Congress roasted Facebook on TV, but won’t hear any bills to regulate it

On October 19th of 2017, a just-barely bipartisan group of senators held a press conference to announce a new piece of legislation. The Honest Ads Act, as the bill is called, would require Facebook, Google, and other tech platforms to retain copies of the political ads they host and make them available for public inspection. Platforms would have to release information about who bought the ads, how much they cost, and to whom the ads were targeted. Anyone who spent more than $500 on political ads would be subject to public scrutiny. Revelations from Facebook, Google, and other social media platforms of Russia-linked groups sparked a flurry of activity in the capital last fall, prompting the tech companies to spend more on lobbyists and crisis public-relations firms than they ever had. But, the opposition to the Honest Ads Act has come not from tech companies, who have been increasingly supportive of the legislation, but instead from the Republican majority in Congress. The multiple new pieces of legislation aimed at regulating tech platforms, including a new consumer privacy protection act, have attracted few Republican cosponsors, and the bills have yet to receive a single hearing. And while the bills’ sponsors remain publicly supportive, it appears increasingly unlikely that Congress will take action on either bill before the midterms.