The United States Senate Intelligence Committee held a hearing Wednesday, Nov. 1 regarding Russian ties with social media platforms surrounding the 2016 presidential election.
“For months now the media has been fixated on the role social media platforms played in spreading disinformation and discord during the 2016 elections,” said Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Burr.
The committee brought witnesses from three major social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Google. Not in attendance were the three CEOs of the companies: Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and Sundar Pichai.
Instead the companies decided to send their general council members. These members included Vice President of the General Counsel for Facebook Colin Stretch, General Counsel member for Twitter Sean Edgett and Senior Vice President General Counsel of Google Kent Walker.
The hearing gave representatives from each of the companies an opportunity to recount their perspectives about the Russian linked accounts and ads present on all of their sites during the election.
“Today I’m hopeful we can provide the American people with an informed and credible assessment of how foreign actors used your platforms to circulate lies and to agitate unrest during last year’s elections,” said Burr.
The committee was also very interested in discovering what these three companies are going to do in order to prevent foreign powers from influencing the American people through an abundance of disinformation.
“Very clearly this kind of vulnerability represents unacceptable risk,” said Burr, “and your companies have a responsibility to reduce that vulnerability.”
During the 2016 election, ads on social media platforms were distinctively targeted at swing states, specifically Wisconsin which some consider led to the election of President Donald J. Trump.
These ads were presented as news stories and gave an estimated 126 million people on Facebook disinformation. While not all of these people went into the voting booth, it does mean that they reached a portion of the American electorate. CNN reports that 128 million people participated in voting in the 2016 election.
It was uncovered recently that Maryland, a state that Hillary Clinton carried by 26 percent, was also targeted with 207 more ads than Wisconsin. In addition, many of the ads ran prior to Trump being identified as the Republican candidate.
It was discovered that of the 3,000 ads released between 2015 and 2017, they focused on divisive topics aside from the election such as race, LGBT rights and gun ownership.
While some have designated Russia as being the cause of the 2016 election outcome, “We can not calculate the impact that foreign meddling and social media had on this election,” said Burr.
Burr further said, “nor can we assume that it must be the explanation for an election outcome that many didn’t expect.”
“The full impact of fake news on the election is far from known. What is clear is that there was and remains a lot of fake news. Social media is one key source of this and certainly a key contributor to its distribution,” said Associate Professor of Political Science at WCU Ashlie Delshad.
“As a social scientist, I cannot take lightly teasing apart which factors had what causal impact on the outcome . . . an election is a very complex and imprecise exercise. Did it have an impact? Yes. The exact nature and degree is not fully clear.”
The committee called upon Facebook to inform them of how they dealt with and will deal with Russian propaganda.
“All of these accounts and pages violated our policies and we removed them,” said Stretch. “Going forward we are making significant investments.”
Facebook is in the process of at least doubling their security engineering efforts, hiring more ad reviewers, placing tighter restrictions on ad content, working more closely with law enforcement, launching new tools to improve ad transparency and building artificial intelligence to locate more banned content and bad actors, according to Stretch.
Twitter is also taking significant efforts in combatting Russian propaganda prevalence. “At the time of the 2016 election we observed and acted on instances of automated and malicious activity,” said Edgett. “As we learned more about the scope of the broader problem we resolved and strengthened our systems moving forward.”
Twitter has a review underway tracking activity between Sept. 1 and Nov. 15, 2016 and has uncovered automated and coordinated activity of interest. Although, the number of accounts linked to Russia are about .01 of the percentage of total Twitter users according to Edgett. Moving forward Twitter is increasing their security and ad regulations as well as changing their ad policies.
“Google believes we have a responsibility to prevent the misuse of our platforms,” said Walker, “and we take that very seriously.”
Google is taking many preventative measures to protect their platform users. They are continually growing their security technology as well as increasing their transparency surrounding ad purchases. In addition, Google is providing secure technology for campaigns and making a purpose of defending digital democracy.
The committee was not entirely pleased with what the social media platforms had to say about their efforts, and emphasized that they do not understand the caliber of what is occurring. The committee told them that they must do more in order to combat the problem and all three platforms agreed.
Social media platforms are not the only ones being called upon to help combat the influence of Russian propaganda on American society. “We have a president who remains unwilling to acknowledge the threat that Russia poses on our democracy,” said Sen. Walker, Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “President Trump should stop delegitimizing American journalism and acknowledge and address this very real threat posed by Russian propaganda.”
Moving forward, the use of social media will not disappear; rather, it will continue to grow. “The reality is politicians will use whatever platform provides them access to an audience,” said Delshad. “One of the great things about social media is that in most cases not only can they reach lots of people very quickly, they can do so at very low or no cost.”
Erin McFeeters is a fourth-year student majoring in communication studies with a minor in journalism. She can be reached at EM857951@wcupa.edu.