Google, Facebook, Twitter Scramble to Hold Washington at Bay
Google, Facebook, Twitter Scramble to Hold Washington at
Bay
Crisis PR, personal phone calls mark response to Russia
probes
Executives slated to testify at Nov. 1 congressional
hearings
By Mark Bergen, Sarah Frier, and Selina Wang October 10,
2017, 1:00 AM PDT October 10, 2017, 10:00 AM PDT
Last month, Google summoned about 200 staff from around
the world for an annual policy meeting. One agenda item was very different this
time: How to deal with the sudden drumbeat of calls in the U.S. to regulate the
company for being too big.
The two-day retreat in Monterey, California, where
employees from the $682 billion company plied Washington policy experts with
questions about the pros and cons of its size, took place as Google confronts
European antitrust claims and proposed U.S. legislation that would increase
online publishers’ liability for content produced by others.
This week, the Alphabet Inc. unit disclosed new
information that could further roil the regulatory picture: revelations that
Russian-linked accounts used its advertising network to interfere with the 2016
presidential election. The news put Google in the company of Facebook Inc. and
Twitter Inc., both of which are embroiled in the controversy surrounding
Russia’s involvement in last year’s U.S. elections. Executives at all three
companies are scrambling to respond.
Facebook has hired two crisis PR firms, and it plans to
bring on as many as 1,000 people to screen ads. Top executives, including Chief
Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, are phoning members of Congress directly.
The company reported spending more than $3.2 million on lobbying in the first
quarter of 2017, a company record. Google spent almost $6 million in the second
quarter for its own record. Both companies, with Twitter, are working together
to deal with issues related to the Russian ads.
“There is a lot of pressure to intervene in this case
because of the democratic implications,” said Laura DeNardis, director of the
Internet Governance Lab at American University in Washington. “Because of the
rising stakes for cyberspace, for the economy, for democracy, there is greater
attention on the part of all actors.”
It’s a delicate balance for the companies, whose products
reached massive scale because of their ability to transact advertising
automatically, without much restriction. They must figure out how much
responsibility to take and how much change to promise, without succumbing to
costly regulation or setting a precedent that might be difficult to follow in
other countries.
In the context of political advertising, some lawmakers
are already proposing new limits. “We must update our laws to ensure that when
political ads are sold online Americans know who paid for them,” Senator Amy
Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, said Monday.
Two congressional committees and special counsel Robert
Mueller are examining whether Russian operatives used social-media platforms to
influence U.S. voters in 2016. Investigators are also examining possible
collusion between Russian interests and associates of President Donald Trump.
Facebook has turned over more than 3,000 ads purchased by Russian entities to
both congressional investigations. Twitter has said it gave the panels a
roundup of advertisements by RT, a TV network funded by the Russian government
that was formerly known as Russia Today.
Facebook for years has sought exemptions from
political-ad disclosure rules -- but the company recently said it’s working on
ways to show who pays for ads. It also indicated it might be open to some
regulation regarding transparency.
For Google, the new concerns around political advertising
come as it responds to European antitrust charges and tries to preserve online
platforms’ liability protections under a law known as Section 230. A Senate
bill aimed at stopping online sex trafficking has drawn opposition from Google,
Facebook and other internet companies because it weakens those protections.
Google executives expected Congress to be more receptive to its arguments that
penalizing knowledge of trafficking might stop smaller internet companies from
looking for it at all. They were caught off-guard by negative responses to the
company’s lobbying, according to one Washington operative who works for the
company.
Meanwhile, a potential showdown on political advertising
looms on Nov. 1, when executives from Google, Facebook and Twitter have been
summoned to Washington to give public testimony before congressional
committees.
Facebook’s two top executives -- Zuckerberg and Chief
Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg -- have joined others in making calls to
members of Congress and trying to smooth relationships, the company said. It
has also hired two crisis communications firms to help it on both Republican
and Democratic fronts. And a letter went out to advertisers, saying Facebook
staff would manually review ads that target people based on their politics,
religion, ethnicity or social issues.
Facebook’s vice president of public policy, Elliot
Schrage, started a question-and-answer-style blog called “Hard Questions” in
June. In consultation with Liz Spayd, the former New York Times public editor,
Facebook updates the blog when news breaks on the company’s relationship with
the Trump campaign and the Russian ads.
On Sunday, when “60 Minutes” aired an interview with the
Trump campaign’s digital director saying he had partisan Facebook employees
work as “embeds” in the campaign, the company added an explanation of how its
services for Trump were standard for any advertiser during an important event.
The strategy is meant to reassure the public, and
lawmakers, that Facebook is working diligently on solutions and therefore
doesn’t need to be regulated more. But some critics say that by volunteering to
be responsible, Facebook is opening itself up to more publicity and more blame.
Inside the company, leaders are dismayed by how the
public is interpreting its involvement in the Russia investigation, according
to a person familiar with their thinking. Executives fear that Facebook’s work
for the presidential campaigns is being re-framed as partisan, for example,
even though it offers the same services to any major advertiser.
Alex Stamos, Facebook’s chief security officer, defended
the company from media critics who say it should have found a technical
solution to the problem of fake news. It’s not that simple -- and any quick
solution could end up being ideologically biased, he said in a series of recent
posts on Twitter.
Facebook, Twitter and Google are cooperating on issues
related to the Russian political ads. A person familiar with the effort said it
was similar to how the three firms would work together on difficult
industrywide issues, such as child pornography or content from terrorist
groups.
"We are taking a deeper look to investigate attempts
to abuse our systems, working with researchers and other companies, and will
provide assistance to ongoing inquiries," a Google spokeswoman said on
Monday.
Twitter executives have been in frequent contact with
Congressional committees and investigators to try and answer their questions
before Nov. 1, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company is
addressing the issue from multiple angles, the person said, including asking
engineers to examine spam-use on the platform and asking its advertising team
to delve into ad purchases by RT, the Russian TV network.
Teaching Twitter’s algorithms to find malicious actors is
challenging; Russian actors in particular are moving away from bots and
networks to human beings that behave in coordinated ways, the person said. For
instance, it can be difficult for Twitter’s algorithms to detect the difference
between a group of paid tweets in Eastern Europe and a group of legitimate
tweeters who are all posting at the same time at a convention. Bloomberg LP is
developing a global breaking news network for the Twitter service.
Meanwhile, Google took a more creative approach to
discussing its future last month. At the policy session in Monterey, one
speaker played the opposition, voicing concerns about the power big
corporations can wield over society. Another played defense. That was Robert
Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
His upcoming book, Big is Beautiful -- co-authored by Michael Lind -- argues
larger firms create progress and prosperity.
“It was very open-minded to have that kind of debate,”
Atkinson said when reached by phone. “The threats against Google are certainly
more severe now. Trying to portray yourself just as a good company is not
adequate enough.”
— With assistance by Ben Brody, Gerrit De Vynck, and
Selina Wang
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