Social Media Execs on the Hill

[dc2london]

More Trump defense. Senator Lankford wants us all to know that only 9% of the identified problematic content was directly related to the election. Do these Republican Senators not understand how starting/perpetuating domestic social issues arguments can be equally problematic AND can turn an election?

[dc2london]

I mean it's willful ignorance to pretend that convincing Americans that all Syrian refugees are terrorists didn't result in some of them turning up at the polls and voting for Trump. You don't have to blatantly say, "Vote for Trump" to ensure him votes

[dc2london]

I'm going to drive to school early now so I can live blog Kamala. Be back in a few

[jkjacq]

Manchin wants to know if they will support legislation saying all political ads on net are treated the same as tv/radio

crickets, then uhhh we're looking into it,

[jkjacq]

Cotton wants twitter to relook at their policies when dealing with friendly intel community vs hostile.
They are talking about dataminer

[jkjacq]

Cotton Wikileaks is hostile according to Pompeo but twitter still allows them to use it

WHY CANT YOU BE BIASED FOR American companies

Twitter tries to be equal across the board

Cotton wants to know why Blackburns tweet was taken down

Twitter never took it down but it was considered an ad and not an organic tweet. They allowed her to leave it up after review

[dc2london]

The Republicans on this committee want to tell private corporations how they should behave were foreign governments...

[jkjacq]

Kamala is up

you are tv, news, emergency broadcast etc..

She is holding up a FCC form

[jkjacq]

She wants to talk about America ads (finally)

[jkjacq]

How much $ did you make from legitimate advertising running along russian proproganda.

They no know

[dc2london]

How much $ did you.make on legitimate advertising that ran alongside or in connection with propaganda

[jkjacq]

She wants to know how much they profited from legit ads running in front of propaganda
Will they commit to keeping records of this during investigation

[dc2london]

Kamala directed each company to appoint a C-level point person who is responsible for security against nation states pushing propaganda

[dc2london]

Senator Cornyn is making the excellent point that social media companies have more information about Americans than anyone, including the government, and use that to Target advertising

[dc2london]

Nov 1, 2017 10:10:21 GMT -6 @heartbot said:

Nov 1, 2017 8:47:42 GMT -6 dc2london said:

DiFi: Why didn't Google revoke RT's preferred status when it was determined to be Kremlin propaganda?

Walker: Google has been working on cyberespionage for years. We recognize the concerns about RT and it's "slanted coverage." RT is everywhere. We have carefully reviewed their content, but they do not violate our terms of use. Google provides information about the "government-funded nature of RT" and are working to expand that to YouTube and other platforms.

DiFi: Yeah, that's...not remotely good enough. You all need to take a hard look at the role you play in cyber warfare.

I still take issue with this argument b/c while RT might be spreading foreign propaganda, it's STILL a media organization, and the government should not be regulating media organizations b/c we disagree with their content. As much as it pains me to say it.

I agree with you. I think we're treading into problematic ground here

[dc2london]

Twitter argues that they shouldn't be regulated like tv and radio bc they don't produce content

[dc2london]

Oh Jack Reed came!

[dc2london]

Senator Reed is suggesting that the SM companies have an obligation to notify users who have been misled by a foreign government

[dc2london]

Ok good, Reed is asking the same question I was asking earlier about artificially inflating hit counts on Google and YouTube

[dc2london]

If they detect efforts to inflate viewcounts on YouTube, they correct the count and/or remove the account.

Twitter also bans bots who amplify trending topics (not very well, clearly)

[jkjacq]

Nov 1, 2017 10:19:08 GMT -6 dc2london said:

Senator Reed is suggesting that the SM companies have an obligation to notify users who have been misled by a foreign government

Again I think we're putting too much on a company(ies) to spoon feed us "correct" information.  
I understand what they are saying but ignorant people are gonna be ignorant.  They dont care.  People believed the national enquirer and all the other supermarket tabloids.  They dont make them say that Elvis having an alien baby is FAKE NEWS.
But people bought it and believed it.

[dc2london]

Senator Reed echoes Senator Rubio's sentiment that the SM companies need to be more proactive than reactive.

[dc2london]

Their chief defense seems to be, "But the hackers are just so smart."

[dc2london]

Senator Burr is willing to issue antitrust waivers for these companies to collaborate on this issue. The government is making it clear that they want to work with these companies, not just regulate them to death.

[jkjacq]

Burr saying they may need to seek anti-trust waivers to combine together to fight this.

[jkjacq]

Nov 1, 2017 10:24:46 GMT -6 dc2london said:

Their chief defense seems to be, "But the hackers are just so smart."

Then they should hire them.

[dc2london]

Rep Conaway started the hearing with a prayer that surreptitiously and preemptively scolded MOC for not acting like good Christians

[dc2london]

Well Adam Schiff just neatly laid out the tale of how Russia used Trump and his merry men to steal our election.

[dc2london]

Schiff: What responsibility do you think your companies bear with regard to protecting Americans from foreign influence, and in allowing the pitting of American versus American?

Edgett (Twitter): We're focused on limiting automated activity. If bad actors can't get or expand an audience, they can't be effective. We're shutting down the voice and amplification of bad actors on our system.

Stretch (Facebook): Our goal is to provide relevant information to users, and that is driven by your friends and family. What you are interested in tends to align with what your friends and family are interested in (ohh Facebook, you don't know Americans). We haven't seen overlap in the targetting used by the Internet Research Agency (Russian troll farm) and the campaign operations on Facebook.

Walker (Google): The use for our platforms for advertising was relatively limited, and wasn't microtargeted.

[blurnette989]

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