Elections and Media

Federal officials across the US government are investigating whether Russia sought to influence the 2016 presidential election by purchasing ads on social networks like Facebook. But President Donald Trump on Sept 22 dismissed the matter as a “hoax.”

Only a day earlier, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that foreign governments had used his company’s website to spread misinformation in the United States and around the world. So far, his company has pinpointed about 3,000 ads purchased by Russian sources ahead of Trump’s Election Day win. Despite the evidence, President Trump tweeted on Sept 22: "The Russia hoax continues, now it's ads on Facebook. What about the totally biased and dishonest Media coverage in favor of Crooked Hillary?"

After years of largely avoiding regulation, businesses like Facebook, Google and Amazon are a focus of lawmakers, some of whom are criticizing the expanding power of big tech companies and their role in the 2016 election.

The attacks cover a smattering of issues as diverse as antitrust, privacy and public disclosure. They also come from both sides, from people like Stephen Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, as well as Sen Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Many of the issues, like revising antitrust laws, have a slim chance of producing new laws soon. But they have become popular talking points nonetheless, amplified by a series of missteps and disclosures by the companies. The companies, recognizing the new environment in Washington, have started to fortify their lobbying forces and recalibrate their positions.

A group of House and Senate Democrats are calling on the US government to issue new “guidance” to stop foreign advertisers from spending money on Facebook, Google and other web platforms in a bid to influence American elections.

Federal law already bars that sort of political spending, but lawmakers — including Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) — stress in a letter to the Federal Elections Commission that countries like Russia “have routinely deployed sophisticated tactics in making political expenditures to evade detection.” To that end, the Democrats are asking the FEC — which oversees campaign finance —to offer suggestions for how to crack down on “loopholes” that allow foreign entities to use “corporate or nonprofit designations to evade disclosure.” And they want to help tech companies harden their own platforms to prevent that spending in the first place.

For now, though, the Democrats are asking the watchdog agency to issue a timeline for action and respond to their questions no later than Oct. 4.

Republican governors are getting into the “news” business. The Republican Governors Association has quietly launched an online publication that looks like a media outlet and is branded as such on social media. The Free Telegraph blares headlines about the virtues of GOP governors, while framing Democrats negatively. It asks readers to sign up for breaking news alerts. It launched in the summer bearing no acknowledgement that it was a product of an official party committee whose sole purpose is to get more Republicans elected. Only after The Associated Press inquired about the site last week was a disclosure added to The Free Telegraph’s pages identifying the publication’s partisan source. The governors association describes the website as routine political communication. Critics, including some Republicans, say it pushes the limits of honest campaign tactics in an era of increasingly partisan media and a proliferation of “fake news” sites, including those whose material became part of an apparent Russian propaganda effort during the 2016 presidential campaign. “It’s propaganda for sure, even if they have objective standards and all the reporting is 100 percent accurate,” said Republican communications veteran Rick Tyler, whose resume includes Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign.

In a report published recently in Psychological Science, a team of academics reviewed two decades of research to better understand how to effectively debunk misinformation. In the end, they found eight worthwhile studies, with more than 6,800 participants. Based on the findings of those experiments, the authors offer these broad recommendations for how to expose misinformation:
Limit arguments supporting misinformation
Encourage scrutiny
Present new information
Bonus: Video may work better than text

House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-NJ), Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Mike Doyle (D-PA), and former Subcommittee Ranking Member Anna Eshoo (D-CA) want Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election via U.S. broadcasting.

At issue is Sputnik, a digital news/radio service reportedly funded by the Russian government. “Recent reports suggest that Sputnik was used as part of the Kremlin’s efforts to influence the 2016 election,” the House members wrote to Pai in a letter dated Sept. 18. “In Washington, D.C., listeners need only tune their radios to 105.5 FM to hear the Russian government’s effort to influence U.S. policy. Disturbingly, this means the Kremlin’s propaganda messages are being broadcast over a license granted by the FCC.”

US investigators wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort under secret court orders before and after the election, apparently, an extraordinary step involving a high-ranking campaign official now at the center of the Russia meddling probe. The government snooping continued into early 2017, including a period when Manafort was known to talk to President Donald Trump. Some of the intelligence collected includes communications that sparked concerns among investigators that Manafort had encouraged the Russians to help with the campaign, according to three sources familiar with the investigation. Two of these sources, however, cautioned that the evidence is not conclusive. Special counsel Robert Mueller's team, which is leading the investigation into Russia's involvement in the election, has been provided details of these communications.

[Commentary] Every day a new front emerges in Big Tech’s battle against fake news. Signs of trouble reared their head during the election, when hyper-partisan misinformation began materializing on Facebook. Months later it became known that many of these sites had been weaponized in a larger misinformation campaign spearheaded by external players, including the Russian government.

While they make head nods toward trying to fix the misinformation problem, the tech giants refuse to own up to these issues–citing the privacy of their clients and their own proprietary ad systems. While it may seem noble that the big tech companies are taking up the charge, their current attempts will likely produce little effect. The problem rests in the very advertising systems these companies created. No amount of content tagging or ad category de-incentivizing is going to stop the beast unless a bigger upheaval begins to take root.

[Cale is a Brooklyn-based reporter.]

How the Kremlin built one of the most powerful information weapons of the 21st century — and why it may be impossible to stop.

Apparently, Russia’s effort to influence US voters through Facebook and other social media is a “red-hot” focus of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 election and possible links to President Donald Trump’s associates. Mueller’s team of prosecutors and FBI agents is zeroing in on how Russia spread fake and damaging information through social media and is seeking additional evidence from companies like Facebook and Twitter about what happened on their networks, said one of the officials, who asked not to be identified discussing the ongoing investigation. The ability of foreign nations to use social media to manipulate and influence elections and policy is increasingly seen as the soft underbelly of international espionage, another official said, because it doesn’t involve the theft of state secrets and the US doesn’t have a ready defense to prevent such attacks.