HEARING BEFORE THE UNITED STATES SENATE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY AND THE UNITED STATES SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE SCIENCE AND TRANSPORTATION April 10 2018 Testimony of Mark Zuckerberg Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Facebook I INTRODUCTION Chairman Grassley Chairman Thune Ranking Member Feinstein Ranking Member Nelson and Members of the Committees We face a number of important issues around privacy safety and democracy and you will rightfully have some hard questions for me to answer Before I talk about the steps we’re taking to address them I want to talk about how we got here Facebook is an idealistic and optimistic company For most of our existence we focused on all the good that connecting people can bring As Facebook has grown people everywhere have gotten a powerful new tool to stay connected to the people they love make their voices heard and build communities and businesses Just recently we’ve seen the #metoo movement and the March for Our Lives organized at least in part on Facebook After Hurricane Harvey people raised more than $20 million for relief And more than 70 million small businesses now use Facebook to grow and create jobs But it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well That goes for fake news foreign interference in elections and hate speech as well as developers and data privacy We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility and that was a big mistake It was my mistake and I’m sorry I started Facebook I run it and I’m responsible for what happens here So now we have to go through every part of our relationship with people and make sure we’re taking a broad enough view of our responsibility It’s not enough to just connect people we have to make sure those connections are positive It’s not enough to just give people a voice we have to make sure people aren’t using it to hurt people or spread misinformation It’s not enough to give people control of their information we have to make sure developers they’ve given it to are protecting it too Across the board we have a responsibility to not just build tools but to make sure those tools are used for good It will take some time to work through all of the changes we need to make but I’m committed to getting it right That includes improving the way we protect people’s information and safeguard elections around the world Here are a few key things we’re doing 1 II CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA Over the past few weeks we’ve been working to understand exactly what happened with Cambridge Analytica and taking steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again We took important actions to prevent this from happening again today four years ago but we also made mistakes there’s more to do and we need to step up and do it A What Happened In 2007 we launched the Facebook Platform with the vision that more apps should be social Your calendar should be able to show your friends’ birthdays your maps should show where your friends live and your address book should show their pictures To do this we enabled people to log into apps and share who their friends were and some information about them In 2013 a Cambridge University researcher named Aleksandr Kogan created a personality quiz app It was installed by around 300 000 people who agreed to share some of their Facebook information as well as some information from their friends whose privacy settings allowed it Given the way our platform worked at the time this meant Kogan was able to access some information about tens of millions of their friends In 2014 to prevent abusive apps we announced that we were changing the entire platform to dramatically limit the Facebook information apps could access Most importantly apps like Kogan’s could no longer ask for information about a person’s friends unless their friends had also authorized the app We also required developers to get approval from Facebook before they could request any data beyond a user’s public profile friend list and email address These actions would prevent any app like Kogan’s from being able to access as much Facebook data today In 2015 we learned from journalists at The Guardian that Kogan had shared data from his app with Cambridge Analytica It is against our policies for developers to share data without people’s consent so we immediately banned Kogan’s app from our platform and demanded that Kogan and other entities he gave the data to including Cambridge Analytica formally certify that they had deleted all improperly acquired data — which they ultimately did Last month we learned from The Guardian The New York Times and Channel 4 that Cambridge Analytica may not have deleted the data as they had certified We immediately banned them from using any of our services Cambridge Analytica claims they have already deleted the data and has agreed to a forensic audit by a firm we hired to investigate this We’re also working with the U K Information Commissioner’s Office which has jurisdiction over Cambridge Analytica as it completes its investigation into what happened B What We Are Doing We have a responsibility to make sure what happened with Kogan and Cambridge Analytica doesn’t happen again Here are some of the steps we’re taking 2 • Safeguarding our platform We need to make sure that developers like Kogan who got access to a lot of information in the past can’t get access to as much information going forward o We made some big changes to the Facebook platform in 2014 to dramatically restrict the amount of data that developers can access and to proactively review the apps on our platform This makes it so a developer today can’t do what Kogan did years ago o But there’s more we can do here to limit the information developers can access and put more safeguards in place to prevent abuse  We’re removing developers’ access to your data if you haven’t used their app in three months  We’re reducing the data you give an app when you approve it to only your name profile photo and email address That’s a lot less than apps can get on any other major app platform  We’re requiring developers to not only get approval but also to sign a contract that imposes strict requirements in order to ask anyone for access to their posts or other private data  We’re restricting more APIs like groups and events You should be able to sign into apps and share your public information easily but anything that might also share other people’s information — like other posts in groups you’re in or other people going to events you’re going to — will be much more restricted  Two weeks ago we found out that a feature that lets you look someone up by their phone number and email was abused This feature is useful in cases where people have the same name but it was abused to link people’s public Facebook information to a phone number they already had When we found out about the abuse we shut this feature down • Investigating other apps We’re in the process of investigating every app that had access to a large amount of information before we locked down our platform in 2014 If we detect suspicious activity we’ll do a full forensic audit And if we find that someone is improperly using data we’ll ban them and tell everyone affected • Building better controls Finally we’re making it easier to understand which apps you’ve allowed to access your data This week we started showing everyone a list of the apps you’ve used and an easy way to revoke their permissions to your data You can already do this in your privacy settings but we’re going to put it at the top of News Feed to make sure everyone sees it And we also told everyone whose Facebook information may have been shared with Cambridge Analytica 3 Beyond the steps we had already taken in 2014 I believe these are the next steps we must take to continue to secure our platform III RUSSIAN ELECTION INTERFERENCE Facebook’s mission is about giving people a voice and bringing people closer together Those are deeply democratic values and we’re proud of them I don’t want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy That’s not what we stand for We were too slow to spot and respond to Russian interference and we’re working hard to get better Our sophistication in handling these threats is growing and improving quickly We will continue working with the government to understand the full extent of Russian interference and we will do our part not only to ensure the integrity of free and fair elections around the world but also to give everyone a voice and to be a force for good in democracy everywhere A What Happened Elections have always been especially sensitive times for our security team and the 2016 U S presidential election was no exception Our security team has been aware of traditional Russian cyber threats — like hacking and malware — for years Leading up to Election Day in November 2016 we detected and dealt with several threats with ties to Russia This included activity by a group called APT28 that the U S government has publicly linked to Russian military intelligence services But while our primary focus was on traditional threats we also saw some new behavior in the summer of 2016 when APT28-related accounts under the banner of DC Leaks created fake personas that were used to seed stolen information to journalists We shut these accounts down for violating our policies After the election we continued to investigate and learn more about these new threats What we found was that bad actors had used coordinated networks of fake accounts to interfere in the election promoting or attacking specific candidates and causes creating distrust in political institutions or simply spreading confusion Some of these bad actors also used our ads tools We also learned about a disinformation campaign run by the Internet Research Agency IRA — a Russian agency that has repeatedly acted deceptively and tried to manipulate people in the US Europe and Russia We found about 470 accounts and pages linked to the IRA which generated around 80 000 Facebook posts over about a two-year period Our best estimate is that approximately 126 million people may have been served content from a Facebook Page associated with the IRA at some point during that period On Instagram where our data on reach is not as complete we found about 120 000 pieces of content and estimate that an additional 20 million people were likely served it Over the same period the IRA also spent approximately $100 000 on more than 3 000 ads on 4 Facebook and Instagram which were seen by an estimated 11 million people in the United States We shut down these IRA accounts in August 2017 B What We Are Doing There’s no question that we should have spotted Russian interference earlier and we’re working hard to make sure it doesn’t happen again Our actions include • • Building new technology to prevent abuse Since 2016 we have improved our techniques to prevent nation states from interfering in foreign elections and we’ve built more advanced AI tools to remove fake accounts more generally There have been a number of important elections since then where these new tools have been successfully deployed For example o In France leading up to the presidential election in 2017 we found and took down 30 000 fake accounts o In Germany before the 2017 elections we worked directly with the election commission to learn from them about the threats they saw and to share information o In the U S Senate Alabama special election last year we deployed new AI tools that proactively detected and removed fake accounts from Macedonia trying to spread misinformation o We have disabled thousands of accounts tied to organized financially motivated fake news spammers These investigations have been used to improve our automated systems that find fake accounts o Last week we took down more than 270 additional pages and accounts operated by the IRA and used to target people in Russia and Russian speakers in countries like Azerbaijan Uzbekistan and Ukraine Some of the pages we removed belong to Russian news organizations that we determined were controlled by the IRA Significantly increasing our investment in security We now have about 15 000 people working on security and content review We’ll have more than 20 000 by the end of this year o • I’ve directed our teams to invest so much in security — on top of the other investments we’re making — that it will significantly impact our profitability going forward But I want to be clear about what our priority is protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits Strengthening our advertising policies We know some Members of Congress are exploring ways to increase transparency around political or issue advertising and we’re happy to keep working with Congress on that But we aren’t waiting for legislation to act 5 • o From now on every advertiser who wants to run political or issue ads will need to be authorized To get authorized advertisers will need to confirm their identity and location Any advertiser who doesn’t pass will be prohibited from running political or issue ads We will also label them and advertisers will have to show you who paid for them We’re starting this in the U S and expanding to the rest of the world in the coming months o For even greater political ads transparency we have also built a tool that lets anyone see all of the ads a page is running We’re testing this in Canada now and we’ll launch it globally this summer We’re also creating a searchable archive of past political ads o We will also require people who manage large pages to be verified as well This will make it much harder for people to run pages using fake accounts or to grow virally and spread misinformation or divisive content that way o In order to require verification for all of these pages and advertisers we will hire thousands of more people We’re committed to getting this done in time for the critical months before the 2018 elections in the U S as well as elections in Mexico Brazil India Pakistan and elsewhere in the next year o These steps by themselves won’t stop all people trying to game the system But they will make it a lot harder for anyone to do what the Russians did during the 2016 election and use fake accounts and pages to run ads Election interference is a problem that’s bigger than any one platform and that’s why we support the Honest Ads Act This will help raise the bar for all political advertising online Sharing information We’ve been working with other technology companies to share information about threats and we’re also cooperating with the U S and foreign governments on election integrity At the same time it’s also important not to lose sight of the more straightforward and larger ways Facebook plays a role in elections In 2016 people had billions of interactions and open discussions on Facebook that may never have happened offline Candidates had direct channels to communicate with tens of millions of citizens Campaigns spent tens of millions of dollars organizing and advertising online to get their messages out further And we organized “get out the vote” efforts that helped more than 2 million people register to vote who might not have voted otherwise Security — including around elections — isn’t a problem you ever fully solve Organizations like the IRA are sophisticated adversaries who are constantly evolving but we’ll keep improving our techniques to stay ahead And we’ll also keep building tools to help more people make their voices heard in the democratic process 6 IV CONCLUSION My top priority has always been our social mission of connecting people building community and bringing the world closer together Advertisers and developers will never take priority over that as long as I’m running Facebook I started Facebook when I was in college We’ve come a long way since then We now serve more than 2 billion people around the world and every day people use our services to stay connected with the people that matter to them most I believe deeply in what we’re doing And when we address these challenges I know we’ll look back and view helping people connect and giving more people a voice as a positive force in the world I realize the issues we’re talking about today aren’t just issues for Facebook and our community — they’re challenges for all of us as Americans Thank you for having me here today and I’m ready to take your questions 7