Rethinking the role of social media as a political tool
Three of the most successful social media giants were brought further into the public eye late last month when they were summoned for hearings with the Senate Intelligence Committee to discuss the nature of Kremlin-sponsored activity on their platforms from 2015 to 2017. Testimonies from Twitter, Facebook, and Google suggest that the Kremlin-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) and Russian hacking sites were associated with thousands of dollars of fake ad sponsorship, reaching over 150 million people on Facebook and creating 2,752 Twitter accounts over the two year span. While the exact goal of the fabricated ads is not known, the nature of the content suggests that it was created to capitalize on existing political tensions within the US voting population.
The US senators argued that the social media-facilitated Russian activity conflicted with two areas of Federal Election Commission (FEC) legislation, including a law barring foreign interference in American elections and legislation requiring broadcast media to publicly disclose political and issue-based ads, maintaining databases of who funds them. One motion on the table by the senators includes the Honest Ads Act, which would extend the latter piece of legislation to capture social media networks within its scope. After years of enjoying relatively little regulation on the Internet, the social media companies were reluctant to concede their freedom easily, arguing that they seek to be important forums for open debate and to provide a “wide variety of perspectives” to Americans.
It is difficult to measure the impact these fake advertisements have had on the election, but the implication of the Honest Ads Act does raise some questions about how responsible companies on the Internet should be to individual states and their domestic laws when social media posts sometimes have real world implications. With an unprecedented ability to reach the masses, social media outlets perpetuate the rapid spread of information across the globe, allowing messages and ideas to spread before their veracity can be confirmed. One need only look back to the manhunt that evolved following the Boston Marathon bombings, where Reddit users wrongly came to the conclusion that missing university student Sunil Tripathi was one of the suspects. In the context of these recent Russia allegations, fake Facebook accounts intentionally booked two protests from opposite political leanings for the exact same location and time. The Senate Intelligence Committee argued that “foreign adversaries will read this playbook” and perpetuate social media-based attacks of a similar nature in the future.
In some countries such as Germany, Facebook is already complying with domestic restrictive speech laws. But advocates for free speech and market deregulation push back against any government’s ability to police what can be posted or bought online. In addition to the difficulty of analyzing and monitoring the sheer volume of Tweets and Facebook posts produced every day, the vast majority of the companies’ revenue streams come from advertising. The piecemeal effort by Twitter to ban Kremlin-linked Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik from advertising on its site represents a surface-level attempt at appeasing the US Government before being pegged with heavier regulations. But with Burr’s warning at the hearing suggesting the sites are on the front lines of defense for the security of the United States’ future, it is unlikely that the Silicon Valley giants will ever be able to return to business-as-usual low regulation in America.