Senator Cotton Q&A during Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

Cotton: Some of your company’s efforts in collusion with Joe Biden’s campaign led by the current Secretary of State to suppress the factual reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Mr. Clegg, you had acknowledged earlier that Facebook demoted that story after it was published by the New York Post. Is that right?

Nick Clegg: Correct. But I should clarify, we don’t do that anymore.

Cotton: Mr. Zuckerberg has said that you demoted it. He expressed regret. I assume you share that regret with your boss?

Nick Clegg: Yes.

Cotton: And you share what he said, that you’re not going to do it anymore, right?

Nick Clegg: Correct. So that demotion does not take place today.

Cotton: Mr. Walker, what about Google? Did Google suppress results about the Hunter Biden laptop?

Kent Walker: We did not, sir. We ran an independent investigation. It did not meet our standards for taking any action, so it remained up on our services.

Cotton: Okay. Okay. And Twitter, under the old regime there was, I think someone said, even more egregious than Facebook or other platforms. And again, this is domestic information operations, if you’d like to say. Far more influence on our elections than some memes or YouTube videos or articles that Russian intelligence agents or Chinese intelligence agents posted, which no doubt they do. Just look today, like the New York Times the other day had a fit that social media was awash. Awash, it said, in AI-generated memes of Donald Trump saving ducks and geese. I mean are AI-generated memes of Donald Trump saving ducks and geese really all that danger to election? Mr. Smith, you laughed, for the record, do you want to answer my question? Are you worried about ducks-

Brad Smith: I think it’s a rhetor-

Cotton: … ducks and geese memes of Donald Trump saving them from predators?

Brad Smith: When I create a list of the greatest worries for this election, they do not involve ducks or geese.

Cotton: I wouldn’t think so, it seemed like that to me either … Gavin Newsom just signed the law, three laws actually in California, into effect that will criminalize the use of so-called, deep fakes before an election. How do you plan to comply with that law? Are you going to go arrest people who are making AI-generated memes of Donald Trump running away with ducks and geese?

Kent Walker: Senator, it’s early for us to understand. We are just receiving the laws, which were signed very recently and we’re looking at how we might best comply with a number of laws. There are quite a few.

Cotton: Mr Clegg, a lot of ducks and geese memes on your website. Mr. Smith thinks they’re funny. He’s laughing again. It’s fine. People laugh at them. Satire and political humor is as old as our country. It’s fine. I’m glad that you’re not going to do again what you did in 2020, but I don’t envy either of your companies dealing with what Gavin Newsom has done in California or what many in this Congress propose to do, criminalizing and censoring core political speech. Mr. Clegg, do you have any idea how you’re going to comply with California’s law.

Nick Clegg: Well, it’s only just been signed, so again, we would need probably to look at it more closely. But I think Senator, your central point that there is a lot of playful and innocent and innocuous use of AI and then there’s duplicitous and egregious and dangerous use of AI. That is exactly why as I think-

Cotton: And I have to ask because my time’s expired, but I have to ask, who’s going to draw that line? Who’s going to decide what’s playful, innocuous and harmless and what is misinformation and disinformation? And I got to say, some of the people you go to like, PolitiFact and Southern Poverty Law Center, don’t strike me as quite neutral sources and I don’t think you’re going to find neutral sources in the government of California or in this administration either.

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Gavin Newsom laws in CA: criminalize deep fakes; AI-generated memes; Hunter Laptop