Senators roast social media chiefs
Facebook, Twitter, Google criticized for not stopping Russian interference in American elections
Washington — Exasperated U.S. senators harshly criticized representatives of Facebook, Twitter and Google at a hearing Tuesday for not doing more to prevent Russian agents interfering with the American political process as early as 2015.
At one point, Sen. Al Franken shook his head after he couldn’t get all the companies to commit to not accepting political ads bought with North Korean currency.
The hearing by a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary panel was moved last week into a cavernous hearing room usually reserved for high-profile events like Supreme Court confirmations. About 50 people waited to get in as senators fired pointed questions and waved at cardboard displays of outrageous ads.
“People are buying ads on your platform with rubles. They are political ads,” Franken fumed. “You put billions of data points together all the time . ... Google has all knowledge that man has ever developed. You can’t put together rubles with a political ad and go like, ‘Hmmm, those data points spell out something pretty bad?’”
Technology company representatives fumbled at points. After Franken pointed out foreign spending on U.S. political campaigns is illegal, Google’s director of law enforcement and information security, Richard Salgado, replied only that the search giant would refuse political ads paid with foreign currency “if it’s a good enough signal on illegality.”
“In hindsight, we should have had a broader lens,” said Facebook’s general counsel, Colin Stretch.
The companies all pledged to do more and politely said they understood the seriousness with which lawmakers are taking the question of Russian meddling.
Misleading ads revealed
Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut revealed some of the ads taken out by Russians, including one that showed comedian Aziz Ansari holding up a sign that said “Save time, avoid the line, vote from home,” a message that falsely suggested voters could cast ballots by text message.
Another Twitter post urged voters to text “Hillary” to 59925 to cast their vote.
Blumenthal pressed Twitter’s acting general counsel Sean Edgett to commit to researching how many voters may have been misled into incorrectly believing they had voted because of the posts.
Pressured to support legislation
Sen. Amy Klobuchar pressured the representatives to support her “Honest Ads” bill, which she is co-sponsoring with Sen. Mark Warner and Sen. John McCain, and which would bring political ad rules from TV, radio and print to the internet.
She dismissed pledges from the companies this week to be more transparent about political ads as an unenforceable “patchwork” of self-policing.
“We’re not waiting for legislation,” said Stretch, before Klobuchar cut him off and repeated her demand for a yes or no answer.
“We stand ready to work with you and your co-sponsors on that legislation going forward,” Stretch replied, echoed by Twitter’s and Google’s representatives.
Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy browbeat Stretch into admitting that Facebook had no way of knowing the true identity of all of the 5 million advertisers that use its platform every month.
“Of course, the answer is no,” Stretch said.