bias or 
discrimination. In some other industries laws, regulations, or 
regulatory guidance, and/or the collective efforts of industry members 
answer these questions and guide the process of collecting or 
estimating sensitive information to enable industry players and 
regulators to measure and monitor discrimination. Facebook asserts that 
for social media companies like it, answering these questions requires 
broad conversations with stakeholders and policymakers about how to 
chart a responsible path forward. Facebook states that it has already 
been working with the Partnership on AI to initiate multi-stakeholder 
conversations (to include civil rights experts) on this important 
topic, and plans to consult with a diverse group of stakeholders on how 
to make progress in this area. Facebook also reports that it is working 
to better understand the cutting edge work being done by companies like 
Airbnb and determine if similar initiatives are applicable and 
appropriate for companies that are the size and scale of Facebook.
4. Investing in the Diversity of the Facebook AI team.
    A key part of driving fairness in algorithms in ensuring companies 
are focused on increasing the diversity of the people working on and 
developing FB's algorithms. Facebook reports that it has created a 
dedicated Task Force composed of employees in AI, Diversity and HR who 
are focused on increasing the number of underrepresented minorities and 
women in the AI organization and building an inclusive AI organization.
    The AI Task Force has led initiatives focused on increasing 
opportunities for members of underrepresented communities in AI. These 
initiatives include:

  (i)  Co-teaching and funding a deep learning course at Georgia Tech. 
        In this pilot program, Facebook developed, co-taught and led a 
        4 month program for 250+ graduate students with the aim to 
        build a stronger pipeline of diverse candidates. Facebook 
        states that its hope is that a subset of participating students 
        will interview for future roles at Facebook. Facebook intends 
        to scale this program to thousands of underrepresented students 
        by building a consortium with 5-6 other universities, including 
        minority-serving institutions.

  (ii)  Northeastern's Align Program. Facebook also recently provided 
        funding for Northeastern University's Align program, which is 
        focused on creating pathways for non-computer science majors to 
        switch over to a Master's Degree in Computer Science, with the 
        goal of increasing the pipeline of underrepresented minority 
        and female students who earn degrees in Computer Science. 
        Facebook reports that its funding enabled additional 
        universities to join the Align consortium, including: Georgia 
        Tech, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Columbia.

      In addition to focusing on increasing diversity overall in AI, 
        Facebook states that it has also increased hiring from civil 
        society including nonprofits, research, and advocacy 
        organizations that work closely with major civil rights 
        institutions on emerging technology-related challenges--and 
        these employees are actively engaged in the Responsible AI 
        organization.
B. Auditor Observations
    It is important that Facebook has publicly acknowledged that AI can 
be biased and discriminatory and that deploying AI and machine learning 
models brings with it a responsibility to ensure fairness and 
accountability. The Auditors are encouraged that Facebook is devoting 
resources to studying responsible AI methodologies and engaging with 
external experts regarding best practices.
    When it comes to Facebook's own algorithms and machine learning 
models, the Auditors cannot speak to the effectiveness of any of the 
pilots Facebook has launched to better identify and address potential 
sources of bias or discriminatory outcomes. (Both because the pilots 
are still in nascent stages and the Auditors have not had full access 
to the full details of these programs.) The Auditors do, however, 
credit Facebook for taking steps to explore ways to improve Facebook's 
AI infrastructure and develop processes designed to help spot and 
correct biases, skews, and inaccuracies in Facebook's models.
    That being said, the Auditors strongly believe that processes and 
guidance designed to prompt issue-spotting and help resolve fairness 
concerns must be mandatory (not voluntary) and company-wide. That is, 
all teams building models should be required to follow comprehensive 
best practice guidance and existing algorithms and machine-learning 
models should be regularly tested. This includes both guidance in 
building models and systems for testing models.
    And while the Auditors believe it is important for Facebook to have 
a team dedicated to working on AI fairness and bias issues, ensuring 
fairness and non-discrimination should also be a responsibility for all 
teams. To that end, the Auditors recommend that training focused on 
understanding and mitigating against sources of bias and discrimination 
in AI should be mandatory for all teams building algorithms and 
machine-learning models at Facebook and part of Facebook's initial 
onboarding process.
    Landing on a set of widely accepted best practices for identifying 
and correcting bias or discrimination in models or for handling 
sensitive data questions is likely to take some time. Facebook can and 
should be a leader in this space. Moreover, Facebook cannot wait for 
consensus (that may never come) before building an internal 
infrastructure to ensure that the algorithms and machine learning 
models it builds meet minimum standards already known to help avoid 
bias pitfalls (e.g., use of inclusive data sets, critical assessment of 
model assumptions and inferences for potential bias, etc.). Facebook 
has an existing responsibility to ensure that the algorithms and 
machine learning models that can have important impacts on billions of 
people do not have unfair or adverse consequences. The Auditors think 
Facebook needs to approach these issues with a greater sense of 
urgency. There are steps it can take now--including mandatory training, 
guidance on known best practices, and company-wide systems for ensuring 
that AI fairness guidance are being followed--that would help reduce 
bias and discrimination concerns even before expert consensus is 
reached on the most challenging or emergent AI fairness questions.
                         Chapter Seven: Privacy
    Given the vast amount of data Facebook has and the reach of its 
platform, the civil rights community has repeatedly raised concerns 
about user privacy. These concerns were only exacerbated by the 
Cambridge Analytica scandal in which the data of up to 87 million 
Facebook users was obtained by Cambridge Analytica without the express 
consent of the majority of those users.
    While the larger digital privacy discourse has focused on issues 
such as transparency, data collection minimization, consent, and 
private rights of action, the civil rights and privacy communities are 
increasingly focused on the tangible civil rights and civil liberties 
harms that flow from social media data collection practices. Groups are 
concerned about the targeting of individuals for injurious purposes 
that can lead to digital redlining, discriminatory policing and 
immigration enforcement, retail discrimination, the targeting of 
advocates through doxxing and hate speech, identity theft, voter 
suppression, and a litany of other harms. In the wake of the COVID-19 
pandemic and massive racial justice protests, these concerns are at an 
all-time high as people are more reliant on social media and digital 
platforms for civic activity and basic needs.
    In recent years, the civil rights community has focused on the use 
of Facebook and Facebook data for law enforcement purposes. More 
specifically, civil rights and civil liberties groups have expressed 
concern about use of the platform to monitor or surveil people without 
their knowledge or consent by obtaining and scraping Facebook data, 
using facial recognition technology on Facebook users, or 
misrepresenting themselves to ``investigate'' people. There is 
particular concern that these tactics could be used to focus on 
communities of color.
    Also, collection of personal social media data can also have 
enormous consequences for lawful and undocumented immigrants and the 
people they connect with on Facebook. For example, in a program 
starting in 2019, the State Department began collecting and reviewing 
social media accounts for most visa applicants and visitors entering 
the United States, affecting some 15 million travelers per year. The 
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is building upon this. Although 
Facebook continues to push back on governments (and this use of social 
media data specifically), the use of public social media data by law 
enforcement and immigration authorities is seemingly ever-expanding in 
ways that can have significant privacy (and civil rights) implications.
    Facebook's announcements regarding its planned adoption of end-to-
end encryption for all of its messaging products have been praised by 
some privacy, human rights and civil liberties groups as an important 
step to protect the privacy, data security and freedom of expression 
rights for billions of users. However, the issue cuts both ways. Civil 
rights and anti-hate groups have also raised questions, given that 
encryption can prevent Facebook and law enforcement from proactively 
accessing or tracing harmful content such as hate speech, viral 
misinformation, efforts to engage in human trafficking or child 
exploitation.
    This chapter provides an overview of the changes Facebook has 
recently implemented to provide increased privacy protections, 
including those adopted in connection with its 2019 settlement with the 
Federal Trade Commission. It also shines a light on Facebook's current 
policies with respect to the use of facial recognition technology, law 
enforcement's use of Facebook and access to Facebook data, data 
scraping, end-to-end encryption and COVID-tracing.
    By providing transparency on these issues, the Auditors' goal is to 
inform future conversations between Facebook and advocates on the 
company's current policies and practices. While intervening events 
(such as time-sensitive Census and election-related issues and the 
COVID-19 crisis) prevented the Auditors from conducting the kind of 
comprehensive analysis of Facebook's privacy policies and practices 
necessary to make detailed recommendations, the Auditors hope that this 
chapter helps lay the groundwork for future engagement, analysis, and 
advocacy on privacy issues at Facebook.
A. Privacy Changes from FTC Settlement
    In July 2019, Facebook entered into a $5 billion settlement with 
the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to resolve claims stemming from 
allegations that Facebook violated a prior agreement with the FTC by 
giving entities access to data that users had not agreed to share. That 
settlement was formally approved in court in April 2020. The agreement 
requires a fundamental shift in the way Facebook approaches building 
products and provides a new framework for protecting people's privacy 
and the information they give Facebook.
    Through the settlement, Facebook has agreed to significant changes 
to its privacy policies and the infrastructure it has built for 
flagging and addressing privacy risks. Specifically, under the 
settlement Facebook will, among other things:

   Develop a process for documenting and addressing identified 
        privacy risks during the product development process;

   Conduct a privacy review of every new or modified product, 
        service, or practice before it is implemented and document its 
        decisions about user privacy;

   Create a committee on its Board of Directors responsible for 
        independently reviewing Facebook's compliance with its privacy 
        commitments under the settlement;

   Designate privacy compliance officer(s) responsible for 
        implementing Facebook's compliance program who are removable 
        solely by the Board committee

   Engage an independent privacy assessor whose job will be to 
        review Facebook's privacy program on an ongoing basis and 
        report to the Board committee and the FTC, if they see 
        compliance breakdowns or opportunities for improvement;

   Provide to the FTC quarterly and annual certifications 
        signed by Mark Zuckerberg attesting to the compliance of the 
        Privacy Program; and

   Report to the FTC any incidents in which Facebook has 
        verified or otherwise confirmed that the personal information 
        of 500 or more users was likely to have been improperly 
        accessed, collected, used, or shared by a third party in a 
        manner that violates the terms under which Facebook shared the 
        data with them.

    Facebook is working on implementing these new commitments. The 
company announced the membership of the Privacy Committee of the Board 
of Directors. The company also reports that it has added new members to 
its privacy leadership team, created dozens of technical and non-
technical teams that are dedicated only to privacy, and currently have 
thousands of people working on privacy-related projects with plans to 
hire many more. Facebook reports that it has also updated the process 
by which they onboard every new employee at Facebook to make sure they 
think about their role through a privacy lens, design with privacy in 
mind and work to proactively identify potential privacy risks so that 
mitigations can be implemented. All new and existing employees are 
required to complete annual privacy training. Facebook further reports 
that it is looking critically at data use across its operations, 
including assessing how data is collected, used, and stored.
    It is worth noting that despite these commitments, critics of the 
settlement contend that it did not go far enough because it did not 
impose any penalties on Facebook leadership and does not do enough to 
change the incentives and data gathering practices that led to the 
underlying privacy violations.
B. Law Enforcement's Use of Facebook & Access to Facebook Data
    When it comes to sharing user information or data with law 
enforcement, Facebook states that it provides such access only in 
accordance with applicable law and its terms of service. According to 
Facebook, that means that except in cases of emergency, its policy is 
to provide data to U.S. law enforcement entities only upon receipt of a 
valid subpoena, court order, or warrant. Law enforcement officials may 
submit requests for information through Facebook's Law Enforcement 
Online Request System, which requires certification that the requesting 
person is a member of law enforcement and uses a government-issued e-
mail address. Facebook indicates that it provides notice to the person 
whose data is being sought unless it is prohibited by law from doing so 
or in exceptional circumstances, such as child exploitation cases or 
emergencies.
    Facebook defines ``emergency circumstances'' as those involving 
imminent risk of harm to a child or risk of death or serious physical 
injury to anyone. In those cases, Facebook states that it will allow 
disclosure of information without the delay associated with obtaining a 
warrant, subpoena, or court order. According to Facebook's most recent 
Transparency Report, these emergency requests for user data make up 
approximately 11 percent of the data requests Facebook receives, and 
Facebook provides at least some requested data in response to such 
emergency requests approximately 74 percent of the time.
    Facebook's authenticity policies prohibit users from 
misrepresenting who they are, using fake accounts, or having multiple 
accounts. Facebook does not have any exceptions to those policies for 
law enforcement. Accordingly, it is against Facebook policy for members 
of law enforcement to pretend they are someone else or use a fake or 
``undercover'' alias to hide their law enforcement identities. Facebook 
states that it takes action against law enforcement that violate these 
policies. In 2018, Facebook learned that the Memphis Police Department 
set up fake accounts as part of a criminal investigation; in response, 
Facebook disabled the fake accounts it identified and wrote a public 
letter to the Department calling out the policy violations and 
directing it to cease such activities.
    That being said, Facebook does not restrict law enforcement's 
ability (or anyone's ability) to access the public information users 
post on Facebook, including public posts, photos, profiles, likes, and 
friend networks--so long as law enforcement personnel do not 
misrepresent their identities in doing so. Further, Facebook's current 
policy does not prohibit law enforcement from posting on police or 
other law enforcement department Facebook pages images of or 
allegations about alleged suspects, persons of interest, arrestees, or 
people the department thinks might have connections to criminal or gang 
organizations--including those who have not been convicted (or even 
charged) with anything. (The only limitation on law enforcement's 
ability to use Facebook this way are Facebook's other policies, such as 
those prohibiting the posting of personal identifying information like 
social security numbers or home addresses, or Facebook's bullying and 
harassment policy.)
C. Facial Recognition Technology
    Facebook has several products and features that rely on facial 
recognition technology. One example is Facebook's ``Photo Review'' 
feature that is part of the Face Recognition setting. When that setting 
is turned on, a user is notified if they appear in photos uploaded by 
other users, even if they are not tagged, as long as the user has 
permission to see the photo based on the photo's privacy setting. This 
gives the user the option to tag themselves in the photo, leave the 
photo as is, reach out to the person who posted the photo or report the 
photo if the user has concerns. Facial recognition also allows Facebook 
to describe photos to people who use screen-reading assistive 
technology.
    In 2017 and 2018, Facebook sent a notice to all users explaining 
the face recognition setting, how it works, and how users can enable or 
disable the setting. New users receive a similar notice. Facebook also 
includes in its Help Center an explanation of how the company uses 
their face profile or ``template'' and how users can turn that setting 
on or off. According to Facebook, facial recognition is disabled by 
default, and users would have to affirmatively turn the feature on in 
order for the technology to be activated. If a user turns the facial 
recognition setting off, Facebook automatically deletes the face 
template it has which allows Facebook to recognize that user based on 
images. (That said, where a user has already been tagged in a photo, 
turning off facial recognition does not untag the photo.)
    In addition to on-platform uses, the civil rights community has 
sought clarity on whether/how Facebook makes facial recognition 
technology or data available off platform to government agencies, law 
enforcement entities, immigration officials, or private companies. 
Facebook maintains that it does not share facial recognition 
information with third parties, nor does it sell or provide its facial 
recognition technology to other entities. Facebook further indicates 
that it built its facial recognition technology to be unique to 
Facebook, meaning that even if someone were to gain access to the data, 
they would not be able to use it with other facial recognition systems 
because it (intentionally) does not work with other systems.
    New or proposed uses of facial recognition are required to go 
through the privacy review described above and obtain approval before 
they can be launched.
    Because facial recognition relies on algorithms, it necessarily 
raises the same questions of bias, fairness, and discrimination 
associated with AI more broadly. Facebook reports that it has been 
testing the algorithms that power its facial recognition system for 
accuracy when applied to people of different ages and genders since 
before 2017.
    Facebook asserts that it began testing those algorithms for 
accuracy when applied to different skin tones starting in 2018. As a 
result of those tests, Facebook made adjustments to its algorithms in 
an effort to make them more accurate and inclusive. Facebook's testing 
of its facial recognition algorithms is in line with its new Inclusive 
AI initiative (announced in 2019 and described more fully in the 
Algorithmic Bias Chapter), through which the company is adopting 
guidelines to help ensure that the teams developing algorithms are 
using inclusive datasets and measuring accuracy across different 
dimensions and subgroups.
D. Data Scraping
    In the past few years (including in the wake of the Cambridge 
Analytica scandal) civil rights and privacy advocates have become 
increasingly concerned with data scraping (using technology to extract 
data from apps, websites, or online platforms without permission).
    Since 2004, Facebook has prohibited data scraping and other efforts 
to collect or access data using automated technology from Facebook 
products or tools without prior permission from Facebook.
    Facebook reports that in recent years it has continued to enhance 
its enforcement against scraping, including creating a team in 2019 
that is dedicated to both proactively detecting (and preventing) 
scraping and conducting investigations in response to allegations of 
scraping. According to Facebook, it enforces its no-scraping policy 
through various means, including barring violators from using Facebook, 
cease and desist letters, and in some cases litigation. Last year, for 
example, Facebook sued two developers based in Ukraine who operated 
malicious software designed to scrape data from Facebook and other 
social networking sites. Recently, Facebook filed lawsuits against 
unauthorized automated activity--specifically data scraping and 
building software to distribute fake likes and comments on Instagram.
E. End-to-End Encryption
    End-to-end encryption is a system in which messages or 
communications between users are encrypted throughout the communication 
process such that the entity providing the communication service (such 
as WhatsApp or Messenger) cannot access or review the content of the 
messages. Advocates for such encryption maintain that it protects user 
privacy and security by ensuring that their private messages cannot be 
surveilled or accessed by third parties, whether those be government 
entities, criminal hackers, advertisers, or private companies. These 
protections against access can be critical for whistleblowers, protest 
organizers, individuals subject to government surveillance or 
suppressive regimes, public figures subject to targeted hacking, those 
who handle sensitive information, and many others. However, critics of 
end-to-end encryption have expressed concern that it may make it harder 
to identify and take action against individuals whose communications 
violate laws or Facebook policies, such as those running financial 
scams or seeking to harm or exploit children.
    Although WhatsApp is already end-to-end encrypted and Messenger 
offers an opt-in end-to-end encrypted service, Facebook announced in 
2019 that it plans to make its communication services, namely Messenger 
and Instagram Direct, fully end-to-end encrypted by default. To address 
concerns about shielding bad actors, Facebook indicates that alongside 
encryption, it is investing in new features that use advanced 
technology to help keep people safe without breaking end-to-end 
encryption and other efforts to facilitate increased reporting from 
users of harmful behavior/content communicated on encrypted messaging 
systems.
    More specifically, Facebook states that it is using data from 
behavioral signals and user reports to build and train machine-learning 
models to identify account activity associated with specific harms such 
as child exploitation, impersonation, and financial scams. When these 
potentially harmful accounts interact with other users, a notice will 
surface to educate users on how to spot suspicious behavior and avoid 
unwanted or potentially harmful interactions so that wrongdoers can be 
detected and people can be protected even without breaking end-to-end 
encryption. In addition, Facebook reports that it is improving its 
reporting options to make them more easily accessible to users by, for 
example, inserting prompts asking users if they want to report a person 
or content.
    Regardless of whether the content is end-to-end encrypted, Facebook 
permits users to report content that's harmful or violates Facebook's 
policies, and, in doing so, provide Facebook with the content of the 
messages. In other words, end-to-end encryption means that Facebook 
cannot proactively access message content on its own, but users are 
still permitted to voluntarily provide Facebook with encrypted content. 
This allows Facebook to continue to review and determine whether it is 
violating and then impose penalties and/or report the matter to law 
enforcement, if necessary.
F. COVID-19 Tracing
    In an effort to track the spread of COVID-19 and warn those who may 
have been exposed, contact tracing has been increasingly advanced as an 
important tool for containing the virus. Given the amount of data 
Facebook has and the number of Facebook users, some have called for 
Facebook to directly participate in contact tracing efforts. Others, 
however, have expressed concern that sharing information about the 
locations or contacts of those who have contracted the virus would be 
an unacceptable invasion of privacy.
    Facebook has not participated in the development of contact tracing 
apps, but has received requests from government and private entities 
asking Facebook to promote contact tracing apps on Facebook through ad 
credits or News Feed notifications to users. Facebook states that it 
has not granted any such requests. If it were to do so, the apps would 
need to undergo a privacy review. Facebook has, however, promoted 
voluntary surveys conducted by third-party academic research 
institutions to track and study COVID-19 through users self-reported 
symptoms. (The research institutions do not share any individual survey 
responses with Facebook and Facebook does not share individual user 
information with the research institutions.)
    Through its Data for Good initiative, Facebook also makes aggregate 
data available to researchers to assist them in responding to 
humanitarian crises, including things like the COVID-19 pandemic. 
Facebook has released to researchers (and the public) mobility data 
comparing how much people are moving around now versus before social 
distancing measures were put in place, and indicating what percentage 
of people appear to stay within a small area for the entire day. Only 
users who have opted in to providing Facebook with their location 
history and background location collection are included in the data set 
and the data shared is only shared on an aggregate level. Facebook 
asserts it has applied a special privacy protocol to protect people's 
privacy in mobility datasets shared publicly and ensure that aggregated 
data cannot be disaggregated to reveal individual information.
    Facebook is also taking steps to support manual contact tracing 
efforts--that is, efforts which promote awareness and understanding of 
off-platform tracing initiatives that do not involve the sharing of 
Facebook data. For example, through its COVID Information Center and 
advertising, Facebook is helping to disseminate information about 
contact tracing. Facebook states that it intends to continue to support 
such manual tracing efforts.
    Facebook plans to continue with the work outlined above and will 
continue to assess where it can play a meaningful role in helping 
address the evolving health problems that society is facing related to 
COVID-19 with privacy in mind.
G. Further Research
    The specific issues discussed in this chapter are set against a 
larger digital privacy discourse that centers around transparency, data 
collection minimization, consent, the impacts of inaccurate data, and 
myriad potential civil rights implications depending on how captured 
data is used. The volume of data collected by technology companies on 
users, non-users associated with them, and both on-and off-platform 
activity requires that companies, including Facebook, be fully 
transparent about the ways data is collected and used. Without this 
transparency, users have no way of knowing whether the information 
collected on them is accurate, let alone any way to correct errors--and 
those inaccuracies can have significant consequences, especially for 
marginalized communities.
    While beyond the capacity of this Audit, these privacy issues and 
their interconnectivity with topics like advertising, discriminatory 
policing and immigration enforcement, employment and lending 
discrimination, and algorithmic bias, are important issues with serious 
potential civil rights implications that are worth further study and 
analysis.