“Your power sometimes scares me”
How Facebook, Twitter, and Google’s hearings with the Senate could change the way users interact with the internet.
Recently, Facebook, Twitter, and Google began their congressional hearings with the bipartisan Senate Judiciary Committee’s Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee on Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election. These hearings were centered around the companies’ understanding of how deeply Russia used their technology offerings to influence the election.
As the hearings began the most glaring absence was that of the chief executives of the companies themselves. Jack Dorsey Twitter’s CEO, Larry Page Google’s co-founder, and Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg were all absent from the hearings. Instead, general counsel from the companies were there to represent the companies in what was a surreal and telling portrait off the companies and their interaction with the United States.
It’s strange seeing Zuckerberg and Dorsey out in public spouting off the latest and greatest from their companies grandiose visions for the future and a connected society, and yet when there was a breakdown of the system that significantly impacted a presidential election in a negative way, they have some prepared remarks and plans to eliminate the problem in the future.
As the hearing carried on without the companies’ figureheads, Senator John Kennedy set the table for what defines this entire discussion: “Gentlemen, I’m very proud the three companies you’re representing here today are American companies, and I do think you do enormous good. But your power sometimes scares me.”
That power was seen when Facebook disclosed in a prepared testimony that: “Russia’s election posts reached 126 million people, Facebook will tell Congress”. Google said that a Kremin-linked group was found to have spent $4,700 on ads during the 2016 Election. Twitter had to deal with fake ads that said that Hillary Clinton supporters could save some time by voting online.
Think about 126 million people seeing some sort of post that was created by a Russian backed agent attempting to influence the presidential election. Now ponder the possibilities of how posts of that nature could fuel fake news and propaganda that benefits Russia. There aren’t illogical steps that need to be taken to see and understand the terrifying implications of what those Facebook posts could have done, and that’s only what Facebook publicity disclosed.
Overall, Facebook took the majority of the tough questions. The evidence that was disclosed supported that the Russian presence in paid advertising and generic posts on Facebook would have had the most impact on the election, so the battering they took was justified.
Kennedy challenged Facebook’s general counsel Colin Stretch on visibility into the companies’ advertisers today: “You don’t have the ability to know who every one of those advertisers is, do you, today?” Kennedy said. “Right now? Not your commitment — I’m asking about your ability.”
Kennedy and Stretch continued with Kennedy going hypothetical, asking if Zuckerberg could potentially use Facebook’s data to potentially garner information for surveillance purposes.
Stretch responded: “The answer is absolutely not,” he said. “We have limitations in place on our ability [to access this information].”
Kennedy jumped back in: “I’m not asking about your rules, I’m saying you have the ability to do that, don’t you? You can’t put a name to a face to a piece of data? You’re telling me that?”
“We have designed our systems to prevent exactly that, to protect the privacy of our users,” Stretch responded.
“That’s your testimony under oath?” asked Kennedy.
From the first moment of the hearings on Tuesday there were more roundabout questions and answers than necessary. It was unhelpful and there wasn’t much to takeaway other than conjecture from Senators and some master class avoiding from the companies’ general counsel. With how large the data operations are with these companies it just appears to be getting more difficult for them to answered point blank questions about what they’re doing.
The difficult aspect of this entire hearing process is that there are some scary answers for some equally scary questions. Russia quite clearly had a hand in the election to some extent, and the companies at hand were clearly taken aback by how involved they became in the election from a negative perspective.
There seem to be two lines of thinking that this situation brings up and begs to have discussed. What this breakdown in the advertising process means for how we view Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other large technology companies. As well as how the internet really should interact with the political process.
It doesn’t seem to matter all that much how the overwhelming presence of Russian advertising changed a person’s vote, it’s obviously impossible to figure out. What is clear from the evidence that Facebook, Twitter, and Google have disclosed is that there was an overwhelming Russian presence in the election advertising process.
Changing the way that online advertising works opens an entire can of worms when it comes to online anonymity. But as congress grows in their skepticism about big technology companies the possibility that online anonymity doesn’t extend to the advertising world is a very real and probably healthy reality, although it faces a tough legislative road ahead.
The hearings came on the back of a bill that is entitled the Honest Ads Act. Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) initially put forward the bill that would bring some clarity to who purchases ads on these platforms. It doesn’t have support from the companies themselves despite Senator Klobuchar asking executives to support the bill.
Some of the challenges that Senators posed to different lawyers from the tech giants were the lackluster ad review policies currently in place, how bots could have been used in a negative context, and the use of companies that could hide advertiser identification.
What came out of these hearings and future ones like it, positive or not, has the potential to change the way that companies and users alike interact and use online platforms. They bring up topics of conversation that should be somewhat scary. The anonymity of the internet could be slipping away as one of the most precious things for Americans was violated, a fair election process. Whether you believe that’s good or bad depends upon how you view the internet and all that comes with it.
In this circumstance the anonymity of the internet swayed a presidential election, in other situations the anonymity of the internet could help a newspaper to break a groundbreaking story on political corruption in a city. These discussions of the ethics of anonymity in our present day are important topics, and not something to be taken lightly. Hearings between Senators and the technology giants that shape our online world are vital to the topic.
