Fox News "The Story with Martha MacCallum" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Max Rose

Interview

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REP. MAX ROSE, D-N.Y.: Good to see you, Ed. Thank you so much for having me.

HENRY: What is your sense about what -- where Facebook is missing the mark?

ROSE: Yes. So, this is an incredibly disturbing report that just came out. You know, Facebook often brags, especially in recent months where we've seen incidents around, there are being terrorist content on their platform.

They brag that they have it under control, that they have an A.I. platform that can deal with this, that they have personnel allocated, and then we see problems like this, where 60 percent of terrorist content is leaking -- is sifting through leaking through their screen's controls, and being amplified then.

It's a gigantic problem, and they have got to tell us what they are doing to solve this. We requested three weeks ago, my committee -- my subcommittee on intelligence and counterterrorism, along with the chairman of the committee to actually tell us what personnel you are allocating to this. What are you doing to solve this problem?

(CROSSTALK)

HENRY: Yes. What is the answer?

ROSE: And they've ignored -- they've ignored us. They have treated us as if we were stepchildren in the corner, and it is not a laughing matter.

HENRY: Not at all.

ROSE: You know, at this point, Facebook's elitist snobbery and their woeful neglect of congressional oversight and their counterterrorism screening obligations, represents what I believe an incredibly serious national security threat, and they have got to do something about it.

HENRY: Well, let give me our viewers an example of what you are talking about, in terms of flipping through the cracks and what is going on.

So, the Associated Press had a look at this auto generated, we have some video of it, Facebook celebration video with various images. Look at this. Basically, it's an animated video that begins with a photo of the black flags of Jihad. Seconds later, it flashes highlights of a year of social media posts, that basically some of the stuff was being posted, and they thought it was, you know, some sort of celebration.

So, they said great, let's put this together like it's somebody's birthday video like we get on our normal pages. Instead, it's Jihad propaganda and it's just sort of auto generated, and then who knows, kids, others, are seeing this trash.

ROSE: You know, when we think about the most likely threat that we face today, it is a lone wolf inspired gunman, who the message and his actions are completely sourced from online social media. That's where he is inspired to do these things, and Facebook all they're thinking about right now is their quarterly profit.

And it's not just Facebook who has this responsibility. It's YouTube, it's Twitter, and it is the less popular sites like 8chan.

HENRY: Yes.

ROSE: Someone else who we also have to be focusing on, and as we've seen most recently, the FBI, the DOJ are not doing nearly enough to communicate out of with 8chan, as well.

HENRY: Congressman, real quick, you are not the only one pressuring them, they are getting pressure sort of from some of their own today. It was a pretty big story that one of the cofounders of Facebook, Chris Hughes, came out, he had a big op-ed in the New York Times and then he said this on The Today show. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you think Facebook is dangerous?

CHRIS HUGHES, CO-FOUNDER, FACEBOOK: I do. I think Facebook has become too big, too powerful, because there isn't been -- there is no regulatory agency from the federal government.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENRY: So, one of the co-founders is saying, it's time to break them up. What say you?

ROSE: Yes. Look, he is still enjoying the hundreds of millions of dollars he made of Facebook, so I'll take his comments with a grain of salt.

What I will say, though, is that we can break up Facebook and still face the same problem, which is incendiary language, terrorist content on our social media platforms. And if we don't have a strong public-private partnership that is completely focused on dealing with this crisis, we are going to continue to deal with this whether we break up these large social media companies or not, and that's what I'm concerned with. Keeping the American people safe.

HENRY: All right. Congressman, I appreciate you for coming in.

ROSE: All right. Thank you so much again.

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