By Byron Tau and Deepa Seetharaman
WASHINGTON -- Senators pressed representatives from three
technology giants to explain why they didn't recognize
Russia-linked accounts earlier, as the officials struck a contrite
tone about the role their services played in stoking political
tensions during the 2016 campaign
Facebook Inc., Alphabet Inc.'s Google and Twitter Inc. were all
summoned in front of a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary
Committee on Tuesday, where officials told members of Congress that
they were actively developing better policies for how to curb
foreign activity on their platforms and ensure that foreign
governments, terrorists and criminals aren't able to abuse social
media for nefarious purposes.
The officials also faced questions about voter-suppression
efforts and whether Silicon Valley can or should police speech.
The tech companies emphasized that only a fraction of the total
political content that appeared on their platforms had any links to
foreign governments, particularly Russia, which the U.S.
intelligence community determined in January ran a campaign of
hacking and disinformation aimed at influencing the 2016
presidential election. They promised to take more responsibility
for policing political content on their platforms in the
future.
But the tech giants also disclosed that millions of users saw
either paid or free election-related content during and after last
year's election across the platforms. Members of Congress peppered
tech executives, especially Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch,
with questions about their policies toward hate speech and
terrorism, ad-targeting capabilities and how they manage their role
in political discourse in the U.S. as well as in developing
countries like Myanmar.
In his written remarks, Mr. Stretch of Facebook described the
Russian-created posts and ads as "deeply disturbing -- seemingly
intended to amplify societal divisions and pit groups of people
against each other."
Several senators appeared irked by the amount of time it took
tech companies to detect and disclose the extent of the Russian
activity on their platforms. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) noted
that there remained many pages on Facebook that appeared similar to
those created by the Internet Research Agency, a pro-Kremlin group
that bought ads on Facebook during a two-year period that included
the U.S. election.
Sen. Al Franken (D, Minn.) highlighted that those Russian-backed
actors purchased Facebook ads in rubles. "How could you not connect
those two dots?" he asked. Mr. Stretch responded: "It's a signal we
should have been alert to and in hindsight, one we missed."
Another member, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) called better
addressing nefarious activity on social media "the national
security challenge of the 21st century."
On Tuesday, the companies promised that they understood their
civic responsibilities to ensure that hateful, misleading, false or
propagandistic content is better policed. Facebook has 10,000
people working on safety and security and plans to double that
figure by the end of 2018, Mr. Stretch said. Twitter for the first
time revealed the reach of Russian-linked content, acknowledging
that there were about 288 million automated, election-related
tweets from accounts tied to Russia between Sept. 1 and Nov. 15,
2016.
Facebook in prepared testimony estimated that 126 million people
on Facebook saw Russian-backed content from a single pro-Kremlin
firm called the Internet Research Agency,
The hearing featured some prominent examples of the
Russian-created content, with Sen. Chris Coons (D, Del.) displaying
two images of ads run by Facebook pages created by the pro-Kremlin
Internet Research Agency.
One was an anti-Hillary Clinton ad from a page called "Heart of
Texas", which said she was "despised by the overwhelming majority
of American veterans." The second ad came from a page "Being
Patriotic" for an Oct. 2, 2016 event called "Miners for Trump."
Mr. Stretch said such ads had no place on Facebook and angered
Facebook employees. This ad reflected "the sophistication, in my
view, of what we're dealing with," Mr. Stretch said. "This is an
online attack...and it's also paired with offline activity."
Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California and Amy Klobuchar of
Minnesota asked about voter-suppression efforts, pointing to tweets
that falsely claimed that people could "vote by text."
Twitter removed the tweets because the company deemed it illegal
voter suppression, Twitter's acting general counsel Sean Edgett
said.
"It is criminal," Sen. Klobuchar said. "I say it so that people
understand why we need to have another kind of law in place to
police this conduct."
All three companies found themselves in the hot-seat on Capitol
Hill this week after Facebook revealed in September that it had
uncovered Russian activity on its platform. Since that disclosure,
Twitter and Google have also launched internal audits to uncover
the extent of Russian activity on their platforms.
Tuesday's hearing was the first of three high-profile scheduled
appearances before Capitol Hill committees probing aspects of
Russian activity during the 2016 election. On Wednesday, they are
scheduled to appear in back-to-back appearances before the House
and Senate Intelligence Committee. The House Intelligence committee
is expected to release more examples of Russia-influenced content.
Also on Wednesday, Facebook is due to release its latest quarterly
earnings report.
In front of the Judiciary committee, Facebook, Google and
Twitter all faced tough questions about privacy, potential
regulation of ads on their platforms and why it took so long for
the companies to uncover the amount of Russian activity on the
platform.
Other members expressed concerns about tech companies taking too
great a role in policing speech -- raising First Amendment concerns
about the control that the tech giants have over the public
square.
"The prospect of Silicon Valley companies actively censoring
speech or the news content is troubling to anyone who cares about a
democratic process with a robust First Amendment," said Sen. Ted
Cruz (R., Texas.).
All three companies also vowed that they were developing
policies to provide better political ad disclosure but expressed
hesitation in endorsing new legislation.
In response to questions from Sen. Klobuchar, a sponsor of
legislation to require social media companies to register political
advertisements purchased on their platforms in a federal database,
asked representatives of all three companies if they supported her
bill. The proposal calls for regulating digital political
advertising media more like the ads that appear on television and
radio.
"We certainly support the goals of the legislation and hope to
work through the nuances," said Richard Salgado, Google's director
of law enforcement and information security.
--Georgia Wells, Michelle Hackman, and Douglas MacMillan
contributed to this article.
Write to Byron Tau at byron.tau@wsj.com and Deepa Seetharaman at
Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 31, 2017 18:54 ET (22:54 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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