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October 2017

Facebook's Sandberg meets with House leaders on Russia probe

Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg met with House leaders on Capitol Hill to brief them on the social media platform’s investigation into alleged Russian use of the site to influence the 2016 presidential campaign. Following Sandberg’s meeting with the House Intelligence Committee, the panel’s top members said that they would be making public the 3,000 ads purchased by Russian groups during the campaign that Facebook handed over to congressional investigators.

Ranking Member Adam Schiff (D-CA) said that in addition to the ads, Facebook would also be turning over data on how many people the fake Kremlin-linked accounts were able to reach beyond their paid advertisements. “Obviously, we’re going to want to get a complete sense of what the Russians were doing on their platforms and others,” Schiff said. “Not just the advertising but all the downstream consequences of that advertising, all the things that they were pushing out through non-advertising means on these platforms."

We Asked Facebook 12 Questions About the Election, and Got 5 Answers

The conversation about Facebook would benefit from more facts, and less speculation. So this week, I sent a list of some of my unanswered questions to Facebook. Two representatives — Alex Stamos, Facebook’s chief security officer, and Joe Osborne, a company spokesman — responded to several questions in some detail. The company declined to answer several other questions, but I include those here as well, in hopes that they might one day be answered. Below are my questions, followed by Facebook’s responses, where applicable.

How Russian content ended up on Pinterest

Image-bookmarking site Pinterest is known as a place where people go to get ideas about home décor, fashion, and recipes. Few would associate it with politics – let alone Russian trolls. But in the run-up to the 2016 election, the site became a repository for thousands of political posts created by Russian operatives seeking to shape public opinion and foment discord in US society, the company acknowledged Oct 11.

Russian operatives don’t appear to have posted directly on Pinterest, but their influence spread to the site through users who came across Russian content elsewhere and unwittingly “pinned” it onto their Pinterest scrap boards. “We believe the fake Facebook content was so sophisticated that it tricked real Americans into saving it to Pinterest,” said Pinterest head of public policy Charlie Hale. “We’ve removed the content brought to our attention and continue to investigate.”

Kushner texts Bannon congrats after Hannity hit

After Steve Bannon appeared on Fox News Oct 9 to declare war on Republican Senate incumbents and call for Sen Bob Corker (R-TN) to resign, he received a text from an unlikely fan: Jared Kushner. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser messaged the former chief White House strategist to say he thought the TV hit was a success, according to multiple people who were dining with Bannon at Del Frisco’s steakhouse across the street from Fox News’ Manhattan studios when the message popped up.

The attaboy from a campaign ally-turned-West Wing nemesis was surprising on multiple fronts. For one, Bannon associates and White House officials said Kushner hasn’t reached out to Bannon since he was ousted from his White House post in August. But even stranger was that members of the Del Frisco’s dinner crew, which included conservative media personalities, thought Kushner was belatedly endorsing an anti-establishment strategy that has many Republicans concerned about losing control of the Senate altogether — one that undercuts the very members of Congress the White House needs as partners if Trump wants to pass any part of his domestic agenda, including tax reform.

‘Blatantly Unacceptable': Trump’s Threat to NBC License Denounced by 2 Ex-FCC Commissioners

Two former commissioners with the Federal Communications Commission threw cold water on President Donald Trump’s suggestion to “challenge” the broadcast licenses of networks over news reports he considers to be “fake” and “bad for country.” “To me it’s just incomprehensible that because of the content of NBC News that somehow their license would be at risk,” said Alfred Sikes, a Republican who chaired the FCC under President George H.W. Bush. “Any kind of action would require a majority of commissioners and I find it very, very unlikely that based on arguments about the foundations of NBC News content that those licenses would be put up for review,” he added.

Michael Copps, a Democrat who served as FCC commissioner from 2001 to 2011, was similarly disturbed by President Trump’s tweet, which followed criticism of a series of NBC News reports critical of his administration and whose facts he disputed. “If such a threat were carried out it would be a blatantly unacceptable intervention in the jurisdiction of an independent federal agency,” said Copps. “It would have a chilling effect not just on NBC but maybe even worse, small and independent stations who might not have the resources of NBC to fight back such an effort.”

Backlash swift after President Trump tweet on NBC

President Donald Trump’s suggestion that NBC should potentially have its broadcast license challenged has prompted a wave of condemnation from both sides of the aisle, with many saying that such a move would violate the First Amendment.

“The president’s threat against NBC and other media outlets is far from empty,” said Sen Brian Schatz (D-HI), referencing a similar proposal from President Nixon, who wanted to crack down on the Washington Post. “In confirmation hearings for Ajit Pai, we raised this possibility,” Sen Schatz said. “Now, the FCC must show that it is loyal to the law, not the president, and make clear that it rejects this kind of interference.”

“This threat alone could intimidate the press and lead to skewed and unfair reporting,” said House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ). “I therefore call on FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to immediately condemn this unwarranted attack. I also call on the Chair to announce publicly that he will not follow through on his orders from the President. Chairman Pai should not act in any way to undermine free speech on our airwaves.”

President Trump: 'Disgusting' press able to write whatever it wants

President Donald Trump said it is "disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write" during remarks from the Oval Office, with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sitting by his side. Presdient Trump was asked about a report from NBC News that claimed he’d sought to dramatically expand the US nuclear arsenal. President Trump called the report “fake news” and said a ten-fold increase in the US nuclear arsenal would be “totally unnecessary” and that he merely wants US weapons programs to be in “tip top shape.”

“It is frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write,” President Trump said. When asked, he said "no," he would not seek to limit what the press writes. "The press should speak more honestly," he said. "I've seen tremendously dishonest press. It's not even a question of distortion. Like the question that was just asked before about 10 times the nuclear capablity. I know the capability we have, believe me, and it is awesome. It is massive. So when they make up stories like that, that's just made up, and the generals will tell you that. And then they have sources that don't exist, they don't exist. They make up the sources. There are no sources."

President Trump’s threat to NBC’s license is the very definition of Nixonian

President Donald Trump is yet again threatening to crack down on media outlets he doesn't like. But this time he's doing it in a much more brazen fashion. And it's almost exactly what Richard Nixon appeared to attempt in the 1970s. The difference here is that Nixon talked about the scheme only privately. Nixon allies challenged the licenses of TV stations whose owners ran afoul of Nixon. And those owners were The Washington Post Co.

President Trump’s often compared to Putin, but his comments on the media once again evoke Erdogan

Framing the freedom of the press to cover what it deems important as “disgusting” is remarkable coming from any American politician, much less the president while sitting in the Oval Office. But it serves as a reminder that, for all of the focus placed on President Donald Trump’s relationship with and emulation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, there’s another autocrat with whom he has had a friendly relationship and interests in common: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan, perhaps more directly than Putin, moved early to line up allies in the Trump administration. In August of 2016, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s consulting firm entered into a business arrangement with Inovo BV, a Dutch consulting firm owned by a Turkish businessman with ties to Erdogan. At the same time, Flynn was a key aide to Trump. On the day of the election itself, Nov. 8, an opinion piece written by Flynn ran at The Hill. It was titled, “Our ally Turkey is in crisis and needs our support.” “The U.S. media is doing a bang-up job of reporting the Erdogan government’s crackdown on dissidents,” Flynn wrote, “but it’s not putting it into perspective.”

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