Already, Russia and Iran already have sought to interfere by passing themselves off as American groups or people to shape the views of American voters, say lawmakers and technology executives. Facebook, Google and Twitter together took down hundreds of accounts tied to the two countries last month, a move that prompted Burr to express fear that “more foreign countries are now trying to use your products to shape and manipulate American political sentiment as an instrument of statecraft."<doc-sep>The Interface is a daily column and newsletter about the intersection of social media and democracy. Subscribe here . Heading into today’s tech hearings, conventional wisdom held that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg would sail through on the strength of her poise and command of the facts. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, making his first appearance before Congress, was expected to struggle. Google, which declined to send CEO Sundar Pichai (or Alphabet CEO Larry Page), and which would be represented on the dais by an empty chair, was expected to receive the worst of lawmakers’ scorn. As the day began, before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the conventional wisdom appeared to hold. These two paragraphs from The New York Times’ formidable five-person live-blogging operation capture the dynamic: Ms. Sandberg, who was born in Washington, and spent years living there during her time at the Treasury Department, appeared confident in her opening remarks. Speaking clearly and with practiced pacing, she complimented the committee’s previous work on election interference. Mr. Dorsey stumbled during his opening, forgetting to turn on his microphone and reading from a cellphone he held in his hand. He added that he was also live-tweeting his opening remarks through his Twitter account. Google, meanwhile, did indeed incur the wrath of the lawmakers. It had offered to send its chief legal and policy executive, Kent Walker, but the Senate declined. “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu, and Congress looks hungry,” a lobbyist tells Mark Bergen and Ben Brody in Bloomberg. They offer some informed speculation on why Google declined to send Page or Pichai: For Google, the Senate decision may be a calculated risk. The bad optics of an empty chair could outweigh being dragged further into a morass that Google may feel belongs to Facebook and Twitter. Google found far less election spending from Russia’s Internet Research Agency than the other two. When Walker testified in earlier hearings, the lawyer repeatedly emphasized that Google was, unlike its peers, not a “social network.” The risk appeared not to pay off, in part because the Senate hearing — focused on how companies were working to protect their platforms from foreign attacks — was cordial and workmanlike. Unlike the disastrous House of Representatives hearing about “bias” in April, this one was conducted largely in good faith. Google missed out on a chance to build goodwill with lawmakers simply by repeating what its executives had said elsewhere — the approach that both Facebook and Twitter took, to good results. Sandberg, as expected, sailed through her portion of the hearing, essentially elaborating on the primer that CEO Mark Zuckerberg had offered up the night before in an op-ed in the Washington Post. Facebook is hiring moderators, killing fake accounts, making ads public and searchable, and working with fact checkers to reduce the spread of misinformation. All of this had been widely publicized before, and now it’s once again part of the Congressional record. If there was a surprise in the hearing, it was that Dorsey’s unpracticed, shy-guy persona played so well with lawmakers. He, too, offered lawmakers promises he has made elsewhere, as during his recent media tour. Twitter is thinking about labeling bots; it’s thinking about conversational health; it’s thinking about rethinking the entire service. The Senate took him at his word, praising him for his candor and (late in the day) his endurance. In the House, where Dorsey appeared alone to answer more than four hours’ worth of lawmakers’ questions, the tone was often sharper — but members of Congress were ultimately just as deferential. Dorsey kept his cool through some bizarre moments, most notably a far-right activist screaming and a conservative lawmaker assuming the voice of an auctioneer and staging a faux auction until she could be escorted out of the building. Peter Kafka captured the gist in Recode: Republicans asked, over and over, whether Twitter’s programs, policies and employees favored liberal causes and politicians over conservative ones. Not at all, Dorsey patiently answered, over and over. And Democrats split their time between complaining about other issues they wished the hearing focused on, like Twitter’s failure to keep abusive users off the platform, and the fact that the entire hearing seemed ginned up as a political exercise to help Republicans in the fall elections. If you watched any of this, there’s no way you think US lawmakers are going to do anything about US internet companies, or anything else. Some folks, of course, do think lawmakers are going to regulate US internet companies, possibly soon. The Justice Department said Wednesday that it would meet with states attorney general to discuss whether companies like Facebook and Google are hurting competition and stifling the free exchange of ideas. “Congress is going to have to take action here,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-VA, said in a widely circulated quote from Wednesday’s hearings. “The era of the Wild West in social media is coming to an end.” Time will tell, though I still have my doubts. (Warner is, after all, a member of the minority party.) On the whole, though, I found the day’s proceedings heartening. Members of Congress, who have now taken several runs at top tech leaders, seem to be developing an actual command of how social-media platforms work, their benefits and risks, and the complex nature of trying to regulate them. Tech companies are responding accordingly — if not always aggressively, or even effectively. It’s not enough. It’s not clear to me what would be enough. But it’s a start. Democracy The 7 biggest moments from today’s social media hearings For more on today’s hearings, read this guide from me and my colleague Adi Robertson. Who’s in Charge of Protecting Social Media from Election Interference? Sarah Frier and Alyza Sebenius look at Facebook’s latest refrain when it comes to defending against foreign interference, which is that it needs the government’s help. Because behind the scenes, there is a delicate struggle over who is accountable for ensuring that another election isn’t compromised. Tech firms have been stymied in efforts to get federal agencies to provide the kinds of assistance that can only come from officials who have access to sensitive national security information, according to people familiar with the matter. The government has made it clear that the companies need to do more to prevent hacking and improper influence. Federal agencies have been hesitant to share confidential tips that could identify or prevent the next Russia-scale attack because of security concerns, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak about the matter. The intelligence community assumes the companies already know what to look for, said the people. When the companies do ask for help, they sometimes don’t know who to call, because there’s not a single person or entity in charge. In May, the White House eliminated the role of cybersecurity coordinator. In late August, a Facebook security official invited representatives from other technology companies including Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. to a meeting at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, to share strategies and tips for detecting problems ahead of the midterms. Nobody from the government was invited, one of the people said. Benin is taxing use of social media apps like Facebook, WhatsApp Like Zambia and Uganda before it, the country of Benin has levied a tax on social media usage: The government passed a decree in late August taxing its citizens for accessing the internet and social-media apps. The directive, first proposed in July, institutes a fee (link in French) of 5 CFA francs ($0.008) per megabyte consumed through services like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter. It also introduces a 5% fee, on top of taxes, on texting and calls, according to advocacy group Internet Sans Frontières (ISF). The new law has been denounced, with citizens and advocates using the hashtag #Taxepamesmo (“Don’t tax my megabytes”) to call on officials to cancel the levy. The increased fees will not only burden the poorest consumers and widen the digital divide, but they will also be “disastrous” for the nation’s nascent digital economy, says ISF’s executive director Julie Owono.<doc-sep>The Senate Intelligence Committee’s hearing on Wednesday to examine foreign influence campaigns on social media was marked by a notable absence and a couple of odd cameos. The committee had invited executives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google to testify on efforts to prevent bad actors from manipulating their platforms in the run up to the midterm elections. Facebook chose to send COO Sheryl Sandberg. Twitter sent CEO Jack Dorsey. And Google lacked a representative. After Alphabet CEO Larry Page and Google CEO Sundar Pichai both turned down the invite, Google offered up Senior Vice President of Global Affairs Kent Walker in their stead. The committee rebuffed this offer since Walker is not a C-suite executive. A Senate spokesperson told CNN, “The purpose of this hearing is to hear from senior leadership making the decisions, not those operationalizing them.” Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Rather than have Walker sit beside Sandberg and Dorsey, the committee instead decided to place an empty chair at the dais in the hearing room. Sen. Mark Warner, vice chair of the Intelligence Committee, pounced on Google at the beginning of his opening remarks. “I’m deeply disappointed that Google, one of the most influential digital platforms in the world, chose not to send its own top corporate leadership to engage this committee, because I know our members have a series of difficult questions about structural vulnerabilities on a number of Google’s platforms,” Warner said. “Given its size and influence, I would have thought that leadership at Google would have wanted to demonstrate how seriously it takes these challenges.” Advertisement Though Google’s absence was conspicuous, most of the buzz on social media at the start of the hearing had to do with surprise appearance of Infowars founder Alex Jones. Facebook and YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, have banned accounts run by Jones and Infowars in recent months for violating the platforms’ community standards. Among other falsehoods over the years, Jones has baselessly claimed that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax, which spurred harassment of the victims’ parents. Twitter also temporarily suspended Jones for inciting violence, though it has neglected to take a more definitive enforcement action. I just walked thru security at the Senate building with Alex Jones. pic.twitter.com/eDUUAxRB9E — Ryan Mac (@RMac18) September 5, 2018 Advertisement Alex Jones is now done shouting outside and is in the Dirksen hearing room, sitting silently with a furious face, and the cameras are fixated on him, waiting for him to do something disruptive. — Sarah Frier (@sarahfrier) September 5, 2018 Advertisement Alex f'in Jones just sat down next to me — David Dayen (@ddayen) September 5, 2018 Advertisement The Infowars firebrand held a press conference outside the hearing room, in which he said, “The real election meddling is by Facebook and Google and others that are shadow banning people.” Jack Posobiec, another conspiracy theorist, was also reportedly present and complained in interviews that he had not been allowed to testify. Update, 11:30 a.m. EDT: Jones repeatedly interrupted Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s interview with reporters outside the hearing room, leading Rubio to threaten to “take care of you myself.” A video of the exchange is here:<doc-sep>
WASHINGTON – Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg acknowledged in a Capitol Hill hearing Wednesday that the company was too slow to respond to efforts by foreign actors, including Russia, to use its platform to interfere in U.S. elections. “We were too slow to spot this and too slow to act. That is on us,” Sandberg told the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that was focused on whether regulatory changes are needed for social media giants. “We’re getting better at finding and stopping our opponents,” she said. The mostly conciliatory hearing with Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey came as both Democrats and Republicans have inched closer to regulating social media. The executives detailed steps to address foreign influence but also acknowledged the problem of protecting free speech while weeding out misinformation is daunting. Dorsey discussed labeling automated accounts, or bots, on Twitter. Sandberg said Facebook had removed hundreds of pages and accounts engaged in "coordinated inauthentic behavior." While lawmakers said they appreciated the effort, it wasn't clear whether the testimony was enough to satisfy their concerns. "I’m skeptical that, ultimately, you’ll be able to truly address this challenge on your own," said Sen. Mark Warner, the committee’s top Democrat. "Congress is going to have to take action here." North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, the Republican chairman of the committee, said he also has lingering concerns about the companies' ability to address the problem. "Without question, positive things are happening," Burr said. "But clearly this problem's not going away; I'm not even sure it's trending in the right direction." Questions of bias on the platforms added a new layer of controversy to the hearing. Last week, President Donald Trump said he believed Google's search engine results were "rigged" against him, saying that when users type in his name they usually turn up stories that are critical of him. Google issued a statement saying that its search engine was not designed with the intent of promoting a political ideology but is instead aimed at generating "high-quality content" in response to user queries. Google executives did not testify on Wednesday. The purpose of the Senate hearing was to assess how well social media companies are confronting foreign influence on their platforms. Top intelligence officials in the Trump administration have said Russia and other countries are working to sway voters ahead of the November midterm elections. Facebook said in July that it had detected a covert campaign to influence the November elections through the use of posts on hot-button social issues, and it deleted hundreds of pages and accounts. Dorsey told lawmakers that his company is looking into the possibility of labeling bots, which would represent a major change in the company's policy. "It's really a question of the implementation, but we are interested in it and we are going to do something along those lines," he said. Dorsey said Twitter found itself unprepared and ill-equipped for the immensity of the problems it has acknowledged — abuse, harassment, troll armies, propaganda and misinformation. “We’re not proud of how that free and open exchange has been weaponized, and used to distract and divide people and our nation," he said. In addition to probing how foreign governments are attempting to use social media, senators also questioned the executives about privacy issues and how users’ information is used. Warner asked Sandberg whether Facebook should put a value on a users' data so people know what their information is worth. Sandberg didn’t directly answer, responding generally that “we don’t think it’s a question of 'whether regulation,' we think it's a question of the right regulation that supports users, is transparent and doesn’t squash innovation." Asked how Facebook deals with users intentionally spreading false information – such as claiming that victims of a mass shooting were actors – Sandberg said the line between hate speech and misinformation is “very, very difficult.” “Especially if you’re dedicated to expression, and sometimes free expression is expressing things you strongly disagree with,” she said. Because Facebook doesn’t want to be the judge of what’s true or false, the company uses third-party fact checkers, she said. If they deem the content false, Facebook dramatically decreases distribution, warns users who have shared or are about to share the information, and places related articles next to it so viewers can see “alternative facts.” “Bad speech can often be countered by good speech,” she said.