Social media firms grilled on Russia ads

Facebook, Google and Twitter - technology powerhouses actively cultivating their influence in Washington - received an unaccustomed grilling and even ridicule in their first appearance before Congress over Russian meddling in last year’s presidential campaign.

Two hearings on Wednesday may bring more of the same for top attorneys from the companies, who were forced to acknowledge to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee Tuesday that they aren’t sure they’ve measured the full extent of foreign manipulation of their social networks and don’t yet have the technology to ensure it won’t happen again.

“We need to understand the behaviour and we need to have the capacity both as a company and as an industry to be able to track it and eradicate it,” said Colin Stretch, Facebook’s general counsel. He said the company will double its safety and security staff to 20,000, including contract workers, by the end of 2018 to help track foreign interference and extremist postings.

The companies stopped short of endorsing proposed legislation that would require them to disclose all purchasers of political advertising, as old-line broadcasters have long been required to do. While some Republicans said such requirements would raise constitutional questions, Democrats on the panel said Congress must act.

The ridicule came from Democratic Senator Al Franken, who expressed amazement that Facebook had failed to detect Russians were behind American political ads on its platform even though some of them were paid for in rubles.

“People are buying ads on your platforms with rubles! They’re political ads,” the senator from Minnesota said. “You can’t put together rubles with a political ad and go like, ‘Hmmm, those two data points spell out something bad?’”
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Google introduces tools to prevent ads with undesirable content

Google, which has seen a slew of companies withdraw ads after they appeared alongside extremist content, said on Tuesday it was introducing new tools to give firms greater control.

"We know advertisers don't want their ads next to content that doesn't align with their values," Google's chief business officer Philipp Schindler said in a post on the internet giant's blog.

"So starting today, we're taking a tougher stance on hateful, offensive and derogatory content."

The move came a day after an apology by a senior Google executive after the British government and a handful of top firms including Marks and Spencer and HSBC bank pulled their adverts after they appeared alongside extremist content on its internet platforms.

Schindler said Google will tighten safeguards to ensure that ads show up only against legitimate creators on its video-sharing site YouTube, and "is taking a hard look at our existing community guidelines to determine what content is allowed on the platform".

A boycott by firms worried about damaging their image could cause incredible damage to Google as advertising makes up the overwhelming majority of the internet giant's revenue.

Schindler said Google acknowledged that companies have brand guidelines which dictate where and when they want their ads to appear and that it wants to give them more control to do that.

"In the coming days and months, we're introducing new tools for advertisers to more easily and consistently manage where their ads appear across YouTube and the web," said Schindler.

The British government put its YouTube advertising on hold on Monday, saying "it is totally unacceptable that taxpayer-funded advertising has appeared next to inappropriate internet content - and that message was conveyed very clearly to Google."

A Marks and Spencer spokesman said: "In order to ensure brand safety, we are pausing activity
across Google platforms whilst the matter is worked through." (READ MORE)