{"id":9798,"date":"2017-10-31T21:11:20","date_gmt":"2017-10-31T21:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/congress-grills-facebook-twitter-google-on-shells-hiding-election-meddlers.html"},"modified":"2017-10-31T21:11:20","modified_gmt":"2017-10-31T21:11:20","slug":"congress-grills-facebook-twitter-google-on-shells-hiding-election-meddlers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/congress-grills-facebook-twitter-google-on-shells-hiding-election-meddlers.html","title":{"rendered":"Congress grills Facebook, Twitter, Google on shells hiding election meddlers"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

How can Internet giants know that innocent-seeming US companies aren\u2019t actually shell vehicles for malicious foreign actors to buy ads to interfere with elections? The short answer is they can\u2019t, and that drew questioning from a congressional probe<\/a> today into Facebook, Twitter, and Google being used to manipulate the 2016 presidential election.<\/p>\n

The hearing saw Facebook\u2019s general counsel Colin Stretch dodge whether Facebook supports the new Honest Ads bill, instead touting the self-regulation it\u2019s implementing. Google\u2019s Richard Salgado affirmed that the company sees itself as a technology platform, not a media company or newspaper.<\/p>\n

And Senator Ted Cruz pressed Facebook about whether it was politically neutral, and if it sways discourse \u201cin ways consistent with the political views of your employees\u201d, which I\u2019ve noted leans Democrat judging by rampant cheering by employees for Democratic talking points during Barack Obama\u2019s townhall at Facebook HQ in 2011.<\/p>\n

Losing The Shell Game<\/h2>\n

Perhaps the most telling moment of the hearing came when one member of the committee questioning the companies\u2019 spokespeople asked:<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you deal with the problem of a legitimate and lawful but phony American shell corporation, one that calls itself say \u201cAmerica For Puppies And Prosperity\u201d, that has a drop box as its address, and a $50 million check\u00a0<\/span>in its check book that it\u2019s using to spend to manipulate election outcomes?\u201d<\/p>\n

Twitter\u2019s general counsel Sean Edgett admitted \u201cI\u00a0think that\u2019s a problem. We\u2019re continuing to look into \u2018how do you get to know your client . . .and believe that we\u2019ll have to figure out a good process to understand who those customers actually are that are signing the contracts with Twitter to run ads.\u201d<\/p>\n

The committee pressed further about Twitter\u2019s shortcoming here. \u201cYou admit that if you trace it all the way back to an American corporation, let\u2019s call it \u2018America for Puppies And Prosperity\u2019 and it\u2019s actually a shell corporation, you don\u2019t actually now who\u2019s behind it?\u201d the committee asked. \u201cIt could be Vladimir Putin, it could be a big powerful American special interest, it could be the North Koreans or the Iranians. You need to be able to penetrate the obscurity of the shell corporation, correct?\u201d<\/p>\n

Edgett responded \u201cYeah, we\u2019re working on the best approach to getting to know the clients and getting to know who\u2019s behind the entities that are signing up for advertising.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Later, Senator John Kennedy laid into the tech representatives, saying \u201cSometimes your power scares me.\u201d He went on to ream Facebook\u2019s general counsel Colin Stretch \u201cfor having 5 million advertisers, which Kennedy said he thought was a quantity impossible to police. \u201cYou don\u2019t have the ability to know who every one of those advertisers is, do you?\u201d Kennedy asked. Stretch admitted Facebook didn\u2019t, and it would likely be cost-prohibitive to drill down further into their identities.<\/p>\n

Herein lies one of the toughest on-going challenges for Twitter, Facebook, and Google. They must either erect barriers to advertising that could deter innocent businesses and cost too much to administer and maintain, or they have to largely take advertisers at face value.<\/p>\n

Facebook has written that it plans to<\/a> \u201crequire more thorough documentation from advertisers who want to run US federal election-related ads. Potential advertisers will have to confirm the business or organization they represent before they can buy ads.\u201d But if those identified businesses are merely shell companies, that rule doesn\u2019t do much good.<\/p>\n

This issue of advertiser identity and how deep tech platforms are required to investigate it could emerge as key to whether these companies are allowed to self-regulate or whether the government will step in.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Featured Image: Bryce Durbin\/TechCrunch<\/small><\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/-f5AYBu6dVM\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How can Internet giants know that innocent-seeming US companies aren\u2019t actually shell vehicles for malicious foreign actors to buy ads to interfere with elections? The short answer is they can\u2019t, <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-9798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t