11-05-2017, 03:29 AM
We thought Twitter had sent out a good signal, but perhaps we were a tad too optimistic..
And when pressed about what happened last year, the companies' lawyers offered a slew of excuses. Overall, they conveyed the sense that Big Tech feels it's largely blameless for what happened. And they gave little reason to hope that their companies would make many real changes to how they do business. After two days of hearings, it was hard to feel optimistic. Here are the most important takeaways from the hearings
Perhaps the most frustrating moment during the hearings was when Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota asked Facebook's Stretch if the company would stop allowing people to pay for political ads shown in the US with Russian rubles, North Korean won, or other foreign currencies. Stretch danced around the issue quite a bit, but his answer was essentially that Facebook wouldn't commit to that. The bigger message from that exchange? Facebook values making money over making sure political ads are legitimate.
Ah, the tiresome media company debate again. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana asked the Big Tech companies if they were in the media business or were simply agnostic technology platforms. Surprise! Each company's lawyer declared his company an agnostic tech platform. This despite the fact that all three companies distribute news and other media to billions of people each day, act as a primary news source for millions here in the US, and make money by selling advertising that they runs next to or place within news articles and videos.
Last month, senators Mark Warner and Amy Klobuchar introduced the Honest Ads Act, which would require online political ads to contain similar disclosures about who paid for them as are found in print, broadcast, and radio ads. If the bill were enacted, you would be able to see if the election ad in your Facebook News Feed were funded by a political candidate's campaign, a political action committee — or a Russia-linked group looking to stir up trouble. Before the hearings, Facebook and Twitter committed to putting in place new transparency rules for political advertising. But they declined to voice support for the Honest Ads Act, despite its similar goal. Google, which has yet to announce any transparency rules of its own, likewise declined to explicitly endorse the bill.
What you missed from the tech hearings on Russia - Business Insider