Black Lawmakers Pressure Facebook Over Racially Divisive Russian Ads
Black Lawmakers Pressure Facebook Over Racially Divisive
Russian Ads
By YAMICHE ALCINDOR SEPT. 28, 2017
WASHINGTON — Members of the Congressional Black Caucus
pressured Facebook this week to seriously examine how the site allowed Russian
operatives to use advertising to target Black Lives Matter and sow racial
divisions ahead of last year’s election.
In a letter Tuesday to the company’s chief executive,
Mark Zuckerberg, Representative Robin Kelly, Democrat of Illinois, wrote that
Russian-backed Facebook pages promoted “incendiary anti-immigrant rallies,
targeted the Black Lives Matter movement and focused attentions on critical
election swing states like Wisconsin and Michigan.”
Russian groups backed by the country’s president,
Vladimir V. Putin, paid Facebook to influence voters last year by “purchasing
ads designed to inflame and exploit racial, political and economic rifts in the
U.S.,” Ms. Kelly wrote.
Ms. Kelly’s letter follows weeks of criticism of Facebook
over its disclosure that Russians used fake pages and advertisements, designed
to look like the work of American activists, to spread inflammatory messages
during and since the presidential campaign. The company had long denied that
Russians had exploited its system, before reversing course on Sept. 6.
Now, Ms. Kelly said, she wants insight into how Facebook
examines prospective advertisers, how it vets ads placed by foreign authorities
and the “true cost and scope of Russia advertisements placed during the 2016
election cycle.”
Representative Robin L. Kelly, Democrat of Illinois, sent
a letter on Tuesday to Mark Zuckerberg, the C.E.O. of Facebook, expressing
concern about the advertising practices of the social media company.
“It is my belief that Facebook cannot be the Trojan horse
through which America’s vulnerabilities are exploited,” Ms. Kelly wrote in the
letter. “With the information we now have in tow, you have a moral
responsibility to rigorously assess your advertising policies and implement
reforms that ensure that malicious actors — both foreign and domestic — do not
pervert your site to promote a divisive and destabilizing agenda.”
A spokesman for Facebook confirmed that the company
received Ms. Kelly’s letter and that it was in communication with her office.
Ms. Kelly, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight
Committee’s subcommittee on information technology, and several of her
colleagues contacted Facebook seven days after President Trump’s win in
November to express deep concerns about Facebook allowing advertisers to
exclude and target ethnic groups.
Tuesday’s letter ratchets up their concerns as several
social networking sites face scrutiny from Congress and as other Congressional
Black Caucus members such as Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of
California, say they worry about Facebook’s role in the election and in
allowing users to discriminate online.
Representative Cedric L. Richmond, Democrat of Louisiana
and chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, noted that for many
African-Americans, the incident raised memories of past government-orchestrated
espionage and intimidation efforts, such as the F.B.I.’s surveillance of the
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“Historically, those in the struggle for civil rights
have not only been forced to confront institutions of racism in our society,
they have also been forced to confront attacks and espionage activity from
individual actors and organizations in and outside of government,” he said. “It
is my hope that our tech community takes this matter seriously, is forthright
with the special counsel and Congress, and does everything it can to make sure
it is not manipulated like this again.”
Last week, Facebook said it was turning over more than
3,000 Russia-linked advertisements to Congress. Many of those ads, like those
on the National Football League protest issue, targeted divisions in American
society, sending conflicting messages to different users segmented by political
and racial characteristics.
Mr. Zuckerberg addressed his network of more than 2
billion people about the social network’s role in democracies this week and
expressed regret for initially dismissing his company’s potential impact on the
2016 election.
“We will continue to work to build a community for all
people,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “We will do our part to defend against nation
states attempting to spread misinformation and subvert elections. We’ll keep
working to ensure the integrity of free and fair elections around the world,
and to ensure our community is a platform for all ideas and force for good in
democracy.”
Twitter, another social network targeted by Russian
operatives, planned to brief staff members of the Senate and House Intelligence
Committees on Thursday for their investigation of Russian interference in the
2016 election.
The New York Times reported this month on evidence of
Russian operators creating hundreds or thousands of fake Twitter accounts to
flood the network with anti-Clinton messages during the campaign. The
cybersecurity company FireEye identified what it called “warlists” of accounts
linked to Russian intelligence that sometimes spewed messages like
#WarAgainstDemocrats several times a minute.
The House Intelligence Committee also announced on
Wednesday that it would hold a public hearing on the matter of Russian
influence next month, and a Senate aide said Facebook, Twitter and Google
officials have been invited to testify at a Senate Intelligence Committee
hearing on Nov. 1.
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