Elections and Media

The Federal Elections Commission is moving forward with a plan to introduce new rules on political advertising on social media ahead of the 2018 election cycle. The commission has a working draft of the rules in front of it now, longtime Democratic FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub said, though she divulged few details. 

Apparently, the Department of Justice's special counsel Robert Mueller and his office have interviewed at least one member of Facebook's team that was associated with President Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. The interview was part of Mueller's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and what role, if any, the Trump campaign played in that interference. Mueller's team speaking with a Facebook employee does not necessarily implicate Facebook in any wrongdoing.

Congress on Jan 25 published responses from Facebook, Twitter, and Google to questions about how Russian actors used their platforms to spread misinformation before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The responses address issues including whether there is any evidence of collusion between the Russian parties and the Trump campaign, and how Google, a unit of Alphabet, is handling its commercial transactions with a Russian broadcaster that federal intelligence agencies say is a propaganda outlet for the Kremlin.

Facebook, Twitter and Google outlined their efforts to keep state-sponsored groups from manipulating their platforms and interfering in the US political process. Here are six interesting revelations:

Tech policy officials from the Obama administration and from Hillary Clinton’s campaign, as well as prominent Democrats in Congress, are demanding changes from companies they had long viewed as too important and nimble for regulations.  “Democrats and progressives still strongly feel that there are shared values with Silicon Valley, but there is also a real concern over the industry’s increasingly concentrated wealth and power,” said Daniel Sepulveda, an ambassador and deputy assistant secretary at the State Department for the Obama administration.

In a new commentary, Facebook acknowledges the possibility that social media can have negative ramifications for democracy. This comes after repeated criticism that it didn't do enough to prevent the spread of fake news that had the potential to impact the 2016 U.S. presidential election. "Facebook was originally designed to connect friends and family – and it has excelled at that," writes Samidh Chakrabarti, Facebook's Civic Engagement Product Manager.

Apparently, President Donald Trump personally made the decision to curtail the testimony of former chief White House political strategist Steve Bannon before the House Intelligence Committee.  President Trump acted to limit Bannon’s testimony based on legal advice provided by Uttam Dhillon, a deputy White House counsel, who concluded that the administration might have legitimate executive privilege claims to restrict testimony by Bannon and other current and former aides to the president, apparently.

Twitter is planning to notify users who may have been exposed to Russian propaganda during the 2016 presidential election, the company's head of public policy said during the Senate Commerce Committee hearing, "Terrorism and Social Media: #IsBigTechDoingEnough?". While the hearing was ostensibly about how social media companies can better combat terrorism, it veered onto other topics, primarily Russia.

[Commentary] The rules and incentive structures underlying how attention and surveillance work on the internet need to change. But in fairness to Facebook and Google and Twitter, while there’s a lot they could do better, the public outcry demanding that they fix all these problems is fundamentally mistaken. There are few solutions to the problems of digital discourse that don’t involve huge trade-offs—and those are not choices for Mark Zuckerberg alone to make. These are deeply political decisions.

[Commentary] For the better part of 20 years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has engaged in a relentless assault against democratic institutions abroad, universal values and the rule of law.