TWITTER, FACEBOOK, & GOOGLE HAVE SERIOUS ISSUES INVOLVING THE RUSSIANS

…Here’s an aerial view of Facebook Headquarters in Silicon Valley

 

Lawmakers say the problem with foreign intrusion into America’s social media is much broader than the companies know.

 

Isn’t it ironic that President Trump’s main choice of social media, Twitter, is the media where they have found 201 accounts that had to be taken down because they were associated with the Russians.  Twitter management also said it found three accounts from the Russian financed news site, RT, which they were able to link directly to the Kremlin.  RT spent $274,100 in political ads on the Twitter platform in 2016.  This spending was to provide ads for helping steer unaware American voters away from Hillary and toward Donald Trump.

 

But it doesn’t stop there.

 

The 201 accounts were tied to the same Russian operatives who posted thousands of political ads on Facebook.  This effort has frustrated lawmakers who said the problem is far broader than all of these American social media companies appear to know.

 

Despite these disclosures, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) questioned whether the companies are doing enough to stop Russian operatives from using these platforms to spread disinformation and division in American society.

 

Warner said Twitter’s presentation to a closed door meeting of Senate Intelligence Committee staffers was “deeply disappointing” and “inadequate on almost every level.” Twitter made a similar presentation to House Intelligence Committee staffers.  Both companies, Twitter and Facebook, “showed an enormous lack of understanding... about how serious this issue is, and the threat it poses to democratic institutions,” Warner said.

 

The meeting between the companies and Congressional investigators were part of a widening government probe into how Russian operatives used Facebook, Google, Twitter and other social media platforms to sow division and disinformation during the 2016 campaign. Those companies are under increasing pressure from Capitol Hill to investigate Russian meddling on their platforms and are facing the possibility of new regulations that could impact their massive advertising businesses.   The companies must start doing what is required by the TV networks regarding truth in paid advertising.

 

The real issue for these companies is that everything that these Russian companies did, they did in the systems that are all totally automated.  All the ads they bought and ran were done on-line.  The social media companies had no idea that they were coming from companies or individuals connected to a foreign operation that was out to do bad things against American democracy.

 

Take Facebook for instance.  Facebook has over one billion users.  Can you imagine what they have had to go through just to figure out who were the bad guys and who were just regular members doing their thing on the internet?

…The familiar “Like” sign at Facebook.

 

“They have no idea who is on their platform. If it wasn’t for Facebook’s data, they would have no idea these were even Russian accounts,” said Clint Watts, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.  In its blog post, Twitter did not reveal who the ads reached and how many times they were shared. It is also not clear whether Twitter did a broader search of its users for possible Russian interference.

 

The Twitter accounts, which were taken down, were associated with 470 accounts and pages that Facebook last month said came from the Internet Research Agency, a Russia-connected troll-farm. Twitter said the groups on Facebook also had 22 corresponding Twitter accounts. Twitter then found an additional 179 accounts linked, just to those 22 Twitter accounts.

 

Facebook, Google and Twitter are being summoned to a public hearing on Capitol Hill on Nov. 1.

 

But lawmakers and analysts criticized Twitter for appearing as if it only accepted and looked into the data that it received from Facebook, rather than conduct a broader internal investigation. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Ca.), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said Twitter needs to launch “a far more robust investigation” into how Russian actors used the platform.

 

Alex Howard, deputy director of the Sunlight Foundation, said there’s plenty of evidence that Russian intelligence operatives have been on Twitter for years and have used the platform to amplify their messages.  “We need to think very carefully about what role we want these companies to have in our debate…..and, since these platforms largely regulate themselves, what kind of accountability we want them to have,” Howard said.

 

Facebook has faced the greatest Congressional scrutiny. The company has said it will provide 3,000 political ads, in addition to payment information and data about who those ads had targeted.  This will be sent to Congress in the coming days.

 

In a Facebook post on Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, apologized for saying it was “pretty crazy” that fake news could have influenced the US election.  “Calling that crazy was dismissive and I regret it. This is too important an issue to be dismissive,” he wrote. He then emphasized the role Facebook played in encouraging authentic debate and sustaining democratic ideals was much greater than any exploitation that took place.

 

“The data we have has always shown that our broader impact….from giving people a voice to enabling candidates to communicate directly to helping millions of people vote….played a far bigger role in this election,” he said.

 

Google, the largest on-line advertising company in the world, has also been asked to provide information to Congressional investigators and to testify before Congress.  But Google has not said whether it will do so. The company has said it will cooperate with any investigation, but Google says they have “seen no evidence” of a Russian-promoted ad campaign…. ?  Is it possible that the Russians did not also use the largest on-line advertising company in the world?  I would doubt that.

…This is Google’s Data Center in California

 

In many ways, Twitter has been the most vulnerable to exploitation of all the social media companies. The company officially says that 5% of accounts on Twitter are automated bots, but outside researchers say the number could be much, much higher.

 

“It’s very easy to buy fake accounts on Twitter, making it hard for Twitter to discern the extent of the Russian meddling,” analysts said.  “Anyone can create an account anonymously on Twitter and hide its origin,” said Watts, the Foreign Policy Research Institute fellow.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017