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testimony that's truthful and honest and complete let me ask you this Joe Biden last year said that xinping was a dictator do you agree with Joe Biden is xinping a dictator Senator I'm not going to comment on any world leaders what why won't you answer these very simple questions Senator it's not appropriate for me as a businessman to come in and World lead this are you scared that you'll lose your job if you say anything about negative about the Chinese Communist party I disagree with that you will find content that is critical of China the

next time you go on are you scared that you'll be arrested and disappear the next time you go to Mainland China Senator I you will find content is critical of China and any other country freely on Tik Tok okay okay let's let's turn to what Tik Tok a tool of the Chinese Communist party is doing to America's youth does the uh does the name Mason Eden ring a bell uh Senator you may have to give me more specifics if you don't mind yeah he was a 16-year-old AR Kanan after a breakup in 2022 he went

on your platform and searched for things like inspirational quotes and positive affirmations instead he was served up numerous videos glam memorizing suicide until he killed himself by gun what about the name Chase NASA is that ring a bell would you mind giving me more details please he was a 16-year-old who saw more than a thousand videos on your platform about violence and suicide until he took his own life by stepping in front of a plane or train are you aware that his parents Dean and Michelle are suing Tick Tock and bite dance for pushing their

son to take his own life uh yes I'm aware of that okay finally Mr Chu um has the Federal Trade Commission sued Tick Tock during the Biden Administration Senator I cannot talk about whether there's any are you being are you currently being sued by the Federal Trade Commission Senator I cannot talk about any potential lawsuit say potential actual are you being sued by the Federal Trade Commission Senator I think I've given you my answer I can talk about no Miss jino's company is being sued I believe Mr Zuckerberg's company is being sued I believe yet

Tik Tock the agent of the Chinese Communist party is not being sued by the Biden Administration are you familiar with a the name Christina kafara you may have to give me more details Christina kafar was a paid adviser to bite dance your communist influenced parent company she was then hired by the Biden FTC to advise on how to sue Mr Zuckerberg's company Senator B is a global company and not a Chinese report public reports indicate that your lobbyists visited the White House more than 40 times in 2022 how many times did your company visit did

your company's lobbyist visit the White House last year I I don't know that Senator are you are you aware that the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee is on your platform they have Tik Tok accounts Senator we encourage people to come on to't let them they won't let their staffers use their personal phones they give them separate phones that they only use Tik Tok on we encourage everyone to join including so all these companies are being sued by the FTC you're not the FTC has a former paid advisor your parent talking about how they

can sue Mr Zuckerberg's company Joe Biden's re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee is on your platform let me ask you have you or anyone else at Tik Tock communicated with or coordinated with the Biden Administration the Biden campaign or the Democratic National Committee to influence the flow of information on your platform we work with uh anyone any creators who want to use our campaign it's it's all the same um process that we have okay so what we have here we have a company that's a tool of the Chinese Communist party that is poisoning the

minds of America's children in some cases driving them to suicide and that at best the Biden Administration is taking a pass on at worst may be in collaboration with thank you Mr Chu thank you Senator cotton so we're going to take a break now we're on the second roll call Members can take advantage of that they wish the break will last about 10 minutes minutes please do your best to return you try to I think these guys are excuse us sorry EXC of I only very I know they the way say and if we break

through none of this will be children AB Mar ad he wrot I'll share all ours. Sammy the he uh we've been going all through Los Angeles people St ch I had a phone with oh you can I can give you my card yes please watch it you'll find it on our website I will thank you so can we get a picture I'm just a hband better are you ni to see go h good job thir no e can than you than you um power they number num know yeah Senate Judiciary Committee will resume we have

nine Senators who have not uh asked questions yet in seven minute rounds and we'll uh turn first to Senator Pia thank you Mr chair um colleagues as we reconvene uh I'm proud once again to uh uh share that I am one of the few senders with younger children uh and I lead with that because as we are having this conversation today uh it's not lost on me that uh between my children who are all now in the teen and pre-teen category uh and their friends uh I see this issue very up close and personal um

and in that spirit I want to take a second to just acknowledge and thank all the parents who who are in the audience today many of whom have shared their stories with our offices and I credit them uh for um finding strength through their suffering through their struggle and channeling that into the advocacy that is making a difference I thank all of you um now I appreciate again personally the challenges that parents and caretakers uh School personnel and others face in helping our young people navigate this uh world of social media and technology in general

now the services our children are growing up with uh provide them unrivaled access to information I mean this is beyond what previous generations uh have experienced and that includes learning opportunities socialization and much much more but we also clearly have a lot of work to do to better protect protect our children from the Predators and predatory behavior that these technologies have enabled and yes Mr Zuckerberg that includes exacerbating the Mental Health crisis in America nearly all teens we know have access to uh smartphones and the internet uh and use the internet daily and while Guardians

do have primary responsibility for caring for our children the old addage says uh it takes a village uh and so society as a whole including leaders in the tech industry must prioritize the health and safety of our children now dive into my questions now and be specific platform by platform Witness by witness on the topic of some of the parental tools you have each made reference to Mr citen how many miners are on Discord and how many of them have caretakers that have adopted your family center tool and if you don't have the numbers just

say that quickly and uh provide that to our office uh we can follow up with you on that how have you ensured that young people in the Guardians are aware of the tools that you offer um we make it very clear to use to to teens on our platform what tools are available and our te Sounds by what specifically do you do what that what may be clear to you is not clear the general public so what do you do in your opinion to make it very clear uh so our teen safety assist which is

a feature that um helps uh teens keep themselves safe in addition to blocking and blurring images that may be sent to them that is on by default for teen accounts and it cannot be turned off we also have we we market and to our uh teen users directly in our platform we launched our family center we created a promotional video we put it directly on our product so when every Teen um opened the app in fact every user opened the app they got an alert like hey hey Discord has this um they they want you

to use it thank you look forward to the the data that we're requesting for Mr Zuckerberg across all of meta services from Instagram Facebook messenger and Horizon uh how many miners use your applications and of those miners how many have a caretaker that has adopted the parental supervision tools that you offer sorry I can follow up with the specific stats on that okay it would be very helpful not just for us to know but for you to know as a leader of your company uh and how same question how are you ensuring that uh young

people and their Gardens are aware of the tools that you offer uh we run pretty extensive ad campaigns both on our platforms and outside we work with creators and organizations like Girl Scouts to make sure that this is broadly a that there's broad awareness of the tools okay Mr spel how many minors use Snapchat and of those minors how many have caretakers that are registered with your family center Senator I believe approximately in the United States there are approximately 20 million uh Teenage users of Snapchat I believe approximately 200,000 parents use Family Center and about

400,000 teens have a linked their account to their parents using Family Center so 200,000 400,000 sounds like a big number but small in percentage of the minors using SnapChat uh what are you doing to ensure that young people in their Gardens are aware of the tools you offer Senator we uh create a banner for Family Center on the users profile so that accounts We Believe maybe of the age that they could be parents can see uh the the entry Point into Family Center easily okay uh Mr Chu how many miners are on Tik Tok and

how many of them have a caregiver that uses your family tools Senator I need to get back to you on the specific numbers um but we were one of the first platforms to give what we call Family pairing to parents you go to settings you turn on a QR code your teenager's QR code and yours you scan it and what it allows you to do is you can set screen time limits you can um filter out some keywords you can turn on the more restricted mode and we're always talking to parents um I'm I met

a you know a group of parents and teenagers and the high school teachers last week to talk about what more we can provide in the family pairing mode Miss jarino how many miners use x and are you planning to implement safety measures or guidance for caretakers like uh your pure companies have thank you Senator less than 1% of all us users are between the ages of 13 and 17 less than 1% of how many of 90 million us users okay so still hundreds of thousands continue yes yes and every single one is very important uh

being a 14-month-old company we have reprioritized child protection and safety measures and we have just begun to talk about and discuss how we can enhance those with parental controls let me uh continue with a followup question for um Mr Citron in addition keeping parents informed about the nature of various internet services there's a lot more we obviously need to do do for today's purposes while many companies offer a broad range of quote unquote user empowerment tools it's helpful to understand whether young people even find these tools helpful so appreciate you sharing your teen safety assist

on the tools and how you're advertising it but have you conducted any assessments uh of how these features are impacting miners use of your platform Our intention is to is to give teens tools capabilities that they can use to keeps s safe and also so our teams can help keep teens safe um we recently launched teen safety assist last year and we I I do not have um a study off the top of my head but we'd be happy to follow up with you on that okay uh my time is up I'll have followup questions

for uh each of you either in the second round or through statements for the record on a a similar assessment of the tools that you've proposed thank you Mr chair thank you Senator Pia Senator Kennedy thank you all for being here uh Mr Spiegel I see you hiding down there what does y yada y mean I'm not familiar with the term Senator very uncool can we agree that what you do not what you say what you do is what you believe and everything else is just cottage cheese yes Senator you agree with that speak up

don't be shy I I I've listened to to you today I've heard a lot of yach yada ying and I've heard you talk about the reforms you've made and I appreciate them and I've heard you talk about the reforms you're going to make but I don't think you're going to solve the problem I think Congress is going to have to help you I think the reforms you're talking about to some extent are going to be like putting putting paint on rotten wood and I'm not sure you're going to support this legislation I'm not um the

the fact is that you and some of your internet colleagues who are not here are no longer you're you you're not companies your countries you're you're very very powerful and you and some of your colleagues who are not here have blocked everything we have tried to do in terms of reasonable regulation everything from privacy to child exploitation and um in fact we we have a new def definition of recession um a recession is when we know we're in a recession when Google has to lay off 25 members of Congress that's what we're down to we're

also down to this fact that your platforms are hurting children I'm not saying they're not doing some good things but they're hurting children and I know how to count votes and if this bill comes to the floor of the United States Senate it will pass what we're going to have to do and I say this with all the respect I can muster is convince my good friend Senator Schumer to to go to Amazon buy a spine online and bring this bill to the senate floor and uh the house will then pass it now that's that's

one person's opinion I may be wrong but I doubt about it uh Mr Zuckerberg let me ask you a couple of questions let's I might wax a little philosophical here um I have to hand it to you uh you you have um you have convinced over two billion people to give up all of their personal information every bit of it in exchange for getting to see what their high school friends had for dinner Saturday night that's pretty much your business model isn't it it's not how I would characterize it and we give people the ability

to connect with the people they care about and um and to engage with the topics that they care about and you and you take this information this abundance of personal information and then you develop algorithm to punch people's hot buttons which and send and and steer to them information that punches their hot buttons again and again and again to keep them coming back and to keep them staying longer and as a result your users see only one side of an issue and so to some extent your platform has become a killing feeli for the truth

hasn't it I mean Senator I disagree with that that characterization um you know we build ranking and recommendations because people have a lot of friends and a lot of interests and they want to make sure that they see the content that's relevant to them um we're trying to make a product that's useful to people and and make our services um as helpful as possible for people to connect with the people they care about and the interests they care about but you don't show them both sides you don't give them balanced information you just keep punching

in their hot buttons punch in their hot buttons you don't show them balanced information so people can discern the truth for themselves and and you rev them up so much that that so often your platform and others becomes just cess pools of snark where nobody learns anything don't they well Senator I disagree with that I think people can engage in the things that they're interested in um and learn quite a bit about those we have done a a handful of different experiments and things in the past around news and trying to show content on you

know diverse set of of of perspectives I think that there's more that needs to be explored there but I don't think that we can solve that by ourselves do you think I'm sorry to cut you off Mr Mr President but I'm going to run out of time do do you think your users really understand what they're giving to you all their personal information and how you how you process it and how you monetize it do you think people really understand uh Senator I think people understand the basic terms I mean I think that there's I

actually think that a lot of people information been a couple years since we talked about this does your user agreement still suck I I'm not sure how answer thator can you still have can you still have a dead body and all that legal Lee where nobody can find it Senator I'm not I'm not quite sure what you're referring to but I think people get the basic deal of using these Services it's a free service you're using it to connect with the people you care about if you share something with people other people will be able

to see your information it's it's inherently you know if you're putting something out there to be shared publicly um or with a private set of people it's you know you're inherently putting it out there so I think people get that basic part of how Mr Zuckerberg you're in the foothills of creepy you you track you track you track people who aren't even Facebook users you track your own people your own users who are your product even even when they're not on Facebook I mean I'm I'm going to land This Plane pretty quickly Mr chairman I

I I mean it's creepy and I understand you make a lot of money doing it but I just wonder if if our technology is greater than our Humanity I mean let me ask you this final question Instagram is harmful to young people isn't it Senator I disagree with that that's not what the research shows on balance that doesn't mean that individual people don't have issues and that there aren't things that that we need to do to to help provide the right tools for people but across all the research that we've done internally I I mean

this this the uh you know survey that uh the senator previously cited um you know there are 12 or 15 different categories of harm that we asked um teens if they felt that Instagram made it worse or better and across all of them except for the one that that that um that Senator Holly cited um more people said that using Instagram issu they face Zu either positive or let me we're just going have to agree to disagree if if you believe that Instagram I it's I'm not saying it's intentional but if you agree that Instagram

if you think that Instagram is not hurting millions of our young people particularly young teens particularly young women you shouldn't be driving it is thanks Senator Butler thank you Mr chair and um thank you to um our panelists who've come to uh have an important conversation ation with us most importantly I want to appreciate the families uh who have uh shown up to continue to be remarkable um champions of your children and your loved ones for um being here and in particular two California families um that I was able to just talk to on on

the break the families of Sammy Chapman from Los Angeles and Daniel perta uh from Santa Clarita uh they are are here today and are doing some incredible work uh to not just protect the memory and Legacy of their boys um but the work that they're doing is going to protect my nine-year-old uh and that is uh indeed why we're here there are a couple questions that I want to ask um some individuals let me start with a question for each of you uh Mr Citron have you ever sat with a family and talked about their

experience and what they need from your product yes or no uh yes I have spoken with parents about how we can build tools to help them Mr Spiegel have you sat with families and young people to talk about your products and what they need from your product yes Senator Mr Shu yes I just did it two weeks ago for example I don't want to know what you did for the hearing prep Mr Chu I just wanted to know if anything in terms of Prov designing the product that you are creating Mr Zuckerberg um have you

sat with parents and young people to talk about how you design product uh for uh your cons for your uh consumers yes over the years I've had a lot of conversations with parents you know that's interesting Mr Zuckerberg because we talked about this last night and you gave me a very different answer I asked you this very question well I I told you that I wasn't that I didn't know what specific processes are company has no Mr Zuckerberg you said to me that you had not I I must have misspoke I I want to give

you the room to missp misspeak Mr Zuckerberg but I asked you this very question I asked all of you this question uh and you told me a very different answer when we spoke but I won't belabor it can I um a number of you have talked about the I'm sorry ex uh Miss sharino have you talked to parents directly young people but about designing your product as a new leader of X the answer is yes I've spoken to them about the behavioral patterns e because less than 1% of our users are in that age group

but yes I have spoken to them thank you ma'am Mr Spiegel um there are a number of parents who've uh children have been able to access uh illegal drugs on your platform what do you say to those parents well Senator we are devastated that we cannot to the parents what do you say to those parents Mr Spiegel I'm so sorry that we have not been able to prevent these tragedies we work very hard to block all Search terms related to drugs from our platform we proactively look for and detect drug rated content we remove it

from our platform preserve it as evidence we and then we refer it to law enforcement uh for Action we've worked together with nonprofits and with families on education campaigns because the scale of the fenel epidemic is extraordinary over 100,000 people lost their lives last year and we believe people need to know that one pill can kill that campaign reached more than 200 was viewed more than 260 million times on Snapchat we also there are two fathers in this room who lost their sons they're 16 years old they're children were able to get those pills from

Snapchat I know that there are statistics and I know that there are good efforts none of those efforts are keeping our kids from getting access to those drugs on your platform uh as uh California company all of you I've talked with you about what it means to be a good neighbor and what California families and American families should be expecting from you you owe them more than just a a set of Statistics uh and I look forward to you showing up on all pieces of this legislation all of you showing up on all pieces of

legislation to keep our children safe Mr Zuckerberg I want to come back to you I um talked with you about being a a parent to a young child um who's doesn't have a phone doesn't you know is not on social media at all um and one of the things that I am deeply concerned with uh as uh a parent to a young black girl is the utilization of uh filters on your platform that would suggest to young girls utilizing your platform the evidence that they are not good enough as they are I want to ask

more specifically and refer to some unredacted court documents that reveal that your own researchers uh concluding that these face filters that mimic plastic surgery negatively impact youth mental health indeed uh and well-being why should we believe why should we believe that because that you're going to do more to protect young women and young girls when it is that you give them the tools to affirm the self-hate that is spewed across your platforms why is it that we should believe that you are committed to doing anything more to keep our children safe sorry there's a lot

to unpack there there people tools to express themselves in different ways and people use face filters and different tools to make media and photos and videos that are fun or interesting um across a lot of the different products that that that that are plastic surgery pins are good tools to express creativity um Senator I'm not speaking to that skin lightening tools are tools to express creativity this is the direct thing that I'm asking about not defending any specific one of those I think that the ability to kind of filter and um and edit images is

generally a useful tool for expression for that specifically I'm I'm not familiar with the study that you're referring to but we did make it so that we're not recommending this type of content to teams no no reference to a study to court documents that revealed your knowledge of the impact of these types of filters on young people generally young girls in particular I disagree with that characterization I I think that there's hyp cour documents I'm I haven't seen any document that says okay M Mr Zuckerberg my my time is up um I hope that you

hear what is being offered to you and are prepared to step up and do better I know this senate committee uh is going to do our work to hold you in great to Greater account thank you Mr chair Senator Tillis thank you Mr chair thank you all for being here the um I I don't feel like I'm going to have an opportunity to ask a lot of questions so I'm going to reserve the right to submit some for the record but I I have heard we've had hearings like this before I've been in the senate

for nine years I've heard heard hearings like this before I've heard horrible stories about uh people who have died committed suicide uh been embarrassed um every year we have an annual flogging every year and what material has occurred over the last nine years um do any of you all do just yes or no question do any of y'all participate in an industry Consortium trying to make this fundamentally safe across platform yes or no Mr Zuber there's a variety of organizations which organiz I should say does anyone here not participate in an industry if I I

actually think it would be imoral for you all to consider it a strategic advantage to keep safe or to keep private something that would secure all these platforms to avoid this sort of pro do you all agree with that that anybody that would be saying you want ours because ours is the safest and these haven't figured out the secret sauce that you as an industry realize this is an existential threat to you all if we don't get it right right I mean you've you've got to secure your platforms you got to deal with this do

do you not have an inherent mandate to do this because it would seem to me if you don't you're going to cease to exist I mean we could regulate you out of business if we wanted to and the reason I'm saying it may sound like a criticism it's not a criticism I think we have to understand that there should be an inherent motivation get this right our Congress will make a decision that could potentially put you out of business here's the reason I have a concern with that though I I just went on the internet

uh while I was listening intently to all the other members speaking and I found a dozen different uh platforms outside the United States 10 of which are in China two of which are in in Russia uh their daily average subscri or active membership numbers in the billions well people say you can't get on China's version of Tik Tok I took me one quick search on my favorite search engine to find out exactly how I could get a an account on this platform today um and so the other thing that we have to keep in mind

I come from technology I could figure out ladies and gentlemen I could figure out how to influence your kid without them ever being on a social media platform I can randomly send text and get a bite and then find out an email address and get compromising information um if we're it is horrible to hear some of these stories and I have shared the and I've had these stories occur in my hometown down in North Carolina but if we only come here and make a point today and don't start focusing on making a difference which requires

people to stop shouting and start listening and start passing language here the Bad actors are just going to be off our Shores I have another question for you all how much do how many people roughly if you don't know the exact numb okay roughly how many people do you have looking 24 hours a day at these horrible images and just go real quick with an answer down the line and filtering it out um it's it's most of the 40,000 about people who work on safety and again we have 2,300 people all over the world okay

we have 40,000 trust and safety professionals around the world we have approximately 2,000 people dedicated to trust and safety and content moderation um our our platform is much much smaller than these folks we have hundreds of people and it's um looking at content 50% of our work I've mention these people are have a horrible job many of them experience um they they have to get counseling for all the things they see we have evil people out there and we're not going to fix this by shouting past or talking past each other we're going to fix

this by every one of y'all being at the table and hopefully coming closer to what I heard one person and say supporting a lot of the good bills like one that I hope Senator Blackburn mentions when she gets a chance to talk but guys if you're not at the table and securing these platforms you're going to be on it and and and the reason why I'm not okay with that is that if we ultimately destroy your ability to create value and drive you out of business the evil people will find another way to get to

these children and I do have to admit I don't think my mom's watching this one but there is good we we can't look past good that is occurring my mom who lives in Nashville Tennessee and I talked yesterday and we talked about a Facebook post that she made a couple of days ago we don't let her talk to anybody else that that that connects my 92y old mother with uh with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren that lets a kid who may feel awkward in school to get into a group of people and relate to people let

let's not throw out the good because we have it all together focused on rooting out the bad now I guarantee you I could go through some of your governance documents and find a reason to fog every single one of you because you didn't place the emphasis on it that I think you should but at the end of the day I F it find it hard to believe that any of you people started this business some of you in your college dorm rooms for the purposes of creating the evil that is being perpetrated on your platforms

but I hope that every single waking hour you're doing everything you can to reduce it you're not going to be able to eliminate it and I hope that there are some enterprising young tech people out there today that are going to go to parents and say ladies and gentlemen your children have a deadly weapon they have a potentially deadly weapon whether it's a phone or a tablet you have to secure it you can't assume that they're going to be honest and say that they're 16 when they're 12 uh we all have to recognize that we

have a responsibility to play and you guys are at the tip of the spear so I hope that we can get to a point to where we are moving these bills if you got a problem with them State your problem let's fix it no is not an answer uh and and know that I want the United States to be the beacon for Innovation to be the beacon for safety and to prevent people from using other options that have existed since the internet has existed to exploit people and Count Me In as somebody that will try

and help out thank you Mr chair thank you Senator Tillis next is Senator oof thank you Mr chairman and uh thank you to our Witnesses today uh Mr Zuckerberg I want to begin by just asking a simple question which is do you want kids to use your platform more or less well we don't want people under the age of 13 using you want teenagers 13 and up to use your platform more or less um well we would like to build a product that is useful and that people want to use more my time is is

going to be limited so it's just do you want them to use it more or less teenagers 13 to 17 years old do you want them using meta products more or less I'd like them to be useful enough that they want to use them more you want them to use it more I think here in we have one of the fundamental challenges in in fact you have a fiduciary obligation do you not to try to get kids to use your platform more it depends on how you define that um we we obviously are a business

um but it's it I'm Sor Mr Zuckerberg it's just our time is it's it's not it's self-evident that you have a fiduciary obligation to get your users including users under 18 to use and engage with your platform more rather than less correct over the long term term but in the near term we often take a lot of steps including we we made a change to show less videos that that on the platform that reduced amount of time by more than 50 million hours but if your shareholders ask you Mark I wouldn't Mr Zuckerberg here but

your shareholders might be on a firstname basis with you mark are you trying to get kids to use meta products more or less you'd say more right well I would say that over the long term we're trying to create the most let's look so the 10K you file with the SEC a few things I want to note here are some quotes and this is a a filing that you sign correct yes yeah our financial performance has been and will continue to be significantly determined by our success in adding retaining and engaging active users here's another

quote if our users decrease their level of Engagement with our products our Revenue Financial results in business may be significantly harmed here's another quote we believe that some users particularly younger users are aware of and actively engaging with other products and services similar to as a substitute for ours continues in the event that users increasingly engage with other products and services we may experience a decline in use and engagement in key demographics or more broadly in which case our business would likely be harmed you have an obligation as the chief executive to encourage your team

to get kids to use your platform more sen this is is that not self-evident you have a fiduciary obligation to your shareholders to get kids to use your platform more I I think that the thing that's not intuitive is the the direction is to make the products more useful so that way people want to use them more we don't give our the teams running the Instagram feed or the Facebook feed a goal to increase the amount of time that people spend yeah but you don't dispute and your and your 10K makes clear you want your

users engaging more and using more the platform and I think this gets to the root of the challenge because it's the overwhelming view of the the public certainly in my home state of Georgia uh and we've had some discussions about the underlying science that this platform is harmful for children I mean you are familiar with and not just your platform by the way social media in general 2023 report from the Surgeon General about the impact of social media on kids mental health which cited evidence that kids who spend more than three hours a day on

social media have double the risk of poor mental health outcomes including depression and anxiety you're familiar with that Surgeon General report the underlying study I I read the report yes do you dispute it no but I think it's important to characterize it correctly I think what he was flagging in the report is that there seems to be a correlation and obviously the mental health issue is very important so it's something that needs to be the thing is that's that's everyone knows there's a correlation everyone knows that kids who spend a lot of time too much

time on your platforms are at risk and it's not just the mental health issues I mean let let me ask you question question is your platform safe for kids I believe it is but there's a important difference between correlation and causation you because we're not going to be able to get anywhere we want to work in a productive open honest and collaborative way with the private sector to pass legislation that will protect Americans that will protect American children above all and that will allow businesses to thrive in this country if we don't start with an

open honest candid realistic assessment of the issues we can't do that the first point is you want kids to use the platform more in fact you have an obligation to but if you're not willing to acknowledge it's a dangerous place for children the internet is a dangerous place for children not just your platform isn't it isn't the internet a dangerous place for children I think it can be yeah there's both great things that people can do and there are harms that we need to work to yeah it's a dangerous place for children there are families

here who have lost their children there are families across the country whose children have engaged in self harm who have experienced low self-esteem who have been sold deadly pills on the internet the internet's a dangerous place for children and your platforms are dangerous places for children do you agree I think that there are harms that we need to work to mitigate okay I I'm not gonna I think overall why not why not just acknowledge it why why do we have to do the the very care I just I disagree with the characterization that the internet's

a dangerous place for children um I I think you're you're trying to characterize our products as inherently dangerous and I think that inherent or not your your product are places where children can experience harm they can experience harm to their mental health they can be sold drugs they can be prayed upon by predators that you know they're dangerous places and and and yet you have an obligation to promote the use of these platforms by children and look all I'm all I'm trying to suggest to you Mr Zuckerberg and my my time is is running short

is that in order for you to succeed you and your colleagues here we have to acknowledge these basic truths we have to be able to come before the American people the American public the people in my state of Georgia and acknowledge the internet is dangerous including your platforms there are predators lurking there are drugs being sold there are harms to mental health that are taking a huge toll on kids quality of life and yet you have this incentive not just you Mr Zuckerberg all of you have an incentive to boost maximize use utilization and engagement

and that is where public public policy has to step in to make sure that these platforms are safe for kids so kids are not dying so kids are not overdosing so kids are not cutting themselves or killing themselves because they're spending all day scrolling instead of playing outside and I appreciate all of you for your testimony we will continue to engage as we develop this legislation thank you senator from Tennessee thank you Mr chairman thank you for to each of you for coming and I know some of you had to be subpoena to get here

but we do appreciate that you all are here Mr Chu I want to come to you first uh we've heard that you're looking at putting a headquarters in Nashville and likewise in Silicon Valley and Seattle and what you're going to find probably is that the welcome mat is not going to be rolled out for you in Nashville like it would be in California there are a lot of people in see that are very concerned about the way Tik Tock is basically building dossier on our kids the way they are building those on their virtual you

and also that that information is held in China in Beijing as you responded to Senator Blumenthal and I last year in reference to that question and we also know that a major music label yesterday said they were pulling all of their content off your site because of your issues on payment on artificial intelligence and because of the negative impact on our kids mental health so we will see how that progresses uh Mr Zuckerberg I want to come to you uh we have just had Senator Blumenthal and I of course have had some internal documents and

emails that have come our way one of the things that really concerned me is that you referred to your young users in terms of their lifetime value of being roughly $270 per teenager and each of you should be looking at these kids their t-shirts they're wearing to say today say I'm worth more than 270 dollars we've got some standing up in those t-shirts now and some of the children from our state some of the children the parents that we have worked with just to think whether it is Becca Schmidt David mik Sarah flat and Lee

sh would you say that Li is only worth $270 what could possibly lead you I mean I listen to that I know you're a dad I'm a mom I'm a grandmom and how could you possibly even have that thought it is astounding to me and I think this is one of the reasons that um States 42 states are now suing you because of features that they consider to be addictive that you are pushing forward and in the emails that we've got from 2021 that go from August to November there is the staff plan that is

being discussed and Antony Davis Nick C Cheryl Sandberg Chris Cox Alex Schulz Adam misseri are all on this chain of emails on the well-being plan and then we get to one Nick did email Mark for emphasis to emphasize his support for the package but it sounds like it lost out to various other pressures and priorities see this is what bothers us children are not your priority children are your product children you see as a way to make money and children protecting children in this virtual space you made a conscious decision even though Nick clag and

others were going through the process of saying this is what we do the these documents are really Illuminating and it just shows me that growing this business expanding your Revenue what you were going to put on those quarterly filings that was the priority the children were not it's very clear um I want to talk with you about the pedophile ring because that came up earlier and the Wall Street Journal reported on that and one of the things that we found out was after that became evident then you didn't take that content down and it was

content that showed that teens were for sale and were offering themselves to older men and you didn't take it down because it didn't violate your community standards do you know how often a child is bought or sold for sex in this country every two minutes every two minutes a child is bought or sold for sex that's not my stat that is a TB I stat now finally this content was taken down after a congressional staff or went to meta's Global head of safety so would you please explain to me and to all these parents why

explicit predatory content does not violate your platform's terms of service or your community standards sheer Senator let me try to address all the things that you just said it does violate our standards we work very hard to take it down didn't take it down we've well we've reported I think it's more than 26 million examples of this kind of content didn't take it down until a congressional staffer brought it up it it may be that in this case we made a mistake and missed something make a lot of mistakes leading teams that I want to

talk with you about your Instagram creators program and about the push we found out through these documents that you actually are pushing forward because because you want to bring kids in early you see these younger tweenagers as valuable but an untapped audience quoting from the emails and suggesting teens are actually household influencers to bring their younger siblings into your platform into Instagram now how can you ensure that Instagram creators your product your program does not facilitate illegal activities when you fail to remove content pertaining to the sale of Miners and it is happening once every

two minutes in this country um Senator our tools for identifying that kind of content or industry leading that doesn't mean we're perfect there are definitely issues that we have but we continue Zu yes there are a lot that is slipping through it appears that you're trying to be the premier sex trafficking not Senator Senator that's ridiculous it is not ridiculous you want to turn around and want this content on our platforms why don't you take it down we are here discussing all to work with us no you're not you are not and the problem is

we've been working on this Senator Welch is over there we've been working on this stuff for a decade you have have an army of lawyers and lobbyists that have fought us on this every step of the way you work with net Choice the KO Institute taxpayers protection Alliance and chamber of progress to actually fight our bipartisan legislation to keep kids safe online so are you going to stop funding these groups are you going to stop lobbying against this and come to the table and work with us yes or no Senator we have a yes or

no of course we'll work with you on on the legislation the door is open we've got all these bills you need you need to come to the table each and every one of you need to come to the table and you need to work with us kids are dying Senator Welch uh I want to thank my colleague Senator Blackburn for her decade of work on this I actually have some optimism there is a consensus today that didn't exist say 10 years ago that there is a profound threat to children to mental health to safety there's

not a dispute that was in debate before that's a starting point secondly we're identifying concrete things that can be done in four different areas one is industry standards two is legislation three is are the courts and then four is a proposal that Senator Bennett Senator Graham myself and Senator Warren have to establish an agency a governmental agency whose responsibility would be to engage in this on a systematic regular basis with proper resources and I just want to go through those I appreciate the industry standard decisions and steps that you've had you you've taken in your

companies but it's not enough uh and that's what I think you're hearing from my colleagues like for instance where there are layoffs in it is in the trusted uh the trust and verify programs uh that's alarming because it looks like there is a reduction in emphasis on protecting things like you just added M yino 100 employees in in Texas to in this category uh and how many did you have before I the company is just coming through a significant restructuring so we've increased the number of trust and safety employees and agents all over the world

by at least 10% so far in the last 14 months and we will continue to do so specifically in Austin Texas all right Mr Zuckerberg my understanding is there have been layoffs in that area as well there's added jobs there at Twitter but uh it meta have there been reductions in that there have been across the board not really focused on that area I think our our investment is is relatively consistent over the last couple of years we we invested almost five billion dollars in this work last year and I think this year will be

on the same order of magnitude all right and another question that's come up is when to the core of a user of any of your platforms somebody has an image on there that's very compromising often of a sexual nature is there any reason in the world why a person who wants to take that down can't have a very simple same day response to have it taken down I'll start with Twitter oh now I'm sorry Senator I was taking notes could you repeat the question well it there's a lot of examples of a young person finding

out about an image that is of them and really compromises them and actually can create suicidal thoughts and they want to call up or they want to send an email and say take it down I mean why is it not possible for that to be responded to immediately well we all strive to take down any type of uh violative content or disturbing content immediately at we have increased our capabilities with a twostep reporting process if I'm a parent or I'm a kid and I want this down shouldn't there be methods in place where it comes

down you can see what the image is yes a an ecos systemwide standard would improve and actually enhance the experience for users at all our platforms all right there there actually is an organization I think a number of the companies up here are a part of called take it down it's um some technology that we and and a few others you all are you all are in favor of that because that is going to give some peace of mind to people all right it really really matters uh I don't have that much time so we've

talked about the legislation and uh Senator uh White House had asked you to get back with your position on Section 230 which I'll go to in a minute but I would welcome each of you responding uh as to your company's position on the bills that are under consideration in this hearing all right I'm just asking you to do that a third the court this big question of section 230 and today uh I'm pretty inspired by the presence of the parents who have turned their extraordinary grief into action and hope that other parents may not have

to suffer what for them is a devastating for everyone a devastating loss senator White House asked you all to get back very concretely about section 230 and your position on that but it's an astonishing benefit that your industry has that no other industry has they just don't have to worry about being held accountable in court if they're negligent so you've got some explaining to do and I'm just reinforcing Senator White House's request that you get back specifically about that and then finally I want to ask about this notion this idea of a of a of

a u Federal agency whose resourced and whose job is to be dealing with public interest matters that are really affected by big Tech it's extraordinary what has happened in our economy uh with technology and your companies represent Innovation and success uh but just as when the railroads were ascendant and were in charge and ripping off Farmers because of practices they were able to get away with just as when Wall Street was flying high but there was no one regulating Blue Sky laws uh we now have a whole new world in the economy and Mr Zuckerberg

I remember uh you testifying in the Energy and Commerce Committee and I asked you your position on the uh concept of a federal regulatory agency my recollection is that you were positive about that is that still case um I I think it it could be a a reasonable solution there are obviously pros and cons to doing that versus through the normal the the the current structure of having different Regulatory Agencies focused on specific issues but because a lot of the things trade off against each other like one of the topics that we talked about today

is encryption and that's obviously really important for privacy and security but can we just go down the line I'm at the end but thank you m yino Senator I think the uh industry initiative to keep those conversations going would be something X would be very very proactive about if you think about our support of the report act the shield act the stop cesam act our support of the Project SAFE childhood act I think our intentions are clear to participate and to here yeah Senator um we support National privacy legislation for example so that sounds like

a good idea we just need to understand what it means all right uh Mr Spiel Senator we'll continue to work with your team and we'd certainly be open to exploring the right regul at body for big technology but the idea of a regulatory body is something that you can see has Merit yes sen and Mr Cen yeah we're very open to to working with with you and our peers and anybody on helping make the internet a safer place you know I think you mentioned this is not a one platform problem right so we we do

look to collaborate with other companies and with nonprofits in the government thank you Mr chairman I yield back thank you Senator Welch well we're going to conclude this hearing and thank you all for coming today you probably have your scorecard out there you've met at least 20 members of this committee and have your own impressions of their questioning and approach and the like but the one thing I want to make clear as chairman of this committee for the last three years is this was an extraordinary vote on an extraordinary issue a year ago we passed

five bills unanimously in this committee you heard all the Senators every spot on the political Spectrum was covered every single Senator voted unanimously in favor of the five pieces of legislation we've discussed today it ought to tell everyone who follows Capitol Hill in Washington a pretty Stark message we get it and we live it as parents and grandparents we know what our daughters and sons and others are going through they cannot cope they cannot handle this issue on their own they're counting on us as much as they are counting on the industry to do the

responsible thing and some will leave with impressions of our Witnesses and the companies they represent that you're right as an American citizen but you ought to also leave with the determination to keep the spotlight on us to do something not just to hold a hearing bring out a good strong crowd of supporters for change but to get something done no excuses no excuses we've got to bring this to a vote what I found in my time in the house house and the Senate is that's the day that's the moment of Reckoning speeches notwithstanding press releases

and the like the moment of Reckoning is when we call a vote on these measures it's time to do that I don't believe there's ever been a moment in America's wonderful history when a business or industry has stepped up and said regulate us put some legal limits on us businesses Exist by and large to be profitable and I think that we got to get behind that and say profitability at what cost Senator Kennedy Republican colleague said is our technology greater than our Humanity I I think that is a fundamental question that he asked what I

would add to it or politics greater than technology we're going to find out I want to thank a few people before we close up here I've got several staffers who worked so hard on this Alexander galber thank you very much Alexander Jeff Hansen Scott Jord last point I'll make Mr Zuckerberg is is just a little advice to you I think your opening statement on Mental Health needs to be explained because I don't think it makes any sense there is an parent in this room who's had a child that's gone through an emotional experience like this

that wouldn't tell you and me they changed right in front of my eyes they changed they hold themselves up in their room they don't longer reached out to their friends they lost all interest in school these are mental health consequences that I think come with the abuse of this right to have access to this kind of technology so uh I will just I see my colleague you want to say a word uh I think it was a good hearing I hope something positive comes from it thank you all for coming the hearing record is going

to remain open for a week for statements and questions may be sub uh submitted by Senators by 5:00 P pm on Wednesday once again thanks to the witnesses for coming the hearing stands Jared just keep a path here folks good thank you here your here just watch your step there your St there