This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 1 1 NEAL R GROSS CO INC 2 RPTS SAM WOJACK 3 HIF248000 4 5 6 TWITTER TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY 7 WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 5 2018 8 House of Representatives 9 Committee on Energy and Commerce 10 Washington D C 11 12 13 14 The committee met pursuant to call at 1 30 p m in Room 15 2123 Rayburn House Office Building Hon Greg Walden chairman 16 of the committee presiding 17 Members present Representatives Walden Barton Upton 18 Shimkus Burgess Scalise Latta McMorris Rodgers Harper 19 Lance Guthrie Olson McKinley Kinzinger Griffith Bilirakis 20 Johnson Long Bucshon Flores Brooks Mullin Hudson Collins 21 Cramer Walberg Walters Costello Carter Duncan Pallone 22 Rush Engel Green DeGette Doyle Schakowsky Butterfield NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 2 23 Matsui Castor Sarbanes McNerney Welch Lujan Tonko Clarke 24 Loebsack Schrader Kennedy Cardenas Ruiz Peters and Dingell 25 26 Staff present Jon Adame Policy Coordinator 27 Communications Technology Jennifer Barblan Chief Counsel 28 Oversight Investigations Mike Bloomquist Deputy Staff 29 Director Karen Christian General Counsel Robin Colwell Chief 30 Counsel Communications Technology Jordan Davis Director of 31 Policy and External Affairs Melissa Froelich Chief Counsel 32 Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection Adam Fromm Director 33 of Outreach and Coalitions Ali Fulling Legislative Clerk 34 Oversight Investigations Digital Commerce and Consumer 35 Protection Elena Hernandez Press Secretary Zach Hunter 36 Director of Communications Paul Jackson Professional Staff 37 Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection Peter Kielty Deputy 38 General Counsel Bijan Koohmaraie Counsel Digital Commerce and 39 Consumer Protection Tim Kurth Senior Professional Staff 40 Communications Technology Milly Lothian Press Assistant and 41 Digital Coordinator Mark Ratner Policy Coordinator Austin 42 Stonebraker Press Assistant Madeline Vey Policy Coordinator 43 Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection Jessica Wilkerson 44 Professional Staff Oversight Investigations Greg Zerzan NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 3 45 Counsel Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection Michelle Ash 46 Minority Chief Counsel Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection 47 Jeff Carroll Minority Staff Director Jennifer Epperson 48 Minority FCC Detailee Evan Gilbert Minority Press Assistant 49 Lisa Goldman Minority Counsel Tiffany Guarascio Minority 50 Deputy Staff Director and Chief Health Advisor Carolyn Hann 51 Minority FTC Detailee Alex Hoehn-Saric Minority Chief Counsel 52 Communications and Technology Jerry Leverich Minority Counsel 53 Jourdan Lewis Minority Staff Assistant Dan Miller Minority 54 Policy Analyst Caroline Paris-Behr Minority Policy Analyst 55 Kaitlyn Peel Minority Digital Director Andrew Souvall Minority 56 Director of Communications Outreach and Member Services and 57 C J Young Minority Press Secretary NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 4 58 The Chairman The Committee on Energy and Commerce will 59 now come to order The chair now recognizes himself for five 60 minutes for purposes of an opening statement 61 62 Good afternoon and thank you Mr Dorsey for being before the Energy and Commerce Committee today 63 The company you and your co-creators founded 12 years ago 64 has become one of the most recognizable businesses in the world 65 66 Twitter has reached that rarified place where using the 67 service has become a verb instantly recognized around the globe 68 Just as people can Google a question or Gram a photo everyone 69 70 knows what it means to tweet one's thoughts or ideas The list of superlatives to describe Twitter certainly 71 exceeds 280 characters It is one of the most downloaded apps 72 in the world one of the most visited websites 73 It is one of the world's premier sources for breaking news 74 Its power and reach are so great that society-changing events 75 76 like the Arab Spring have been dubbed the Twitter Revolution The service allows anyone with access to the internet the 77 power to broadcast his or her views to the world It's truly 78 revolutionary in the way that the Gutenberg press was 79 revolutionary NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 5 80 It helps set information free It allows ideas to propagate 81 and challenge established ways of thinking 82 and growth rate has been extraordinary but it is not without 83 controversy 84 Twitter's success The service has been banned at various times and in various 85 countries such as China and Iran 86 the company itself has come under criticism for impeding the 87 ability of some users to post information remove tweets and 88 other content moderation practices 89 Here in the United States For instance in July it was reported that some politically 90 prominent users were no longer appearing as auto-populated 91 options in certain search results 92 This led to concerns that the service might be quote 93 unquote shadow banning some users in an attempt to limit their 94 visibility on the site 95 Now this was hardly the first instance of a social media 96 service taking actions which appeared to minimize or de-emphasize 97 certain viewpoints and in the most recent case Twitter has 98 stated that the action were not intentional but rather the 99 result of algorithms designed to maintain a more civil tone on 100 101 the site Twitter is also -- Twitter has also direction the issue of NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 6 102 bots or automated accounts not controlled by one person 103 Even the removal of these bots from the service raise questions 104 about how the bots were identified because the number of followers 105 someone has on Twitter has real economic value in our economy 106 We recognize the complexity of trying to manage your service 107 which posts over half a million tweets a day 108 once temporarily suspended from Twitter due to an internal error 109 yourself 110 111 I believe you were We do not want to lose sight of a few fundamental facts Humans are building the algorithms humans are making decisions 112 about how to implement Twitter's terms of service and humans 113 are recommending changes to Twitter's policies 114 Humans can make mistakes Now Twitter manages those 115 circumstances as critically important in an environment where 116 algorithms to decide what we see in our home feed ads and search 117 suggestions on 118 It is critical that users are confident that you're living 119 up to your own promises 120 believes that everyone should have the power to create and share 121 ideas and information instantly without barriers 122 123 According to Twitter rules the company Well that's a noble mission and one that as a private company you certainly do not have to take on The fact that you have NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 7 124 done so as enriched the world changed societies and given an 125 outlet to voices that might otherwise never be heard 126 We and the American people want to be reassured that you're 127 continuing to live up to that mission 128 better understand how Twitter decides when to suspend a user or 129 ban them from the service and what you do to ensure that such 130 decisions are made without undue bias 131 We hope you can help us We hope you can help us better understand what role automated 132 algorithms have in this process and how those algorithms are 133 designed to ensure consistent outcomes and a fair process 134 The company that you and your co-founders created plays an 135 instrumental role in sharing news and information across the 136 globe 137 today and to answer our questions 138 139 We appreciate your willingness to appear before us to With that I yield back the balance of my time and recognize Mr Pallone from New Jersey for an opening statement 140 Mr Pallone 141 Over the past few weeks President Trump and many Republicans 142 have peddled conspiracy theories about Twitter and other social 143 media platforms to with up their base and fund raise 144 145 Thank you Mr Chairman I fear the Republicans are using this hearing for those purposes instead of addressing the serious issues raised by social NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 8 146 147 media platforms that affect Americans' everyday lives Twitter is a valuable platform for disseminating news 148 information and viewpoints It can be a tool for bringing people 149 together and allows one to reach many 150 In places like Iran and Ukraine Twitter was used to organize 151 and give voice to the concerns of otherwise voiceless individuals 152 Closer to home Twitter and hashtags like #StayWoke #MeToo 153 and #NetNeutrality have fostered important conversations and 154 supported larger social movements that are changing our society 155 But Twitter has a darker side Far too many Twitter users 156 still face bullying and trolling attacks 157 threaten belittle demean and silence individuals can have a 158 devastating effect sometimes even driving people to suicide 159 and while Twitter has taken some steps to protect users and enable 160 reporting more needs to be done 161 Tweets designed to Bad actors have co-opted Twitter and other social media 162 platforms to spread disinformation and sow divisions in our 163 society 164 For example Alex Jones used Twitter to amplify harmful and 165 dangerous lies such as those regarding the Sandy Hook Elementary 166 School shooting 167 Other have used the platform to deny the existence of the NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 9 168 Holocaust disseminate racial supremacy theories and spread 169 false information about terrorism natural disasters and more 170 When questioned about this disinformation Twitter's CEO 171 Jack Dorsey said the truth will win out in the end 172 is reason to doubt that in my opinion But there 173 According to a recent study published by the MIT Media Lab 174 false rumors on Twitter traveled and I quote farther faster 175 deeper and more broadly than the truth with true claims taking 176 about six times as long to reach the same number of people and 177 that's dangerous 178 179 And countries like Russia and Iran are taking advantage of this to broadly disseminate propaganda and false information 180 Beyond influencing elections foreign agents are actively 181 trying to turn groups of Americans against each other and these 182 countries are encouraging conflict to sow division and hatred 183 by targeting topics that generate intense feelings such as race 184 religion and politics 185 Unfortunately the actions of President Trump have made the 186 situation worse 187 and belittle people calling them names like dog clown spoiled 188 brat son of a bitch enemies and loser 189 Repeatedly the president uses Twitter to bully He routinely tweets false statements designed to mislead NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 10 190 Americans and foster discord and the president's actions coarsen 191 the public debate and feed distrust within our society 192 President Trump has demonstrated that the politics of 193 division are good for fund raising and rousing his base and sadly 194 Republicans are now following his lead instead of criticizing 195 the president for behavior that would not be tolerated even from 196 a child 197 As reported in the news the Trump campaign and the 198 Republican majority leader have used the supposed 199 anti-conservative bias online to fund raise 200 This hearing appears to be just one more mechanism to raise 201 money and generate outrage and it appears Republicans are 202 desperately trying to rally the base by fabricating a problem 203 that simply does not exist 204 Regardless of the Republicans' intentions for this hearing 205 Twitter and other social media platforms must do more to regain 206 and maintain the public trust 207 disinformation and malicious foreign influence continue 208 Bullying the spread of Twitter policies have been inconsistent and confusing The 209 company's enforcement seems to chase the latest headline as 210 opposed to addressing systematic problems 211 Though Twitter and other social media platforms must NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 11 212 establish clear policies to address the problems discussed today 213 provide tools to users and then swiftly and fairly enforce those 214 policies and those policies should apply equally to the 215 president politicians administration officials celebrities 216 and the teenager down the street 217 It's long past time for Twitter and other social media 218 companies to stop allowing their platforms to be tools of discord 219 of spreading false information and of foreign government 220 manipulation 221 222 So I thank you for having the hearing Mr Chairman and I yield back 223 The Chairman 224 The chair now recognizes Mr Dorsey for purposes of an 225 opening statement 226 to go ahead I thank the gentleman We appreciate your being here and feel free NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 12 227 STATEMENT OF JACK DORSEY CEO TWITTER INC 228 229 Mr Dorsey 230 Thank you Chairman Walden Ranking Member Pallone and the 231 committee for the opportunity to speak on behalf of Twitter to 232 the American people 233 234 235 Thank you I look forward to our conversation about our commitment to impartiality to transparency and to accountability If it's okay with all of you I'd like to read you something 236 I personally wrote as I thought about these issues 237 going to tweet it out right now 238 I am also I want to start by making something very clear We don't 239 consider political viewpoints perspectives or party 240 affiliation in any of our policies or enforcement decisions 241 period 242 243 Impartiality is our guiding principle Let me explain why We believe many people use Twitter as a digital public square 244 245 They gather from all around the world to see what's happening 246 and have a conversation about what they see Twitter cannot 247 rightly serve as public square if it's constructed around the 248 personal opinions of its makers NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 13 249 250 We believe a key driver of a thriving public square is the fundamental human right of freedom of opinion and expression 251 Our early and strong defense of open and free exchange has 252 enabled Twitter to be the platform for activists marginalized 253 communities whistle blowers journalists governments and the 254 most influential people around the world 255 default to open and free exchange 256 Twitter will always A default to free expression left unchecked can generate 257 risks and dangers for people 258 distinguishes between people's opinions and their behaviors and 259 disarms behavior intending to silence another person or adversely 260 interfere with their universal human rights 261 It's important Twitter We build our policies and rules with the principle of 262 impartiality objective criteria rather than on the basis of bias 263 prejudice or preferring the benefit to one person over another 264 for improper reasons 265 If we learn we failed to create impartial outcomes we 266 immediately work to fix 267 transparency recently we failed our intended impartiality 268 In the spirit of accountability and Our algorithms were unfairly filtering 600 000 accounts 269 including some members of Congress from our search auto complete 270 and latest results We fixed it but how did it happen NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 14 271 Our technology was using a decision-making criteria that 272 considers the behavior of people following these accounts 273 decided that wasn't fair and we corrected it We 274 We will always improve our technology and algorithms to drive 275 healthier usage and measure the impartiality of those outcomes 276 Bias in algorithms is an important topic Our 277 responsibility is to understand measure and reduce accidental 278 bias due to factors such as the quality of the data used to train 279 our algorithms 280 everyone applying artificial intelligence This is an extremely complex challenge facing 281 For our part machine-learning teams at Twitter are 282 experimenting with these techniques in developing roadmaps to 283 ensure present and future machine-learning models uphold a high 284 standard when it comes to algorithmic fairness 285 It's an important step towards ensuring impartiality 286 Looking at the data we analyzed tweets sent by all members of 287 the House and Senate and found no statistically significant 288 difference between the number of times a tweet by a Democrat is 289 viewed versus a Republican even after all of our ranking and 290 filtering of tweets has been applied 291 Also there is a distinction we need to make clear 292 people follow you you've earned that audience and we have a NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com When This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 15 293 responsibility to make sure they can see your tweets We do not 294 have a responsibility nor you a right to amplify your tweets to 295 an audience that doesn't follow you 296 What our algorithms decide to show in shared spaces like 297 search results is based on thousands of signals that constant 298 learn and evolve over time 299 Some of those signals are engagement 300 of abuse reports 301 system 302 Some are the number We balance all of these to prevent gaming our We acknowledge the growing concern people have of the power 303 held by companies like Twitter 304 ask Twitter to regulate opinions or be the arbiter of truth 305 306 307 We believe it's dangerous to We'd rather be judged by the impartiality of outcomes and criticized when we fail this principle In closing when I think of our work I think of my mom and 308 dad in St Louis a Democrat and a Republican We had lots of 309 frustrating and -- frustrating and heated debates 310 back I appreciate I was able to hear and challenge different 311 perspectives and I also appreciate I felt safe to do so But looking 312 We believe Twitter helps people connect to something bigger 313 than themselves show all the amazing things that are happening 314 in the world and all the things we need to acknowledge and NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 16 315 316 317 address We are constantly learning how to make it freer and healthier for all to participate 318 Thank you all 319 The prepared statement of Mr Dorsey follows 320 INSERT 1 NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 17 321 The Chairman 322 We'll now begin the opportunity to have questions and I will 323 324 Thank you Mr Dorsey lead off So Mr Dorsey I am going to get straight to the heart of 325 why we are here today 326 business practices including questions about your algorithms 327 content management practices and how Section 230's safe harbors 328 protect Twitter 329 We have a lot of questions about Twitter's In many ways for some of us it seems a little bit like 330 the Wizard of Oz -- we want to know what's going on behind the 331 curtain 332 This summer reports surfaced that profiles of prominent 333 Republican Twitter users were not appearing in automatically 334 populated drop-down search results 335 in your own testimony I think you mentioned that 336 This was after a member of this committee had her tweets 337 and ads taken off the service because of a basic conservative 338 message and then there are other examples that have been sent 339 our way 340 Twitter's public response is and I quote We do not shadow 341 ban You're always able to see the tweets from accounts you 342 follow although you may have to quote do more work to find NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 18 343 344 them like go directly to their profile closed quote But to most people they might think of that as shadow 345 banning 346 banning is when the expectation you are given to your users who 347 choose to follow certain accounts is different from what they 348 see on their time line and in their searches 349 It doesn't matter what your definition of shadow In one example of many certain prominent conservative users 350 including some of our colleagues who have come to us -- 351 Representatives Meadows Jordan Gaetz -- were not shown in the 352 automatically populated drop-down searches on Twitter correct 353 Out of the more than 300 million active Twitter users why 354 did this only happen to certain accounts 355 did the algorithm take into account that led to prominent 356 conservatives including members of the U S House of 357 Representatives not being included in auto search suggestions 358 In other words what What caused that 359 Mr Dorsey 360 So we use signals usually hundreds of signals to determine 361 and to decide what to show what to down rank or potentially 362 what to filter 363 364 Thank you for the question In this particular case as I mentioned in my opening we were using a signal of the behavior of the people following NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 19 365 accounts and we didn't believe upon further consideration and 366 also seeing the impact which was about 600 000 accounts -- a 367 pretty broad base -- that that was ultimately fair and we decided 368 to correct it 369 We also decided that it was not fair to use a signal for 370 filtering in general and we decided to correct that within search 371 as well 372 And it is important for us to one be able to experiment 373 freely with the signals and to have the -- to have the freedom 374 to be able to inject them and also to remove them because that's 375 the only way we are going to learn 376 We will make mistakes along the way and the way we want to 377 be judged is making sure that we recognize those and that we 378 correct them and what we are looking in terms -- for in terms 379 of whether we made a mistake or not is this principle of 380 impartiality and specifically impartial outcomes and we 381 realized that in this particular case and within search that we 382 weren't driving that and we could have done a better job there 383 The Chairman Let me ask you another question Could bots 384 game the system or work to block or silence certain voices 385 political or otherwise 386 Mr Dorsey We are always looking for patterns of behavior NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 20 387 intending to amplify information artificially and that 388 information could include actions like blocking 389 So that's why it's important that we don't just use one signal 390 but we use hundreds of signals and that we balance them 391 accordingly 392 There is a perception that a simple report of a term -- of 393 a violation of the terms of service will result in action or down 394 ranking 395 weigh according to other signals that we see across 396 That is not true The Chairman It is one signal that we use and I have one final question I asked followers 397 of Twitter -- Twitter followers I have and one from Oregon asked 398 why Twitter relies exclusively on users to report violations 399 Mr Dorsey This is a matter of scale So today in order 400 to remove tweets or to remove accounts we do require a report 401 of the violating and that report is reviewed by an individual 402 Those reports are prioritized based on the severity of the 403 report 404 others and we take action on them much faster 405 So death threats have a higher prioritization of all We do have algorithms that are constantly proactively 406 searching the network and specifically the behaviors on the 407 network and filtering and down ranking accordingly 408 And what that means in terms of filtering is it might filter NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 21 409 behind an interstitial An interstitial is a graphic or element 410 within our app or service that one can tap to see more tweets 411 or show more replies 412 So in some cases we are proactively based on these 413 algorithms hiding some of the content causing a little bit more 414 friction to actually see it and again those are models that 415 we constantly learn from and evolve as well 416 The Chairman My time has expired 417 I now recognize the gentleman from New Jersey Mr Pallone 418 Mr Pallone 419 Twitter's effect on American society raise genuine and Thank you Mr Chairman 420 serious issues 421 called you here today Mr Dorsey 422 But that's not why the Republican majority has I think it's the height of hypocrisy that President Trump 423 and congressional Republicans criticize Twitter for supposed 424 liberal bias when President Trump uses the platform every day 425 for his juvenile tweets and spreading lies and misinformation 426 to the whole country and to the world 427 In my opinion you have an obligation to ensure your 428 platform at a minimum does no harm to our country or democracy 429 and the American public 430 And as I noted in my opening one persistent critique of NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 22 431 Twitter by civil rights advocates and victims of abuse and others 432 is that your policies are unevenly enforced 433 The rich and powerful get special treatment Others get 434 little recourse when Twitter fails to protect them unless the 435 company gets some bad press 436 Now you have admitted that Twitter needs to do a better 437 job explaining how decisions are made especially those by human 438 content moderators who handle the most difficult and sensitive 439 questions 440 So let me just ask you how many human content moderators 441 does Twitter employ in the U S and how much do they get paid 442 Mr Dorsey We -- so we want to think about this problem 443 not in terms of the number of people but how we make decisions 444 to invest in building new technologies versus hiring folks 445 Mr Pallone Well let me ask you these three questions 446 on this point and then if you can't answer it I would appreciate 447 it if you can't -- through the chairman if you could get back 448 to us 449 The first one was how many human content moderators does 450 Twitter employ in the U S and how much do they get paid second 451 how many hours of training is given to them to ensure consistency 452 in their decisions and last are they given specific instructions NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 23 453 to ensure that celebrities and politicians are treated the same 454 as everyone else 455 456 457 If you can answer -- otherwise I am going to ask you to get back to us in writing because I -Mr Dorsey We'll follow up with you on specific numbers 458 But on the last point this is a very important distinction 459 I do believe that we need to do more around protecting private 460 461 individuals than public figures I don't know yet exactly how that will manifest But I do 462 believe it's important that we extend the protection of our rules 463 more to private individuals necessarily than public figures 464 Mr Pallone Well I appreciate that because I think 465 everyone should be treated the same and you seem to be saying 466 that 467 is there so that's true But we have to make sure that the enforcement mechanism 468 Let me -- let me ask if you could report back to the committee 469 within one month of what steps Twitter is taking to improve the 470 consistency of its enforcement and the metrics that demonstrate 471 improvement if you could within a month 472 Mr Dorsey 473 Mr Pallone 474 Now let me turn to another issue Is that okay Absolutely All right I only have a minute NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 24 475 Other technology companies like Airbnb and Facebook have 476 committed to conducting civil rights audits amid concerns raised 477 by members of the Congressional Black Caucus and others including 478 Representatives Rush to my left Butterfield and Clarke on our 479 committee and these audits seek to uncover how platforms and 480 their policies have been used to stoke racial and religious 481 resentment or violence and given the sometimes dangerous use 482 of your platform and the haphazard approach of Twitter towards 483 developing and enforcing its policies I think your company should 484 take similar action 485 486 So let me ask these three questions and again if you can answer them If not please get back to us within the month 487 488 Will you commit to working with an independent third-party 489 institution to conduct a civil rights audit of Twitter 490 no 491 492 493 494 Mr Dorsey Yes or We will and we do do that on a regular basis with what's called our Trust and Safety Council which -Mr Pallone All right But I mean I would like -- asking for an independent third party institution to conduct it 495 Mr Dorsey 496 Mr Pallone Yes Let us follow up with you on that All right NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 25 497 Second will you commit -- let me ask these two together 498 -- will you commit to making the results of all such audits 499 available to the public including all recommendations and 500 findings 501 502 Mr Dorsey Yes We do believe we need a lot more transparency around our actions and our decisions -- 503 Mr Pallone 504 Then the third one Mr Chairman with your permission will 505 you commit based on the findings of all such audits to change 506 Twitter's policies programs and processes to address these areas 507 of concern 508 509 All right Yes or no Mr Dorsey We are always looking to evolve our policies based on what we find so yes 510 Mr Pallone All right 511 And again Mr Chairman through you if we could get a report 512 back to the committee within one month of the steps that Mr Dorsey 513 is taking I would appreciate it 514 Mr Dorsey 515 The Chairman 516 I now turn to Mr Upton former chairman of the committee 517 518 Thank you All right Thank you for questions Mr Upton Thank you Mr Chairman NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 26 519 So Mr Dorsey I think it's fair to say that even looking 520 at my Twitter feed that there are some fairly ugly things on 521 Twitter that come every now and then and my name is Fred Upton 522 and I got a bet that my initials are probably used more than just 523 about any other 524 Laughter 525 Might even think that it's bipartisan on both sides of the 526 aisle 527 public discourse 528 tweets from bad faith actors who intend to manipulate or divide 529 the conversations should be ranked lower 530 531 532 But I would like to see civility brought back into the In a July post Twitter acknowledged that So the question is how do you determine whether a user is tweeting to manipulate or divide the conversation Mr Dorsey This is a great question and one that we have 533 -- we've struggled with in the past We recently determined that 534 we needed something much more tangible and cohesive in order to 535 think about this work and we've come across health as a concept 536 And we've all had experiences where we felt we've been in 537 a conversation that's a little bit more toxic and we wanted to 538 walk away from it 539 We've all been in conversations that felt really empowering 540 and something that we are learning from and we want to stay in NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 27 541 542 them So right now we are trying to determine what the indicators 543 of conversational health are and we are starting with four 544 indicators 545 One is what is the amount of shared attention that a 546 conversation has 547 on the same things 548 What percentage of the conversation is focused What is a percentage of shared facts that the conversation 549 is having -- not whether the facts are true or false but are 550 we sharing the same facts 551 is receptive What percentage of the conversation 552 And finally is there a variety of perspective within the 553 conversation or is it a filter bubble or echo chamber of the same 554 sort of ideas 555 So we are currently trying to figure out what those 556 indicators of health are and to measure them and we intend not 557 only to share what those indicators are that we've found but also 558 to measure ourselves against it and make that public so we can 559 show progress because we don't believe we can really fix anything 560 unless we can -- we can measure it and we are working with external 561 parties to help us do that because we know we can't do this alone 562 Mr Upton So do you believe that Twitter's rules are clear NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 28 563 564 on what's allowed and what's not allowed on the platform Mr Dorsey I believe if you were to go to our rules today 565 and sit down with a cup of coffee you would not be able to 566 understand it 567 only with those rules but with our terms of service 568 to make them a whole lot more approachable 569 I believe we need to do a much better job not We need We would love to lead in this area and we are working on 570 this 571 confusion around our rules and also our enforcement and we intend 572 to fix it 573 But I think there's a lot of -- I think there's a lot of Mr Upton The last question is can a Twitter user's friend 574 or someone that they follow grant permission to access to that 575 user's personal information to a third party 576 Mr Dorsey No We -- if you are sharing your password 577 of your account with another then they have the rights that you 578 would have to take on with that account 579 Mr Upton 580 The Chairman 581 582 Yield back The chair now recognizes the gentleman from New York Mr Tonko Ms DeGette is next Okay The chair now recognizes the 583 gentlelady from Colorado Ms DeGette 584 we were given We are going by the order NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 29 585 Ms DeGette Thank you very much Mr Chairman 586 Mr Dorsey thank you so much for joining us here today 587 because these are important issues and even though the Democrats 588 have highlighted that really some of the reasons why you came 589 are -- we think are political and wrong nonetheless there are 590 some real issues with Twitter that I think we can discuss today 591 592 And as you said Twitter really has become a tool for 593 engagement across society and recently we saw some of its 594 positive social change with the role it's played in the #Metoo 595 movement 596 But nonetheless Twitter has also experienced its own sexual 597 harassment problem to confront and I just wanted to ask you some 598 questions about how Twitter is dealing with these issues 599 I don't know if you're aware Mr Dorsey of the Amnesty 600 International report called Toxic Twitter A Toxic Place for 601 Women Are you aware of that 602 Mr Dorsey 603 Ms DeGette 604 I am aware of it Mr Chairman I would like to ask unanimous consent to put that in the record 605 The Chairman Without objection 606 The information follows NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 30 607 608 COMMITTEE INSERT 2 NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 31 609 Ms DeGette Now in that report it described the issues 610 women face on Twitter and how Twitter could change to be more 611 friendly to women 612 International about this report and about some of their 613 recommendations 614 Mr Dorsey I assume you have talked to Amnesty I am not sure if -- I haven't personally but 615 I imagine that the folks on our team have 616 up with you But we can follow 617 Ms DeGette 618 The report goes into great and frankly graphic detail of 619 the types of abuses that have been used -- experienced on Twitter 620 including threats of rape bodily harm and death 621 Thank you Now some were found -- have found to violate Twitter's 622 guidelines but others were not and I think probably you and your 623 staff agree that Twitter needs to do a better job of addressing 624 instances where some of the users are using the platform to harass 625 and threaten others 626 And so I am wondering if you can tell me does Twitter 627 currently have data on reports of abuse of conduct including on 628 the basis of race religion gender or orientation targeted 629 harassment or threats of violence 630 have data on the actions that it has taken to address these And separately does Twitter NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 32 631 632 complaints Mr Dorsey So a few things here First and foremost we 633 don't believe that we can create a digital public square for people 634 if they don't feel safe to participate in the first place and 635 that is our number one and singular objective as a company is 636 to increase the health of this public space 637 We do have data on all violations that we have seen across 638 the platform and the context of those violations and we do intend 639 -- and this will be an initiative this year -- to create a 640 transparency report that will make that data more public so that 641 all can learn from it and we can also be held publicly accountable 642 to it 643 644 645 646 647 648 Ms DeGette That's good news and you say you will have that this year yet by the end of -Mr Dorsey We are working on it as an initiative this year We have a lot of work to do to aggregate all the data and to report that will be meaningful -Ms DeGette And is Twitter also taking actions to address 649 some of the deficiencies that have been identified in this report 650 and in other places 651 Mr Dorsey 652 We are We definitely -- we are focussing -- one other point I wanted to make is that we don't feel it's fair NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 33 653 that the victims of abuse and harassment have to do the work to 654 report it 655 Ms DeGette 656 Mr Dorsey Yes Today our system does work on reports 657 especially when it has to take content down 658 is a metric that we would look at not as something that we want 659 to go up because it's easier to report things but as something 660 we want to go down not only because we think that we can -- we 661 can reduce the amount of abuse but we can actually create 662 technology to recognize it before people have to do the reporting 663 themselves 664 665 666 667 Ms DeGette So abuse reports Recognize it and take it down before a report has to be made Mr Dorsey Yes Any series of enforcement actions all the way to the -- to the extreme of it which is removing content 668 Ms DeGette Thank you 669 Mr Chairman I just want to say for the record I don't think 670 these issues are unique to Twitter Unlike so many of the 671 invented borderline conspiracy theories I believe this is a real 672 threat and I appreciate you Mr Dorsey taking this seriously 673 and your entire organization so that we can really reduce these 674 threats online NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 34 675 Thank you and I yield back 676 Mr Dorsey 677 The Chairman 678 The chair recognizes the gentleman from Illinois Mr 679 Thank you The gentlelady yields back Shimkus for questions 680 Mr Shimkus Thank you Mr Chairman 681 Mr Dorsey first of all go Cards I am from the St Louis 682 metropolitan area and be careful of Colin behind you who has 683 been known to be in this committee room a couple times 684 are glad to have him back 685 So we The -- while -- and I want to go to my questions and then 686 hopefully have time for a little summation While listening to 687 users is important how can anyone be sure that standards about 688 what quote unquote distracts or distorts are being handled 689 fairly and consistently 690 power to the loudest mob and ultimately fail to protect 691 controversial speech 692 Mr Dorsey And the follow-up is doesn't this give So this goes back to that framework I was 693 discussing around health and again I don't -- I don't know if 694 those are the right indicators yet 695 for outside help to make sure that we are doing the right work 696 That's why we are looking But we should have an understanding and a measurement -- NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 35 697 a tangible measurement -- of our effects on our system and 698 specifically in these cases we are looking for behaviors that 699 try to artificially amplify information and game our systems in 700 some ways that might happen -- 701 Mr Shimkus Would you consider -- I am sorry to interrupt 702 -- but a bot would be -- you would consider that as manipulating 703 the system right 704 705 706 707 708 Mr Dorsey If a bot is used for manipulating the conversation and the way we -Mr Shimkus together What about -- what about if the users band Would that be a -- you would consider manipulation Mr Dorsey The same -- and that's why it makes this issue 709 complicated is because sometimes we see bots 710 human coordinations in order to manipulate 711 Mr Shimkus Thank you Sometimes we see The -- Twitter has a verification 712 program where users can be verified by Twitter as legitimate and 713 verified users have a blue checkmark next to their name on their 714 page 715 align with your community guidelines or standards 716 How does the review process for designating verified users Mr Dorsey Well to be very frank our verification 717 program right now is not where we'd like it to be and we do believe 718 it is in serious need of a reboot and a reworking NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 36 719 And it has a long history It started as a way to verify 720 that the CDC account was the actual CDC account during the swine 721 flu and we brought into -- without as many principles -- strong 722 principles -- as we needed and then we opened the door to everyone 723 and unfortunately that has caused some issues because the 724 verified badge also is a signal that is used in some of our 725 algorithms to rank higher or to inject within shared areas of 726 the -- 727 728 729 Mr Shimkus That was my next question You do prioritize content shared by verified users currently Mr Dorsey We do have signals that do that We are 730 identifying those and asking ourselves whether that is still true 731 and it's still correct today 732 Mr Shimkus And then I am just going to end with my final 733 minute to talk about industry standards 734 Diana DeGette hit on the issue because this is across the 735 technological space 736 I think my colleague You're not the only one that's trying to address these type 737 of concerns 738 industry standards by which they can comply and also can help 739 self-police and self-correct 740 Many industries have banded together to have I would encourage the tech sector to start looking at that NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 37 741 model and there's a lot of them out there I was fortunate to 742 get this book The Future Computed in one of my visits to Tech 743 World and you know they just mention fairness reliability 744 privacy inclusion transparency and accountability as kind of 745 baseloads of standards that should go across the platform and 746 we need to get there for the use of the platforms and the trust 747 And with that thank you Mr Chairman 748 The Chairman 749 The chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas Mr Green 750 Yield back The gentleman yields back for questions 751 Mr Green 752 Mr Dorsey thank you for being here today and I am pleased 753 that Twitter started taking steps to improve users' experience 754 on its platform 755 Thank you Mr Chairman However Twitter's current policies still leave the 756 consumers in danger of the spread of misinformation and 757 harassment 758 Twitter needs to strengthen its policies to ensure that users 759 are protected from fake accounts misinformation and harassment 760 and I know that's an issue you all are trying to address 761 I would like to start off by addressing privacy 762 Twitter has changed its policy in regards to the general data protection NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 38 763 regulation that went into effect by the European Union this 764 summer 765 The GDPR makes it clear that consumers need to be in control 766 of their own data and understands how their data is being given 767 to others 768 Mr Dorsey as it now stands the United States does not 769 mandate these settings are enforced However I think they are 770 important for an integral part of consumers 771 My question is will Twitter commit to allowing users in the 772 United States have the option of opting out of tracking despite 773 the fact that there's no current regulation mandating this for 774 protection for consumers 775 Mr Dorsey 776 We -- even before GDPR was enacted and we complied with that 777 regulation a year prior we were actively making sure that our 778 -- the people that we serve have the controls necessary to opt 779 out of tracking across the web to understand all the data that 780 we have inferred on their usage and to individually turn that 781 off and on 782 Thank you for the question So we took some major steps pre-GDPR and made sure that we 783 complied with GDPR as well We are very different from our peers 784 in that the majority of what is on Twitter is public NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 39 785 People are approaching Twitter with a mind-set of when I 786 tweet this the whole world can see it So we have -- we have 787 a different approach and different needs 788 But we do believe that privacy is a fundamental human right 789 and we will work to protect it and continue to look for ways to 790 give people more control and more transparency around what we 791 have on them 792 Mr Green 793 One of the steps Twitter has taken to protect consumers has 794 been to come together with other social media platforms to create 795 the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism 796 Thank you However there is no forum to counter fake bot accounts on 797 social media platforms 798 together with social media platforms to combat these fake bots 799 accounts like the 770 accounts Twitter and other social media 800 platforms recently deleted that were linked to Russian and Iranian 801 disinformation campaigns 802 Mr Dorsey Yes What steps is Twitter taking to work So this one is definitely a complicated 803 issue that we are addressing head on There's a few things we 804 -- we would love to just generally be able to identify bots across 805 the platform and we can do that by recognizing when people come 806 in through our API NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 40 807 There are other vectors of attack where people script our 808 website or our app to make it look as if they were humans and 809 they're not coming through our API 810 So it's not a simple answer But having said that we have 811 gotten a lot better in terms of identifying and also challenging 812 accounts 813 We identify 8 to 10 million accounts every single week and 814 challenge them to determine if they're human or not and we've 815 also thwarted over half a million accounts every single day from 816 even logging in to Twitter because of what we detected to be 817 suspicious activity 818 So there's a lot more that we need to do but I think we do 819 have a good start We always want to side with more automated 820 technology that recognize behavior and patterns instead of going 821 down to the surface area of names or profile images or what not 822 823 So we are looking for behaviors and the intention of the 824 action which is oftentimes to artificially amplify information 825 and manipulate others 826 Mr Green 827 Thank you Mr Chairman 828 Okay I know I am out of my time and thank you for being here today NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 41 829 The Chairman 830 Mr Dorsey 831 The Chairman Mr Green Thank you so much The chair will now recognize the gentleman 832 from Texas the chairman of our Health Subcommittee Dr Burgess 833 for four minutes for questions 834 Mr Burgess Thank you Mr Chairman 835 Thank you Mr Dorsey for being here I will just say that 836 you know Twitter is -- in addition to everything else it's a 837 news source 838 I mean it's how I learned of the death of Osama bin Laden 839 many many years ago when Seal Team 6 provided that information 840 and it happened in real time late a Sunday night 841 shows were all over and Twitter provided the information The news 842 This morning sitting in conference not able to get to a 843 television one of my local television stations was attacked and 844 Twitter provided the real-time information and updates 845 extremely useful and for that as a tool I thank you 846 So it's Sometimes though -- well Meghan McCain's husband 847 complained a lot on Twitter over the weekend because of a doctored 848 image of Meghan McCain that was put up on Twitter and then it 849 seemed like it took forever for that to come down 850 Is there not some way that people can -- I understand there NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 42 851 are algorithms 852 checks and balances 853 something that's that egregious to be addressed 854 I understand that you know you have to have Mr Dorsey But really it shouldn't take hours for Absolutely and that was unacceptable and we 855 don't want to use our scale as an excuse here 856 -- we need to do two things 857 We do need to Number one we can't place the burden on the victims and 858 that means we need to build technology so that we are not waiting 859 for reports -- that we are actively looking for instances 860 While we do have reports and while we do -- while we are 861 making those changes and building that technology we need to 862 do a better job at prioritizing especially any sort of violent 863 or threatening information 864 In this particular case this was an image and we just didn't 865 apply the image filter to recognize what was going on in real 866 time 867 that as a lesson to -- in order to help improve our systems 868 869 So we did take way too many hours to act and we are using Mr Burgess And I am sure you have But just for the record have you apologized to the McCain family 870 Mr Dorsey I haven't personally but I will 871 Mr Burgess 872 But along the same lines but maybe a little bit different I think you just did NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 43 873 -- I mean the chairman referenced several members of Congress 874 who had been affected by what was described as shadow banning 875 876 So does someone have to report Is it only fixed if someone 877 complains about it And if no one complained would it have been 878 fixed 879 accounts being diminished is it only because they complained 880 that that got fixed 881 Mr Dorsey So with Mr Jordan Mr Meadows Mr Gaetz and their It's a completely fair point and you know 882 we are regularly looking at the outcomes of our algorithms 883 wasn't just the voices of members of Congress 884 It We saw as we rolled this system out a general conversation 885 about it and sometimes we need to roll these out and see what 886 happens because we are not going to be able to test every single 887 outcome in the right way 888 So we did get a lot of feedback and a lot of conversations 889 about it and that is what prompted more digging and an 890 understanding of what we were actually doing and whether it was 891 the right approach 892 Mr Burgess And as a committee can we expect any sort 893 of follow-up as to your own internal investigation -- your own 894 investigations digging that you described Is that something NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 44 895 896 that you can share with us as you get more information Mr Dorsey We would -- we would love to I mean we want 897 to put a premium on transparency and also how we can give you 898 information that is clearly accountable to changes 899 That is why we are putting the majority of our focus on this 900 particular topic into our transparency report that we would love 901 to -- we'd love to release 902 work -- It's going to require a bunch of 903 Mr Burgess Sure 904 Mr Dorsey -- and some time to do that But we would 905 love to share it 906 Mr Burgess 907 Mr Chairman I will yield back 908 The Chairman 909 The chair recognizes the gentleman from Pennsylvania Mr 910 And we appreciate your attention to that Thank you The gentleman yields back Doyle for four minutes 911 Mr Doyle Thank you Mr Chairman 912 Mr Dorsey welcome Thanks for being here I want to read 913 a few quotes about Twitter's practices and I just want you to 914 tell me if they're true or not 915 916 Social media is being rigged to censor conservatives Is that true of Twitter NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 45 917 Mr Dorsey 918 Mr Doyle No I don't know what Twitter is up to It sure 919 looks like to me that they're censoring people and they ought 920 to stop it Are you censoring people 921 Mr Dorsey 922 Mr Doyle 923 Republicans No Twitter is shadow banning prominent That's bad 924 Mr Dorsey 925 Mr Doyle Is that true No So these were statements made by Kevin McCarthy 926 the House majority leader on Twitter Devin Nunes on Fox News 927 and President Trump on Twitter and I want to place those 928 statements into the record Mr Chairman 929 The Chairman Without objection 930 The information follows 931 932 COMMITTEE INSERT 3 NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 46 933 Mr Doyle I think it's important for people to understand 934 -- you know the premise of this whole hearing and the reason 935 that Twitter somehow with all the other social media platforms 936 out there got the singular honor to sit in front of this committee 937 is because there is some implication that your site is trying 938 to censor conservative voices on your platform 939 Now when you tried to explain the shadow banning as I 940 understand it you had a system where if people who were following 941 people had some behaviors that was the trigger that allowed -- 942 that caused you to do the shadow banning 943 944 So you were really like an equal opportunity shadow banner right You didn't just shadow ban four conservative Republicans 945 946 You shadow banned 600 000 people across your entire platform 947 across the globe who had people following them that had certain 948 behaviors that caused you to downgrade them coming up 949 correct 950 Mr Dorsey 951 Mr Doyle Is that Correct So this was never targeted at conservative 952 Republicans This was targeted to a group of 600 000 people 953 because of the people who followed them and then you determined 954 that wasn't fair and you corrected that practice Is that NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 47 955 correct 956 Mr Dorsey 957 Mr Doyle Correct So just for the record since you have been 958 singled out as a social media platform before this committee 959 Twitter undertook no behavior to selectively censor conservative 960 Republicans or conservative voices on your platform 961 correct 962 Mr Dorsey 963 Mr Doyle Is that Correct Good So let the record reflect that because 964 that's the whole reason supposedly we are here because House 965 Leader Kevin McCarthy wrote our chairman a letter and said hey 966 this is going on and we think your committee should investigate 967 it and it's a load of crap 968 Now let me ask you a couple other things while I still have 969 some time 970 of us have about Twitter -- people that use Twitter to bully 971 troll or threaten other people 972 What are you doing to address the real concerns many We know that this has led to many prominent users 973 particularly women who have been targeted with sexual threats 974 leaving Twitter because of this toxic environment 975 976 Now I understand that you're working to address these issues and that you want to to use machine learning and AI But I am NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 48 977 concerned that these solutions will take too long to deploy and 978 that they can't cure the ills that Twitter is currently suffering 979 from 980 So my question is how can we be assured that you and your 981 company have the proper incentives to address the toxicity and 982 abusive behavior on your platform given Twitter's current state 983 Mr Dorsey First and foremost we -- our singular 984 objective as a company right now is to increase the health of 985 public conversation and we realize that that will come at 986 short-term cost 987 We realize that we will be removing accounts We realize 988 that it doesn't necessarily go into a formula where -- I think 989 there's a perception that we are not going to act because we want 990 as much activity as possible 991 992 993 994 Mr Doyle Right That is -- There's like an economic disincentive to act because it takes people from your platform Mr Dorsey That is not true So we see increasing health of public conversation as a growth vector for us 995 Mr Doyle 996 Mr Dorsey Good It's not a short-term growth vector It is 997 a long-term growth vector and we are willing to take the hard 998 -- to take the hard path and the decisions in order to do so and NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 49 999 1000 1001 we communicated a lot of these during our last earnings call and the reaction by Wall Street was not as positive But we believe it was important for us to continue to increase 1002 the health of this public square 1003 use it in the first place Otherwise no one's going to 1004 Mr Doyle 1005 I yield back 1006 The Chairman 1007 The chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas former 1008 1009 Thank you for being here today The gentleman yields back chairman of the committee Mr Barton for four minutes Mr Barton Thank you Mr Chairman and I want to thank 1010 you sir for appearing voluntarily without subpoena and standing 1011 or sitting there all by yourself 1012 1013 That's refreshing I don't know what a Twitter CEO should look like but you don't look like a CEO of Twitter should look like with that beard 1014 Mr Dorsey 1015 Laughter 1016 Mr Barton My mom would agree with you I am going to kind of reverse the questions 1017 that my good friend Mr Doyle just asked so that we kind of 1018 get both sides of the question 1019 1020 In the -- in a July blog post your company Twitter indicated some Democrat politicians were not properly showing NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 50 1021 up within search auto suggestions 1022 said that your algorithm were somewhat discriminatory against 1023 Democrats 1024 1025 1026 1027 1028 1029 1030 1031 1032 1033 1034 Can you identify which Democrat representatives and accounts weren't properly showing up Mr Dorsey We typically don't identify those as a matter of protecting their privacy and they haven't communicated that But we can certainly follow up with your staff Mr Barton All right Mr Dorsey I can -- we'll follow up with your staff on that Mr Barton Can you personally vouch that that statement is a true statement -Mr Dorsey 1036 Mr Barton Yes -- that there are Democrat politicians who when you did the auto search they didn't show up 1038 Mr Dorsey Yes 1039 Mr Barton No 1040 Can you identify how many without naming names 1035 1037 In other words your company It was -- it was over 600 000 accounts No There were 600 000 accounts affected but how many Democrat versus Republican accounts 1041 Mr Dorsey Yes I -- 1042 Mr Barton The allegation that we made the Republicans NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 51 1043 is that you're discriminatory against us -- against the 1044 Republicans 1045 politicians too 1046 Your post says well there were some Democrat So out of 600 000 if there were a thousand Republicans and 1047 10 Democrats it still seems somewhat biased 1048 then that's a whole different ball game 1049 1050 1051 1052 Mr Dorsey If it's 50 50 Well we agree that the result was not impartial and that is why we corrected it and we fixed it Mr Barton So you do agree that there were more Republicans than Democrats 1053 Mr Dorsey I didn't say that 1054 Mr Barton Well you can't have it both ways sir 1055 Laughter 1056 It's either 50 50 or one side is disproportionately affected 1057 1058 But I do -- I do -- and the allegation is that more Republicans were affected Mr Dorsey Well we don't always have the best methods 1059 to determine who is a Republican and who is a Democrat 1060 to refer -- 1061 1062 1063 1064 Mr Barton Well usually it's known because we run as Republicans or Democrats Mr Dorsey We have Yes That's not hard to identify When it is self-identified it's easier But we -- you know we are happy to follow up with you NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 52 1065 Mr Barton 1066 whispering in my ear 1067 chairman of the committee 1068 1069 1070 1071 1072 Well do you want to -- my chairman keeps I am glad to have a staffer who's the Do you discriminate more on philosophy like anti-conservative versus pro-liberal Mr Dorsey No Our policies and our algorithms don't take into consideration any affiliation philosophy or viewpoint Mr Barton That's hard to stomach I am not -- I just 1073 -- we wouldn't be having this discussion if there wasn't a general 1074 agreement that your company has discriminated against 1075 conservatives most of whom happen to be Republican 1076 1077 1078 1079 1080 1081 1082 Mr Dorsey I believe that we have found impartial outcomes and those are what we intend to fix and continue to measure Mr Barton All right Well my time is about to expire You said you would provide my staff those answers with some more specificity and I hope you mean that But again thank you for voluntarily appearing I yield back 1083 Mr Dorsey 1084 The Chairman 1085 The chair recognizes the gentlelady from California Ms 1086 Thank you We'll follow up with you The gentleman yields back Matsui for four minutes for questions NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 53 1087 Ms Matsui 1088 Mr Dorsey thank you for being here 1089 1090 Thank you very much Mr Chairman I know it's becoming a long day for you I want to talk to you about anonymization It's been noted 1091 that advertising is less concerned with identifying the 1092 individual per se than with the activity of users to predict and 1093 infer consumer behavior 1094 But I wonder if that is quickly becoming a distinction 1095 without a difference 1096 with that user's name precise information can and is gathered 1097 through metadata associated with messages or tweets 1098 Even when user content isn't associated For instance Twitter offers geospatial metadata that 1099 requires parsing the tweet for location and names of interest 1100 including nicknames 1101 other publicly available social media data to re-identify 1102 individuals and researchers have demonstrated this ability The metadata could then be associated with 1103 So even though advertising itself may not be considered with 1104 identifying the individual how is Twitter working to ensure its 1105 data is not being used by others to do so 1106 Mr Dorsey Well we -- first and foremost the data on 1107 Twitter is very different than our peer companies given that 1108 the majority of our data is public by default and where we do NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 54 1109 infer information around people's interests or their behaviors 1110 on the network we enable them first and foremost to see what 1111 we've collected and second turn it off 1112 And in terms of our data business our data business is 1113 actually focussed on packaging up and making real time the public 1114 data and we send everyone who wants to consume that real-time 1115 stream of the public data through a know-your-customer process 1116 which we audit every year as well to make sure that the intent 1117 is still good and proper and also consistent with how they signed 1118 up 1119 Ms Matsui Okay As I previously announced in this 1120 committee I am soon introducing legislation to direct the 1121 Department of Commerce to convene a working group of stakeholders 1122 to develop a consensus-based definition of block chain 1123 Distributed ledger technologies such as block chain have 1124 particularly interesting potential applications in the 1125 communications space ranging from identity verification to IOT 1126 deployments and spectrum sharing 1127 But there currently is no common definition of block chain 1128 which could hinder in its deployment You had previously 1129 expressed interest in the broad applications of block chain 1130 technology including potentially any effort to verify identity NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 55 1131 to fight misinformation and scams 1132 What potential applications do you see for block chain 1133 Mr Dorsey You know first and foremost we need to start 1134 with problems that we are trying to solve and the problems we 1135 are solving for our customers and then look at all available 1136 technology in order to understand if it can help us or accelerate 1137 or make those outcomes much better 1138 So block chain is one that I think has a lot of untapped 1139 potential specifically around distributed trust and distributed 1140 enforcement potentially 1141 We haven't gone as deep as we'd like just yet in understanding 1142 how we might apply this technology to the problems we are facing 1143 at Twitter but we do have people within the company thinking about 1144 it today 1145 Ms Matsui Okay Advertising-supported models like 1146 Twitter generate revenue through user-provided data In your 1147 terms of service you maintain that what's yours is yours -- you 1148 own your content 1149 I appreciate that but I want to understand more about that 1150 To me it means users ought to have some say about if how and 1151 1152 when it's used But you say that Twitter has an evolving set of rules for NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 56 1153 how partners can interact with user content and that Twitter may 1154 modify or adapt this content as it's distributed 1155 The hearings this committee has held demonstrated that the 1156 real crux of the issue is how content is used and modified to 1157 develop assumptions and inferences about users to better target 1158 ads to the individual 1159 Do you believe that consumers own their data even when that 1160 data has modified used to develop inferences supplemented by 1161 additional data or otherwise 1162 Mr Dorsey Sorry What was the question Do I -- 1163 Ms Matsui Do you believe that consumers own their data 1164 Mr Dorsey Yes 1165 Ms Matsui Even when that data has modified used to 1166 develop inferences supplemented by additional data or 1167 otherwise 1168 Mr Dorsey Yes Generally we would want to understand 1169 all the ramifications of that 1170 own their data and should have ultimate control over it Okay But yes we believe that people 1171 Ms Matsui Thank you 1172 I yield back 1173 The Chairman 1174 The chair now recognizes the whip of the House Mr Scalise The gentlelady yields back NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 57 1175 for four minutes 1176 Mr Scalise 1177 And Mr Dorsey appreciate you coming and as others have Thank you Mr Chairman 1178 said we are welcoming your testimony and your willingness to 1179 answer some of these questions and I think there are serious 1180 concerns more than anything about how Twitter has been used and 1181 will continue to be used and clearly there is many examples 1182 of things that Twitter has done and you can just look at the Arab 1183 Spring 1184 Many people would suggest that a lot of the real ability 1185 for the Arab Spring to take off started with platforms like 1186 Twitter and in 2009 you were banned in Iran and we've seen other 1187 countries -- China and North Korea have banned Twitter 1188 And I would imagine when Twitter was banned it wasn't a 1189 good feeling But what we are concerned about is how Twitter 1190 has in some ways it looks like selectively adversely affected 1191 conservatives 1192 I want to go through a couple of examples and I would imagine 1193 you're familiar with these but our colleague Marsha Blackburn 1194 when she announced her campaign for the Senate Twitter quickly 1195 banned her announcement advertisement because it had a pro-life 1196 message NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 58 1197 She at the time was the chair of the Special Select 1198 Committee that a number of my colleagues both Republican and 1199 Democrat here were on it that were looking into the sale of body 1200 parts and Twitter banned her because they said this statement 1201 was deemed an inflammatory statement that is likely to evoke a 1202 strong negative reaction 1203 Are you familiar with this 1204 Mr Dorsey 1205 Mr Scalise Yes Why was she banned for just stating a fact 1206 that Congress was actually investigating because of the deep 1207 concern nationally when this scandal took place 1208 1209 Mr Dorsey do apologize -- 1210 Mr Scalise 1211 Mr Dorsey 1212 1213 1214 Well first we -- this was a mistake and we This was a mistake by Twitter It was a mistake by Twitter It was a mistake by us which we corrected Mr Scalise So was anybody held accountable for that mistake 1215 Mr Dorsey 1216 Mr Scalise What do you mean by that Well somebody -- I mean there was a 1217 spokesperson that said we deem it inflammatory -- Twitter deems 1218 it inflammatory and at the same time the organization that was NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 59 1219 selling the body parts was not banned by Twitter but our colleague 1220 who just exposed the fact that the sale of body parts was going 1221 on was banned by Twitter and your -- one of your own 1222 spokespersons said that it was inflammatory 1223 1224 1225 1226 1227 Was that person held accountable for making those kind of statements Mr Dorsey We use the -- you know these events and these opportunities to improve our process and look for ways -Mr Scalise And we've talked about that and obviously 1228 I appreciate the fact that you have acknowledged that there have 1229 been some mistakes made in algorithms and we've talked about this 1230 with other companies 1231 Facebook was in here talking about similar concerns that 1232 we had with their algorithm and how we felt that might have biased 1233 against conservatives 1234 A liberal website Vice did a study of all members of 1235 Congress -- all 535 -- and they identified only three that they 1236 felt were targeted in the shadow banning and that was Reps 1237 Meadows Jordan and Gaetz 1238 And I know while I think Mr Barton was trying to get into 1239 this in more detail if there were 600 000 ultimately they did 1240 a study and found only three members of Congress were biased NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 60 1241 1242 against and all three happened to be conservatives And so can you at least see that that is a concern that a 1243 lot of us have if there is a real bias in the algorithm as it 1244 was developed 1245 And look I've written algorithms before So if somebody 1246 wrote an algorithm with a bias against conservatives I would 1247 hope you are trying to find out who those people are and if they're 1248 using their own personal viewpoints to discriminate against 1249 certain people 1250 Because if it's your stated intention that you don't want 1251 that discrimination to take place I would hope that you would 1252 want to know if there are people working for Twitter that did 1253 have that kind of discriminatory viewpoint against conservatives 1254 that you would at least hold them accountable so that it doesn't 1255 happen again 1256 Mr Dorsey I would want to know that and I assure you 1257 that the algorithm was not written with that intention 1258 signal that we were using caught people up in it and it was a 1259 signal that we determined was not relevant and also not fair in 1260 this particular case 1261 1262 The And there will be times -- and this is where we need to experiment as you know in writing algorithms in the past -- NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 61 1263 that you need to test things and see if they work at scale and 1264 pull them back correctly if they don't and that is -- that is 1265 our intention 1266 Mr Scalise But also you shouldn't inject your own 1267 personal viewpoint into that unless that's the intention of the 1268 company But you're saying it's not the intention of the company 1269 1270 Mr Dorsey That is not the intention and they should never be ejecting people 1271 Mr Scalise And I know I am out of time But I appreciate 1272 at least your answering these questions 1273 some more answers to these examples and there are others like 1274 this that we'd surely like to have addressed 1275 Thank you 1276 The Chairman 1277 Disturbance in hearing room 1278 The Chairman Hopefully we can get Yield back The chair now recognizes the -- Order We'll have order in the hearing room 1279 or you will be asked to leave You -- ma'am if you will please 1280 take a seat or we'll have to have you -- then you will need to 1281 relieve -- 1282 Disturbance in hearing room 1283 Mr Long 1284 her What Huh What's she saying I can't understand What's she -- NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 62 1285 1286 1287 1288 1289 1290 1291 1292 1293 The Chairman Officer will you escort this young lady out please Somehow I think our auctioneer in residence is going to get tweeted about today Yeah I would remind members of the audience you're here to observed not participate and I appreciate that We'll now turn to the gentleman from New York Mr Engel for four minutes Mr Engel That's a hard act to follow Mr Chairman 1294 That's a hard act to follow Maybe I will get Mr Long to help 1295 me along a little bit as well 1296 Thank you Mr Chairman and Mr Pallone 1297 Mr Dorsey welcome Our country is facing a direct threat 1298 to our democratic institutions 1299 foreign adversaries like Russia and Iran from using American 1300 technology against us 1301 We need to find ways to stop Earlier this year Special Counsel Robert Mueller filed 1302 an indictment against a Russian internet research agency 1303 charging that they created fake social media accounts sometimes 1304 using American stolen identities to sow discord and interfere 1305 with our 2016 elections 1306 and Mr Chairman I would like to introduce it for the record I have a copy of that indictment here NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 63 1307 The Chairman Without objection 1308 The information follows 1309 1310 COMMITTEE INSERT 4 NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 64 1311 Mr Engel Mr Dorsey Twitter recently took down a number 1312 of Russian- and Iranian-linked accounts after it was tipped off 1313 by a cybersecurity firm 1314 I am glad to see that Twitter is taking action to protect 1315 us 1316 cybersecurity firm detected fraudulent activity before you did 1317 But do you think we should be concerned that an outside Mr Dorsey Well I think it's really important that we 1318 have outsiders and we have an open channel to them because they're 1319 always going to approach the data and the work in a way that we 1320 may not see and we are going to do our best to capture everything 1321 that we can and to be as proactive as we can 1322 But we want to leave room for others to bring a different 1323 perspective that might look at what's happening on the platform 1324 in a different way that we do 1325 Mr Engel So how confident are you that Twitter can 1326 identify and remove all of the fake and automated accounts linked 1327 to a foreign adversary on your platform 1328 Mr Dorsey We are getting more and more confident But 1329 I do want to state that this is not something that has an end 1330 point that reaches perfection 1331 1332 We are always going to have to stay 10 steps ahead of the newest ways of attacking and newer vectors and we are getting NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 65 1333 more agile and better at identifying those and that's showing 1334 in some of our results which I talked about earlier in the terms 1335 of being able to identify 8 to 10 million suspicious accounts 1336 every single week and then also challenging them to see if they're 1337 humans or bots or some sort of malicious automation 1338 Mr Engel I understand that Twitter is now requiring some 1339 suspicious accounts to respond to recapture to prove that they're 1340 human accounts and not bots 1341 I was surprised to learn that you're not requiring users 1342 to do the same thing when they first sign up to Twitter 1343 accounts are authenticated using only an email address 1344 you tell me why that is 1345 Mr Dorsey New Could We actually do send accounts through a variety 1346 of authentication including sometimes reCAPTCHA 1347 depends on the context and the information that we have 1348 thwarted over a half a million accounts from even logging in in 1349 the first place because of that 1350 Mr Engel It really We have I understand that dealing with foreign 1351 adversaries can be difficult Twitter may respond to one 1352 practice only to find new tactics being used to sow discord 1353 Can you commit to us with any level of certainty that the 2018 1354 mid-term elections in the United States will not be subject to NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 66 1355 interference by foreign adversaries using bots or other fake 1356 accounts on your platform 1357 Mr Dorsey We are committing to making it our number-one 1358 priority to help protect the integrity of the 2018 mid-terms and 1359 especially the conversation around it 1360 Mr Engel Let me ask you this finally Are you aware 1361 of foreign adversaries using any different tactics on your 1362 platform to interfere in our 2018 mid-term elections 1363 Mr Dorsey None that we haven't communicated to the Senate 1364 Intelligence Committee and any that we do find we will be 1365 communicating and sharing with them 1366 1367 Mr Engel Okay Thank you very much Thank you Mr Chairman 1368 Mr Dorsey 1369 The Chairman 1370 We now go to the gentleman from Ohio Mr Latta for four 1371 Thank you I thank the gentleman minutes 1372 Mr Latta Thank you Mr Chairman 1373 And Mr Dorsey thanks very much for being here with us today 1374 I would like to ask my first question on how you're protecting 1375 that -- users' data Do you collect any data from other third 1376 parties about Twitter users NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 67 1377 Mr Dorsey We don't collect data from third parties about 1378 Twitter folks 1379 when people do go visit those sites we note that and we can 1380 integrate it when they do login to Twitter 1381 that off as well 1382 Mr Latta 1383 Mr Dorsey We do have embeds of tweets around the web and But people can turn How does Twitter use that data We use the data to personalize the experience 1384 specifically around -- it might -- it might infer a particular 1385 interest so that we can show them specific topics or make our 1386 advertising targeting better 1387 Mr Latta Is that sold or offered in some other forum then 1388 for the advertisers 1389 Mr Dorsey 1390 Mr Latta 1391 Mr Dorsey 1392 Mr Latta 1393 Let me back up to where Mr Shimkus was when we were talking I am sorry Is it sold to the advertisers Is it sold to the advertisers No Okay 1394 about the verification of the blue checkmark How easy is it 1395 for someone to obtain a verified Twitter handle and what does 1396 Twitter take to ensure it is not highlighting one political 1397 viewpoint over another through the use of that verification on 1398 the platform NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 68 1399 Mr Dorsey Well right now it's extremely challenging 1400 because we've paused the verification program because we've found 1401 so many faults in it that we knew we needed a restart 1402 We do make exceptions for any representatives of government 1403 particular brands or public figures of interest 1404 generally have paused that work But we 1405 Before that pause we did allow anyone to submit an 1406 application to be verified and it uses very -- it used various 1407 criteria in order to determine if the verification was necessary 1408 Mr Latta With that verification for that has said -- you 1409 all have said that it can be removed for the activity on the on off 1410 platform 1411 blue verified checkmark 1412 What off platform is the basis for someone using that Mr Dorsey We look at specifically any violent extremist 1413 groups and off platform behavior for violent extremist groups 1414 when we consider not just verification but also holding an account 1415 in the first place 1416 Mr Latta Okay In your statement it said in the last 1417 year Twitter developed and launched more than 30 policy and 1418 product changes designed to foster information integrity and 1419 protect the people who use our service from abuse and malicious 1420 automation NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 69 1421 Can you share with the committee what those 30-plus policy 1422 and product changes are or highlight some and then give us the 1423 others in written 1424 Mr Dorsey Yes and we can -- we can certainly follow up 1425 with all of you on exactly the details 1426 models for instance to detect where people are gaming our 1427 systems 1428 amplify 1429 But we established new These are algorithms with an intent to artificially We have new reporting flows that enable people to report 1430 tweets or accounts 1431 current circumstances and what we are seeing and we have certainly 1432 done a bunch of work around GDPR which has affected our work 1433 in general 1434 1435 We have changed policies reflective of But we will follow up with you with enumeration Mr Latta If we could get those 30 points that would be great and submit those to the committee 1436 You also indicated in your written statement that the company 1437 conducted an internal analysis of members of Congress affected 1438 by the auto suggest search issue and that you'd make that 1439 information available to the committee if requested 1440 Will you commit to us on the committee that you will present 1441 all of Twitter's analysis as soon as that is possible after this 1442 hearing NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 70 1443 Mr Dorsey Yes and we also hope to include this in our 1444 long-standing initiative of a transparency report around our 1445 actions 1446 Mr Latta 1447 Mr Chair my time has expired 1448 The Chairman 1449 The chair recognizes the gentlelady from Florida Ms 1450 Thank you I thank the gentleman from Ohio Castor for four minutes 1451 Ms Castor Thank you Mr Chairman 1452 Good afternoon Mr Dorsey do you feel like you're being 1453 manipulated yourself -- you're part of a manipulation campaign 1454 because I mean when you see the majority leader of the Congress 1455 is running ads on Facebook to fundraise around allegations of 1456 anti-conservative bias on social media platforms and then you 1457 see the Trump campaign use President Trump's tweets where he 1458 claims anti-conservative bias at Google Facebook and Twitter 1459 and then you -- we saw this outburst today 1460 1461 1462 1463 1464 The woman jumped up of course with her phone so that she can get that and that's probably trying to spread on the web And now the Justice Department even says boy this is so serious we have to investigate Does this feel like a manipulation campaign itself to you NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 71 1465 Mr Dorsey Look as I noted in my opening I do believe 1466 that there's growing concern around the power that companies like 1467 ours hold and the reason why is people do see us as a digital 1468 public square and that comes with certain expectations and we 1469 -- 1470 Ms Castor That's a very diplomatic answer I have to say 1471 because there are very serious questions I mean the Russian 1472 trolls created thousands of bots to influence our democracy -- 1473 our elections 1474 world They're doing it in other countries across the 1475 Do you -- do you feel like you have a handle on these bots 1476 You said earlier in your testimony you ID 8 to 10 million accounts 1477 per month Is that right 1478 Mr Dorsey Per week 1479 Ms Castor Per week 1480 Mr Dorsey And to thwart over half a million accounts from 1481 logging in every single day 1482 Ms Castor Can Twitter keep up 1483 Mr Dorsey We intend to keep up 1484 Ms Castor I mean if they -- if they are using automated So -- 1485 accounts isn't -- don't we reach a point where they're -- they 1486 have the ability to overwhelm content on Twitter and affect your NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 72 1487 1488 algorithms Mr Dorsey Maybe I mean it is definitely -- others have 1489 described this as an arms race 1490 like security 1491 But I believe it's very much There's no perfect end point When you build a lock someone else will figure out how to 1492 break it and therefore you can't try to design and optimize 1493 for the perfect lock 1494 system 1495 Ms Castor You always have to build those into the Can't you -- can't you identify the bots at 1496 least as they sign up in some way so that folks understand okay 1497 that's a fake automated account 1498 Mr Dorsey In certain cases we can -- and it's a great 1499 point -- especially through our API 1500 sophisticated ways of automation that actually script our site 1501 and our app that are much harder to detect because they're 1502 intending to look like human behavior with the slowness of human 1503 behavior rather than the speed of through an API 1504 1505 1506 There are more So it's a little bit more complicated we are not intending to face Ms Castor It's not a challenge We are taking it head on You have some creative minds I would think 1507 you can put all of those creative minds all of your expertise 1508 to work to do that NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 73 1509 I want to ask you a little bit about privacy Twitter and 1510 other companies collect information on users and nonusers 1511 oftentimes without their knowledge 1512 Twitter's business model is based on advertising and you 1513 serve targeted advertising to users based on vast amounts of data 1514 that you collect which raises consumer privacy concerns 1515 You -- up until last year you -- the privacy policy included 1516 a promise to support do not track 1517 mind 1518 1519 1520 1521 1522 1523 1524 1525 1526 Why But then you changed your Why shouldn't it be up to consumers Why shouldn't it be the consumer's choice on tracking Mr Dorsey Well we do allow consumers within the app to turn off tracking across the web Ms Castor But they cannot -- you're still able to build the -- a profile on each and every user Mr Dorsey Isn't that correct If they log into the account then yes and we allow them to turn that off Ms Castor But I understand that even when they go and 1527 they change the -- they opt out that you're still collecting data 1528 on them 1529 1530 You're still tracking them Mr Dorsey I don't believe that's the case But happy to follow up with you with our team NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 74 1531 1532 1533 Ms Castor time Okay and let's do that because I am out of Thank you The Chairman The chair now recognizes the chairman of the 1534 Republican Conference the gentlelady from Washington State 1535 Cathy McMorris Rodgers for four minutes 1536 Mrs McMorris Rodgers Thank you Mr Chairman and thank 1537 you Mr Dorsey for joining us today I want to start off by 1538 saying that I think Twitter is a valuable tool in modern 1539 communication and it's why back in 2011 I was spearheading an 1540 effort to get our members signed up and using this tool 1541 I think it's a great way to interact with the people that 1542 we represent and since then it's been amazing to see the growth 1543 of Twitter and the Twitter users all across America and the world 1544 It's why I think this hearing is so timely There's a lot 1545 of serious questions that Americans have regarding tech platforms 1546 and the ones that they're using every day and the issues like 1547 data privacy community standards and censorship 1548 Today I want to focus on Twitter's procedures for taking 1549 down offensive and inappropriate content 1550 there's been examples that were already shared today 1551 1552 And as you know I was going to highlight the one with Meghan McCain with the altered image of a gun pointed at her when she was mourning NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 75 1553 her father's loss and the tweet image said America this one's 1554 for you 1555 Obviously this offensive tweet was reported by other users 1556 even to you I understood 1557 to be action to take it down 1558 Yet it took nearly 16 hours for there So I just wanted to ask first do you think that this is 1559 a violation of Twitter's content policies and rules against 1560 violence and physical harm and that I would also like to understand 1561 how much of this is driven by the algorithm versus human content 1562 managers 1563 Mr Dorsey So it definitely is a violation and we were 1564 slow to act 1565 hours way too long and we build -- our current model works in 1566 terms of removing content based on reports that we receive and 1567 we don't believe that that is fair ultimately 1568 that we should put the burden of reporting abuse or harassment 1569 on the victim of it 1570 The tweet was actually up for five hours but five We don't believe We need to build algorithms to Proactively look for when 1571 these things are occurring and take action So the number of 1572 abuse reports that we get is a number that we would like to see 1573 go down not only because there's less abuse on the platform but 1574 because our algorithms are recognizing these things before NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 76 1575 someone has to report them and that is our goal and it will take 1576 some time And meanwhile while we -- 1577 Mrs McMorris Rodgers 1578 what are your current policies 1579 for prioritizing timely take downs and enforcement 1580 Mr Dorsey Yes Can you talk to me then just about What are the current policies So any sort of violent threat or image 1581 is at the top of our priority list in order to review and enforce 1582 and we do have a prioritization mechanism for tweets as we get 1583 the reports 1584 But obviously this one was too slow and is not as precise 1585 as it needs to be 1586 because it was captured within an image rather than the tweet 1587 text itself 1588 In this particular case the reason why was Mrs McMorris Rodgers So I think much of the concern 1589 surrounding this incident and some others has been how long it 1590 takes to remove the content when there's a clear violation and 1591 the issue only seemed to be resolve after people publicly tweeted 1592 about it providing a larger platform for this type of content 1593 than it ever should have had 1594 So I did want to hear what steps the company is going to 1595 be taking to speed up its response time to future ones to ensure 1596 these kind of incidences don't continue NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 77 1597 Mr Dorsey In the short term we need to do a better job 1598 at prioritizing around the reports we receive and this is 1599 independent of what people see or report to us on the platform 1600 And in the longer term we need to take the burden away from 1601 1602 the victim from having to report it in the first place Mrs McMorris Rodgers Okay Well clearly you hold a 1603 large amount of power in the public discourse Allowing speech 1604 that incites violence could have devastating consequences and 1605 this is one way where I believe it's very important that Twitter 1606 take action to help restore trust with the people and your 1607 platform 1608 So and with that I will yield back my time 1609 The Chairman 1610 The chair recognizes the gentleman from Maryland Mr 1611 The gentlelady yields back Sarbanes for four minutes 1612 Mr Sarbanes Thank you Mr Chairman 1613 Mr Dorsey thank you for coming There are a number of 1614 important topics that we could be discussing with you today but 1615 unfortunately the Republican majority has decided to pursue the 1616 trumped-up notion that there is a special conservative bias at 1617 work in the way Twitter operates and that's a shame 1618 What worries me is this is all part of a campaign by the NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 78 1619 GOP and the right wing to work the refs -- complaining of 1620 non-existent bias to force and over correction which then can 1621 result in some actual bias going in the other direction and we 1622 saw this actually with Facebook 1623 Conservatives cried bias because Facebook was seeking to 1624 make information available using reputable news sources instead 1625 of far right-wing outlets or conspiracy platforms 1626 got pushed into this correction and it got rid of its human editors 1627 and the result was immediately it was overrun with hoaxes that 1628 were posing as news So Facebook 1629 I actually have questions about the subject of the hearing 1630 but I am going to submit those for the record and ask for written 1631 responses because I don't really have confidence that this hearing 1632 was convened for a serious purpose to be candid 1633 Like I said I think it's just a chance to work the ref to 1634 push platforms like yours away from the serious task of empowering 1635 people with good and reliable information 1636 But what is really frustrating to me about today's inquiry 1637 is that my Republican colleagues know there are plenty of other 1638 kinds of investigations that we should be undertaking in this 1639 Congress but they don't have any interest in pursuing them 1640 And that's not just conjecture There's actually a list NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 79 1641 that's been circulating that Republicans put together of all the 1642 investigations that they've been blocking sweeping under the 1643 rug because they want to hide the truth from the American people 1644 And this spreadsheet which is going around is pretty telling 1645 It's circulating in Republican circles So what are these 1646 things that they know could and should be investigated but they 1647 are determined to dismiss or bury or ignore altogether 1648 According to their own secret cover-up list Republicans 1649 don't want the public to see President Trump's tax returns 1650 don't want the public to know about Trump's business dealings 1651 with Russia 1652 They They're determined not to investigate Secretary of Treasury 1653 Steven Mnuchin's business dealings They're blocking public 1654 inquiry into the personal email use of White House staff 1655 They're wilfully ignoring how taxpayer money has been wasted 1656 by corrupt cabinet secretaries for first class travel private 1657 jets large security details office expenses and other misused 1658 perks 1659 They're giving the president a pass on investigation into 1660 the motives behind his travel ban and his family separation 1661 policy 1662 They definitely don't want the public to see how poorly the NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 80 1663 Trump White House responded to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico 1664 and finally they don't want the public to see how the 1665 administration is failing to protect our elections and guard 1666 against hacking attempts 1667 These are all things that deserve attention and inquiry of 1668 this Congress 1669 happen But the Republicans are not going to let it 1670 Let me just go back in the last 40 seconds and talk about 1671 election security because we are 60 days away from the mid-term 1672 election 1673 democracy 1674 actors are using this very platform -- Twitter and others -- 1675 to sow discord We know there are ongoing efforts to disrupt our We know these same actors these foreign and hostile 1676 We know the public is desperate that their representatives 1677 -- that's us -- will act to protect their democracy and we know 1678 thanks to this list that the Republicans know they should be 1679 investigating our nation's election security and hacking attempts 1680 by hostile actors 1681 Instead here we are using our precious resources to feed 1682 Deep State conspiracy theories preferred by the president and 1683 his allies in Congress 1684 frankly has been drawn into such a charade It's a shame that this committee NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 81 1685 I yield back my time 1686 The Chairman 1687 The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Mississippi 1688 1689 The gentleman's time has expired chair of the Oversight Subcommittee Mr Harper for four minutes Mr Harper Thank you Mr Chairman and thank you Mr 1690 Dorsey for taking this time to be here 1691 topic 1692 We all utilize Twitter It's a very important You have a very daunting task to 1693 try to work through this 1694 today about algorithms and of course those are really only as 1695 good as the people who create them edit them and guide them 1696 and algorithms have to be trained which means as you know -- 1697 the feeding them a lot of data 1698 It's a lot and we've talked a lot My understanding is that oversight of machine learning 1699 algorithms involves examining the data sets or the search results 1700 to look for that bias 1701 can be adjusted and retrained 1702 If bias is spotted then the algorithm So I want to understand the oversight that Twitter does of 1703 its own algorithms 1704 algorithmic time line are adjusted if not daily almost daily 1705 1706 The algorithms that support Twitter's Why is that and what are some reasons why the algorithms would need to be adjusted daily NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 82 1707 Mr Dorsey So we -- you know bias in algorithms is a rather 1708 new field of research within broader artificial intelligence and 1709 it's something that is certainly new to us as a company as well 1710 We do have teams who are focused on creating roadmap so that 1711 we can fully understand best practices for training data sets 1712 and also measuring impartiality of outcomes 1713 1714 1715 But I will say that we are pretty early in that work We intend to get better much faster but we are very very early We are learning as quickly as possible as is the industry on 1716 how best to do this work and also how best to measure whether 1717 we are doing the right thing or not 1718 In terms of why we need to change the signals all the time 1719 is because we -- when we release some of these models we release 1720 them in smaller tests and then as they go out to the broader Twitter 1721 at scale we discover some unexpected things and those unexpected 1722 things will lead to questions which then cause us to look deeper 1723 at the particular signals that we are using and as we recognize 1724 that there are any sort of impartiality within the outcome we 1725 work to fix 1726 us feedback 1727 1728 And it is somewhat dependent upon people giving Mr Harper And those teams that you're talking about those are individuals correct NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 83 1729 Mr Dorsey They're -- 1730 Mr Harper That are -- that are employees of Twitter 1731 Mr Dorsey Yes 1732 Mr Harper And how do you take into account what their Yes -- 1733 leanings or their you know bias or life story 1734 an input into what they determine is important or what to look 1735 for or how do you factor that in 1736 Mr Dorsey Does that have It doesn't -- it doesn't have an input that 1737 we use 1738 algorithms making objective decisions -- our engineers using 1739 engineering rigor which is free of bias and free of any action 1740 that might be aligned with one particular perspective or not 1741 1742 The way we judge ourselves ultimately is are the So -Mr Harper Okay If I can ask this because we only have 1743 a few moments 1744 for when they're deciding whether or not to make a change 1745 1746 1747 What are they looking for Mr Dorsey for impartiality Mr Harper What do they look They're looking for fairness They're looking They're looking for whether -If I can interrupt must for a moment Who 1748 defines fairness What is that fairness that's determined there 1749 and -- because your fairness may be different than my definition 1750 of fairness depending on what the issue or the interpretation NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 84 1751 1752 of it is Mr Dorsey Yes This goes back to those health indicators 1753 that we are trying to search for 1754 a variety of perspectives or are we creating more echo chambers 1755 and filter bubbles 1756 Mr Harper So are we showing for instance And as you looked at the 600 000 users and then 1757 specifically you were asked earlier about that you -- you said 1758 you would follow up on the number of Democrats or Republicans 1759 in the House -- 1760 Mr Dorsey 1761 Mr Harper Where we can determine that -- so my question is you know that's a pretty 1762 limited you know pool 1763 the House 1764 We are talking about 435 members of Do you -- do you have that info and just don't want to discuss 1765 it or do you have to find that info on how many House members 1766 there were that were affected 1767 Mr Dorsey We do have the info and we will share it 1768 Mr Harper Can you share it now 1769 Mr Dorsey Yes we'll share it with you 1770 Mr Harper Can you share it now in your testimony 1771 Mr Dorsey I don't -- I don't have it front of me 1772 Mr Harper Okay But you will provide it NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 85 1773 The Chairman 1774 Mr Harper 1775 The Chairman 1776 The chair now recognizes the gentleman from California Mr 1777 1778 The gentleman's time -- Thank you With that I yield back my time The gentleman's time has expired McNerney or four minutes Mr McNerney I thank the chairman and I thank you Mr 1779 Dorsey for the frankness you have been showing on answering our 1780 questions 1781 But this hearing is really a desperate effort to rally the 1782 Republican base before the November election and to please 1783 President Trump 1784 However there are some real serious issues that we should 1785 be examining -- for example targeting 1786 networks have been accused of facilitating discriminatory 1787 advertising such as housing and employment ads 1788 Some social media So when targeting ads are advertisers able to exclude 1789 certain categories of users on Twitter which would be 1790 discriminatory 1791 Mr Dorsey I am sorry 1792 ads or issues ads 1793 Mr McNerney 1794 Can you -- can you -- for political No for non-political ads Are advertisers able to exclude groups or categories of users NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 86 1795 1796 1797 1798 Mr Dorsey Advertisers are able to build criteria that include and exclude folks Mr McNerney So that could be -- end up being discriminatory 1799 Mr Dorsey Perhaps yes 1800 Mr McNerney Apart from reviewing how ads are targeted 1801 does Twitter review how its ads are ultimately delivered and if 1802 any discriminatory effects occur as a result of its own 1803 optimization process 1804 Mr Dorsey Yes we do do regular audits of how our ads 1805 are targeted and how they're delivered and we work to make sure 1806 that we have fairness within them 1807 1808 1809 1810 Mr McNerney Sure Could you briefly describe the process that Twitter uses for making changes to algorithms Mr Dorsey In terms of making changes to ads algorithms we are looking first and foremost at the data test sets 1811 We run through tests to make sure that we are -- that they're 1812 performing in the way that we expect with those outcomes and then 1813 we bring them out to production which is at scale on the live 1814 system and then also we are doing checks to make sure that they 1815 are consistent with constraints and boundaries that we expect 1816 Mr McNerney Has Twitter ever taken down an ad because NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 87 1817 of potential discriminatory effects -- non-political 1818 Mr Dorsey 1819 get that information 1820 I will have to follow up with you on that to Mr McNerney Well it's difficult to know if Twitter's 1821 platforms are having discriminatory effects because there's no 1822 real way for watchdog groups to examine what's happening for 1823 potential biases 1824 Twitter announced now that it's making political ads 1825 searchable 1826 watchdog groups to examine how non-political ads are being 1827 targeted 1828 1829 1830 How about non-political ads Mr Dorsey Yes Is there a way for Our ads transparency center is comprehensive of all ads Mr McNerney Thank you Okay moving on to privacy -- 1831 Twitter's privacy policy states that we believe you should always 1832 know where your data -- what data we collect from you and how 1833 we use it and what you should -- and you should have meaning control 1834 over both 1835 But most Americans really don't know what's happening with 1836 their data 1837 product that you are their product 1838 There's a saying that if you aren't paying for a Mr Dorsey Do you agree with that I don't necessarily agree with that I mean NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 88 1839 I do believe that we need to make more clear the exchange -- what 1840 people are trading to get a free service 1841 I don't think we've done a great job at that certainly within 1842 the service and I do believe that that is important work and 1843 we should clarify it more 1844 1845 1846 Mr McNerney Is Twitter running educational campaigns to inform users about how data is being used Mr Dorsey Not at the moment but we should be looking 1847 at that and also the incentives that we are providing people on 1848 the platform 1849 Mr McNerney I am going to follow up on some prior 1850 questions here 1851 Twitter previously -- does Twitter still store previously 1852 collected data or does it erase it when they ask to be excluded 1853 when they opt out 1854 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 1860 If users disable the track mechanism then does Mr Dorsey I believe it's erased But we'll have to follow up with the details Mr McNerney Okay And so you will commit to -- can you commit to erasing data when people opt out Mr Dorsey Yes but let me just make sure I understand and we understand the constraints and the ramifications of that Mr McNerney Okay Thank you NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 89 1861 Mr Chairman I yield back 1862 Mr Harper 1863 We will now take a five-minute recess and reconvene in five 1864 Presiding minutes 1865 Recess 1866 The Chairman 1867 The gentleman yields back Presiding Our guests will take their seats 1868 If our guests will take their seats and our members we will 1869 resume the hearing now and I recognize the gentleman from New 1870 Jersey Mr Lance for four minutes for questions 1871 Mr Lance Thank you Mr Chairman 1872 Mr Dorsey I have three areas of questioning Number one 1873 in the Meghan McCain matter in your opinion would the photo have 1874 been taken down if those close to the victim including her 1875 husband had not complained to Twitter 1876 Mr Dorsey 1877 not complained 1878 Mr Lance 1879 Mr Dorsey If it would have been taken down if they had Correct We would have taken it down because we -- I 1880 imagine we would have received other reports 1881 work today based on reports for take down 1882 Mr Lance Our system does Let me say that I think it's the unanimous view NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 90 1883 of this committee that five hours is intolerable and it was 1884 horribly violent and we are all opposed to this type of violence 1885 on Twitter regardless of when it occurs and certainly we hope 1886 that you do better in the future 1887 Number two you state in your testimony on Page 6 Bias 1888 can happen inadvertently due to many factors such as the quality 1889 of the data used to train our models 1890 In addition to ensuring that we are not deliberately biasing 1891 the algorithms it is our responsibility to understand measure 1892 and reduce these accidental bias 1893 The machine learning teams at Twitter at learning about these 1894 techniques and developing a roadmap to ensure our present and 1895 future machine learning models uphold a high standard when it 1896 comes to algorithmic fairness 1897 Can you give the committee a time frame as to when we might 1898 expect that that would receive results that are fair to the 1899 American people conservatives and perhaps liberals as well 1900 Mr Dorsey I can't predict a very precise time frame at 1901 the moment 1902 in terms of as we roll out algorithms understanding that they 1903 are fair and that we are driving impartial outcomes 1904 This is something that is a high priority for us But it's hard to predict a particular time frame because NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 91 1905 this is not just a Twitter issue 1906 and a field of research within artificial intelligence 1907 Mr Lance This is the entire industry I was asked on air in New York over the weekend 1908 whether this will require regulation by the federal government 1909 After all we are a committee of jurisdiction in this regard 1910 1911 I certainly hope not but I am sure you can understand Mr 1912 Dorsey that we would like this to occur as quickly as possible 1913 because of the great concern of the American people that there 1914 not be bias intentional or unintentional 1915 Mr Dorsey I do believe you're asking the important 1916 questions especially as we move more of our decisions not just 1917 as a company but also as individuals to artificial intelligence 1918 and we need to understand as we use this artificial intelligence 1919 for more and more of the things that we do that number one that 1920 there are unbiased outcomes and number two that they can explain 1921 why they made the decision in the first place 1922 Mr Lance Thank you Mr Dorsey 1923 And then my third area of questioning prior to 2016 did 1924 Twitter have any policies in place to address the use of the 1925 Twitter platform by foreign governments or entities for the 1926 purpose of influencing an election in the United States NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 92 1927 I am certainly as concerned as any member of this committee 1928 regardless of political party about what happened regarding 1929 Russia in 2016 1930 in place 1931 And so prior to 2016 did you have any policies Mr Dorsey We can follow up with you I don't have that 1932 data right now in terms of what policies against foreign actors 1933 that we had before 2016 1934 elections that impacted both our technology and also the policies 1935 going forward 1936 Mr Lance But we did learn a lot within the 2016 Let me state that I do not believe this is a 1937 partisan matter This is a bipartisan matter It is intolerable 1938 that there was any interference and of course we hope that it 1939 never occurs again 1940 Thank you Mr Chairman 1941 The Chairman 1942 The chair recognizes the gentleman from Vermont Mr Welch 1943 I yield back The gentleman yields back for four minutes 1944 Mr Welch Thank you very much Mr Chairman 1945 There's really two hearings going on One is about that 1946 man in the White House who has been accusing as you have been 1947 sitting here the social media giants of interfering in the 1948 election and making this claim even as you were testifying and NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 93 1949 in fact recently said that the media giants were all in favor 1950 of Hillary Clinton in the election 1951 I will just give you a chance to ask whether the company 1952 Twitter had a -- had a policy of the company for either candidate 1953 in the presidential election 1954 Mr Dorsey No we did not 1955 Mr Welch 1956 The second is a job that we are not doing Absolutely not I expect right We are having 1957 Mr Dorsey here and it's a good opportunity given his experience 1958 in his company 1959 in some cases and there's efforts that are being made at Twitter 1960 -- we had Mr Zuckerberg here some time ago -- efforts being made 1961 at Facebook to deal with false accounts to deal with hate speech 1962 which you're trying to deal with to deal with flat-out false 1963 information which is not the kind of thing you want on the digital 1964 town square right 1965 But these social media platforms are being abused But the fundamental question that this committee refuses 1966 to ask itself is whether there's a role for publicly-elected 1967 officials to make some of these decisions about how you protect 1968 people from hate speech how you protect people from flat-out 1969 false information 1970 Now you mentioned Mr Dorsey that your company is NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 94 1971 investigating this 1972 that's a good thing You have got your team working on it and 1973 But bottom line do you believe that this should be something 1974 that's decided company by company or should we have rules of the 1975 road and a process that is monitored by elected officials in a 1976 regulatory agency That's the question we are coming to 1977 As Mr Harper earlier I thought asked a very good question 1978 -- what you determine to be fair or I determine to be fair we 1979 may disagree 1980 So who's going to be the decider of that Do you believe that ultimately it should be a decision on 1981 these important questions of privacy on these important 1982 questions of hate speech on these important matters you're trying 1983 to contend with about the abuse of your platform should be decided 1984 on a company by company basis or should that be a public discussion 1985 and a public decision made by elected representatives 1986 1987 Mr Dorsey First we want to make it a public discussion We -- this health and increasing health in the public space is 1988 not something we want to compete on 1989 only healthy public square 1990 1991 1992 We don't want to have the We want to contribute to all healthy public conversation Independent of what the government believes it should do we are going to continue to make this our singular objective -- NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 95 1993 Mr Welch 1994 Mr Dorsey Right -- because we believe it's right and we are 1995 going to continue to share our approach and our work so that others 1996 can learn from it and we are going to learn from others 1997 So I do believe that we have worked a lot more closely with 1998 our peers in order to solve some of these common issues that we 1999 are seeing and we'll come up with common solutions as long as 2000 we all have a mind set of this is not an area for us to compete 2001 Mr Welch It's not an area to compete but it's also 2002 ultimately as responsible and you and other companies want to 2003 be which I grant you you do 2004 Ultimately there will be a debate between the president 2005 and his vision of what is fair and perhaps my vision of what is 2006 fair and in the past what we've had we now have the FCC the 2007 FTC that basically were designed to address problems when we 2008 used dial-up telephones and this committee has not done anything 2009 to address the jurisdictional issues and public policy questions 2010 and I do not believe that we should just be leaving it to the 2011 responsibility of private companies 2012 efforts the private companies are making 2013 2014 And I yield back But I appreciate the Thank you Mr Chairman Thank you Mr Dorsey NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 96 2015 2016 The Chairman Gentlemen The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Texas Mr Olson for four minutes 2017 Mr Olson 2018 You mentioned in your opening statement the group called 2019 2020 I thank the chair and welcome Mr Dorsey the Trust and Safety Council within Twitter On Twitter's BOG it relies on the Trust and Safety Council 2021 for guidance in evaluating and developing its own community 2022 guidelines to use your words from your statement to create that 2023 public square for a free exchange of ideas 2024 And you have been pretty honest about your personal biases 2025 and the biases of people within Twitter 2026 biases on the Trust and Safety Council 2027 Mr Dorsey How pervasive are the Well just for some context our Trust and 2028 Safety Council is a external organization of about 40 2029 organizations that are global and are focused on particular issues 2030 such as online harassment or bullying or misinformation 2031 So these are entities that help us give feedback on our 2032 policies and also our solutions that we are coming up with but 2033 we take no direction from 2034 Mr Olson Are these entities either Republican Democrat 2035 Tea Party Green Party Any identity with their affiliation 2036 politically that comes into Twitter's world NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 97 2037 Mr Dorsey We do have some conservative-leaning 2038 organizations but we don't -- we don't add to the council based 2039 on ideology 2040 It's on the issues Mr Olson And I am sure this council in Twitter does not 2041 operate in this Twitter vote of secrecy a vacuum 2042 groups outside of this group help Twitter influence your 2043 developing and shaping your community guidelines 2044 out there besides this Trust and Safety Council you rely upon 2045 2046 Mr Dorsey What other Anybody else Well the Trust and Safety Council is advisory It makes no decisions for us Most of our decisions are made 2047 internally and we definitely take input from external folks and 2048 we look at what's happening in more of the secular trends of what's 2049 going on 2050 But we don't take direction from anything external Mr Olson Could we list those members of that council -- 2051 the Trust and Advisory Council those 40 entities that are your 2052 members -- Safety Council -- sorry Trust and Safety Council 2053 Mr Dorsey 2054 Mr Olson 2055 Mr Dorsey 2056 can send you -- 2057 Mr Olson 2058 They are listed on our web page Okay So we have an accurate list of those and we I apologize I will look that up I also want to turn to back home and as you probably heard a little more NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 98 2059 than a year ago southeast Texas was fighting four feet of water 2060 from floods from Hurricane Harvey 2061 A recent report from my alma mater Rice University 2062 highlights how platforms like Twitter played an important role 2063 in natural disasters and recovery 2064 The report showed the increased use of mobile devices 2065 combined with social media platforms have empowered everyday 2066 citizens to report dangerous situations and lifesaving 2067 operations 2068 quickly 2069 They can see people in trouble and report that very How does Twitter prioritize emergency services information 2070 during disasters 2071 us -- another Harvey within a month or so because it's hurricane 2072 season 2073 Mr Dorsey Like for example if Harvey comes up and hits We do prioritize community outreach and 2074 emergency services on the platform We actually do have some 2075 really good evidence of this specifically with Harvey 2076 saw about 27 million tweets regarding Hurricane Harvey So we 2077 In Texas 911 systems failed and people did use Twitter to 2078 issue SOS calls and we saw as many as 10 000 people rescued from 2079 this 2080 So this is something that we do prioritize and want to make NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 99 2081 sure that we are working with local agencies to make sure that 2082 we have a lot strength there 2083 Mr Olson Thank you and close by recognizing that as a 2084 fan of the St Louis Cardinals and a high-tech leader I will 2085 forgive you for your Cardinals hacking into my Astros accounts 2086 They hacked into my Astros accounts 2087 Thank you St Louis Cardinals We won the World Series 2088 I yield back 2089 Mr Dorsey 2090 The Chairman 2091 The chair now recognizes the gentleman from New Mexico for 2092 Thank you Go Cards The gentleman yields back four minutes -- Mr Lujan 2093 Mr Lujan 2094 Mr Dorsey thank you for being here today as well 2095 Mr Dorsey yes or no -- is it correct that President Trump 2096 lost followers because your platform decided to eliminate bots 2097 and fake accounts 2098 Mr Dorsey 2099 Mr Lujan 2100 2101 2102 Thank you Mr Chairman Yes During the initial purge of bots who lost more followers President Trump or former President Obama Mr Dorsey I am not sure of those details But there was a broad based action across all of Twitter NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 100 2103 Mr Lujan Subject to confirmation do these numbers sound 2104 familiar -- President Obama lost 2 3 million followers President 2105 Trump lost roughly 320 000 followers 2106 Mr Dorsey 2107 Mr Lujan 2108 So Mr Dorsey based on that is it correct that Twitter 2109 is engaged in a conspiracy against former President Barack Obama 2110 2111 2112 Mr Dorsey I would need to confirm that That's what's been reported I don't believe we have any conspiracies against the former president Mr Lujan I don't either I don't think you have them 2113 against this president I want to commend you on your work with 2114 what was done associated with the evaluation following the 2016 2115 election which led to some of this work 2116 In your testimony you note that Twitter conducted a 2117 comprehensive review of platform activity related to the 2016 2118 election 2119 I assume that after your preview you felt that Twitter had 2120 a responsibility to make changes to the way your platform operates 2121 to address future attempts at election manipulation 2122 correct 2123 2124 Mr Dorsey Yes Is that We are working and this is our number-one priority to help protect the integrity of 2018 elections NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 101 2125 Mr Lujan Further Mr Dorsey -- and Mr Chairman I would 2126 ask unanimous consent to submit three articles into the record 2127 -- one from January 19th recode net cnbc com April 5th 2018 2128 and from techcrunch com August 21st 2018 2129 The Chairman Without objection 2130 The information follows 2131 2132 COMMITTEE INSERT 5 NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 102 2133 Mr Lujan The first article Mr Dorsey says that Twitter 2134 admits that there were more Russian trolls on its site during 2135 the 2016 U S presidential election as reported by recode net 2136 January 1 2018 2137 Is that correct 2138 Mr Dorsey 2139 Mr Lujan 2140 2141 2142 2143 Was this a revelation that Twitter shared Yes Did that lead to some -- was that an outcome of the -- some of the research Mr Dorsey That was an outcome of the continued work as we dug deeper into the numbers in 2016 Mr Lujan Mr Dorsey is it also correct as was reported 2144 by CNBC on April 5th 2018 that Twitter has suspended more than 2145 1 2 million terrorism-related accounts since late 2015 2146 Mr Dorsey 2147 Mr Lujan 2148 Mr Dorsey Correct Yes How did that work come about We have -- we have been working for years to 2149 automatically identify terrorist accounts and terrorist-like 2150 activity from violent extremist groups and automatically shutting 2151 that down and that has been ongoing work for years 2152 2153 2154 Mr Lujan I would hope that this committee would commend your work in closing those accounts Lastly Mr Dorsey Facebook and Twitter removed hundreds NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 103 2155 2156 of accounts linked to Iranian and Russian political meddling This was reported August 21st 2018 2157 Mr Dorsey 2158 Mr Lujan Is that correct Yes So Mr Dorsey are you aware of any significant 2159 legislation that Congress has passed to protect our democracy 2160 and our elections 2161 Mr Dorsey 2162 Mr Lujan I am not aware The reason you're not aware is because none of 2163 it is -- it's not happened 2164 Congress We've not done anything in this 2165 Mr Dorsey after it was revealed that 87 million Facebook 2166 users' data was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica this 2167 committee heard testimony from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg 2168 This was in April of this year 2169 2170 It's now September Are you aware of any significant privacy legislation that passed this committee since Mr Zuckerberg's testimony 2171 Mr Dorsey No 2172 Mr Lujan 2173 Mr Chairman we've not done anything as well for the 148 Again nothing has happened 2174 million people that were impacted by Equifax I think we should 2175 use this committee's time to make a difference in the lives of 2176 the American people and live up to the commitments that this NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 104 2177 committee has made to provide protections for our consumers 2178 I yield back 2179 The Chairman 2180 The chair now recognizes the gentleman from West Virginia 2181 2182 2183 The gentleman's time has expired Mr McKinley for four minutes Mr McKinley Thank you Mr Chairman and thank you Mr Dorsey for coming today 2184 Earlier this year and we just referred to it in testimony 2185 the FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb reported that there were 2186 quote offers to sell illegal drugs all over social media 2187 including Twitter and the easy availability in online purchases 2188 of these products from illegal drug peddlers is rampant and fuels 2189 the opioid crisis closed quote 2190 Now Mr Dorsey do you believe that your -- Twitter's 2191 platform and your controls has contributed to fuelling the opioid 2192 crisis 2193 Mr Dorsey Well first and foremost we do have strong 2194 terms of service that prevent this activity and we are taking 2195 enforcement actions when we see it 2196 Mr McKinley Okay Well there was a recent study just 2197 published by the American Journal of Public Health that analysed 2198 over a five-month period of time the Twitter accounts and went NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 105 2199 through several thousands -- hundreds of thousands of those and 2200 found that there were still 2 000 illegal drug sites being sold 2201 on your -- on your account 2202 Do you think that -- so my curiosity now from -- now that 2203 we have this report in our hand about the 2 000 -- do you think 2204 that -- your website states that this is prohibited 2205 2206 2207 2208 It's against your standards and you just said that Can you tell me how many of these sites are still up Mr Dorsey I can't -- I can't tell you I would have to follow up with you on the exact data 2209 Mr McKinley 2210 Mr Dorsey 2211 Mr McKinley But they shouldn't be up right They shouldn't be It is prohibited activity If I could just within the last hour -- Mr 2212 Dorsey within the last hour here's an ad for cocaine on Twitter 2213 It's still up and it goes on and it says that you know not 2214 only from that -- on that site they can buy cocaine heroin meth 2215 Ecstasy Percocet 2216 say this is against your public policy and you have got ways of 2217 being able to filter that out and it's still getting on there 2218 2219 2220 I would be ashamed if I were you and you So I am astounded that that information is still there And then we have the next commercial is one on cocaine This is on -- this Here's the next one that here you can get NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 106 2221 2222 -- contact us for any medicine you want That doesn't say you have to have a prescription Contact 2223 these people and it's on your site and you said you have got 2224 ways of checking that 2225 there Just within the last hour it's still up 2226 We ran into the same problem with Facebook and Zuckerberg 2227 came back to me within two hours later and it had all come down 2228 They took them off They weren't aware 2229 Their algorithm had missed it They had missed it 2230 I am hoping that in the hours after this hearing you will 2231 get back to us and tell us that these are down as well -- that 2232 you're serious about this opioid epidemic 2233 I just happen to come from a state that's very hard hit with 2234 this 2235 of illegal drugs in our children and our families 2236 2237 2238 2239 2240 We don't need to have our social media promoting the use So I hope I hear from you that you will be taking them down Is that a fair statement Mr Dorsey Yes I agree with you this is unacceptable and we will -- we will act Mr McKinley I would also hope that you would move the 2241 same resources that have complicated so much of what this hearing 2242 has been about today so that you can focus on this to make sure NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 107 2243 that this doesn't happen again -- that we wouldn't have to 2244 reprimand you to follow the guidelines that you have published 2245 and you're so proud about that you have the ways of stopping opioid 2246 sales 2247 2248 But it's not happening So please take a good hard look at it and be serious about this this next time 2249 Thank you very much 2250 Mr Dorsey 2251 The Chairman 2252 The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Iowa Mr 2253 2254 I yield back Thank you The gentleman yields back Loebsack for four minutes for questions Mr Loebsack I thank the chairman and ranking member for 2255 having this oversight hearing today and I thank you Mr Dorsey 2256 for being here 2257 been very diplomatic and I commend you for that You have exhibited a lot of patience you have 2258 And there have been a lot of great issues brought up you 2259 know with what our most recent colleague here from West Virginia 2260 mentioned 2261 I think that's a very very important issue It's something that's affecting rural America as well as 2262 urban America as well where I am from and I think it -- I think 2263 this discussion today has really has demonstrated how important 2264 Twitter is to our national conversation -- the good the bad NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 108 2265 the ugly all of it -- and for our democracy and I am glad we 2266 are shining a light on many issues of concern of Americans across 2267 the country with regard to Twitter and the role it plays in our 2268 society today and will continue to play into the future 2269 obviously 2270 And many of my colleagues have raised legitimate concerns 2271 about data privacy the influence of hostile actors in our 2272 elections and the spread of misinformation that can distort and 2273 harm our very democracy 2274 I think these are all important issues but I want to for 2275 a second on the issue of online harassment and the use of Twitter 2276 by teenagers -- by young people 2277 Social media use among the under 18 population continues 2278 to increase as you know and while reaching online communities 2279 may allow young people to find friendship and community in ways 2280 we cannot have imagined growing up -- I certainly wouldn't have 2281 imagined -- Twitter may also be creating unimaginable crises for 2282 many kids as I am sure you're aware 2283 Social media in general and Twitter specifically has been 2284 used frequently for abusive purposes like harassment and cyber 2285 bullying and Twitter has too often been too slow to respond when 2286 victims report abuse and harassment NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 109 2287 These interactions which adults might view as merely 2288 stressful and hurtful when we look at our Twitter account or things 2289 that are said that might hurt our feelings whatever the case 2290 may be for young people these can be devastating as we know 2291 because they're still developing and often place large importance 2292 on their reputations with their peers 2293 We've seen too many tragic stories of what can happen when 2294 individuals move -- feel moved to harm themselves in response 2295 to online harassment and it should be a goal of all of us to stop 2296 that kind of bullying 2297 So Mr Dorsey my first question is as part of the 2298 healthiness of conversations on Twitter are you making any 2299 specific changes to the experience of your youngest users 2300 Mr Dorsey Yes We agree with all your points and this 2301 is one of our areas of focus is around harassment in particular 2302 and how it is used and weaponized as a tool to silence others 2303 and the most important thing for us is that we need to be able 2304 to measure our progress around it and understand if we are actually 2305 making any progress whatsoever 2306 2307 2308 Mr Loebsack So -- There is a minimum age of 13 Is that correct that you're -Mr Dorsey Yes NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 110 2309 Mr Loebsack 2310 Mr Dorsey 2311 Mr Loebsack 2312 2313 2314 2315 -- now trying to enforce Yes Does Twitter put any safety checks on the accounts of teenage users Mr Dorsey We do have -- we do have various safety checks and we can follow up with your team on that Mr Loebsack That would be good Does Twitter do anything 2316 to look for indications of harmful or dangerous interactions 2317 specifically 2318 Mr Dorsey Yes 2319 Mr Loebsack Yes It'd be good to know that I appreciate that 2320 -- what those are specifically 2321 research with outside independent organizations to determine how 2322 it can best combat online harassment bullying or other harmful 2323 interactions either for children or teenagers or for other groups 2324 of people 2325 2326 2327 2328 Mr Dorsey Has Twitter conducted any We do this through our Trust and Safety Council So we do have an organization that represents youth on digital platforms Mr Loebsack And will you commit to publishing a discreet 2329 review with outside organizations to help evaluate what more 2330 Twitter can be doing to protect our kids NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 111 2331 2332 2333 Mr Dorsey We haven't yet but we will certainly work with our partners to consider this Mr Loebsack Because I think your three principles -- 2334 impartiality transparency and accountability -- I think we can 2335 put those into effect and operationalize those when it comes to 2336 these particular questions that I've asked you 2337 And so I really do appreciate your time and we can -- we 2338 can expect such a review to be provided to the public then in 2339 the future 2340 Mr Dorsey 2341 Mr Loebsack 2342 Yes Okay Thank you very much for your time and I yield back Mr Chair 2343 Mr Dorsey 2344 The Chairman 2345 I recognize the gentleman from Kentucky Mr Guthrie for 2346 Thank you I thank the gentleman from Iowa four minutes 2347 Mr Guthrie 2348 for being here today 2349 Thank you very much I am here I appreciate it I've had to manage the floor debates 2350 the Capitol Building most of the afternoon 2351 was a conflict of scheduling 2352 Thank you I've been over in I apologize It But glad to be here and I know that I missed some of your NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 112 2353 answers and some of the -- what we've talked about previously 2354 But I want to further go down the path of -- on a couple of things 2355 2356 But many of my constituents who use Twitter perceive it to 2357 be an open market of ideas that you have referred to in your 2358 testimony and we are obviously here today because some questions 2359 have been raised about the rules for posting content and whether 2360 some viewpoints are restricted in practice -- specifically 2361 political conservatives 2362 So I will come to a question of editorial judgment but one 2363 major issue for my constituents start with transparency and how 2364 their data is being collected and used by Twitter 2365 I understand you have spoken about data a few times already 2366 this afternoon 2367 by my colleagues what specific data points are collected on 2368 Twitter users and with whom do you share them 2369 Mr Dorsey So to build on those previous questions asked So we infer interest around usage So when 2370 people follow particular accounts that represent interests in 2371 basketball or politics for instance we can utilize that 2372 information to introduce them to new tweets that might be similar 2373 or accounts that might be similar as well 2374 So a lot of our inference of that data is interest NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 113 2375 is all viewable within the settings of the app so you can see 2376 all the interests that we've inferred about you within the 2377 settings and you can also turn them off or delete them 2378 Mr Guthrie 2379 Mr Dorsey 2380 Mr Guthrie 2381 Is that shared with outside parties It's not It's not shared So it's only used by Twitter 2382 Mr Dorsey 2383 Mr Guthrie Yeah And how do you obtain consent from users if 2384 -- so you don't share with any third parties so you don't have 2385 to go through the consent then Okay 2386 When it comes to questions of editorial judgment and I am 2387 not an expert on Section 230 but I would like to ask you about 2388 your thoughts on publisher liability 2389 Could you comment on what some have said -- that there is 2390 a certain amount of inherent editorial judgment being carried 2391 out when Twitter uses artificial intelligence-driven algorithms 2392 or promotes content through Twitter Moments and the questions 2393 would be so where should we draw the line on how much editorial 2394 judgement can be exercised by the owner of a neutral platform 2395 like Twitter before the platform is considered a publisher 2396 Mr Dorsey Well we do defend Section 230 because it is NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 114 2397 the thing that enables us to increase the health in the first 2398 place 2399 and take enforcement actions against them accordingly 2400 It enables us to look at the content and look for abuse We do have a section of the service called Moments where 2401 we do have curators who are looking through all of the relevant 2402 tweets for a particular event or a topic and arranging them and 2403 they use a internal guideline to make sure that we are 2404 representative of as many perspectives as possible going back 2405 to that concept of variety of perspective 2406 We want to see a balanced view of what people think about 2407 a particular issue 2408 but that's how they measure themselves against 2409 area that people can choose to use or ignore altogether 2410 Mr Guthrie Not all of them will be as balanced as others Okay Thanks But it is one And then finally I have 52 2411 seconds left -- some people say and I've heard some people say 2412 that Twitter could be classified as a media outlet due to certain 2413 content agreements you may have now or consider in the future 2414 2415 Do you have any comment on that Mr Dorsey I don't think the -- you know the broader 2416 categories are necessarily useful We do see our role as serving 2417 conversation 2418 product a communication product and we do see a lot of people Like we do see our product as a conversational NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 115 2419 use Twitter to get the news because we believe that news is a 2420 by-product of public conversation and allows to see a much broader 2421 view of what's currently happening and what's going on 2422 So that's what we are focussing on is how do people use us 2423 rather than these categories 2424 stream events like this one -- this one is live on Twitter right 2425 now -- where people can have a conversation about and everyone 2426 can benefit and engage in that conversation accordingly 2427 Mr Guthrie 2428 and I yield back 2429 2430 Okay The Chairman We do have partnerships where we Thank you And my time has expired The chair recognizes the gentleman from Massachusetts Mr Kennedy for four minutes 2431 Mr Kennedy Thank you Mr Chairman 2432 Mr Dorsey thanks so much for being here Thank you for 2433 your -- over here -- thank you for your patience 2434 were over on the Senate side earlier today 2435 enduring all these long hours of questioning 2436 I know you So thank you for I wanted to kind of just make sure we were clear on a couple 2437 things 2438 bit more detail -- about the mechanisms that you use to look at 2439 different aspects of content on the site 2440 One you have talked at length -- I will get into a little But you have also talked about how you're algorithms have NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 116 2441 -- are a bit imperfect -- how they have impacted some members 2442 of this body Democrats and Republicans 2443 Mr Dorsey 2444 Mr Kennedy Is that true Yes And you have also indicated that there are 2445 others that get caught up in that liberal activists that use 2446 perhaps profane language in response to political leaders 2447 that true 2448 Mr Dorsey Is That may or may not be a signal that we use 2449 in terms of the content 2450 that we are seeing and that's what I was describing in terms of 2451 the signal was the behavior of the people following these 2452 accounts 2453 Mr Kennedy Fair enough 2454 suspended at a time 2455 Mr Dorsey 2456 Mr Kennedy 2457 Mr Dorsey 2458 Mr Kennedy 2459 You yourself were actually Was that not true I was So fair to say that sometimes that -There are errors There are errors Yes there are unless you engage in that destructive behavior of your own site which you did not right 2460 Mr Dorsey 2461 Mr Kennedy 2462 We tend to favor more of the behavior I am sorry Unless you engaged in that own destructive behavior that you were talking about which I don't think you NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 117 2463 did 2464 Mr Dorsey Correct 2465 Mr Kennedy Right So you have talked about essentially 2466 depending on those automated tools and then individual users to 2467 report tweets behavior one of these horrifying instances with 2468 Ms McCain 2469 2470 2471 2472 2473 But that's basically that the self-regulation mechanisms that you all use right Mr Dorsey Yes Our model currently depends upon reports to remove content or to remove accounts Mr Kennedy And why is it that you depend on those reports 2474 rather than having a more robust network within your company to 2475 do that 2476 users 2477 2478 2479 Why is it you -- that you basically outsource that to Mr Dorsey Well we don't feel great about this We don't believe that the burden should be on the victim in the first place So this is something we'd like to change 2480 technology and -- 2481 Mr Kennedy We have to build that But if you change that right if you -- I 2482 understand you don't feel good about putting that on the victims 2483 or the observers but you also expressed a reticence for your 2484 company to be the arbiter as to what is decent fair truth NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 118 2485 2486 You mentioned the term false fact earlier in your testimony I have no idea what a false fact is But putting that aside 2487 for a second how -- it seems like you're trying to basically 2488 meld this world of outside kind of crowd sourcing what works versus 2489 internalizing some of it 2490 I want to try to push you on that in a minute and a half 2491 which is not exactly fair 2492 to fix it what are you trying to do 2493 Mr Dorsey But how -- as you say you're trying What does that look like We are trying to build proactive systems that 2494 are recognizing behaviors that are against our terms of service 2495 and take action much faster so that people don't have to report 2496 them 2497 2498 2499 Mr Kennedy And is that -- one of my Republican colleagues asked earlier I believe how many folks you have working on that You said the issue wasn't so much how many people but you 2500 deflected that a bit understanding that I am certain technology 2501 can advance here 2502 2503 2504 But is that two people Do you expect to be hiring more here Is it 200 people That's got to be some sort of reflection of an area of focus right 2505 2506 Is it 20 people Mr Dorsey it Yes We have hundreds of people working on But the reason I don't want to focus on that number is because NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 119 2507 we need to have the flexibility to make decision between investing 2508 to build more new technology or hiring people and in my experience 2509 companies naturally just want to grow and that isn't always the 2510 right answer because it doesn't allow for a lot of scalability 2511 Mr Kennedy 2512 Mr Dorsey 2513 The Chairman 2514 All right sir Thank you I yield back Thank you The gentleman -- now we recognize the gentleman from Illinois Mr Kinzinger for four minutes 2515 Mr Kinzinger Thank you Mr Chair and Mr Dorsey thank 2516 you again for coming in here 2517 swords to free speech -- there's good and bad that comes with 2518 it 2519 Recognizing that there's multiple I think it's important to also mention that Twitter as well 2520 as other social media platforms has been key in liberating 2521 oppressed people and allowing oppressed people to communicate 2522 If you look in Syria although that situation is not good 2523 over there people have been able to get their message out 2524 chemical weapons attacks happen we know about that very quickly 2525 because government-censored media which would never report a 2526 chemical weapons attack is usurped by Twitter use and Facebook 2527 and some of these others 2528 When So part of a very big concern with that too is also foreign NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 120 2529 interference in our democracy 2530 very concerned about the role that the Russians played in 2531 attempting to undermine democracy 2532 We are very concerned -- I am I don't think Russia elected President Trump but I think 2533 it's obvious they're trying to sow instability in democracy 2534 And so I think the more we can get a grip on this and a grasp 2535 and make people aware of just the fact of what's happening we 2536 can begin to inoculate ourselves 2537 2538 I would like to ask you though about Twitter's practices with respect to information sharing with foreign governments 2539 2540 It's a topic I addressed in the Facebook hearing with Mr 2541 Zuckerberg and in which I think Senator Rubio broached with you 2542 a little earlier today 2543 2544 On September 1st 2015 Russian Federal Law Number 242-FZ known by many as the data localization law went into effect 2545 2546 It requires social media companies offering service to 2547 Russian citizens to collect and maintain all personal information 2548 of those citizens on databases physically located in their 2549 country 2550 Is Twitter in compliance with this law Mr Dorsey I need to follow up with you on that NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 121 2551 Mr Kinzinger 2552 that law right now 2553 Mr Dorsey 2554 Mr Kinzinger You don't know if you're in compliance with Which law again It's the Russian Federal Law 242-FZ which 2555 requires -- the data localization requires storage of information 2556 to be kept in Russia 2557 years now so I would hope you would know 2558 2559 2560 Mr Dorsey This has been in the news for a couple I don't I need my team follow up with you on that Mr Kinzinger 2561 can ask them if I -- 2562 Mr Dorsey 2563 Mr Kinzinger 2564 Mr Dorsey 2565 Mr Kinzinger You got a bunch of people back there You We don't have servers in Russia You don't -- you do not have them No Okay So you're not technically in 2566 compliance which I think is good So that might answer my second 2567 question -- if you store user data because there would be concern 2568 about breaches and everything else in dealing with Russia 2569 And besides -- and legitimate and well-defined requests for 2570 data that may aid in the investigation of a crime does Twitter 2571 make any user data available to Russian state entities including 2572 intelligence and security agencies NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 122 2573 Mr Dorsey No 2574 Mr Kinzinger Okay Let me ask you then -- we've touched 2575 on this a few times -- with the minute I have left -- parents 2576 young adults teenagers using Twitter 2577 I think our laws haven't caught up with the new reality 2578 the 21st century that we are in 2579 can be used to hurt innocent people 2580 We have to address how technology In Illinois there's laws to prevent people from 2581 distributing photos with malicious intent A fake account can 2582 be created in a matter of minutes to slander someone and do damage 2583 and circulate photos 2584 Mr Zuckerberg testified before this committee that he -- 2585 that Facebook is responsible for the content on Facebook which 2586 I think you can appreciate how newsworthy that was given the 2587 longstanding interpretations of Section 230 2588 Your user agreement clearly states that all content is the 2589 sole responsibility of the person who originated such content 2590 You may not monitor or control the content posted via services 2591 2592 and we cannot take responsibility for the content Your corrective actions and the statements you have made 2593 a little bit seem to be somewhat in conflict with the language 2594 Can you just take a little bit of time with what we have left NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 123 2595 to clarify your stance on content 2596 Mr Dorsey In what regard 2597 Mr Kinzinger Just I mean are users responsible 2598 Twitter 2599 responsibility or when you step in why 2600 2601 Is it mixed Mr Dorsey Is What area does Twitter have a So people are responsible for their content We have made our singular objective to -- as a company to help 2602 improve the health of the content that we see on the service 2603 and for us that means that people are not using content to silence 2604 others or to harass others or to bully each other so that they 2605 don't even feel safe to participate in the first place and that 2606 is what CDA 230 protects us to do is to actually enforce these 2607 actions -- make them clear to people in our terms of service but 2608 also to enforce them so that we can take actions 2609 Mr Kinzinger 2610 The Chairman 2611 The chair recognizes the gentleman from California Mr 2612 2613 2614 2615 2616 Okay I am out of time So I yield The gentleman's time has expired Cardenas for four minutes Mr Cardenas Thank you very much Mr Chairman and colleagues for participating in this important matter I want to follow up on some of Mr Loebsack's line of questioning While the president and the Republicans are NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 124 2617 criticizing social media -- I think it's to whip up their base 2618 -- there are real issues such as the shocking number of teens 2619 that are reporting being bullied 2620 Physical playground bullying is bad enough But 2621 increasingly this cruelty is moving online where one click of 2622 a button sends hateful words and images that can be seen by 2623 hundreds or even thousands of people at a time 2624 People kids are being targeted for being who they are or 2625 for being a certain race or a certain sexual orientation and so 2626 on 2627 We know it's pervasive -- it's a pervasive problem 2628 First Lady has made combatting cyber bullying a national priority 2629 oddly enough 2630 great example to follow 2631 At the same time adults are not giving kids a Public figures including the president spew inflammatory 2632 harmful words every day 2633 follow their victims and families forever 2634 2635 These actions cannot be erases and may For example how does it feel to be in front of us for hours at a time 2636 Mr Dorsey 2637 Mr Cardenas 2638 The I am enjoying the conversation Yes But do you get to go home Do you get to do what you choose to do once you leave this room NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 125 2639 Mr Dorsey 2640 Mr Cardenas Yes Well that's what's incredibly important for 2641 us to think about when we think about bullying online because 2642 it's inescapable really and that's really an issue that is new 2643 to us as human beings and certainly with platforms like yours 2644 it's made possible 2645 It can take many forms It can be hurtful It's about words It's about many many things It's about 2646 appearances So I think it's 2647 really important that the public understands that something needs 2648 to be done about it and what can be done is something that 2649 hopefully we can come to terms with you over at Twitter and with 2650 all the millions of people who use it 2651 As very public examples for example celebrities such as 2652 14-year-old Millie Bobby Brown Kelly Marie Tran Ariel Winter 2653 and Ruby Rose have stopped using Twitter or taken breaks from 2654 Twitter because their intense -- the intensified bullying that 2655 they experience on the platform have persisted 2656 couldn't or wouldn't help these public figures how does it deal 2657 with all the kids who aren't famous 2658 bullying claims for American families who are not in the news If Twitter I want to know how you handle 2659 2660 You have explained that Twitter investigates when it is -- NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 126 2661 when it gets a report of behavior such as that -- behavior that 2662 crosses the line into abuse including behavior that harasses 2663 intimidates or uses fear to silence other voices 2664 2665 2666 2667 2668 2669 How many reports of cyber bullying does Twitter receive each month is my first question Mr Dorsey We don't disclose that data but we can follow up with you Mr Cardenas Mr Dorsey 2671 Mr Cardenas 2673 2674 Appreciate you reporting to the committee on that answer 2670 2672 Okay How about Periscope The same The same Okay Look forward to that answer submitted to the committee And how many of those reports are for accounts of people age 18 or younger 2675 Mr Dorsey In what regard 2676 Mr Cardenas Yes The -- Periscope or Twitter Is it -- do you ever take into account 2677 whether or not it's a report to somebody who's been attacked who 2678 are 18 years or younger 2679 Mr Dorsey We -- we'll have to follow up with you on that 2680 We don't have the same sort of the demographic data that our 2681 peers do because we are not a service of profiles but of -- but 2682 of conversation NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 127 2683 Mr Cardenas That makes it even more critical for us to 2684 understand that 2685 reports and how long does it take for Twitter to take such a 2686 response 2687 Mr Dorsey What actions are taken in response to these We rank according to the severity of the report 2688 and again this is something that we need to improve to understand 2689 the severity of each report and how that is ranked so we can move 2690 much faster 2691 2692 2693 2694 Ultimately we don't want the reporting burden to be on the victim We want to do it automatically Mr Cardenas Okay Thank you very much I am out of time 2695 Thank you very much Mr Chairman 2696 The Chairman 2697 And we now turn to the gentleman from Virginia Mr Griffith 2698 2699 2700 I yield back I thank the gentleman for four minutes Mr Griffith Thank you very much Mr Chairman I appreciate you being here Mr Dorsey 2701 I represent that portion of Virginia that's in the southwest 2702 corner and borders a big chunk of southern West Virginia and so 2703 I had some questions similar to Mr McKinley's questions because 2704 we are suffering from a huge opioid problem but drugs in general NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 128 2705 And so I know you're trying and you're working on it and 2706 you're looking for things 2707 Scientific American they talked about having artificial 2708 intelligence scan Twitter for signs of opioid abuse and it would 2709 seem to me that on something that's an illegal conduct if somebody 2710 is selling drugs that's not just an inconvenience or trying to 2711 judge whether it's truly you know something that's bad or -- 2712 it's illegal -- it would seem to me that you all ought to be able 2713 to deploy an artificial intelligence platform that would knock 2714 down anybody trying to sell illegal substances on your platform 2715 2716 2717 2718 2719 2720 But last year in an edition of Can you address that Mr Dorsey Yes We -- I mean we have -- we have to prioritize all of our models and we have been prioritizing -Mr Griffith Shouldn't illegal be at the very top of that model Mr Dorsey Absolutely But we have been prioritizing a 2721 lot of what we saw in 2016 and 2017 in terms of election 2722 interference and our readiness for 2018 2723 Mr Griffith Here's what I got That does not say -- I got people writing me 2724 whose kids have died because they've been in treatment they have 2725 a relapse and one of the easiest ways to get in there is to get 2726 on social media and you know if scientists can use artificial NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 129 2727 intelligence to track opioid abuse in this country it would seem 2728 to me you ought to be able to track illegal sales with artificial 2729 intelligence 2730 2731 Now wouldn't you agree with that Mr Dorsey I agree with that Yes or no It's horrible and definitely it's something we need to address as soon as possible 2732 Mr Griffith I appreciate that very much 2733 Now look I don't think there's a conspiracy I think that 2734 there's a lot of folks out there though that may not have that 2735 many conservative friends who might be living in your neighborhood 2736 or living in the area that you live in and I looked at your 2737 advisory council 2738 There may be some right-leaning groups but I didn't see any 2739 right groups in there that would -- you know look we are not 2740 all crazy on the right 2741 can help out on your advisory council 2742 Get in there and find some groups that Also I would say to you and I said this to Mr Zuckerberg 2743 when he was here it seems to me that if you don't want the 2744 government in there -- and I think it's better not to have the 2745 government in there telling you all what to do as social media 2746 -- that you all as a group ought to get together and come up with 2747 something 2748 1894 had this new-fangled thing Electronic devices were NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 130 2749 coming onto the scene and an engineer says you know what -- maybe 2750 we ought to test all this and they got the insurance companies 2751 and the electric manufacturers together and they funded United 2752 Laboratories and as an industry without government coming in 2753 and saying this is what you have to do they came up with 2754 standards 2755 It would seem to me that the social media particularly the 2756 big actors like yourself but others ought to come together 2757 figure out something that's a template that works for all to make 2758 sure that we are not having political bias because I really do 2759 believe you when you say that you all aren't trying to do it 2760 2761 2762 But it's happening anyway and I think it's an accident I am not -- I am not trying to assess blame But I am saying 2763 you have got to help us because I don't think it's good for the 2764 internet or social media to have the government laying down rules 2765 that may or may not make sense 2766 But somebody's got to do something because we need to protect 2767 privacy as you have heard and we need to make sure there's not 2768 any political bias intentional or unintentional 2769 to that 2770 Mr Dorsey Would you agree It's a great idea and that is why we want to NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 131 2771 be a lot more open around these health indicators that we are 2772 developing and we don't see this as a competition 2773 Mr Griffith And last but not least one of the questions 2774 that's come up as I've been discussing this issue with a lot of 2775 folks is if you -- if you do put the kibosh on somebody's post 2776 or somebody's Twitter account can you at least tell them about 2777 it so that they have some idea so they can do the appeal 2778 if they don't know about it they're not likely to appeal are 2779 they 2780 Mr Dorsey Yes Because We need a much more robust way of 2781 communicating what happened and why and also a much more robust 2782 appeals process 2783 2784 Mr Griffith Thank you very much My time is up I yield back 2785 The Chairman 2786 I turn now to the gentleman from California Mr Peters 2787 2788 2789 2790 I thank the gentleman for four minutes Mr Peters Thank you Mr Chairman and thank you Mr Dorsey for being here You know I don't know if anyone else has mentioned the 2791 breath-taking irony that Donald Trump is complaining about 2792 Twitter NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 132 2793 It's hard for me to imagine he would have done nearly as 2794 well as he did without your platform and he's a master of using 2795 it 2796 2797 I think it has done some wonderful things for democracy It's democratized democracy in many ways We saw that here in the House when we live streamed the 2798 protest over guns in 2016 2799 in a way that I think none of us had imagined before 2800 a lot just to stay connected back home in San Diego 2801 It brought people into the chamber I use it I find out what's going on every day in the local government 2802 in the local activities 2803 minor leagues through it and I think it's been a great platform 2804 The problem with when anyone can be on your platform though 2805 is that now everyone's a journalist and I just want to explore 2806 in that context your discussion of the term fairness 2807 I follow my baseball team's promising Can you -- have you ever written down what you mean by 2808 fairness 2809 have these allegations about facts versus false equivalency that 2810 journalism has been dealing with I think more successfully 2811 recently trying to provide truth rather than balance 2812 And what I am sort of getting at is you know you Is that something that goes into your calculation of fairness 2813 and what kind of standards do you impose on content that's on 2814 Twitter NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 133 2815 Mr Dorsey So we want to -- fairness to us means that we 2816 are driving more impartial outcomes which are more objective 2817 driven not basing anything on bias and we do want to be able 2818 to measure this and also make public what we find and that's 2819 why we kicked off this initiative to understand the health of 2820 conversation and how it might trend 2821 One of the -- one of the indicators that we are considering 2822 is shared facts and that is the percentage of conversation that 2823 shares the same facts 2824 That is not an indication of truth or not just what 2825 percentage of people participating in a conversation are actually 2826 sharing the same facts versus having different facts and we think 2827 a greater collection of shared facts leads to a healthier 2828 conversation 2829 So then if we understand the makeup of them currently how 2830 can we help drive more people towards sharing more of the facts 2831 and if we can do that then we can see a lot more healthy 2832 conversations So that's our intent 2833 But first we are at the phase where we just need to measure 2834 it against those four indicators I laid out earlier and we can 2835 send you more of our information and thinking about how we are 2836 developing these NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 134 2837 Mr Peters I would love to hear that One of the problems 2838 with everyone having their own facts is it's very hard to have 2839 conversations about difficult issues 2840 One that I am concerned about is climate change If everyone 2841 has a different understanding of the facts it's hard to agree 2842 on what to do about it 2843 2844 Mr Sarbanes raised the concept of this hearing being a way to work to refs I don't know if you recall that reference 2845 Is that something that we should be concerned about Is 2846 that something that strikes you as going to have an impact on 2847 your business the notion that we'll -- that the committee would 2848 be working the refs with the majority 2849 Mr Dorsey I honestly don't know what that means so -- 2850 Mr Peters Okay Good So the idea is that we will -- 2851 that they're going to put so much pressure on you to avoid pressure 2852 from us that you will change your behavior in a way that's not 2853 -- that's not fair 2854 about 2855 Mr Dorsey Is that something that we should be concerned Well I mean I think we -- we've articulated 2856 what we think is important and what we are trying to drive and 2857 I see the role of government as being a checkpoint to that and 2858 also being a clarifier and asking questions of our path and you NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 135 2859 know I do believe the system is working in that regard 2860 So we -- you know we are putting out what we believe is 2861 critical for us to focus on and if there are disagreements en 2862 masse in feedback we get we will certainly change our path 2863 2864 Mr Peters Well I appreciate your testimony today time has expired and I thank the chairman 2865 The Chairman 2866 The chair recognizes the gentleman from Florida Mr 2867 2868 2869 2870 My I thank the gentleman Bilirakis for four minutes Mr Bilirakis Thank you Mr Chairman I appreciate it Thank you very much and thank you for your testimony Mr Dorsey Mr Dorsey I've heard from my local Pasco County school 2871 district -- that's located on the west coast of Florida -- that 2872 is -- it has consistently responded to threats of school violence 2873 I've heard from the superintendent Kurt Browning who's 2874 doing an outstanding job that it faced as many as 19 threats 2875 in one week 2876 tweets 2877 Many of those threats have come from individual News reports and studies show this is a widespread problem 2878 as you can imagine What is your company's process for notifying 2879 local law enforcement officials and school districts when these 2880 threats emerge NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 136 2881 Mr Dorsey We do have outreach to local entities and local 2882 law enforcement when we see anything impacting someone's physical 2883 security 2884 implementations are 2885 2886 We can follow up with you on exactly what those Mr Bilirakis Well how effective have they been Can you give me -- 2887 Mr Dorsey I don't -- I don't -- I am not sure how to 2888 determine the efficacy But we can -- we can follow up with you 2889 on that and share what we have 2890 Mr Bilirakis Please do Please do 2891 And would you consider an internal process in which Twitter 2892 can work directly with the school districts to address these 2893 tweets quickly 2894 Mr Dorsey Obviously time is of the essence Yes You know one of the things we are always 2895 looking for is ways to quickly especially where it impacts 2896 physical security ways to quickly alert us to things that we 2897 might be able to help with in terms of the conversation around 2898 it 2899 2900 2901 2902 So we are certainly open to it and open to an implementation that we think we can scale Mr Bilirakis Let me ask you a question How did you determine the -- and I know social media Facebook too -- the NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 137 2903 2904 2905 minimum age of use 13 and are you considering raising that age Mr Dorsey We I don't believe have considered raising the age but we do determine it upon sign-up 2906 Mr Bilirakis Okay Thank you 2907 The next question -- according to Twitter's website 2908 Twitter's Moments are defined as quote and I quote again 2909 curated storage showing the very best of what's happening on 2910 Twitter and customized to show you topics that are popular or 2911 relevant so you can discover what is unfolding again customized 2912 to show you topics and what's relevant so you can again what 2913 is unfolding on Twitter in an instant and that's an end quote 2914 In my experience Twitter Moments more often features a 2915 specific point of view or political narrative and the question 2916 is how are these Moments -- again quote Moments compiled 2917 and prioritized 2918 You said earlier that Moments are selected by employees 2919 publishing content 2920 has set to determine what makes a Moment 2921 Mr Dorsey What are the internal guidelines the company Yes So we first and foremost take a 2922 data-driven approach to how we arrange these Moments and again 2923 these are collections of tweets that we look at based on any 2924 particular topic or event and we bring them into a collection NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 138 2925 and we use a data-driven approach meaning that we are looking 2926 for the amount of conversation first and foremost that's 2927 happening around a particular event and then as we rank that 2928 then we go into impartiality to make sure that we are looking 2929 for opportunities to show as many perspectives as possible 2930 So a variety of perspectives and a high score on a variety 2931 of perspectives is beneficial to the people reading because they 2932 can see every side of a particular issue or a particular event 2933 2934 Mr Bilirakis Okay Very good I thank you and look forward to getting some information on this particular -- 2935 Mr Dorsey Thank you 2936 Mr Bilirakis -- following up and we'd like to have you 2937 back in my opinion even though I am not the chairman to see 2938 the progress that you have made with regard to these issues 2939 Thank you and I yield back 2940 Mr Dorsey 2941 The Chairman 2942 The chair recognizes the gentlelady from Michigan Mrs 2943 2944 2945 2946 Thank you I thank the gentleman Dingell for four minutes Mrs Dingell Thank you Mr Chairman and thank you Mr Dorsey You're actually one of my husband's heroes I am married NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 139 2947 to what we call -- affectionately call around here the Dean of 2948 Twitter who quite frankly at 92 is better on Twitter than 2949 probably everybody in this room which means I know the power 2950 of this platform and I think it's a very important tool 2951 But to those who have been doing conspiracy theories and 2952 politicizing this it is not only Meghan McCain -- that I myself 2953 have had some of those same threats and those same caricatures 2954 and quite frankly I was blissfully ignorant until law 2955 enforcement brought it to my attention 2956 So I would -- I do think that the threats that are happening 2957 on Twitter do need to be better understood and more quickly acted 2958 upon 2959 But I would rather ask some questions right now because 2960 you're educating all of us and we all need to understand social 2961 media better period and its tool in the background 2962 So I would like to ask some questions about privacy and the 2963 use of machine learning and artificial intelligence on the 2964 platform 2965 You have spoken about how you are trying to deploy machine 2966 learning to combat the disinformation the harassment the abuse 2967 and I want to build on what some of my other colleagues have said 2968 about the black box nature of these algorithms and the lack of NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 140 2969 what they call accountability but how we improve it 2970 So building on what actually my colleague Representative 2971 Harper was saying what type of data sets do you use to train 2972 AI and how often do you retrain them 2973 Mr Dorsey That's a great question We try to use data 2974 sets that will be predictive of what we would expect to see on 2975 the service and as we train these models we are certainly using 2976 previous experiences and outputs that we've seen in natural uses 2977 of how people use the system and then also trying to test some 2978 edge cases as well 2979 But again all these tests are great and help us understand 2980 what to expect but ultimately they're not really put to test 2981 until they're released on production and we actually see how 2982 people use it and how it's affecting usage and also what might 2983 be unexpected which I talked about earlier 2984 So that is in -- that's training There are -- AI is not 2985 a new field but the application of AI at scale is rather new 2986 especially to us and our company 2987 So there are best practices being developed that we are 2988 learning as quickly as possible from and more importantly trying 2989 to measure those outcomes in terms of bias and impartiality 2990 Mrs Dingell So as we build on that do your engineers NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 141 2991 have an ability to see and understand why an algorithm made certain 2992 decisions 2993 Mr Dorsey That is a great question because that goes into 2994 another field of research in AI which is called explainability 2995 which is encouraging engineers to write a function that enables 2996 the algorithm to describe how it made the decision and why it 2997 made the decision and I think that is a critical question to ask 2998 and one to focus on because we are offloading more and more of 2999 our decisions to these technologies whether they be companies 3000 like ours who are offloading our enforcement actions to algorithms 3001 or ranking actions to algorithms or even personally 3002 I am wearing an Apple watch right now and it tells me when 3003 to stand 3004 the context to why it made that decision or why it's taking that 3005 action it becomes quite scary 3006 I've offloaded a decision to it and if it can't explain So I do believe that is a valid -- a valid form It is 3007 extremely early in terms of research -- this concept of 3008 explainability -- but I think it will be one that bears the 3009 greatest fruit in terms of trust 3010 Mrs Dingell 3011 of time 3012 things For the record because I am going to be out You have talked about how these algorithms have missed It's made mistakes What is an acceptable error rate NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 142 3013 You can do that for the record later but I just -- 3014 Mr Dorsey 3015 The Chairman 3016 3017 I will come back -- we'll come back The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Ohio Mr Johnson for four minutes Mr Johnson Thank you Mr Chairman and Mr Dorsey thank 3018 you for being here today 3019 algorithm is essentially a decision tree that once it's turned 3020 into software it operates on a data set as input and it produces 3021 a desired action or result 3022 layman's term of what an algorithm is 3023 Mr Dorsey 3024 lot more complicated 3025 Mr Johnson Is it -- is it safe to say that an Is that -- would that be a good For a general algorithm yes But it gets a I know it gets a lot more complicated than 3026 that and I am going to get into the complication 3027 there's -- I am a software engineer by trade and I've written 3028 thousands and thousands of algorithms 3029 3030 You know There's as much art that goes into writing an algorithm as there is science 3031 Mr Dorsey 3032 Mr Johnson Would you agree with that I agree with that So and essentially there's a part of the 3033 heart of the algorithm writer that's writing that algorithm 3034 correct NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 143 3035 Mr Dorsey 3036 Mr Johnson In -I mean if you have got a painter -- if you 3037 got -- if you put 10 painters in 10 different rooms and say paint 3038 me a picture of a tree you're going to get Charlie Brown's 3039 Christmas tree in one room 3040 You're going to get a tree with an oak tree and a swing and 3041 grass underneath it 3042 of a tree 3043 algorithm you're going to get 10 different solutions to solve 3044 that problem right 3045 Mr Dorsey 3046 You're going to get 10 different pictures If you ask 10 software engineers to develop you an Which is why testing is so important because we are looking for other algorithms 3047 Mr Johnson Which is why testing is so important What 3048 kind of testing do you guys do with your algorithms to make sure 3049 that that innate bias that's inevitable because you -- it's 3050 already been admitted that Twitter has got bias in your algorithms 3051 because you have acknowledged that and you have tried to correct 3052 it 3053 So how do you go about weeding out that innate bias 3054 you do any peer reviews of your algorithms before you -- before 3055 you send them to production 3056 Mr Dorsey We do do those internally yes NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com Do This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 144 3057 Mr Johnson Well can't you -- can't you modify your 3058 algorithms especially in this age of artificial intelligence 3059 to be more intelligent in identifying and alerting on specific 3060 things 3061 I mean we got -- in the automotive industry today we've 3062 got artificial intelligence in automobiles that doesn't just tell 3063 you that there's in front of you 3064 on 3065 lives It actually puts the brakes It takes some action and it's instantaneous because it saves 3066 Is it unreasonable to think that Twitter could not modify 3067 its algorithms to hit on illegal drug sales on violent 3068 terminology and those kinds of things and make faster alerts 3069 to stop some of this 3070 Mr Dorsey 3071 It's just a matter of work and doing the work and that is our focus 3072 3073 Not unreasonable at all Mr Johnson Okay Well I would submit to you that you need to do that work and you need to get to it pretty quick 3074 Let me ask you another quick question The trending topics 3075 list is a -- is an important issue and I want to understand that 3076 one 3077 be trending 3078 Can you -- can you tell me how a topic is determined to Give me some specific -- what's it based on Mr Dorsey Well so in a tweet when you use a particular NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 145 3079 key word or hashtag when the system notices that those are used 3080 en masse in aggregate it recognizes that there's a velocity shift 3081 in the number of times people are tweeting about a particular 3082 hashtag or trend and it identifies those and then puts them on 3083 that trending topic list 3084 Now there is a default setting where we personalize those 3085 trending topics for you and that is the default 3086 first come on to Twitter trending topics are personalized to 3087 you and it's personalized based on the accounts you follow and 3088 how you engage with tweets and what not 3089 So when you Basically you know we could show you all the trending 3090 topics happening in the world but not all of them are going to 3091 be relevant to you 3092 and rank them accordingly 3093 Mr Johnson 3094 you essentially 3095 Mr Dorsey 3096 Mr Johnson We take the ones that are relevant to you So it's trending based on what's relevant to Correct Okay My time is up But let me just say 3097 this and I said this to Mr Zuckerberg 3098 of massive federal regulations telling you guys how to do your 3099 business the responsibility bar goes really really high 3100 You know in the absence And I think coming back to what Mr Griffith says I think NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 146 3101 you guys need to look at an outside entity of some sort to help 3102 you bounce off ideas of how to address this stuff before legal 3103 or market forces drive you to a place that you're not going to 3104 want to go 3105 The Chairman 3106 Mr Johnson 3107 The Chairman 3108 I yield back The chair now recognizes the gentleman from New York Mr Tonko for four minutes 3109 3110 The gentleman's time has expired Mr Tonko Thank you Mr Chair and thank you Mr Dorsey for all the time you have given the committee 3111 I want to echo my dismay that our Republican colleagues have 3112 chosen to hold this hearing to rile up their base and give credence 3113 to unsupported conspiracies when there are real issues here that 3114 run to the heart of our civic life that deserve our immediate 3115 attention 3116 3117 It is unfortunate and a missed opportunity on behalf of our majority 3118 Mr Dorsey I know that Twitter has said it is taking steps 3119 to help make political advertising more transparent on the 3120 platform and is now working to do something similar with issue 3121 ads 3122 Unfortunately looking at Twitter today I am concerned that NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 147 3123 even for political ads you haven't made anything clear necessarily 3124 to consumers 3125 if a user visits a political or politician's website that user 3126 can immediately see all the advertisement that she or he has 3127 purchased on the platform On some platforms and Facebook for an example 3128 On Twitter I have to find a separate resource -- the ads 3129 transparency center -- and then search for the politician to see 3130 what promotion she or he purchased in the past 3131 difficult to find and seems ill advised particularly when your 3132 competitors are doing it differently and perhaps better 3133 3134 3135 It is indeed So did Twitter do any research regarding how best to make election advertising information available to its consumers Mr Dorsey We did do some research But this is not a 3136 stopping point for us 3137 transparency something that is meeting our customers where they 3138 are so that it is relevant so it's easy to get to 3139 3140 So we want to continue to make ad We did some things a little bit differently We have launched the issue ad feature of the ad transparency as well 3141 But we also enabled anyone even without a Twitter account to 3142 search Twitter ads to see who is behind them and also the targeting 3143 criteria that are used 3144 Mr Tonko Thank you And have you kept any statistics NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 148 3145 that you can share with this committee today about how often 3146 average consumers even searched the ads transparency center 3147 Mr Dorsey 3148 of our products 3149 to give you some relevant information 3150 Mr Tonko We do keep statistics and track usage of all We can certainly follow up with your office Thank you And I know that you said this is 3151 not a stopping point -- that you're still exploring -- but why 3152 is it that it appears that you're making it harder for Americans 3153 to see who's trying to influence them 3154 Mr Dorsey That's not our intention and you know we do 3155 know we need to make -- do a lot more work to meet people where 3156 they are and in the interface there's just some design choices 3157 that we need to make in order to do this the right way 3158 Mr Tonko What's more it seems that political advertising 3159 information that Twitter makes available only shows 3160 advertisements served in the past seven days 3161 3162 3163 Mr Dorsey I don't -- I am not aware right now of the constraints on it Mr Tonko Is that correct But we'll follow up with you Okay But if that is correct that seems vastly 3164 insufficient given that political campaigns in the U S last 3165 months if not years 3166 So Mr Dorsey why doesn't your platform reflect that NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 149 3167 insight and disclose political advertising beyond seven days if 3168 that indeed is the time frame 3169 Mr Dorsey 3170 Mr Tonko 3171 We'll look into that Okay I appreciate that immensely and I thank you 3172 And I yield back Mr Chair the balance of my time 3173 The Chairman 3174 We now go to the gentleman from Missouri Mr Long for four 3175 3176 3177 I thank the gentleman minutes Mr Long Thank you Mr Chairman and thank you Mr Dorsey for being here 3178 I think it's pretty easy to understand why you have been 3179 as successful as you have because your mannerisms today your 3180 decorum -- a lot of people come into these hearings and they 3181 practice and they coach them and they tell them how to act 3182 obvious that no one did that for you 3183 You are who you are and that shows today and I think that 3184 that has a lot to do with how successful you have been 3185 you for your time and being here today 3186 Mr Dorsey 3187 Mr Long 3188 It's So thank Thank you I do have a couple of questions asked you about Moments Mr Bilirakis I am not sure exactly what Moments are NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 150 3189 but when my staff got a hold of me couple days ago they said 3190 well what do you want to ask Mr Dorsey -- where do you want 3191 to take this -- what direction -- do a little research 3192 And I just -- you know off the top of my head I said well 3193 let me send you some stuff so I started shooting them emails 3194 and these are emails that I received -- they're called highlights 3195 as you're familiar with -- daily highlights to my personal Twitter 3196 account about the most interesting content from Twitter that is 3197 tailored just for me 3198 And when we are talking about impartiality and you know 3199 somebody said the Republicans are all full of conspiracy theories 3200 over here I just want you to -- you know you're a thoughtful 3201 guy 3202 to say and do with it what you want to 3203 I just want you to take into consideration what I am going But if you're saying hey we are impartial -- we really are 3204 -- this that and the other out of the -- I pulled -- I just 3205 started firing off emails to my lege director and I sent him eight 3206 -- excuse me 14 emails of highlights that were sent to me just 3207 in the last few days and I guess I don't know it might have 3208 been over 14 days -- I don't know how often you send them 3209 3210 But there's six highlighted tweets per email So that's a total of 84 recent examples that you all picked out and said NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 151 3211 hey this conservative congressman from Missouri -- and thank 3212 goodness you're a Cardinal fan -- but and you being from Missouri 3213 -- but this conservative congressman that we found out what this 3214 guy wants to read and here it is 3215 Twelve of them of the 84 were from Glenn Thrush reporter 3216 for the New York Times Maggie Haberman -- you sent me nine from 3217 her -- White House correspondent for the New York Times political 3218 analyst for CNN Chris Cillizza political commentator for CNN 3219 David Frum senior editor at The Atlantic and MSNBC contributor 3220 Nicole Wallace current anchor of Deadline White House and chief 3221 political analyst for MSNBC and NBC News Sam Stein former 3222 political editor of the Huffington Post politics editor at the 3223 Daily Beast and MSNBC contributor Rep Eric Swalwell Democratic 3224 congressman from California's 15th District Robert Costa 3225 national political reporter for the Washington Post a political 3226 analyst for NBC News and MSNBC Kaitlan Collins White House 3227 correspondent for CNN Michael Schmidt New York Times 3228 correspondent and contributor to MSNBC and NBC Tommy Vietor 3229 former spokesman for President Obama David Corn MSNBC analyst 3230 and author of the Russian Roulette book Kasie Hunt NBC News 3231 correspondent host of MSNBC Show Richard Painter commentator 3232 on MSNBC and CNN outspoken critic of Trump David Axelrod NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 152 3233 commentator for CNN former chief strategist for Obama's 3234 campaign senior advisor to Obama 3235 I did not cherry pick these Here's a Republican -- a former 3236 Republican 3237 one from Bill Kristol founder and editor of the At Large Weekly 3238 and a vocal supporter and a never Trumper guy and you did send 3239 me another one from Fox News -- I will put that in there -- Brit 3240 Hume senior political analyst for Fox News channel 3241 I am not sure what he is now But you did send me I want to submit these for the record so you can peruse them 3242 at your leisure 3243 -- Kristol -- and out of 84 they were handpicked tailored for 3244 me because they know what I want to read But Glenn Thrush Chris 3245 Cillizza -- it just goes on and on 3246 That's the only two I remember being Republican I have I guess 14 pages of them here and they're all pretty 3247 much Trump bashing They're all pretty much Trump bashing 3248 mean if you just go right down the line one after another 3249 So just if you will take that into consideration and I 3250 again I do -- and I think that there was a fake news tweet sent 3251 out yesterday by a guy that was sitting here earlier and he's 3252 not here anymore 3253 3254 John Gizzi -- reporter John Gizzi sent out a fake news tweet yesterday He said he was headed to the Nationals' park -- that NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 153 3255 he was going to watch them beat the Cardinals 3256 news 3257 Laughter 3258 I yield back 3259 Mr Dorsey 3260 3261 3262 Thank you That was fake It doesn't sound like we served you well in matching your interests Mr Duncan Presiding The gentleman's time has expired 3263 The chair will recognize Ms Schakowsky 3264 Ms Schakowsky 3265 So while you have been sitting here all day -- we appreciate Thank you Mr Chairman 3266 that -- according to the Wall Street Journal the Justice 3267 Department to examine whether social media giants are quote 3268 intentionally stifling some viewpoints and it quotes the 3269 president 3270 It says that in an interview Wednesday morning with the Daily 3271 Caller Mr Trump accused social media companies of interfering 3272 in elections in favor of Democrats -- quote The truth is they 3273 were all on Hillary Clinton's side he said 3274 3275 3276 Would you agree with that characterization by the -- by the president Mr Dorsey No NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 154 3277 Ms Schakowsky The other thing it says in this article 3278 is that they expressed -- referring to the -- I guess it's in 3279 the Senate -- they expressed contrition for allowing their 3280 platform to be abused in the past while pledging to make -- 3281 protecting the system from -- the system during the 2018 mid-term 3282 elections a priority 3283 First of all I just want to say about contrition we heard 3284 from Facebook's CEO Mr Zuckerberg one example after another 3285 after another through the years -- you haven't been there that 3286 long Twitter -- of contrition 3287 are sorry 3288 3289 We are sorry we are sorry we But even today if I had listed well we made a mistake -we are going to do better et cetera 3290 So first let me ask you what are you going to do to make 3291 sure that the election is not in some way influenced by foreign 3292 governments in an inappropriate way 3293 3294 Mr Dorsey Well this is -- this is our number-one priority in our information quality efforts -- 3295 Ms Schakowsky 3296 Mr Dorsey I hear that -- and our broader health and we have benefited 3297 from learning from recent elections like the Mexican election 3298 and were able to test and refine a bunch of that work accordingly NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 155 3299 So we are doing a few things First we are opening portals 3300 that allow partners and journalists to report anything suspicious 3301 that they see so that we can take much faster action 3302 Second we are utilizing more technology to identify where 3303 people are trying to artificially amplify information to steer 3304 or detract the conversation 3305 Third we have a much stronger partnership with law 3306 enforcement and federal law enforcement to make sure that we are 3307 getting a regular cadence of meetings that we are seeing more 3308 of the trends going on and that we can understand intent behind 3309 these accounts and activities so we can act much faster as well 3310 Ms Schakowsky Well I appreciate that because that's 3311 where the emphasis ought to be 3312 and the Republicans have concocted this idea of a supposed 3313 anti-conservative bias to it seems to me distract from the fact 3314 that the -- that their majority has absolutely done nothing to 3315 prevent foreign governments from using social media platforms 3316 to spread misinformation and if we don't do that then I think 3317 our democracy itself is actually at stake 3318 I have to tell you the president But also in terms of your motives Mr Dorsey the majority 3319 of Twitter's revenue comes from selling advertising on the 3320 platform right NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 156 3321 Mr Dorsey 3322 Ms Schakowsky 3323 Correct And Twitter is a for-profit publicly-traded company 3324 Mr Dorsey 3325 Ms Schakowsky Is that right Correct And generally speaking businesses 3326 political campaigns and other advertisers choose to advertise 3327 on Twitter because Twitter promises to deliver targeted 3328 highly-engaged audience 3329 say 3330 Mr Dorsey 3331 Ms Schakowsky Is that agree -- is that what you'd Correct So you actually said that you are 3332 incentivized -- it says Twitter is incentivized to keep all voices 3333 on the platform 3334 Mr Dorsey Is that correct No That is where we need to make sure that 3335 we are questioning our own senses but also we understand that 3336 making health our top and singular priority means that we are 3337 going to be removing accounts and we have done so 3338 Ms Schakowsky Okay I am quoting actually -- that you 3339 said from a business perspective Twitter is incentivized to keep 3340 all voices on the platform 3341 3342 Mr Dorsey Oh All perspectives meant more the accounts But I thought you But we do want to make sure that we NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 157 3343 are -- you know we believe we are used as a public square for 3344 people and that all perspectives should be represented 3345 Ms Schakowsky 3346 Mr Dorsey Thank you 3347 Mr Duncan The gentlelady's time has expired 3348 3349 3350 3351 Thank you and thank you for being here The chair will recognize the gentleman from Indiana Mr Bucshon Mr Bucshon Thank you Thank you Mr Dorsey for being here I just want to say I don't think -- I don't see this as 3352 particularly partisan The hearing I think is completely 3353 appropriate and relevant to the American people across political 3354 ideology 3355 I would respectfully disagree with my Democrat colleagues 3356 and some of the comments they've made and I would just like to 3357 say this 3358 Ironically in my view they're the ones most likely to want 3359 heavy-handed government intervention into your industry and I 3360 would argue that people like me Republicans are trying to help 3361 you avoid it So take that for what it's worth 3362 You know you have implied and you have said that Twitter 3363 is taking all these different actions to improve all the things 3364 that you're doing as it relates to algorithms and other things NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 158 3365 3366 What's your time line And I know you have said that this 3367 is an ongoing process right 3368 not going to get a checkered flag right 3369 line for getting some of this really done 3370 Mr Dorsey You're never going to -- you're But what's your time We want to move as fast as possible and I know 3371 that's a frustrating answer because it's really hard to predict 3372 these outcomes and how long they may take 3373 But it is our singular objective as a company in terms of 3374 improving the -- increasing the health of the public square that 3375 we are hosting 3376 Mr Bucshon Yes Thank you 3377 So how do -- is there any way that users and third parties 3378 can verify whether or not their political standards or judgments 3379 are embedded accidentally into Twitter's algorithms 3380 I mean I guess I am asking is are your algorithms publicly 3381 available for independent coders to assess whether there is bias 3382 whether it's intended or unintended 3383 Mr Dorsey Not today But that is a -- that is an area 3384 we are looking at and we'd love to be more open as a company 3385 including our algorithms and how they work 3386 We don't yet know the best way to do that We also have NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 159 3387 to consider in some cases when we are more clear about how our 3388 algorithms work it allows for gaming of the system so people 3389 taking advantage of it 3390 Mr Bucshon 3391 Mr Dorsey 3392 Yes So we need to be cognizant of that and it's not a blocker by any means 3393 Mr Bucshon 3394 Mr Dorsey Oh I understand We'd love for it to be open But that's the 3395 big -- that's a big understanding that we need to -- we need to 3396 understand how to correct 3397 Mr Bucshon Yes I totally get that I could see where 3398 if the algorithms were there then smart people are going to find 3399 ways to subvert that right 3400 proprietariness there that you may have a competitor in the future 3401 named something else and you don't want your processes out there 3402 3403 And there's some -- probably some I totally respect that Mr Dorsey 3404 compete 3405 whatever we find 3406 Mr Bucshon Although this is an area we don't want to We do not want to compete on health Okay We want to share And I think many people have said you 3407 know all of us whether we know it or not have some inherent 3408 biases based on where we grew up what our background is what NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 160 3409 our life experiences are 3410 So I am kind of -- I am really interested in how you recruit 3411 you know to your company because I think -- I mean obviously 3412 the tech industry has had some criticism about its level of 3413 diversity 3414 But I think it would be important to kind of get your feel 3415 for if you're going to have -- if you're going to avoid group 3416 think and you're creating algorithms how do you -- how do you 3417 recruit and -- I mean you're not going to ask somebody hey 3418 are you pro-Trump or against Trump 3419 I get that right But you want to have -- I would argue 3420 you want to have people from everywhere different races men 3421 women different political view because our -- my impression 3422 is is like diversity is in some respects in certain industries 3423 fine as long as it's not political diversity 3424 3425 So how do you -- can you give me a sense of how you kind of build the team 3426 Mr Dorsey 3427 the company right now 3428 our workforce out of San Francisco 3429 in San Francisco 3430 Yes This is an active conversation within We recognize that we need to decentralize Not everyone wants to be Not everyone wants to work in San Francisco Not everyone can afford to even come close to living in San NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 161 3431 3432 Francisco and it's not fair So we are considering ways of how we hire more broadly across 3433 every geography across this country and also around the world 3434 and being a lot more flexible 3435 technology is enabling more of that and we are really excited 3436 about this and I am personally excited to not consider San 3437 Francisco to be a headquarters but to be a more distributed 3438 company 3439 Mr Bucshon Yes It's finally the case that I just want to say I think it's very 3440 important to make sure that companies like yours do get a variety 3441 of perspectives within your employee base 3442 Thank you 3443 Mr Dorsey 3444 Mr Bucshon 3445 Mr Dorsey Thank you 3446 Mr Duncan The chair will recognize the gentleman from 3447 3448 3449 3450 I agree Thanks for being here California Mr Ruiz for four minutes Mr Ruiz Mr Dorsey you have had a long day You're in the home stretch So thank you for being with us today I am glad my colleagues 3451 on this side of the aisle have been focussing on the issues that 3452 are very important to our democracy and how we combat foreign NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 162 3453 influences and bots and harassment and other challenges on your 3454 platform 3455 I would like to take a step back and look more precisely 3456 at the makeup of Twitter's users and I am not sure we or even 3457 possibly you have a true understanding of who is really using 3458 your services and your website 3459 So as you have said previously the number of followers an 3460 account has is critically important both in terms of the 3461 prominence of an account but also the ranking of algorithms that 3462 push content to users 3463 So when tens of thousands of new accounts created every day 3464 both real and fake and by humans and bots alike I am concerned 3465 about the accuracy of those numbers we are using here today and 3466 the implications those numbers have 3467 3468 So you have said that 5 percent of your accounts are false or spam accounts 3469 Mr Dorsey 3470 Mr Ruiz 3471 3472 3473 3474 Is that correct Correct Okay And is that -- how do you measure that Is that at any one time or is that over the course of any one year How did you come to the conclusion of 5 percent Mr Dorsey Yes We have various methods of identification most of them automations and machine learning NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 163 3475 algorithms to identify these in real time looking at the 3476 behaviors of those accounts and -- 3477 3478 3479 3480 Mr Ruiz So that's how you identify which ones are false But how did you come up with the 5 percent estimate of total users are fake Mr Dorsey Well it's 5 percent we believe are taking 3481 on spammy like behaviors which would indicate an automation or 3482 some sort of coordination to amplify information beyond their 3483 earned reach 3484 So we are looking at behaviors and that number -- 3485 Mr Ruiz So you just take that number versus the total 3486 number of users 3487 Mr Dorsey 3488 3489 The total -- the total active and that number has remained fairly consistent over time Mr Ruiz Okay In 2015 you reported that you had 302 3490 million monthly active users on your platform 3491 317 million monthly active users 3492 2018 you said 335 million monthly active users In 2017 330 million and in 3493 How do you define monthly active users 3494 Mr Dorsey 3495 3496 In 2016 it was It's someone who engages with the service within the month Mr Ruiz So is that somebody who tweets or somebody who NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 164 3497 retweets or somebody who just logs in 3498 Mr Dorsey 3499 Mr Ruiz Someone who just logs in Okay And is it 5 percent of those yearly numbers 3500 that you believe to be spam of the -- somebody who just simply 3501 logs in 3502 Mr Dorsey Yes who are taking on spam like behaviors or 3503 spam like threats 3504 Mr Ruiz 3505 And has the 5 percent been consistent over the years 3506 Mr Dorsey 3507 Mr Ruiz It has been consistent Okay So we have heard reports of hundreds of 3508 Twitter accounts run by just one person It's my understanding 3509 that each of those accounts are counted as separate monthly active 3510 users Is that correct 3511 Mr Dorsey 3512 Mr Ruiz Correct Okay Good So my concern with these questions 3513 is that the number of followers an account has which is 3514 obviously comprised of the subset of those 335 million Twitter 3515 users is an incredibly important metric to your site and one 3516 you even said this morning in front of the Senate presented too 3517 much of an inventive for account holders 3518 Based on what we've heard though it appears that the number NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 165 3519 of followers may not be an accurate representation of how many 3520 real people follow any given account 3521 For example last year Twitter added roughly 13 million 3522 users but early today you said you are flagging or removing 8 3523 to 10 million per week 3524 3525 3526 How can we be confident the 5 percent fraudulent account number you are citing is accurate Mr Dorsey Well we -- we are constantly updating our 3527 numbers and our understanding of our system and getting better 3528 and better at that 3529 Mr Ruiz We do see our work to mitigate -- Before we end the time I am going to ask you 3530 one question and you can submit the information if you don't 3531 mind and that's basically in medicine or any screening utility 3532 -- I am a doctor -- for any screening utility we use a specificity 3533 and sensitivity and that just measures how well your methodology 3534 works 3535 have 3536 have 3537 And the higher specificity the lower false positive you The higher sensitivity the lower false negatives that you In this case you can see the different arguments is how 3538 many false positives versus how many false negatives We are 3539 concerned that you're going to have false negatives with the 3540 Russian bots NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 166 3541 3542 3543 Some are concerned that your false positive you're taking out people that legitimately should be on there So if you can report to us what those specificity and 3544 sensitivity of your mechanism in identifying bots I would really 3545 appreciate that 3546 strengths are and where your weaknesses are That will give us a sense of where your 3547 Mr Dorsey Thank you 3548 Mr Duncan Point's well-made and the gentleman's time has 3549 expired 3550 The chair will go to Mr Flores from Texas 3551 Mr Flores 3552 3553 I thank you Mr Chair and I appreciate Mr Dorsey you showing up to help us today If you don't mind I am going to run through a bunch of 3554 questions it will take and ask Twitter to supplementally ask those 3555 later -- or excuse me answer those later and then I have a 3556 question or two at the close that I would like to try to get asked 3557 Our local broadcasters provide a valuable service when it 3558 comes to emergency broadcasting or broadcasting of different 3559 events that happen 3560 the TV station that was attacked this morning and the first notice 3561 he got was on Twitter 3562 You heard Mr Burgess earlier talk about So my question is this Should Twitter be considered a NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 167 3563 trusted advisor in the emergency alerting system and how do you 3564 manage the intentional or unintentional spread of misinformation 3565 or abuse by bad actors on this platform during times of emergency 3566 And you can supplementally answer that if you would 3567 And then the next question is -- this has to do with free 3568 speech and expression -- does Twitter proactively review its 3569 content to determine whether a user has violated its rules or 3570 is it only done once another user voices the concerns 3571 And the next question is do you have a set of values that 3572 Twitter follows when it makes decisions about flagged content 3573 or is it done on a case by case basis and which individuals at 3574 Twitter make judgement calls 3575 The next one has to do with how do you -- this is a conceptual 3576 question I would like you to try to answer and that's how do 3577 you balance filtering versus -- and moderating versus free speech 3578 3579 3580 3581 3582 I mean there's always this tenuous balance between those two So if you could I would like to have you respond to that Then we need some definition We are not trying to legislate This is an oversight hearing We are just trying to -- and 3583 not trying to get into fights -- we are just trying to get -- 3584 to learn about this space NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 168 3585 And so I would like to have Twitter's definitions of 3586 behavior Twitter's definition of hateful conduct Twitter's 3587 definition of low quality tweets 3588 I would like to -- an explanation of the abuse reports 3589 process and also you said you had signals for ranking and 3590 filtering 3591 can 3592 I would like to know how that process works if we I would like to know more about the Trust and Safety Council 3593 how it works and its membership -- some of that's publicly 3594 available some of it's not -- and then the Twitter definition 3595 of suspicious activity 3596 And here's the question I have in the last minute that I 3597 have that I would like you to respond to 3598 media space has been through some tumultuous times over the past 3599 18 to 24 months and so my question is this 3600 A lot of the social If we were to have a hearing a year from now what would 3601 be the three biggest changes that Twitter has made that you would 3602 share with Congress 3603 Mr Dorsey That's an excellent question So I believe 3604 first and foremost we see a lot of progress on increasing the 3605 health of public conversation 3606 Second I believe that we have reduced a bunch of the burden NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 169 3607 that a victim has to go through in order to report any content 3608 that is against them or silencing their voice or causing them 3609 to not want to participate in the public space in the first place 3610 And then third we have a deeper understanding of the 3611 real-world effects off platform of our service both to the broader 3612 public and also to the individual as well and those are things 3613 that I think we can and will make a lot of progress on the latter 3614 one being probably the hardest to determine 3615 going to learn a lot within these 2018 elections 3616 Mr Flores Okay But I think we are I thank you for your responses and I 3617 know you have got team people back there that took good notes 3618 on the other ones that I left for supplemental disclosure 3619 Thank you 3620 Mr Costello 3621 The gentleman from Illinois Mr Rush is recognized for 3622 3623 3624 I yield back Presiding Yields back four minutes Mr Rush Mr Dorsey I certainly want to thank you for being here and for really enduring this marathon of questions 3625 I want to go back to the beginning of this hearing where 3626 Mr Pallone discussed the need for an independent third party 3627 institute to conduct a civil rights audit of Twitter and I am 3628 not sure of your answer It was kind of vague to me NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 170 3629 So I ask the question are you willing to commit to or are 3630 you saying that Twitter will consider Mr Pallone's request 3631 Is that a commitment or is that just a consideration 3632 Mr Dorsey Yes We are -- we are willing to commit to 3633 working with you and staff to understand how to do this best in 3634 a way that is -- that is actually going to show what we can track 3635 and the results 3636 But I think that is a dialogue we need to have 3637 Mr Rush 3638 Chicago is experiencing an epidemic of violence particularly 3639 as it relates to our young people and Facebook has already been 3640 confirmed as an asset that is being used by some of these young 3641 people to commit violence 3642 Thank you And my question to you are you aware of where Twitter was 3643 used to organize or perpetuate any form of street violence 3644 anywhere in the nation and certainly in Chicago 3645 Mr Dorsey We do look at cases and reports where people 3646 are utilizing Twitter and coordinating in terms of having 3647 off-platform violence 3648 3649 3650 We do have a violent extremist group policy where we do look at off-platform information to make judgments Mr Rush And is there an automatic process for the removal NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 171 3651 3652 of such posts Mr Dorsey Yes There is a reporting process But 3653 again it does require right now for removal of the post a report 3654 of the violation 3655 Mr Rush So are they removed though 3656 Mr Dorsey 3657 Mr Rush 3658 Mr Dorsey 3659 Mr Rush 3660 Mr Dorsey Sorry Are they removed How many have been removed No We -- Have you removed any Have we removed any We do often remove 3661 content that violates our terms of service 3662 of enforcement actions that ranges from a warning to temporary 3663 suspension and removal of the offending tweet all the way to a 3664 permanent suspension of the -- of the account 3665 Mr Rush All right We have a series In that regard do you also have any 3666 authoritative actions that you have taken to inform local police 3667 departments of these kind of activities 3668 Mr Dorsey We do -- we do have partnerships with local 3669 enforcement and law enforcement agencies all over the world and 3670 we do inform them as necessary 3671 Mr Rush 3672 question here All right Let me ask you one other final I want to switch Your legal and policy chief NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 172 3673 told Politico yesterday and I quote There is not a blanket 3674 exception for the president or anyone else when it comes to abusive 3675 tweeting 3676 3677 3678 Do you consider President Trump's tweets to be abusive or harmful at all Mr Dorsey We hold every account to the same standards 3679 in the consistency of our enforcement 3680 our terms of service that allows for public interest and 3681 understanding of public interest per tweet and you know we 3682 definitely weigh that as we consider enforcement 3683 Mr Rush 3684 Mr Costello 3685 Mr Pallone We do have a clause within Mr Chairman my time is -Yes Mr Chairman I seek unanimous consent to 3686 submit a statement for the record on behalf of our colleague 3687 Representative Anna Eshoo of California 3688 Mr Costello Without objection 3689 The information follows 3690 3691 COMMITTEE INSERT 6 NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 173 3692 3693 3694 Mr Costello The gentlelady from Indiana Mrs Brooks is recognized for four minutes Mrs Brooks Thank you and thank you Mr Dorsey for being 3695 here today and for sitting through an entirely very long day of 3696 a lot of questions 3697 And I want to share with you and stay a little bit on the 3698 public safety angle In 2015 I was very pleased because we got 3699 signed into law the Department of Homeland Security Social Media 3700 Improvement Act bill and this group has been meeting which I 3701 am pleased that they organized and have been meeting 3702 They've issued about three different reports and actually 3703 one of the reports is focused on highlighting countering false 3704 information and disasters and emergencies 3705 Another one focuses on best practices of incorporating 3706 social media into their exercises -- public safety exercise all 3707 the time and then how do they operationalize social media for 3708 public safety 3709 I would be curious whether or not you and your team A if 3710 you even knew anything about this group and whether or not you 3711 and your team might be willing to assist this group 3712 While I recognize that you have contacts around the globe 3713 there actually is a group -- a public safety social media group NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 174 3714 that's very focussed on this and I think we need to have better 3715 interaction between the social media platforms and organizations 3716 and the public safety community so they can figure this out 3717 Is that something you might be willing to consider 3718 Mr Dorsey 3719 Yes I was not aware of it honestly but I am sure my team is and we'll definitely consider 3720 Mrs Brooks 3721 I am curious and I asked Mr Zuckerberg this when he appeared 3722 before us -- with respect to the terrorism groups and the extremist 3723 groups that you monitor and that you take down -- and I have seen 3724 reports that in a short period of time July of 2017 to December 3725 of 2017 you actually took down 274 460 Twitter accounts in a 3726 six-month period relative to promoting terrorism and so that's 3727 a -- seems like a very large number of accounts and I am afraid 3728 that people believe that it's not happening 3729 it as much 3730 Thank you We don't hear about Can you -- and I understand that you have worked with Google 3731 YouTube Facebook and others to create a shared database of 3732 prohibited videos and images 3733 that either 3734 working together and collaborating 3735 But we don't hear anything about Is this database still in use Mr Dorsey Yes Are you all still We are still working together and this NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 175 3736 is a very active collaboration and a lot of you know the work 3737 we've been doing over years continues to bear a lot of fruit here 3738 3739 But we are happy to send to the committee more detailed results 3740 We do have this in our transparency report Mrs Brooks And I was going to ask the transparency report 3741 -- and you have talked about that a few times -- it's not done 3742 yet 3743 Is that right Mr Dorsey It's not finished yet for actions upon content 3744 in accounts that have to do with our health aspects 3745 terrorism accounts 3746 Mrs Brooks It is finished there It is for All of these questions 3747 that you have gotten and there have been a lot of things can 3748 we expect that a lot of these things might be in that transparency 3749 report that people have been asking you about 3750 Mr Dorsey Yes The first step is to figure out what is 3751 most meaningful to put in there 3752 document so that people can get meaningful insight in terms of 3753 how we are doing and what we are seeing and what we are dealing 3754 with and then we need to aggregate all that data 3755 So really designing the So we are in the early phases of designing this document 3756 and how we are thinking about it But we'd like to move fast 3757 on it because we do believe it will help earn trust NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 176 3758 Mrs Brooks Well and certainly from a public safety 3759 perspective you can't and shouldn't divulge everything that you 3760 do relative to helping keep us safe 3761 And while I appreciate that it is very important to have 3762 an open dialogue and to have the -- as much information as possible 3763 in the conversation in the public square 3764 I certainly hope that your work with law enforcement -- 3765 we need to make sure the bad guys don't understand what you're 3766 doing to help us 3767 3768 And so I thank you and look forward to your continued work in this space 3769 Mr Dorsey 3770 Mrs Brooks 3771 The Chairman 3772 3773 3774 Thank you so much Thank you Presiding The gentlelady's time has expired The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Pennsylvania Mr Costello for four minutes 3775 Mr Costello Thank you 3776 Mr Dorsey in your testimony you identified a handful of 3777 behavioral signals but you noted Twitter uses thousands of 3778 behavioral signals in your behavioral-based ranking models 3779 Could you provide the committee with a complete accounting NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 177 3780 of all of these signals 3781 Mr Dorsey We -- a lot of those signals are changing 3782 constantly So even if we present one today it might change 3783 within a week or within a month 3784 The point is that it's not a thousand behavioral signals 3785 It's a thousand decision-making criteria and signals that the 3786 algorithms use 3787 And I don't mean exactly a thousand -- it could be hundreds 3788 it could be thousands -- they all vary -- to actually make 3789 decisions 3790 Mr Costello Would you consider providing a more expansive 3791 list of signals beyond the small handful that you have provided 3792 specifically those that seem to endure and that don't change week 3793 to week 3794 Mr Dorsey We are looking at ways to open up how our 3795 algorithms work and what criteria they use to make decisions 3796 We don't have conclusions just yet and the reason why we are 3797 pausing a little bit here and considering is because by giving 3798 up certain criteria we may be enabling more gaming of the system 3799 -- 3800 Mr Costello 3801 Mr Dorsey Sure -- taking advantage of the system so that NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 178 3802 people can bypass our protections 3803 Mr Costello You used the term a little earlier curators 3804 Is that a term -- is that a position within your company or did 3805 you just kind of -- could you -- what's a curator at your company 3806 do 3807 Mr Dorsey Yes We have a -- we have a product within 3808 Twitter called Moments and what it is is if you go to the search 3809 icon you can see a collection of tweets that are actually arranged 3810 by humans organized around a particular event or a topic 3811 it might be a supporting game for example So 3812 And we have curators who are looking for all the tweets that 3813 would be relevant and one of the things that they want to ensure 3814 is that we are seeing a bunch of different perspectives -- 3815 3816 3817 Mr Costello Relevant based on my behavior and do I have to manually do that or is that going to show up in my feed Mr Dorsey It's a -- we do that work and then sometimes 3818 you make it a Moment that is more personalized to you based on 3819 your behavior 3820 In some cases all people get the same Moment Mr Costello Would that be subject -- and listen the 3821 bias issue -- but would that -- that would open up consideration 3822 for there to be more bias in any way 3823 Bias can mean a lot of different things It doesn't even NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 179 3824 have to be political 3825 sort of subjective determination on what might be of interest 3826 -- what might pop more -- what might get more retweets comments 3827 et cetera 3828 Mr Dorsey That's -- so your curators are making some Well they use a data-driven approach based 3829 on the percentage of conversation that people are seeing So 3830 we are trying to reflect how much this is being talked about on 3831 the network first and foremost and then checking it against 3832 impartiality and also making sure that we are increasing the 3833 variety of perspective 3834 Mr Costello I appreciated your testimony -- your written 3835 testimony You said something in there that interests me and 3836 that -- a lot of things -- but one was you have no incentive to 3837 remove people from your -- in other words you have no incentive 3838 to remove conservatives from your platform because the more people 3839 talking the better 3840 But it strikes me that in -- when we are talking about hate 3841 speech or personal insults or things that are just straight up 3842 mean there's kind of -- there's an incentive not remove that stuff 3843 if it's driving more participation 3844 How do you reconcile that 3845 Mr Dorsey It's an excellent question and something that NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 180 3846 we have balanced in terms of number one our singular objective 3847 is to increase the health of this public square and this public 3848 space and we realize that in the short term that will mean 3849 removing accounts 3850 And we do believe that increasing the health of the public 3851 conversation on Twitter is a growth vector for us but only in 3852 the long term and we -- you know over the -- over the past few 3853 months we've taken a lot of actions to remove accounts en masse 3854 3855 We reported this during our -- during our past earnings call 3856 and you know the reaction was what it was But we did that 3857 because we believe that over the long term these are the right 3858 moves so that we can continue to serve a healthy public square 3859 The Chairman The gentleman's time -- 3860 Mr Costello Yes 3861 The Chairman The chair now recognizes the gentleman from 3862 3863 3864 Thank you I yield back Oklahoma Mr Mullin for four Mr Mullin Thank you Mr Chairman and Mr Dorsey thank you so much for being here 3865 I've got a question and this isn't a gotcha question 3866 a point that -- to which I want to try to make because as my 3867 colleague from Virginia Mr Griffith said earlier he doesn't NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com It's This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 181 3868 3869 believe that you're doing it on purpose It's just that the way things are working out the system 3870 to which you guys use to figure out who's going to be censored 3871 and who's not 3872 3873 So my question is would you consider yourself conservative Liberal Socialist How would you -- how would you consider 3874 your political views 3875 Mr Dorsey I try to focus on the issues so I don't -- 3876 Mr Mullin Well I know but the issues are at hand and 3877 that's what I am trying to ask 3878 Mr Dorsey What issues in particular 3879 Mr Mullin Well okay 3880 If you're not going to -- are you a registered voter 3881 Mr Dorsey I am a registered voter 3882 Mr Mullin Republican 3883 Mr Dorsey Independent 3884 Mr Mullin Independent Democrat So as a business owner myself 3885 different departments that I have seem to take on the personality 3886 of the ones that I have running it -- the people that I have running 3887 a department or a business or an organization 3888 3889 When I stepped down as CEO of my company the new CEO took on a different personality and the employees followed NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com And we This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 182 3890 are choosing one mind set over another in some way regardless 3891 if you're doing it on purpose or not 3892 The way that it is being picked the way it's being portrayed 3893 is somewhat obvious and let me just simply make my point here 3894 2016 presidential campaign the Twitter -- Twitter was 3895 accused of suspending an anti-Hillary focussed account and 3896 de-emphasized popular hashtags 3897 Marsha Blackburn's campaign video for an ad platform calling 3898 it inflammatory 3899 October 2017 Twitter barred November 2017 rogue -- a single rogue employee deactivated 3900 Trump's account for 11 minutes That's shocking that a single 3901 rogue employee could actually have that much authority to do that 3902 3903 That's a different question for a different day maybe 3904 July 2018 Twitter was accused of limiting visibility of certain 3905 Republican politicians by preventing their official accounts from 3906 appearing in sites -- auto-populated drop down searches -- search 3907 bar results 3908 August 2018 conservative activist Candace Owens' account 3909 was suspended after essentially imitating a account from a New 3910 York Times editorial board member Susan -- I think I am 3911 pronouncing this right -- Jeong Are you familiar with this NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 183 3912 Mr Dorsey Yes 3913 Mr Mullin Let me read what Ms Jeong wrote 3914 #cancelwhitepeople 3915 their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants 3916 people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun thus 3917 logically being only fit to live underground like grovelling 3918 goblins 3919 much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men 3920 mouth to populate -- to politely greet a Republican but nothing 3921 but an unending cascade of vomiting flows from my mouth 3922 3923 3924 White people marking up the internet with Are white Oh man it's kind of sick how much I enjoy -- or how I open my Now that same tweet went out by Candace Owens but replaced Jewish for white Ms Owens' account was suspended and flagged The New York Times reporter's account wasn't 3925 What's the difference 3926 Mr Dorsey We -- so we did make a mistake with Owens -- 3927 Mr Mullin But I've heard you say that multiple times -- 3928 we made a mistake -- we made a mistake 3929 the whole time you have been up here and you have been very polite 3930 and pretty awesome at doing it 3931 I've heard you say that But the fact is it's bigger than a mistake It's the 3932 environment to which I think Twitter has My point of the first 3933 question was does that fit your political views to which your NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 184 3934 company is following 3935 The Chairman 3936 Mr Mullin 3937 Mr Dorsey Because there seems to be -- The gentleman's time --- a pattern here No it doesn't I value variety in perspective 3938 and I value seeing people from all walks of life and all points 3939 of views and we do make errors along the way both in terms of 3940 our algorithms and also the people who are following guidelines 3941 to review content 3942 Mr Mullin 3943 The Chairman 3944 Mr Mullin 3945 The Chairman 3946 3947 The -The gentleman's time has expired Thank you I yield back The chair recognizes the gentleman from Michigan Mr Walberg for four minutes Mr Walberg Thank you Mr Chairman and thank you Mr 3948 Dorsey for being here and it's been a long day for you 3949 an important day though 3950 It's I guess the only complaint I would have thus far is that 3951 your staff didn't prepare well enough to go through 535 members 3952 of Congress to see if there were any biases and have those figures 3953 for us today that you could answer 3954 3955 I would assume that they should have thought that with Republicans and Democrats here and the statements that we've heard NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 185 3956 from the other side of the aisle that that question would come 3957 up -- those facts those statistics -- at least on the members 3958 -- 535 members 3959 It would have been worth being able to answer right today 3960 with an imperative no there was no bias or yes it appears there 3961 was a bias 3962 That's the only complaint I have But let me -- let me go to the questions In a July 26th 3963 blog post Twitter asserted and I quote We believe the issue 3964 had more to do with how other people were interacting with these 3965 representatives' accounts 3966 What specific signals or actions of other accounts 3967 interacting with the representative's account would you suggest 3968 -- this is my question -- contributed to the auto suggest issue 3969 3970 3971 3972 3973 3974 3975 Mr Dorsey The behaviors we were seeing were actual violations of our terms of service Mr Walberg Clear violations of your terms -- would muting or blocking another user's account contribute to that Mr Dorsey No These were reported violations that we reviewed and found in violation Mr Walberg And retweeting or boosting wouldn't be a 3976 contribution to what you did either Does Twitter have policies 3977 and procedures in place to notify accounts or users when their NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 186 3978 3979 messages or content have been hidden from other users Mr Dorsey We don't have enough of this so we don't -- 3980 we do have a lot of work to do to help people understand why -- 3981 right in the products why we might rank or why we might filter 3982 or put their content behind an interstitial and that is an area 3983 of improvement 3984 Mr Walberg So we haven't done enough work there So while -- and I appreciate the fact you don't 3985 -- you don't want to have users be responsible for contacting 3986 you about issues you ought to be catching some of this stuff 3987 3988 You have no specific time line or strong policy in place 3989 to notify me for instance that there's a reason why you have 3990 taken me down blocked or whatever for the time being so I can 3991 at least respond to that and can make a change so that I am a 3992 productive positive member of Twitter 3993 Mr Dorsey Well if we take any enforcement action that 3994 results in removal of content or asking the removal you get 3995 notified immediately 3996 Mr Walberg 3997 Mr Dorsey 3998 Immediately It's just a question of the filtering or the time ranking that we don't have a great way of doing this today 3999 NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 187 4000 It is our intention to look deeper into this but -- and I 4001 know this is a frustrating answer but the time lines are a little 4002 bit unpredictable 4003 important concept for us to push because we want to earn more 4004 people's trust 4005 Mr Walberg But we do believe that transparency is an With regard to internet service providers 4006 they're required to disclose if they are throttling or blocking 4007 their services 4008 Of course that's been a big issue Would you be open to a similar set of transparency rules 4009 when you have taken actions that could be viewed as blocking or 4010 throttling of content 4011 Mr Dorsey We are considering a transparency report around 4012 our actions regarding content like this 4013 right now of understanding what is going to be most useful in 4014 designing the document and then to do the engineering work to 4015 put it in place we can aggregate all the information 4016 4017 4018 We are in the phases But I do think it's a good idea and something that I do think helps earn people's trust Mr Walberg Well I wish you well on it because I don't 4019 want to be like my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that 4020 want to regulate 4021 we have This is the amazing social media opportunity NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 188 4022 We want to keep it going -- keep it going proper I don't 4023 want to see government get involved in regulating if you folks 4024 can do the job yourselves 4025 Thank you I yield back 4026 The Chairman 4027 The chair recognizes Mr Duncan for four minutes 4028 Mr Duncan The gentleman yields back Thank you Mr Chairman and Mr Dorsey thank 4029 you for being here We've heard a lot today about content 4030 filters shadow banning and a little bit about bias and I would 4031 like to focus on bias for just a second 4032 A member of my staff recently created a test Twitter account 4033 working on a communications project unrelated to this topic and 4034 even before we knew that this hearing was going to take place 4035 They were interested to note who was listed on the 4036 suggestions for you to follow list 4037 conservative congressional staffer on a work computer whose 4038 search history definitely doesn't lean left 4039 was an email address and a 202 area code phone number 4040 This is a pro-life All they entered Yet here's who Twitter suggested they follow and you will 4041 see it on the screen Nancy Pelosi Kamala Harris John Dingell 4042 Chuck Schumer John Kerry Ben Rhodes David Axelrod Kirsten 4043 Gillibrand Jim Acosta Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Paul Krugman NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 189 4044 Madeline Albright Claire McCaskill Chuck Todd and Jon Lovett 4045 -- all left leaning political types 4046 suggested for you to follow 4047 That's all she got as Forget the fact that there aren't any Republicans or 4048 conservatives on that list No singers no actors no athletes 4049 no celebrities 4050 even get Taylor Swift Chris Pratt Christiano Ronoldo or Kim 4051 Kardashian 4052 screen She's a 20-something female staffer Didn't All she got was the suggestions that I had on the 4053 Look it's one thing not to promote conservatives even though 4054 Donald Trump is the -- truly the most successful Twitter user 4055 in history of the site 4056 but President Trump has utilized Twitter in unprecedented ways 4057 to get around the traditional news media 4058 Say what you want about what he tweets I would think that someone in your position would be 4059 celebrating that and him rather than trying to undermine him 4060 So how do you explain how a female 20-something-year-old who 4061 just put in an email address and a 202 area code -- why does she 4062 only get the liberal suggestions 4063 Mr Dorsey We simply don't have enough information in that 4064 case to build up a more informed suggestion for her 4065 number is all we have so therefore -- So the 202 NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 190 4066 Mr Duncan So I get that you don't have much information 4067 on her One hundred percent of the suggested followers were 4068 biased Where was Kim Kardashian 4069 Taylor Swift 4070 Huge Twitter -- where was Where was Ariana Grande In fact I can look at Twitter most followers and they're 4071 not these people that you suggested for her 4072 in her -- on her search history on a government work computer 4073 to suggest that she was left leaning or right leaning or anything 4074 4075 4076 There was nothing Katy Perry number one -- she wasn't on this list How do you explain that Mr Dorsey I think it was just looking at the 202 as a 4077 D C number and then taking D C -based accounts and the most 4078 followed probably or most engaged with D C accounts 4079 Mr Duncan In the 202 area code area 4080 Mr Dorsey In the 202 area code 4081 Mr Duncan Okay 4082 Ovechkin 4083 D C United 4084 Where's Bryce Harper Where are the Capitols As -- Where's Where are the Nats Where's Where are the sports teams If you're going to use 202 area code and say that's one of 4085 the filters where are those folks you know outside of the 4086 political arena 4087 There are no athletes There are no singers There are no celebrities NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 191 4088 4089 4090 4091 There were only suggested political figures of a very liberal persuasion that were suggested for her to follow Nobody else That shows bias sir Mr Dorsey Well yes I mean we do have a lot more work 4092 to do in terms of our onboarding and obviously you're pointing 4093 out some weaknesses in our -- in our signals that we use to craft 4094 those recommendations 4095 So I -- you know as she continues -- if she were to start 4096 following or following particular accounts or engaging with 4097 particular tweets that model would completely change based on 4098 those 4099 We just don't have information It sounds like we are not 4100 being exhaustive enough with the one piece of information we do 4101 have which is her area code 4102 Mr Duncan Mr Dorsey let me ask you this After this 4103 hearing and me clearly showing this bias and a lot of other 4104 questions if someone in a 202 area code that's 28 years old sets 4105 up a Twitter account with very limited information but has an 4106 email address and a 202 area code -- 4107 The Chairman 4108 Mr Duncan 4109 Gentleman's time --- are you going to tell me today that they're going to get other suggested followers than the liberals that NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 192 4110 I mentioned 4111 Mr Dorsey 4112 The Chairman 4113 Mr Duncan 4114 The Chairman 4115 That is not a good outcome for us Gentleman's time has expired Mr Chairman thank you The chair recognizes the gentlelady from California Mrs Walters for four minutes 4116 Mrs Walters Thank you Mr Dorsey for being here 4117 News reports indicate that Periscope -- as you know is 4118 Twitter's live video feed app -- is being used to sexually exploit 4119 children 4120 young as nine years old 4121 These reports detail the targeting of children as At times coordinated activity for multiple users is 4122 employed to persuade children to engage in sexual behavior 4123 These videos can be live streamed in public or private broadcasts 4124 on Periscope 4125 I recognize that a live video app like Periscope creates 4126 challenges especially when attempting to monitor content in real 4127 time 4128 Yet your testimony discussing malicious election-related 4129 activity on Twitter reads quote We strongly believe that any 4130 such activity on Twitter is unacceptable 4131 I hope that standard of unacceptability is similarly applied NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 193 4132 to sexual exploitation of children on Periscope and I would 4133 expect that it is considering that Twitter has stated zero 4134 tolerance policy for child sexual exploitation 4135 So my questions are does Twitter primarily rely on users 4136 to report sexually inappropriate content or content concerning 4137 child safety 4138 Mr Dorsey We do have some dependency on reports But 4139 this is an area that we want to move much faster in automating 4140 and not obviously placing the blame -- or not placing the work 4141 on the victim and making sure that we are recognizing these in 4142 real time and we have made some progress with Periscope 4143 4144 Mrs Walters So what is the average length of a live video on Periscope 4145 Mr Dorsey 4146 -- we can follow up 4147 Mrs Walters I am not aware of that right now Okay But we can And what is the average response time 4148 to remove a live video on Periscope that is deemed to violate 4149 Twitter's term of service 4150 Mr Dorsey It depends entirely on the severity of the 4151 report and what the context is So we try to prioritize by 4152 severity 4153 a higher priority than everything else So threats of death or suicidal tendencies would get NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 194 4154 Mrs Walters So just out of curiosity when you say we 4155 try to eliminate and we have a -- we have a higher priority like 4156 who makes that decision 4157 Mr Dorsey We have -- so when people report any violations 4158 of our terms of service we have algorithms looking at the report 4159 and then trying to understand how to prioritize those reports 4160 so they're seen by humans much faster 4161 Mrs Walters Okay So I would assume that you don't 4162 believe that you use the reporting as an effective method for 4163 monitoring live videos on Periscope then 4164 Mr Dorsey Not over the long term 4165 Mrs Walters Well obviously this is a really really 4166 important issue 4167 monitoring private broadcasts on Periscope 4168 Mr Dorsey Is user reporting an effective method for Also not over the long term But that is 4169 something that we need to do much more work around in terms of 4170 automating these 4171 Mrs Walters 4172 more work around this 4173 think you will be able to get this handled 4174 4175 Mr Dorsey So can you indicate that you need to do some Do you have any time frame of when you We'd like to work as quickly as possible and make sure that we are prioritizing the proactive approaches of NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 195 4176 our enforcement and again it does go down that prioritization 4177 stack 4178 it's frustrating not to hear a particular time frame 4179 are -- we are moving fast 4180 4181 4182 But we intend to move as quickly as we can Mrs Walters I know that But we Can you explain the type of technology that you're using in order to change this Mr Dorsey Yes We'll be -- we'll be utilizing a lot of 4183 machine learning and deep learning in order to look at all of 4184 our systems at scale and then also prioritize the right review 4185 cadence 4186 4187 Mrs Walters Okay I yield back the balance of my time Thank you 4188 The Chairman 4189 The chair recognizes Mr Carter Georgia our last member 4190 The gentlelady yields back to participate -- thank you -- for four minutes 4191 Mr Carter 4192 congratulations Thank you Mr Chairman and Mr Dorsey I am the last one 4193 Mr Dorsey in preparation for this hearing I sent out a 4194 notice throughout my district and I asked them -- I let them know 4195 that we were having this hearing and I was going to be asking 4196 questions and I said what do you think I ought to ask him 4197 So I got back some pretty interesting responses for that NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 196 4198 and one of them came from a teenage high school student -- a 4199 conservative teenage high school student down in Camden County 4200 That's right on the Georgia Florida state line 4201 And he said -- he said you know I am a conservative teenage 4202 high school student and I've got -- I am on Twitter and I've got 4203 over 40 000 followers yet I have tried -- this young man had 4204 tried five times to get verification and yet he's been turned 4205 down all five times 4206 And his question to me was I've got friends who are more 4207 liberal than me who've got less followers than me and yet they've 4208 been verified 4209 Why is that Mr Dorsey What should I tell him So we -- first and foremost we believe we need 4210 a complete reboot of our verification system 4211 us 4212 really depends on when his friends were verified 4213 4214 4215 4216 4217 4218 4219 It's not serving It's not serving the people that we serve well We -- it We had an open verification system not too long ago that looked for various criteria and we verified people based on that And it's not a function of how many followers you have some verified folks who only have 5 000 followers Mr Carter That was his point We -- I mean he had 40 000 He couldn't -- and he doesn't understand to tell him We have I don't know what I mean -- NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 197 4220 Mr Dorsey 4221 Mr Carter Yes -- you know it seems to me like he would have 4222 been verified and from what he explained to me and to staff is 4223 that they were -- they applied at the same time 4224 Mr Dorsey Yes 4225 Mr Carter So why was he denied and they were approved 4226 Mr Dorsey I would need to understand his particular case 4227 4228 It -- So I would want to know his name and we can follow up -Mr Carter I will be glad -- we will get you that 4229 information because I would like to give the young man an 4230 explanation Okay I think he deserves it 4231 Mr Dorsey Okay 4232 Mr Carter All right And let me ask you something and 4233 I apologize but being the last one sometimes you're a little 4234 bit redundant 4235 But you were asked earlier because you know this committee 4236 and particular the Health Subcommittee has been the tip of the 4237 spear if you will with the opioid crisis that we have in our 4238 country 4239 As you're aware we are losing 115 people every day to opioid 4240 addiction and we just talked about the algorithms and you have 4241 been talking about it all day about and you know why is it -- NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 198 4242 4243 4244 4245 4246 why is it that we haven't been able to get these sites off What's missing I mean what are you identifying that you're missing not to be able to get these tweets off Mr Dorsey I don't know if it's -- I think it's more of a new behavior and a new approach It's -- 4247 Mr Carter This has been going on quite a while 4248 Mr Dorsey It's certainly not an excuse We need to look 4249 at these more deeply in terms of like how our algorithms are 4250 automatically determining when we see this sort of activity and 4251 taking action much faster 4252 Mr Carter Okay Fair enough 4253 My last question is this and I want to talk about 4254 intellectual property particularly as it relates to live 4255 streaming 4256 Now you have been here all day You were over at the Senate 4257 this morning and you have been here this afternoon and all day 4258 long you know you have been saying -- and we have no other reason 4259 but to believe you -- yeah we need to work on this -- we are 4260 going to work on this 4261 The piracy that takes place with live streaming movies and 4262 intellectual property like that that's been going on for quite 4263 a while hasn't it NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 199 4264 Mr Dorsey It has 4265 Mr Carter Why should I believe you -- and we had another 4266 CEO of another social media that was here a couple of months ago 4267 -- you know same thing -- we are working on it -- we are going 4268 to get it done 4269 But yet this is something that's been going on 4270 got it done yet 4271 because you know Dr Bucshon Representative Walberg -- I echo 4272 their comments -- I don't want the federal government to get into 4273 this business 4274 stifle innovation 4275 4276 4277 Why should I believe you now You ain't I don't want to regulate you guys And I say that I think it'll But why should I believe you if you -- you hadn't got this fixed Mr Dorsey Well the reason we have to still work on it 4278 is because the methods of attack constantly change and we'll 4279 never arrive at one solution that fixes everything 4280 constantly iterate based on new vectors of stealing IP or 4281 rebroadcasting IP for instance because they're constantly 4282 changing and we just need to be 10 steps ahead of that 4283 Mr Carter We need to You know I want to believe you and I am going 4284 to believe you But I just have to tell you I hope you believe 4285 me -- we don't want the federal -- and you don't want the federal NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 200 4286 4287 government to be in this I think the success of the internet and of your products 4288 has been because the federal government stayed out of it But 4289 we got to have help 4290 look at this I think why would I believe him if they've been 4291 working on this and hadn't even got it fixed yet We have to have a commitment and when I 4292 Mr Dorsey 4293 The Chairman 4294 Mr Carter Mr Chairman thank you and I yield 4295 Mr Dorsey Thank you 4296 The Chairman 4297 And while we've been sitting here I am told that Twitter 4298 4299 4300 Absolutely The gentleman's time -- Thank you has deleted the account that was trying to sell drugs online So your team has been at work We appreciate that We have exhausted probably you and your team and our members 4301 questions for now 4302 the -- for the record -- concluding script 4303 We do have some letters and questions for And so I again want to thank you for being here before 4304 the committee Some of our members you know didn't get to all 4305 their questions and so we will be submitting those for the record 4306 and we have a number of things we'd like to insert in the record 4307 by unanimous consent a letter from Encompass Consumer NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 201 4308 Technology Association and the Internet Association an article 4309 from Gizmodo an article from Inc a paper by Kate Klonick an 4310 article from NBC and article from Slate an article from The 4311 Verge 4312 The information follows 4313 4314 COMMITTEE INSERT 7 NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com This is a preliminary unedited transcript The statements within may be inaccurate incomplete or misattributed to the speaker A link to the final official transcript will be posted on the Committee’s website as soon as it is available 202 4315 The Chairman Pursuant to committee rules I remind members 4316 they have 10 business days to submit additional questions for 4317 the record 4318 10 business days upon receipt of that question 4319 I ask the witness to submit their response within We ask you remain seated until the Twitter team is able to 4320 exit So if you all would remain seated -- thank you -- then 4321 our folks from Twitter can leave and Mr Dorsey thank you again 4322 for being before the Energy and Commerce Committee 4323 And with that the subcommittee is adjourned 4324 Whereupon at 5 43 p m the committee was adjourned NEAL R GROSS 202 234-4433 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N W WASHINGTON D C 20005-3701 www nealrgross com