Facebook’s Russian meddling insight raises questions

Here’s what we know, so far, about Facebook’s recent disclosure that a shadowy Russian firm with ties to the Kremlin created thousands of ads on the social media platform that ran before, during and after the 2016 US presidential election:

— The ads “appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum”, including race, immigration and gun rights, Facebook said.

— The users who purchased the ads were fakes. Attached to assumed identities, their pages were allegedly created by digital guerrilla marketers from Russia hawking information meant to disrupt the US electorate and sway a presidential election.

— Some of those ads were pushed out to very specific parts of the country, presumably for maximum political effect. Facebook has identified some 2,000 other ads that may have been of Russian provenance, although, as CNN reported last week, it can’t rule out that there might be far more than that.

Here’s what we don’t know, at least not directly from Facebook:

— What all of those ads looked like. — What specific information — or disinformation — they were spreading.

— Who or what the accounts pretended to be.

— How many Americans interacted with the ads or the fake personae.

We also don’t know what geographical locations the alleged social media saboteurs were targeting (The regular list of swing states and counties? Or the most politically flammable fringes?) Facebook says that more of those ads ran in 2015 than in 2016, but not how many more.

Nor has Facebook reported whether the people who were targeted were from specific demographic or philosophical groups — all of which means we really don’t know the full extent of the duping on Facebook, and maybe Facebook doesn’t either.

Facebook says it is working to prevent a repeat. And it was hardly the only platform Russia is presumed to have used to disrupt the political debate in America; there were others in the mix as well, particularly Twitter, which has divulged even less than Facebook has. But, in total, there’s a stunning lack of public specificity about an alleged foreign campaign to influence our domestic politics. It was an effort that involved “the American companies that essentially invented the tools of social media and, in this case, did not stop them from being turned into engines of deception and propaganda”, as The Times’ Scott Shane noted in an investigation this month.

Facebook is cooperating to varying degrees with efforts in Washington to understand how it might have been used by Russian influence agents. As The Wall Street Journal first reported late last week, Facebook handed evidence related to the ad campaign over to the special prosecutor investigating the Russia allegations, Robert Mueller.

When I asked Facebook why it couldn’t be more forthcoming with the public, the company responded with a statement saying, “Due to federal law, and the ongoing investigation into these issues, we are limited as to what we can disclose publicly.”

Facebook is referring to its obligations under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the federal law that prohibits the government from unduly spying on our electronic communications.

Facebook, which didn’t elaborate, appears to be saying it is legally restricted from the willy-nilly handing-over of information about its users to the government or, for that matter, the public. And it’s certainly a challenge for Facebook to decide where the line is between sharing vital details about its use in a plot like election meddling, and exposing private data about its legitimate users.

That’s not to say that Mr Mueller’s involvement doesn’t add to the sensitivity for Facebook. It does. But sooner rather than later Facebook owes it to the public to provide still more detail about the ads. And it owes it to its users to let them know if they have directly interacted with the equivalent of digital spies sent to influence them.

Then there’s democracy itself, and the new problems the social platforms are creating for it.

The American electoral system includes a complicated campaign finance regime that was devised to keep Americans informed about who finances the media messages designed to sway them.

The system is imperfect. And it’s been badly weakened over the years. But it still requires, for instance, that television stations keep careful logs of the ad time they sell to candidates and political groups around elections, and make them available to the public. It is also illegal for foreign interests to spend money in our campaigns.

The Russian effort was able to elude those laws through social media, where the system has clearly — and fundamentally — broken down.

“We now know that foreign interests can run campaign ads — sham issue ads — in this country without anyone having any knowledge of who was behind it, and that fundamentally violates a basic concept of campaign finance laws,” said Fred Wertheimer, a longtime advocate for greater regulation of political spending through his group Democracy21.

This much should be clear: Arguments that sites like Facebook are merely open “platforms” — and not “media companies” that make editorial judgements about activity in the digital worlds they created — fall woefully flat when it comes to meddling in our democracy. The platforms have become incredibly powerful in a short amount of time. With great power has come great profit, which they are only too happy to embrace; the great responsibility part, not always so much.

“Given the role they played in this election, they now have a major responsibility to help solve this problem,” Mr Wertheimer said. After all, the 2018 midterms are just around the corner.