Facebook, Twitter, Google testify before Congress

Silicon Valley is settling in to get grilled by Washington.
Executives from Facebook (FB, Tech30), Twitter (TWTR, Tech30) and Google (GOOGL, Tech30) are testifying before Congress Tuesday afternoon in the first of three hearings this week into how foreign nationals used social media to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.
At the hearing, held by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, the tech companies were pressed on their ability to prevent bad actors from taking advantage of their platforms through ads and regular posts.
"You've got 5 million advertisers, and you're going to tell me you are able to trace the origin of all of those advertisements," Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, asked Colin Stretch, Facebook's general counsel.
Stretch admitted Facebook had limitations on what it could know. "To your question about seeing behind the platform, to understand if there are shell corporations, of course the answer is no," he said. "We cannot see behind the activity."

The heated exchange highlights the difficulties the online companies face in trying to identify and crack down on foreign meddling and misinformation campaigns.
In prepared testimony for the first hearing, which is being held by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, the tech companies revealed the sweeping scale of Russian influence operations on their platforms.
Facebook informed lawmakers that roughly 126 million Americans may have been exposed to content generated on its platform by a Russian government-linked troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency between June 2015 and August 2017.
Twitter disclosed that it has identified 2,752 accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency. It found a total of 36,746 accounts that appeared to be associated with Russia, though not necessarily with the Internet Research Agency, which generated automated, election-related content.
At the hearing, Stretch said Facebook also saw some activity continue after the election with the goal of "fomenting discord about the validity" of President Trump's election.
Continue Reading: Facebook, Twitter, Google testify before Congress

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