The chairman of the Senate intelligence committee says Facebook should testify as part of its probe into Russian meddling in the US election, and that the social media giant “seems to have been less than forthcoming” with Congress. This week, he announced that Facebook users will now be able to visit advertisers’ pages to see what they’re advertising, and who they’re targeting.
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President Donald Trump weighed in on the latest scrutiny of Facebook and the extent to which Russian sources purchased political ads during the 2016 campaign, suggesting that the focus on the social media giant was part of “the Russia hoax”. Elliot Schrage, Vice President of Policy and Communications at Facebook said that “it’s possible” that there could be more ads from Russians or other foreign actors using fake accounts.
Mark Warner of Virginia say the contents of the ads will aid them in their investigations of Russian interference in US elections, but also that the move is just a first step.
The top Democrat on the Senate intelligence panel says he is pleased with Facebook’s announcement that the company is going to provide Congress with thousands of ads bought by Russians and increase transparency. The company initially declined to turn over details on the ads to Congress. Zuckerberg also vowed to create more services to protect Facebook users that engage in political discourse on the platform and said they are now looking into adapting its anti-bullying system to protect against political harassment.
Investigators are interested in other companies as well.
“Zuckerberg, apparently, has not carried out any months-long investigations concerning the actions of the United States to intervene in the affairs of other sovereign countries”, Kosachev said. Roughly 97 percent of that revenue came from the company’s ad business.
The Kremlin says it has never placed adverts on Facebook to influence the U.S. presidential election.
There is growing pressure for such digital platforms and Google to have tighter oversight on political adverts in a way more congruent with regulations on TV and other media.
“We don’t know who placed the advertisements on Facebook or how, and have never done it”.
It remained unclear whether Facebook’s voluntary changes would satisfy demands for government action.
“W$3 e are in a new world”. After the September 6 disclosure, Facebook was under pressure to release the ads to Congress. He also noted that Facebook is a tech titan reaching billions across the globe, operating a platform for “billions of interactions and open discussions” about elections that operate at scale of “100 times or 1,000 times” the scale of the interference.
He went on to say that Facebook’s teams ensure that fake accounts which undermine democratic processes and attempt to influence elections are discovered and shut down.
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While testifying before Congress last week some representatives of Facebook revealed that they believed the fake accounts which were associated with the suspect ad buys possibly had links with a troll farm that is based in St. Petersburg, Russia.
