![]() “You were the canary in the coal mine"įranken called Facebook "the canary in the coal mine" for Russia's 2016 efforts to sway political opinion in the US through internet propaganda, a revelation that has led some senators to propose legislation that would force the disclosure of who paid for political ads online. “It’s a signal we should have been alert to, and in hindsight, it’s one we missed," said Stretch. Stretch, how did Facebook, which prides itself on being able to process billions of data points and instantly transform them into personal connections for its users, somehow not make the connection that electoral ads paid for in rubles were not coming from Russia?” Franken asked. "There were signals we missed.”Īlong with representatives from Google and Twitter, Facebook's Stretch appeared Tuesday before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary to testify about state-sponsored meddling in US politics through social networks.Īt one point during the contentious two-and-a-half-hour hearing, Senator Al Franken pressed Stretch to explain why Facebook took nearly a full year to disclose that Russian-affiliated actors had paid for targeted, politically-charged ads in rubles. “I think in hindsight, we should have had a broader lens," he said with regard to Facebook's efforts to weed out politically-charged ads from fake accounts. He said that Facebook had no knowledge of any outside help the Russian actors could have had to target members of its 2-billion-user network.įacebook general counsel Colin Stretch told lawmakers on Tuesday that the company should have done more to prevent Russia-backed propaganda from spreading on its platform around the 2016 US presidential election.Stretch admitted "there were signals we missed," like the use of Russian rubles to purchase political ads.US senators grilled Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch on Tuesday about why the company didn't catch Russia-linked fake accounts on its platform sooner.Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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