Sheryl Sandberg's Washington Pilgrimage Clouded by Tensions
October 13 2017 - 8:29PM
Dow Jones News
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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