Facebook, Twitter and Google tell U.S. lawmakers about 'reprehensible' Russian election interference


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Representatives from some of America’s largest technology companies were in Washington on Tuesday, telling lawmakers about what they have learned about Russian attempts to influence last year’s U.S. election over their networks.


Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google began testifying in front of a Senate judiciary subcommittee led by Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham that’s probing the issue of Russian meddling in the election.


The three companies — and others — have only recently come forward with hard numbers on how extensive those attempts to meddle were.


Russia’s Internet Research Agency generated 80,000 posts from fake names on 120 different made-up pages between January 2015 and August 2017, Facebook revealed this week, which were eventually viewed by as many as 126 million Americans once they were shared.


Twitter said it has identified and deactivated 2,752 accounts linked to the same group, which is known for promoting pro-Russian government positions. Those accounts put out 1.4 million election-related tweets between the start of September and election day.


None of those tweets were considered advertising under those services’ own rules.



“When it comes to the 2016 election I want to be clear,” Facebook’s general counsel Colin Stretch said in his opening remarks. “The foreign interference that we saw is reprehensible.”


“Many are inflammatory,” Stretch said of the posts, which got around advertising rules by masquerading as genuine posts from real people. “Some are downright offensive.”


In most instances, the offending posts that Facebook uncovered were designed to favour certain candidates over others. But in others, they didn’t favour any one party and instead seemed targeted at certain issues in certain places — including posts about racial strife in places like Ferguson, Miss., and Baltimore, Md.


“They were intended to attract people who were following certain causes to subscribe to those pages,” Stretch said.


The Russian government has denied it intended to influence the election, in which President Donald Trump, a Republican, defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton.


Google Facebook Twitter composite


Representatives from Facebook, Google and Twitter told lawmakers on Tuesday what they have learned about Russian activity over their services with the intent of influencing the 2016 presidential election (Google: Mike Blake/Reuters Facebook: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Twitter: Mark Lennihan/AP)


U.S. lawmakers have responded angrily to the idea of foreign meddling, introducing legislation to require online platforms to say who is running election ads and what audiences are targeted.


“The companies need to get ahead of the curve here,” said James Lewis, senior vice-president of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.


If they can, he added, they might avoid regulation. Lewis, speaking during the Reuters Cyber Summit in Washington, said he expects European officials to watch the U.S. hearings closely.


Facebook and Twitter have taken steps toward self-regulation, saying they would create their own public archives of election-related ads and also apply more specific labels to such ads. Google followed on Monday, saying it would create a database of election ads including ones on YouTube.


The companies have meanwhile disclosed new details about the extent of Russia-based material, raising alarms about a sector that once inspired idealism.


“The internet was seen as a great engine for promoting democracy and transparency. Now we are all discovering that it can also be a tool for hijacking democracy,” said Karen Kornbluh, a senior fellow for digital policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.


Article source: http://www.francesoir.fr/actualites-monde/brexit-la-balle-est-dans-le-camp-de-lue-selon-theresa-may


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