META Meta Platforms Inc

By Doug MacMillan and Byron Tau 

When Sheryl Sandberg toured Capitol Hill in 2015, she was celebrated by female lawmakers, who posted selfies with the Facebook Inc. operating chief and tweeted endorsements for her best-selling book, "Lean In."

Ms. Sandberg received no such acclaim this week on her visit to Washington, D.C., part of a mission to appease lawmaker concerns about the proliferation of foreign propaganda, fake content and divisive advertising on the social media platform.

Facebook's COO on Wednesday met with leaders of the House Intelligence Committee, which is conducting an investigation into Russian activity on Facebook. The following day, she huddled with the Congressional Black Caucus, a group of 49 black lawmakers. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also called lawmakers in recent weeks to explain his efforts to prevent misinformation and propaganda from spreading on its platform.

"The members really expressed themselves and expressed to Ms. Sandberg our utter disappointment with the way Facebook has conducted its affairs from national security all the way to diversity and inclusion," said Rep. G.K. Butterfield, a Democrat from North Carolina, who was present at the Congressional Black Caucus meeting. "She said today, as she said in 2015, that she gets it and the culture of her company is going to change in the foreseeable future."

The pilgrimage by one of Facebook's most politically-connected leaders is part of a broader push by the social network to extend an olive branch to the U.S. government at a time of growing concern over the power companies like Facebook and Alphabet Inc.'s Google have accumulated -- and whether the tech giants have a grasp on how their technology is being used. Congressional investigators have invited Facebook, Google and Twitter Inc. to publicly testify next month about covert Russian manipulation on their platforms that the companies say was designed to interfere with the U.S. elections and sow social discord.

"Facebook is an important part of many people's lives. That's an enormous responsibility -- and one that we take incredibly seriously," said Erin Egan, vice president of U.S. public policy for Facebook, in a statement. "We are continually learning and improving -- and the meetings Sheryl held in D.C. are a key part of that effort."

But as Ms. Sandberg confronted tense discussions in Washington, many wondered whether the push is coming too late.

There are already growing calls for regulatory intervention. Two Senate Democrats are drafting legislation that would require social-media companies to disclose the same kind of information about political ads that broadcasters must -- something that appears to have growing support at least among Democrats. That would include providing the name of the entity that created and paid for the ad.

The Federal Election Commission, the regulator that oversees political ads, this week reopened a comment period for proposals around new guidelines for online ad disclosures. Facebook, which six years ago resisted the regulator's attempt to rein in digital ads, said it plans to submit a recommendation to the FEC before the Nov. 9 deadline for comments.

Lawmakers are still focused on the question of last year's election and the role Facebook played in selling more than $100,000 in ads to a pro-Kremlin company that appeared intent on exploiting tensions in the American electorate. In a media appearance Thursday, Ms. Sandberg acknowledged Facebook's platform was manipulated in a way it shouldn't have been during the election.

Adam Schiff (D, Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called on Facebook to do more to identify buyers of ads on its site and said that Facebook, in turn, asked for more help from government intelligence groups to help it identify threats in the future.

"I think they certainly realize the intense interest in what the Russians did on their platform, the responsibility they have on their own to ferret this material out," Mr. Schiff said. "They also expressed a very strong desire on their own to get any assistance they can from the intelligence community when they identify foreign bad actors."

Facebook's new cooperation with lawmakers contrasts with its initial reluctance to give information to congressional investigators. Congressional investigators were frustrated by how little detail Facebook provided in its briefing to them last month about the Russian ad buying, people familiar with the meetings said. Earlier this month, Facebook agreed to provide investigators with information on 3,000 of the Russia-backed ads.

Facebook, which hired its first in-house lobbyist a decade ago, now has a Washington office staffed with dozens of people just two blocks east of the White House. The group is led by Joel Kaplan, a former deputy chief of staff for George W. Bush. Ms. Sandberg worked at the Treasury Department in the 1980s.

The company spent $6.4 million on outside lobbyists in the first half of this year, 17% more than it did during the same period in 2016.

"It never occurred to [Facebook] that the platform they created that was optimized for advertisers would also be the perfect platform for disrupting democracy," said Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook and the co-founder of Elevation Partners. "There is no easy fix and no amount of public relations can solve their problem."

Deepa Seetharaman and Rebecca Ballhaus contributed to this article.

Write to Byron Tau at byron.tau@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 13, 2017 20:14 ET (00:14 GMT)

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