Elections and Media

The Facebook/Google/Twitter trio are better prepared for this upcoming round of Congressional testimony on Sept. 5. Almost a year after the three companies first testified together in front of Congress for Russian meddling, the three social media giants will be returning to Capitol Hill to talk about censorship and election interference. Many recall CEO Mark Zuckerberg's positive performance during televised Facebook hearings in April following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but the last time these three companies faced Congress together, the reviews were brutal.

Technology giants increasingly are casting themselves as defenders of online integrity as American democracy, yet again, comes under attack. A recent string of revelations from companies including Facebook, Microsoft and Google about foreign hacking and disinformation amount to a public answer to charges that the technology industry should have done more to thwart Russia’s online attacks in 2016.

Apparently, the tabloid executive David J. Pecker has been granted immunity by federal prosecutors investigating payments during the 2016 campaign to two women who said they had affairs with Donald J. Trump. Pecker is chief executive and chairman of American Media Inc., the nation’s biggest tabloid news publisher, best known for its flagship, The National Enquirer. He is close to President Trump and the president’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael D.

“The work you see now from Facebook, Microsoft and others to be more proactive is a trend that is positive — it’s part of the solution, and I would want to see that trend continue,” said Graham Brookie, director of the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council, a think tank that has been working with Facebook on election-security issues. “Is this a solution? No, definitely not.”  

Silicon Valley’s biggest social media companies provide some of the best tools for spreading propaganda. Social media poses an ongoing risk that will only grow without a coordinated effort to prevent manipulation. “The main takeaway from Facebook's announcement is not just that Russia-style meddling is exportable, but that it's inevitable,” said Chris Meserole, a fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. “If Moscow authored the playbook, Tehran read it word for word, and they won't be the only country to do so.

Facebook dismantled 652 pages, groups and accounts engaged in an coordinated influence campaign ahead of the 2018 US midterm elections, part of the company’s broader purge of bad actors on its site. Facebook said the 652 pages and accounts originated in Iran, and that they had been flagged for “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” Facebook said the offenders had targeted internet services in the US, Middle East, UK and Latin America. The company separately found evidence of inauthentic Russian activity. Facebook said it found no evidence the campaigns by Russia and Iran were connected.

Facebook has begun to assign its users a reputation score, predicting their trustworthiness on a scale from zero to 1. The previously unreported ratings system, which Facebook has developed over the past year, shows that the fight against the gaming of tech systems has evolved to include measuring the credibility of users to help identify malicious actors. Facebook developed its reputation assessments as part of its effort against fake news, Tessa Lyons, the product manager who is in charge of fighting misinformation, said in an interview.

The Russian military intelligence unit that sought to influence the 2016 election appears to have a new target: conservative American think tanks that have broken with President Trump and are seeking continued sanctions against Moscow, exposing oligarchs or pressing for human rights. Microsoft detected and seized websites that were created in recent weeks by hackers linked to the Russian unit formerly known as the G.R.U.

How do you effectively govern a country that’s home to one in five people on the planet, with an increasingly complex economy and society, if you don’t allow public debate, civil activism, and electoral feedback? Hu Jintao, China’s leader from 2002 to 2012, had attempted to solve this problem by permitting a modest democratic thaw, allowing avenues for grievances to reach the ruling class. His successor, Xi Jinping, has reversed that trend.

You can boil Facebook’s election plan down into three main challenges: