Social Media’s Impact on Homeland Security

QuestionLankford asks how many employees are dedicated specifically to CSAM removal and reporting.

ResponseMeta again cites its overall 40,000-person safety/security headcount rather than a CSAM-specific number, and points to its role co-launching Project Protect (with Google, Microsoft, and 15 other companies via the Technology Coalition) and consulting 400+ external safety experts and NGOs.

QuestionLankford asks whether Meta's CSAM detection is passive (matching against known content only) or actively looks for new/unknown material.

ResponseMeta says its approach is active, not passive, citing a cited Thorn study on minors' reporting behavior, its Facebook Safety Advisory Board consultations, and a stated shift from purely reactive detection/reporting toward prevention — disrupting offenders' ability to find victims via "strong default protections for young people" and machine learning.

QuestionCiting a more-than-doubling of sextortion reports between 2019 and 2021, Lankford asks what Meta has done to address the trend.

ResponseMeta cites Meta-funded development of an NCMEC hashing platform letting minors privately hash their own images on-device to prevent non-consensual sharing (without uploading the images themselves), plus its 2019 "Stop Sextortion" hub built with Thorn and a Meta Family Center guide for parents talking to teens about intimate images.

QuestionFollowing up on Cox's live-hearing testimony that Meta catches 95% of hate speech before it's reported, Padilla asks (a) where that content originates, (b) how many users saw the uncaught 5% before removal, (c) how long it stayed up, (d) Meta's false-positive rate by language, and (e) what internal success metric Meta uses.

ResponseMeta answers (a) and (e) with its prevalence methodology, but says outright "we do not track this information" for (b) — the specific recommendation-count question Padilla pressed on live — declines to give a direct median-duration figure for (c), and for (d) reports Q2 2022 hate-speech appeal data (2.7M appeals, 238K restored, ~9% reversal rate) without a language breakdown or a distinct "false positive rate."

QuestionCiting reports that Facebook/Instagram's in-app iOS browser injects tracking code for targeted advertising even on non-partner websites, Padilla asks why other apps don't do this and whether Meta will let users default to their native browser instead.

ResponseMeta disputes the premise, saying the Pixel-related code exists to honor Apple's App Tracking Transparency choices (not to circumvent them) and only activates if the external site's own operator has embedded a Meta Pixel; does not directly answer whether it will let users default to their native browser.

QuestionScott asks how many counterfeit-pill-advertising accounts Meta has found (and by what method), whether Meta proactively refers such accounts to law enforcement without tipping off the account holder, and whether moderators search for the DEA's known "Emoji Drug Code" evasion patterns.

ResponseMeta reports Q2 2022 removal figures (98% of Facebook / 97% of Instagram drug-sale content caught proactively; 3.9M and 1.9M pieces removed respectively) rather than an exact counterfeit-pill account count, confirms it does notify account holders about law-enforcement information requests except in emergencies (potentially tipping them off, as Scott's question anticipated), and confirms it monitors for emoji-based drug-code evasion without describing its methods in detail.

QuestionScott asks what Meta has done to help spread awareness of the DEA's "One Pill Can Kill" fentanyl-awareness campaign.

ResponseMeta cites its partnership with Song for Charlie (a fentanyl-awareness nonprofit reaching young people and parents, 1.2M people reached in a recent 30-day period), a Facebook Messenger tool built with the Center for Safe Internet Pharmacies for the DEA's Prescription Drug Take Back Day, and routing drug-related searches to the SAMHSA National Helpline.

QuestionFollowing up on Cox's live-hearing conditional commitment to share cartel-recruitment content with DHS, Sinema asks Meta to detail exactly when privacy/legal concerns would block sharing content that recruits American minors, and whether Meta will commit to a designated point-of-contact for Arizona-border law enforcement.

ResponseMeta does not enumerate specific circumstances where cartel-recruitment content targeting minors would be withheld from DHS, instead describing its general "case-by-case" law-enforcement disclosure process and existing online request system, and does not explicitly commit to a designated Arizona-border point-of-contact.