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On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee kicked off the first of three hearings this week examining the relationship between social media and Russian interference<\/a> in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The hearings mark the first time that lawmakers will hear testimony from Google, Facebook and Twitter around how their platforms were and are manipulated as part of Russian political disinformation campaigns targeting U.S. voters.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is really a critical hearing,\u201d Committee Chair\u00a0Lindsey Graham declared in his opening remarks. \u201cIt marks the first time we will have heard from the three agencies about exactly what is going on and what exactly they are prepared to do to stop it.\u201d<\/p>\n Graham struck a friendly note early on, informing the panel that \u201cthe purpose of this hearing is to figure out how we can help you<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Predictably, the tech representatives weren\u2019t fooled by a group of lawmakers that appears increasingly eager to regulate their ad operations.<\/p>\n As Tuesday\u2019s hearing was the first of three, the big question is just how cooperative the three companies would be. All three elected to send their general counsel<\/a> rather than top executives to the hearing, a move that signaled they\u2019d prefer to remain tight lipped and well within the comfort zones they\u2019re used to in friendlier territory. They mostly succeeded, even when things got a bit awkward for a trio of companies far too accustomed to exercising near total control of the narrative around their products.<\/p>\n None of these tech giants are used to having their feet held to the fire, and some members of the committee, particularly Louisiana Senator\u00a0John Kennedy and Minnesota Senator Al Franken, proved eager to do so. When Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch, who bore the brunt of the committee\u2019s ire, responded tepidly to his line of questioning about the company\u2019s responsibility, Franken rebuked the panel explosively.<\/p>\n \u201cYou put billions of data points together all the time\u2026\u00a0you can\u2019t put together rubles and a political ad?\u00a0How did you not connect those two dots?\u201d<\/p>\n Kennedy picked up a line of questioning threaded early on by Graham, turning to exactly the kind of rapid fire questions that the tech companies dispatched their legal reps to dodge.<\/p>\n Kennedy: \u201cDid China run ads in the last election cycle to try to impact our election? Did Turkmenistan?\u201d<\/p>\n Stretch: \u201cNot that I\u2019m aware of\u201d<\/p>\n Kennedy: \u201cHow can you be aware? You\u2019ve got five million advertisers and you\u2019re gonna tell me that you can trace the origin of all of those advertisers?\u201d<\/p>\n Stretch: \u201cNo sir, I cannot\u201d<\/p>\n Kennedy: \u201cThat\u2019s your testimony under oath?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n On the issue of banning foreign currency in political ads \u2014 and many other issues, including how they\u2019ll deal with shell companies<\/a> \u2014 the trio was non-committal. They refused to endorse Sen. Amy Klobuchar\u2019s bipartisan Honest Ads Act<\/a> when pressed, gesturing that they would be willing to cooperate on legislation but they\u2019d really prefer to self-govern (since that\u2019s gone so well). Klobuchar took that opportunity to skewer the regulation-phobic companies. \u201cThere wouldn\u2019t be an outside enforcer of any of your policies, is that right?,\u201d she demanded. They reluctantly admitted she was right and surely took notes for how to handle tomorrow\u2019s likely continuation of questioning around that legislation.<\/p>\n That sheepish admission and others were about the only candid moments that the hearing produced, as it swung from Russian intelligence operations to Islamic extremists and even to a predictably useless interlude from Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who squandered his time with a distracting line of questioning that accused the companies of partisanship.<\/p>\n The exchanges set a tone for tomorrow\u2019s intelligence committee hearings, which are likely to be meatier and more aggressive, particularly in the Senate. In round one, Google, Facebook and Twitter cooperated, but they weren\u2019t particularly helpful, opting to mostly cover their asses with pre-planned statements and platform reports designed to appease lawmakers and stave off regulation. All three were eager to tout their own home remedies for political disinformation campaigns \u2014 hire actual humans, build AI, et cetera \u2014 but remained unwilling to conduct the kind of deep self examination necessary to inoculate themselves outright.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Featured Image: Richard Sharrocks\/Getty Images<\/small><\/p>\n Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/-ita4VRa7qw\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee kicked off the first of three hearings this week examining the relationship between social media and Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. <\/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-9806","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\n