Major tech companies plan to tell Congress today [Macau time] that they have found additional evidence of Russian activity on their services related to the 2016 U.S. election.
Facebook, for instance, says a Russian group posted more than 80,000 times on its service during and after the election, potentially reaching as many as 126 million users. The company plans to disclose these numbers to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the testimony. The person declined to be named because the committee has not officially released the testimony.
Twitter plans to tell the same committee that it has uncovered and shut down 2,752 accounts linked to the same group, Russia’s Internet Research Agency, which is known for promoting pro-Moscow messages.
That number is nearly 14 times larger than the number of accounts Twitter handed over to congressional committees three weeks ago, according to a person familiar with the matter. This person requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the new findings ahead of the hearing today.
And Google announced in a blog post that it found evidence of “limited” misuse of its services by the Russian group, as well as some YouTube channels that were likely backed by Russian agents.
The companies are set to testify at three hearings this week as part of congressional probes of Russian election interference.
Colin Stretch, Facebook’s general counsel, plans to tell the Judiciary panel that 120 pages set up by the Russian agency posted repeatedly between January 2015 and August 2017. The company estimates that roughly 29 million people were directly “served” posts in their news feeds from the agency over that time. Those posts then spread widely on Facebook, although Stretch’s prepared testimony makes clear that many of the 126 million people reached this way may not have seen the posts.
These “organic” posts that appeared in users’ news feeds are distinct from more than 3,000 advertisements linked to the agency that Facebook has already turned over to congressional committees. The ads — many of which focused on divisive social issues — pointed people to the agency’s pages, where they could then like or share its material.
On Twitter, the Russia-linked accounts put out 1.4 million election- related tweets from September through Nov. 15 last year — nearly half of them automated. The company also found nine Russian accounts that bought ads, most of which came from the state-backed news service Russia Today, or RT.
Google announced on Monday that it will also verify the identity of election-related ad buyers and identify these advertisers publicly via an ad icon. It will provide a public database of election ads detailing who purchased each one, and will publish a transparency report on election ads as well.
The companies have been under constant pressure from Congress since it was first revealed earlier this year that Russians had infiltrated some of their platforms. Facebook has already spent more than USD8.4 million lobbying the government this year, according to federal disclosure forms.
All three firms are expected to face questions about what evidence of Russian interference they found on their services, as well as why they didn’t find it earlier. They will almost certainly do what they can to convince lawmakers that they can fix the problem on their own, without the need for regulation. MDT/AP
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