Facebook Says It Will Hand Over Russia-Backed Ads to Congress -- 2nd Update
September 21 2017 - 5:55PM
Dow Jones News
By Robert McMillan, Byron Tau and Deepa Seetharaman
Facebook Inc., under fire for its response to Russian activity
in the U.S. presidential election, said Thursday it would take
steps to increase political transparency on its site and has agreed
to hand over detailed information on thousands of Russian-backed
ads to congressional investigators.
The measures include bolstering the transparency and disclosure
requirements for political ads on Facebook's platform, boosting its
ad-review process and adding more than 250 employees to its team
working on election integrity, more than doubling the size of that
group.
The actions highlight how Facebook is grappling with its growing
role in politics -- and the social network's potential for
abuse.
"I don't want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy,"
Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said during a live video
broadcast on the site. "That's not what we stand for."
At the same time, Mr. Zuckerberg sought to limit how far
Facebook would go in monitoring content on its platform, reflecting
the hands-off approach it had taken with misinformation on its site
during the campaign. Mr. Zuckerberg said Facebook won't review
posts or ads prior to their publication on the platform.
"Freedom means you don't have to ask permission first, and that
by default you can say what you want," he said.
Facebook earlier this month said that Russian entities paid
$150,000 to run 5,200 divisive ads on its platform during the U.S.
presidential campaign. The disclosure, prompted by congressional
probes as well as a separate investigation by Special Counsel
Robert Mueller, came after Facebook said this summer that it had
found no evidence of such activity.
Facebook has been under political pressure to be more
forthcoming to Congress with information about the ads. The House
and Senate intelligence committees are conducting separate probes
of Russian activity during the 2016 election with the aim of
writing comprehensive reports to publicly document what happened
during last year's divisive campaign. Facebook briefed the
committees on its findings in recent weeks.
Russia has denied any interference in the election.
The company made more complete disclosures of Russian-linked
material to Mr. Mueller for his criminal and counterintelligence
investigation into the same topic.
Still, Facebook is only giving Congress a portion of the ads:
the 3,000 ads created by accounts tied to a Russian entity known as
the Internet Research Agency, which accounted for $100,000 in ad
spending. Facebook found another 2,200 ads, amounting to $50,000 in
spending, that were tied to other accounts such as those associated
with U.S. internet addresses but with the language set to Russian.
It is a violation of Facebook policy to create "inauthentic
accounts" on the platform.
"It will be important for the Committee to scrutinize 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," said Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House
Intelligence Committee.
Facebook is in a difficult position as it tries to balance its
privacy obligations toward its users, while at the same time
informing the American public about Russian influence during the
election, said Thomas Rid, professor of Strategic Studies at Johns
Hopkins University.
But the fuller disclosure sets a risky precedent for Facebook,
which has long been reluctant to reveal data about its users and
advertisers.
According to a January report from the U.S. intelligence
community, Russia's interference was directed at the highest levels
of government. Its tactics included hacking state election systems,
infiltrating and leaking information from party committees and
political strategists and disseminating through social media and
other outlets negative stories about Democratic nominee Hillary
Clinton and positive ones about Donald Trump, the report said.
President Trump has denied any collusion.
Write to Robert McMillan at Robert.Mcmillan@wsj.com, Byron Tau
at byron.tau@wsj.com and Deepa Seetharaman at
Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 21, 2017 17:40 ET (21:40 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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