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Facebook,
Twitter and Google on Thursday outlined their efforts to keep
state-sponsored groups from manipulating their platforms and interfering
in the U.S. political process.
The companies detailed
their efforts in 100 pages of responses to questions from members of the
Senate Intelligence Committee following a November
hearing about Russian interference on their platforms.
While
many of the answers include rehashed facts and figures, the responses
shed some new light on how the companies approached the threat of countries like Russia trying to use their platforms to influence U.S.
politics.
Here are six interesting revelations from the documents:
Facebook says its data doesn’t give insight into collusion
Lawmakers
probed Facebook for any evidence it might have of collusion between the
Trump campaign and Russia. The company said that it didn’t find
anything suggesting collusion and doubted that its data would shed light
on any cooperation between the two.
"Facebook does not believe it is in a position to substantiate or disprove allegations of possible collusion," the company said.
The statement came in response to a question by Sen. Dianne Feinstein
(D-Calif.) citing unnamed researchers who said that Facebook has the
ability to parse its data and determine whether or not the Trump
campaign colluded with Russia.
Russian groups created 129 Facebook events
Facebook
said that it found 129 events created by 13 public pages linked to the
Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian “troll farm” responsible for
disseminating information intended to elicit divisions among Americans
and sway the election.
Facebook said that 338,300 unique accounts viewed these events, and 62,500 users indicated that they would attend in real life.
It’s unclear how many people actually showed up at these events in real life, but The Hill found one example of 5,000-10,000 people attending a rally in New York organized by one of the pages.
Lawmakers revealed during the Nov. 1 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing another example in which Russian pages organized a rally and then counter-rally, with both attended by dozens of people.
Facebook cuts Kaspersky Labs from list of anti-virus options
Facebook
said that it removed Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Labs from
its list of antivirus providers for users who visit its website.
The
Moscow-based company provides free malware clean-up software to users
who access its platform with potentially infected computers. Up until
October, Kaspersky Labs was one of the companies that Facebook worked
with in offering this option.
U.S. government and
intelligence officials have raised red flags about the company over
suspicions that its software could enable Russian espionage on computers
that have the software installed.
President Trump in December signed into law a bill which bans the government from using Kaspersky Labs software.
Why Assange and Snowden are allowed on their platforms
Facebook
and Twitter responded to questions about why figures such as WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange and former National Security Agency contractor
Edward Snowden are allowed on their platforms despite criticism from
some in government.
The companies, responding to questioning from Sen. Tom Cotton
(R-Ark.), explained that so long as Assange, Snowden and others do not
violate their terms of service, those individuals are free to use their
platforms.
“We believe that barring controversial
figures from our platform or removing their controversial Tweets would
hide important information that our users should be able to see and
debate and would detract from the public dialogue that our platform is
intended to promote,” Twitter wrote.
Independent data group in the works; Google earnings from Russians still murky
Facebook told
lawmakers that it is working to establish an independent organization
for the purpose of sharing between companies data on state-sponsored
information campaigns like that from the Internet Research Agency.
The
company says that it already shares information with other companies,
but this effort would be more “formal” than existing partnerships.
Facebook,
Twitter, Google and other companies already work together in other
organizations to share information related to curbing extremist content
and promote child safety on their websites.
Of the three
companies, Google has long maintained that the scope of Russian
influence on its platforms has been more limited than Facebook or
Twitter.
Despite that insistence, the company did face
questions about its ad revenue from Russian-linked content. Google
dodged a question from Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) about whether or not it received ad revenue from ads "that accompanied Russian propaganda."
Google
also didn't explain how much money it made from ads purchased by
Russian state media outlet RT. By late last year, RT had accrued 5.5
billion views on YouTube as a member of its premium channels for
advertisers. Google has since dropped RT from this spot.
Google
did explain that it paid less than $35 to Russian actors for
non-propaganda advertisements placed on their content. The company also
said that it has received $4,700 from Russian troll farms purchasing
advertisements on its platform, a number that it had already released in October.
Twitter casts doubt on results of third-party research on platform
Because
of the public nature of Twitter compared to other social media
platforms, third-party researchers have conducted their own studies of
foreign influence on Twitter.
In documents released Thursday, Twitter cast doubt on any research conducted outside the company.
“Because
third-party researchers do not have access to internal signals that
Twitter can access, their bot and spam detection methodologies must be
based on public information and often rely on human judgment, rather
than on internal signals available to us,” the company wrote, saying
that such judgements are “inherently imprecise.”
Twitter
has been facing controversy over how Russian bots may have tried to
manipulate discourse on its platform in favor of releasing a
controversial House Intelligence Committee memo purported to reveal
surveillance abuses.
Researchers outside Twitter found
that Russian bots were aggressively pushing on social media for the memo
from Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes
(R-Calif.) to be released, prompting calls from top Senate Judiciary
Democrat Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) and top House Intelligence Democrat Adam Schiff (Calif.) for the company to investigate.''
