Facebook to show Russia-linked adverts
"I don't want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy. That's not what we stand for."
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
UNITED STATES: Responding to mounting pressure to reveal details about Russian-paid propaganda on its platform, Facebook said it would share more than 3000 advertisements linked to Russia with congressional panels investigating foreign meddling in the 2016 election.
The move announced yesterday is a reversal for Facebook, which previously only showed staffers on Capital Hill snippets of the adverts, citing user privacy.
Facebook had given the adverts and other information to special counsel Robert Mueller, who is also looking into possible Trump campaign ties to Russia. But the company has been facing growing calls to assist congressional investigators after publicly acknowledging on September 6 that it had accepted at least US$100,000 in Russia-linked adverts.
‘‘We believe it is vitally important that government authorities have the information they need to deliver to the public a full assessment of what happened in the 2016 election,’’ Colin Stretch, Facebook’s general counsel, said yesterday.
Facebook co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg discussed the disclosure during a live broadcast in which he also pledged to strengthen the company’s advert review process and instil more transparency in political advertising on his platform.
‘‘I don’t want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy. That’s not what we stand for,’’ Zuckerberg said. ‘‘The integrity of our elections is fundamental to democracy around the world.’’
He expects the government to publish findings about the Russian adverts, which were aimed at exacerbating divisions on social issues like race, guns and immigration during the US presidential campaign season.
The adverts were purchased by 470 fake accounts traced back to the Internet Research Agency, a Russian firm known for using troll accounts to post on news sites.
Facebook executives briefed the Senate intelligence committee earlier this month on the Russialinked adverts. But Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the committee, and other lawmakers had criticised the company for refusing to turn over the materials that it had given to Mueller.
Rep Adam Schiff, the senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said the Facebook material ‘‘should help us better understand what happened, beyond the preliminary briefings we already received’’.
He added, ‘‘It will be important for the committee to scrutinise how rigorous Facebook’s internal investigation has been, to test its conclusions and to understand why it took as long as it did to discover the Russian sponsored advertisements and what else may yet be uncovered.’’
Schiff made clear that Facebook is not the only company that investigators expect to hear from.
‘‘As we continue our investigation to get to the bottom of Russia’s multifaceted attack on our democratic process, I believe it will be necessary to hear directly from Facebook, Google and Twitter, as well as others in the tech sector, including in open hearings that will inform the American public.’’
No evidence has emerged publicly to indicate co-ordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
But the use of social media was part of a broad effort by the Kremlin to influence the presidential election, US intelligence agencies said in a January report. It concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered the campaign to help Trump and damage Hillary Clinton.
The intelligence report found that Russian social media users had posted messages hostile to Clinton. But the impact of the Facebook adverts on the election remains unclear, current and former officials said.
‘‘The Russians have long considered information operations like this to be part of their foreign policy tool box,’’ said Michael Daniel, a former senior cybersecurity official in the Obama administration. ‘‘But they’re not necessarily seeking to elect an individual; they’re seeking to sow division to sow distrust.’’
Most of the adverts, which ran between June 2015 and May 2017, were bought online, without any contact between Facebook and the buyers, Zuckerberg said. The buys totalled about US$100,000 and only a quarter were geographically targeted to the US.
Facebook’s move comes at a time when lawmakers and the public are debating whether it’s necessary to rein in the growing power and influence of America’s largest technology companies.
‘‘Governments have lost patience with platforms that look more like enablers than innovators to regulators these days, which suggests more regulation on the horizon,’’ said Albert Gidari, of the Centre for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School.
Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Google’s parent company Alphabet have a combined market capitalisation of $3 trillion and an even greater market dominance over consumer data. Facebook and Google’s hold on information is cited as one of the reasons the so-called fake news phenomenon was able to fester. –