Washington
Russia’s large-scale use of American social media platforms to spread misinformation, disinformation and propaganda to U.S. voters before the election was the focus of a hearing on Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google agreed to testify before three congressional committees this week after growing criticism from lawmakers about Moscow’s use of popular social media platforms to secretly help Donald Trump and harm his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
They faced withering criticism from lawmakers on the panel, especially Democrats, for failing to head off the Russian interference before the election and for not doing enough to prevent their platforms from being used in a similar manner in the future.
“You put millions of data points together all the time,” Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., told the company officials. “You can’t put together rubles with a political ad? Those two data points spell out something bad.”
In one Facebook post that ran in May 2016 and was aimed at military veterans, a Russian entity posing as a user named “Heart of Texas” asserted that Clinton was “despised by the overwhelming majority of American veterans” and called for the military to be removed from her control if she were elected president.
“This ad is nothing short of the Russian government directly interfering in our elections — lying to American citizens, duping folks who believe they are joining and supporting a group that is about veterans and based in Texas, when in fact it’s paid for in rubles by Russians,” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del.
“Senator, that advertisement has no place on Facebook, and we are committed to preventing that sort of behavior from occurring again on our platform,” Colin Stretch, Facebook’s general counsel, replied.
In another troubling example, a tweet showed a fake photo of comedian Aziz Ansari holding a sign that improperly told voters they could cast their ballots by tweeting “ClintonKaine” with the hashtag “presidentialelection,” to “save time and avoid the line.”
“We took down this and all other tweets like it as illegal voter suppression,” said Sean J. Edgett, Twitter’s acting general counsel, adding that Twitter did not determine how many users sought to vote this way.
The companies outlined steps they are taking to provide users more information about who was buying ads on their platforms and to close fake accounts.
But the new protections apply only to ads that named political candidates, not to more generic ads about controversial issues, the type used overwhelmingly by Russian entities in the last election cycle.
Blocking those types of posts and ads could threaten the open nature of Facebook, Twitter and Google as platforms that allowed all legitimate users to express themselves freely, the executives said.
None of the companies was willing to endorse a bill sponsored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. that would require the same disclosure of the sponsor for online political ads that is currently in place on ads that appear on television and the radio.
The companies have briefed members and staff of the House and Senate intelligence committees on their findings in a closed-door meeting and provided copies of ads produced by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian company known for using troll accounts to post on news sites.
Twitter and Google also have given information to special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading a criminal investigation into whether any of President Donald Trump’s aides coordinated with Russian authorities during or after the campaign. Trump has denied any collusion.