Congress Grills Big Tech CEOs Over Influence, Accused Of Censoring Conservatives

Google takes pride in the number of people who choose a product. We are even prouder of what they do with them. From the 140 million students and teachers using G Suite for education to stay connected during the pandemic. To the 5 million Americans gaining digital skills to grow with Google. To all the people who turn to Google for help. From finding the fastest route home to learning how to cook a new dish on YouTube. Google's work would not be possible without the long tradition of American innovation. And we are proud to contribute to its future. They employ more than 75,000 people in the U.S. across 26 states. The Progressive Policy Institute estimated that in 2018, we invested more than $20 billion in the U.S. Citing us as the largest capital investor in America that year. And one of the top five for the last three years. One way we contribute is by building helpful products. Research found that free services like search, Gmail, maps, and photos provide thousands of dollars a year in value to the average American. And many are small businesses using our digital tools to grow. Competition also sets higher standards for privacy and security. I've always believed that privacy is a universal right. And Google is committed to keeping your information safe, treating it responsibly, putting you in control, and we've long supported the creation of comprehensive federal privacy laws. Aside from competition, there are other serious issues related to the internet, including questions about elections, harmful content, and privacy. And while these are not antitrust issues and are not specifically the topic of today's hearing, I recognize that we are often at the center of these discussions. We build platforms for sharing ideas, and important debates play out across our services. I believe that this ultimately leads to more progress, but it means we often find ourselves in the middle of deep disagreements about social issues and high-stakes elections. I personally don't believe that private companies should be making so many decisions about these issues by themselves. And that's why last year, I made the case that there needs to be new regulation for the internet. Facebook stands for a set of basic principles. Giving people voice and economic opportunity. Keeping people safe. Upholding democratic traditions like freedom of expression and voting. And enabling an open and competitive marketplace. These are fundamental values for most of us, but not for everyone in the world. Not for every company we compete with or the countries they represent. And as global competition increases, there is no guarantee that our values will win out. More than any place on earth, entrepreneurial companies start, grow, and thrive here in the U.S. We nurture entrepreneurs and startups with stable rule of law, the finest university system in the world, the freedom of democracy, and a deeply accepted culture of risk-taking. Of course, this great nation of ours is far from perfect. Even as we remember Congressman John Lewis and honor his legacy, we're in the middle of a much-needed race reckoning. We also face the challenges of climate change and income inequality, and we're stumbling through the crisis of a global pandemic. Still, with all of our faults and problems, the rest of the world would love even the tiniest sip of the elixir we have here in the U.S. Immigrants like my dad see what a treasure this country is. They have perspective and often can see it even more clearly than those of us who were lucky enough to be born here. It is still day one for this country, and even in the face of today's humbling challenges, I have never been more optimistic about our future. I'm here today because scrutiny is reasonable and appropriate. We approach this process with respect and humility, but we make no concession on the facts. What began as 500 apps is now more than 1.7 million, only 60 of which are Apple software. If Apple is a gatekeeper, what we've done is open the gate wider. We want to get every app we can on the store, not keep them all. The App Store's economic contributions are significant. The ecosystem is responsible for 1.9 million jobs in all 50 states, and it facilitated $138 billion in commerce in the U.S. in 2019 alone. I share the committee's belief that competition promotes innovation, that it makes space for the next great idea, and that it gives consumers more choices. Since Apple was founded, these things have defined us. The first Mac brought opportunity and possibility into the home. The iPod helped musicians and artists to share their creations and be paid fairly for it. This legacy does much more than make us proud. It inspires us to work tirelessly to make sure tomorrow will be even better than today. I'll just cut to the chase. Big tech's out to get conservatives. That's not a suspicion. That's not a hunch. That's a fact. July 20th, 2020, Google removes the homepages of Breitbart and The Daily Caller. Just last night, we learned Google has censored Breitbart so much traffic has declined 99%. June 16th, 2020, Google threatens to demonetize and ban the Federalists. April 19th, 2020, Google and YouTube announce a policy censoring the content that conflicts with recommendations of the World Health Organization. Think about that. The World Health Organization, the organization that lied to us, the organization that shielded for China. And if you contradict something they say, they can say whatever they want. They can lie for China. They can shield for China. You say something against them, you get censored. June 29th, 2020, Amazon bans President Trump's account on Twitch after he raises concerns about defunding the police. June 4th, 2020, Amazon bans a book critical of the coronavirus lockdown written by a conservative commentator. May 27th, 2020, Amazon Smile won't let you give to the Family Research Council and the Alliance Defense Fund, but you can give to Planned Parenthood. Facebook, June 19th, 2020, takes down posts from President Trump's re-election campaign. November 1st, 2018, Facebook silences a pro-life organization's advertisement. May 19th, 2016, former Facebook employees admit Facebook routinely suppresses conservative views. And I haven't even mentioned Twitter, who we actually invited, Mr. Chairman. We asked for you guys to invite them as one of our witnesses. You guys said no. I haven't even mentioned them. Two years ago, they shadow banned two members of this committee. Four members of Congress were shadow banned two years ago. 435 in the House, 100 in the Senate, 535, only four. Gates, Meadows, Nunes, Jordan, only four get shadow banned. And of course, what did Mr. Dorsey tell us? He said, oh, it was just a glitch in our algorithm. I asked him, what did you put in the algorithm? The name's Gates, Meadows, Nunes, Jordan? I mean, if I had a nickel for every time I heard it was just a glitch, I wouldn't be as wealthy as our witnesses, but I'd be doing all right. It was reported that Donald Trump Jr. got taken down for a period of time. Because he put something up on the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine. Now, I wouldn't take it myself, but there still is a debate on whether it is effective either in treating or preventing COVID-19. And I think that this is a legitimate matter of discussion. And it would be up to a patient and their doctor to determine whether hydroxychloroquine was the correct medication, given the circumstances. Why did that happen? Well, first, to be clear, I think what you might be referring to happened on Twitter. So it's hard for me to speak to that. But I can talk to our policies about this. We do prohibit content that will lead to imminent risk of harm. And stating that there's a proven cure for COVID when there is, in fact, none, might encourage someone to go take something that could have some adverse effects. So we do take that down. We do not prohibit discussion around trials of drugs, or people saying that they think that things might work, or personal experiences with experimental drugs. But if someone is going to say that something is proven, when in fact it is not, that could lead people to make a decision with their health. Wouldn't that be up for somebody on the other side of the issue to say that this is not proven? And I know as a fact that for people with certain conditions, it's contraindicated, and they shouldn't take it on that. But wouldn't that be up to somebody else to say, OK, what somebody posted on this really isn't true, and here's what the facts are, rather than having a Twitter or a Facebook take it down? Congressman, in general, I agree with you. And we do not want to become the arbiters of truth. I think that that would be a bad position for us to be in, and not what we should be doing. But on specific claims, if someone is going to go out and say that hydroxychloroquine is proven to cure COVID, when in fact it is not proven to cure COVID, and that that statement could lead people to take a drug that in some cases, some of the data suggests that it might be harmful to people, we think that we should take that down. That could cause imminent risk of harm. The Stop Hate for Profit campaign is a coalition that includes the Color of Change, the Anti-Defamation League, and other civil rights groups, and they're targeting Facebook right now for a boycott because of the rapid spread of hate messages online, the presence of Boogaloo and other right-wing extremist groups trying to infiltrate and disrupt Black Lives Matter protests, and the fact that alt-right racist and anti-Semitic content flourishes on Facebook. So they're asking you to remove these pages and essentially to join the movement for civil rights by not allowing that kind of content. Their boycotters include a lot of big companies, including Patagonia, Levi's, McDonald's, VW, Heineken, and so on. But you seem not to be that moved by their campaign, and I just wonder what you think about what they're asking you to do. Congressman, thanks. We're very focused on fighting against election interference, and we're also very focused on fighting against hate speech, and our commitments to those issues and fighting them go back years before this recent movement. Since 2016, the defenses that the company has built up to help secure elections, not just in the U.S., but around the world, I think are some of the most advanced that any company or government has in the world now. We routinely now collaborate with law enforcement and intelligence agencies and are able to sometimes identify threats coming from other countries before governments are even able to. In terms of fighting hate, we've built really sophisticated systems. Our goal is to identify it before anyone even sees it on the platform. We've built AI systems and, as I mentioned, have tens of thousands of people working on safety and security with the goal of getting this stuff down before people even see it. Right now, we're able to proactively identify 89 percent of the hate speech that we take down before I think it's even seen by other people. I want to do better than 89 percent. I'd like to get that to 99 percent. We have a massive investment here. We invest billions of dollars. Can you just address the proliferation of fake accounts? I understand annually you get 6.5 billion fake accounts produced there, but in some sense you have a profit motive that's linked to that because that's what's reported to your investors, the number of accounts. Are you working zealously to try to ferret out these fake accounts that are used to spread hate and disinformation? The gentleman's time has expired, but the witness may answer the question. Congressman, absolutely. We work hard on this. We take down billions of fake accounts a year. A lot of that is just people trying to set up accounts to spam people for commercial reasons. A very small percent of that are nation-states trying to interfere in elections, but we're very focused on trying to find those. Having fake and harmful content on our platform does not help our business. It hurts our business. People do not want to see that stuff, and they use our services less when they do. We are aligned with people in order to take that down, and we invest billions of dollars a year in doing so. I yield back. Thank you. We rank what we show in feed based on what is going to be the most meaningful to people and is going to create long-term satisfaction, not what's just going to get engagement or eclipse today. If that's true, Mr. Zuckerberg, how do you explain that on Monday, the second most popular post on Facebook was a Breitbart video claiming that you don't need a mask and hydroxychloroquine is a cure for COVID, and in the first five hours after being posted on Facebook, it racked up 20 million views and over 100,000 comments before Facebook acted to remove it? Well, Congressman, a lot of people shared that, and we did take it down because it violates our policies. After 20 million people saw it over the period of five hours, I mean, doesn't that suggest, Mr. Zuckerberg, that your platform is so big that even with the right policies in place, you can't contain deadly content? Congressman, I don't think so. I think we have, on COVID misinformation in particular, a relatively good track record of fighting and taking down lots of false content, as well as putting up authoritative information. We have built a COVID information center with authoritative information from health officials and we've placed it in the dustbin. I just have one more question for you, too.