Elections and Media

Here are the five biggest issues causing lawmakers to look at the technology industry in a new, harsher light: The Russia investigation, A new antitrust movement, Culture wars, Sex trafficking, and Advertising algorithms.

Russia's government denied using Facebook ads to influence the 2016 US presidential election, saying in a statement it didn't even know "how to place an advert" on the social media giant. “We do not know ... how to place an advert on Facebook. We have never done this, and the Russian side has never been involved in it,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Before Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton had even wrapped up their respective bids to secure the nomination for president, Kremlin-funded media outlet RT was plotting to promote its election coverage in the United States. RT hoped to take over at least two Twitter accounts or handles for its media coverage: @NotHillary and @NotTrump. Their goal, RT told Twitter’s advertising department, was to use the accounts to push their 2016 election coverage, but neither handle or username has any identifying information tracing the owner back to the Russian government-funded media organization.

Twitter denied the request. The company declined to comment on the record on the specific accounts “for privacy and security reasons.” RT says that the company’s interest in the dormant accounts was part of an ultimately doomed project to take advantage of a unique moment in American political history.

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.