Speaker 1: Good morning. I'd like to welcome our witnesses today. Before
Speaker 1: I introduced them last week, most of Silicon Valley had
Speaker 1: its eye on Washington, d C. On Capitol Hill, a
Speaker 1: row of senators took their seats behind a tall wood
Speaker 1: paneled bench. In front of them three lawyers representing Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 1: and Google. I welcome our witnesses. Colin Stretch, vice President
Speaker 1: General Counsel at Facebook, Sean Edge, General counsel at Twitter,
Speaker 1: and Kent Walker, Senior Vice president General Counsel at Google.
Speaker 1: It must have been quite a scene, Sarah Fryer, where
Speaker 1: were you? I was in the room and the atmosphere
Speaker 1: was definitely tense. Yeah, the hearing kind of felt like
Speaker 1: a reckoning. Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth,
Speaker 1: the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Please be seating.
Speaker 1: The Senate Intelligence Committee was there to ask the tech
Speaker 1: companies about fake news and all the other kinds of
Speaker 1: miss leading information that Russia has been accused of spreading
Speaker 1: on social networks during the presidential election, stuff like automated accounts,
Speaker 1: political ads, and Facebook pages with names like being Patriotic
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump America that turned out later to have
Speaker 1: connections to Russia. Congress has been wanting answers for months now.
Speaker 1: What was the full extent of Russia's influence campaign on
Speaker 1: social media, how many people had liked and shared this content,
Speaker 1: and how many had believed it. Many lawmakers weren't happy
Speaker 1: with the answers they were getting. Mount Senator, I don't
Speaker 1: have it in front of me. It would be happy
Speaker 1: to follow up. I don't have the data, but I
Speaker 1: will follow up and I will have to come back
Speaker 1: to you on that, Senator, Sir, We've had this hearing
Speaker 1: schedule for months. I find you it's a very very disappointing.
Speaker 1: I'm Brad Stone and I'm Sarah Fryar, and this week Undercrypted,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the future of three big technology platforms, Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 1: and Google, now that they're in hot water with Congress.
Speaker 1: We'll look back at how the public has slowly come
Speaker 1: to understand the volume of this manipulation from Russia and
Speaker 1: how widely it was circulated on these platforms. We'll also
Speaker 1: look ahead at how the companies are promising to address
Speaker 1: the problem and whether those measures will live up to
Speaker 1: the kind of action Congress is calling for. Stay with us, so, Sarah,
Speaker 1: it's been really interesting to watch the story grow over
Speaker 1: the last year. It's been exactly a year since the
Speaker 1: presidential election, and I remember Mark Zuckerberg calling it a
Speaker 1: quote crazy idea that fake news might have swayed the electorate.
Speaker 1: The positions have really changed since then, haven't they. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean Facebook all during was very worried about claims
Speaker 1: that it was biased against conservatives, so they really didn't
Speaker 1: want to do much with the content on their platform, right,
Speaker 1: and they've been giving us more information about how many
Speaker 1: people were touched by Russian backed ads, what's the latest,
Speaker 1: And clearly they were trying to get out a little
Speaker 1: bit ahead of the hearing and acknowledged that this was
Speaker 1: a bigger problem that they had acknowledged before. So remember
Speaker 1: back in April, they had this report that said that
Speaker 1: there was some interference in the election, they didn't name names.
Speaker 1: Faster forward to a couple of months later and they
Speaker 1: actually said that it was in fact Russian interference and
Speaker 1: it included a hundred thousand dollars worth of ads. Now,
Speaker 1: last week they expanded the extent to what they knew
Speaker 1: by saying that a hundred twenty six million people on
Speaker 1: Facebook were potentially served Russian propaganda and fifteen million more
Speaker 1: on Instagram. Now, what was remarkable during these hearings was
Speaker 1: to see so many Democratic senators who clearly count the
Speaker 1: tech companies and their employees among their constituencies. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of senators like Kamala Harris or Mark Warner. I really
Speaker 1: reprimand the tech companies for not taking the issue seriously.
Speaker 1: Diane Feinstein of California. She thought that the tech companies
Speaker 1: just didn't get it. Because I've been very proud and
Speaker 1: I know Senator Harris is as well to represent this
Speaker 1: tech community from California, but I must say, I don't
Speaker 1: think you get it. I have more than a little
Speaker 1: bit of frustration that many of us on this committee
Speaker 1: have been raising this issue since the beginning of his year,
Speaker 1: and our claims were frankly blown off by the leaderships
Speaker 1: of your companies. Dismissed, said, there's no possibility, nothing like
Speaker 1: this happening, nothing to see here. It was really interesting
Speaker 1: to see these senators take that stance, because they definitely
Speaker 1: get a lot of their donations for their campaigns from tech.
Speaker 1: But this is something that across the board in Congress,
Speaker 1: we saw senators get very openly angry. Now, the tech
Speaker 1: companies have announced a series of measures to deal with
Speaker 1: this problem. Mostly they have to do with um partnering
Speaker 1: with fact checking organizations and hiring more people to go
Speaker 1: manually review ads and news stories. How much of a
Speaker 1: solution can that be? Well, I wrote a story last
Speaker 1: week that highlights just the incredible difficulty of solving these
Speaker 1: problems that computers can't solve yet. And when you throw
Speaker 1: humans at the problem, you have to deal with a
Speaker 1: whole gray area of what should and shouldn't be allowed.
Speaker 1: In the case of fact checking, the volume of fake
Speaker 1: news stories is just too large for their third parties
Speaker 1: to handle and rowdy, you know, with with Facebook saying
Speaker 1: they would hire ten thousand more people, including contractors for
Speaker 1: their safety and security team. The Twitter employee that the
Speaker 1: lee did Trump's account on their last day of work
Speaker 1: highlights how how tricky it can be to put the
Speaker 1: fate of your solfisal network in the hands of third
Speaker 1: party contractors. Right there can be unintended consequences. Now, one
Speaker 1: of the answers we heard most frequently during the hearings
Speaker 1: was I don't know, We'll get back to you. And
Speaker 1: you know, there were there were senators. I think It
Speaker 1: was Mark Warner who said it kind of strained credulity
Speaker 1: that these tech companies didn't know that any of this
Speaker 1: was really happening. Candidly, your companies no more about Americans
Speaker 1: in many ways than the state's government does. And the
Speaker 1: idea that you had no idea of any of this
Speaker 1: was happening strange my credibility. The companies were consistently dodging questions,
Speaker 1: and in fact I made a list and found that
Speaker 1: there were more than twenty things that they told senators
Speaker 1: they would get back to them on. They have a
Speaker 1: lot more investigating to do, they reassured everyone. I guess
Speaker 1: shouldn't say reassure. They confirmed to all members of Congress
Speaker 1: that they had not finished their investigations, as there may
Speaker 1: be a lot more to find. Did the hearing really
Speaker 1: give us a better idea of what was happening on
Speaker 1: the platform during the election. Well, you know that about
Speaker 1: this group called the Internet Research Agency? What who are there?
Speaker 1: They're they're from Russia. Basically, what they want to do
Speaker 1: is spread memes that stir up controversy. They're trying, you know,
Speaker 1: when you troll somebody, you're trying to get into their head.
Speaker 1: A little bit and get them angry, agitate them, and
Speaker 1: the ads and posts from the Internet Research Agency just
Speaker 1: touched all the hot button issues in the US that
Speaker 1: really get people riled up, from gun control to immigration
Speaker 1: to um terrorists, him all these things that you know.
Speaker 1: In some cases they organized protests on both sides of
Speaker 1: an argument and people actually showed up. Sarah, how much
Speaker 1: did it cost these internet troll farms to make this
Speaker 1: kind of an impact on the election? On Facebook? A
Speaker 1: hundred thousand, forty six thousand of which was before the election.
Speaker 1: On the other platforms even less and compared to the
Speaker 1: bulk of their revenues, it was nothing. So so they
Speaker 1: spent forty six thousand dollars. How much did how much
Speaker 1: did the Clinton and Trump campaign spend on Facebook during
Speaker 1: I assume before the election? Are organized than than the
Speaker 1: other group? Uh? Approximately combined approximately eighty one million dollars
Speaker 1: eighty one million and before the election. Yes, so eight
Speaker 1: one million. I'm not a great mathematician, but forty six thousand,
Speaker 1: eighty one mill you in would that be like five
Speaker 1: one thousands of one percent? Senator Mansion wasn't the only
Speaker 1: senator trying to get at the question of how much
Speaker 1: the companies had profited from Russia backed activity on the site.
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris, Senator for California, asked about it too, from
Speaker 1: the Russian sources. That's not my question actually, as American
Speaker 1: advertising or legitimate advertising. How much money did you make
Speaker 1: from legitimate advertising that ran alongside the Russia propaganda? A
Speaker 1: diminimous amount, Senator. I don't have it in front of me.
Speaker 1: I would be happy to follow up. Okay, what about
Speaker 1: for Twitter? I don't have the data, but I will
Speaker 1: follow up and have you not looked into that? I believe?
Speaker 1: Are you asking how much advertising revenue we made for
Speaker 1: the period? Totally? I'm asking how much advertising revenue did
Speaker 1: you receive from legitimate advertisers that advertised alongside or in
Speaker 1: connection with Russian properly Ganda. We haven't done that analysis,
Speaker 1: but we'll follow up and work on that. Okay, what
Speaker 1: about Facebook? The same is truy for Facebook, Senitor, you've
Speaker 1: not done that calculation. We've not done that analysis. I
Speaker 1: find that difficult to understand because it would seem to
Speaker 1: me that we would figure out how much you've profited
Speaker 1: from Russian propaganda on your on your platforms. What Senator
Speaker 1: Harris is getting at here, and which has the social
Speaker 1: media companies understandably worried, is that Congress is concerned about
Speaker 1: fake news could result in new regulations or laws that
Speaker 1: might impact their business. Sarah, how real of a worry
Speaker 1: is that Facebook has been pretty smart about redirecting the
Speaker 1: conversation to ads, and that's something where they have said
Speaker 1: that they're open to regulation, and Google and Twitter have agreed, Yes, sir,
Speaker 1: that's a really good distinction between political ads, which you
Speaker 1: know might be easier to regulate, Um, and then the
Speaker 1: unpaid content that we all see in our feeds on
Speaker 1: Twitter and Facebook. What's the chance that that gets regulated?
Speaker 1: What would the implications be for Facebook's business if it was.
Speaker 1: Although they said how angry they were about the nature
Speaker 1: of what was posted by Russia, even Facebook kept coming
Speaker 1: back to the fact that it wasn't against their internal policies,
Speaker 1: that the only problem with the ads from Russia and
Speaker 1: the content from Russia was that it came from fake accounts.
Speaker 1: Some of the senators have agreed with you, Um that
Speaker 1: ads were you know, a small part of the problem,
Speaker 1: but that you know, fake news stories, you know from Facebook,
Speaker 1: from YouTube, you know from Twitter really had the potential
Speaker 1: to change people's minds. Here Senator Ron Widen from Oregon
Speaker 1: making that point. Now, I'm of the view ads or
Speaker 1: a small part of a much bigger problem. Fake users
Speaker 1: posting stories on Facebook, videos on YouTube, links on Twitter
Speaker 1: can be used by foreign and domestic enemies to under
Speaker 1: line our society. You need to stop paying lip service
Speaker 1: to shutting down bad actors using these accounts. Now, Sarah,
Speaker 1: why would the tech companies be scared? Listening to Senator
Speaker 1: Widen here, I I think that's something that scares people
Speaker 1: around the world. You know, you don't want the government
Speaker 1: deciding what is fake or not fake, especially when you
Speaker 1: have a president who considers uh, some mainstream media to
Speaker 1: be fake news. It's it's really a dangerous game to play,
Speaker 1: and that's why Facebook has outsourced it's fact checking to
Speaker 1: third parties. They don't want to play it either. I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems to me that, frankly, this is as much
Speaker 1: a technology company problem as it is a problem inherent
Speaker 1: to our media environment. Right now, You've just you have frankly,
Speaker 1: credible news sources on the right and the left which
Speaker 1: are feeding sometimes stories that feel a little bit like propaganda.
Speaker 1: Or or could be misleading into these social networks where
Speaker 1: then gets propagated pretty widely. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: questions that the hearing is about what actually is fake news?
Speaker 1: How do you define it? And the answer from Facebook
Speaker 1: is that, well, you know, this is stuff that is
Speaker 1: probably false, but you're right that the bigger problem is
Speaker 1: a lot of misleading context and sensationalistic content, content that
Speaker 1: gives information without its proper context. And there's nothing that
Speaker 1: anyone will be able to do about that, right, and
Speaker 1: yet the big tech companies are big, they're visible, and
Speaker 1: their targets and and so here Senator Diane Feinstein at
Speaker 1: the hearing really pointing the finger directly a Twitter, Facebook
Speaker 1: and Google and saying, you know, you're the only ones
Speaker 1: in a position to do something about this. You have
Speaker 1: a huge problem on your hand. You've created these platforms
Speaker 1: and now they are being misused, and you have to
Speaker 1: be the ones to do something about um, or we will.
Speaker 1: Several Senators are now calling for action for new laws
Speaker 1: to regulate the tech companies, as well as consequences for
Speaker 1: countries that medal in US politics. That's what we're going
Speaker 1: to get into next. Sarah, thank you, Okay, so at
Speaker 1: the hearing, it was clear that some senators wanted to
Speaker 1: take action against the social networks or see the company's
Speaker 1: proposed changes themselves to stop the circulation of false or
Speaker 1: misleading information. Senator Angus King for Maine said there should
Speaker 1: be consequences for the hostile states doing the meddling. The
Speaker 1: third thing that we have to determine, I think, is
Speaker 1: that this country has to have some kind of cyber
Speaker 1: warfare deterrent capacity. Right now, there's no price to be
Speaker 1: paid for meddling in our democracy, and our adversaries have
Speaker 1: to understand that if they're going to understake a campaign
Speaker 1: like this, there will be a price to be paid.
Speaker 1: There will Republican Senator Richard Byrne. Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein
Speaker 1: called it a national security risk. In reality, though, regulating
Speaker 1: content on these sprawling social platforms is hard, much harder
Speaker 1: than we might think. Josh Breusteen, that's something you've been
Speaker 1: writing about recently. Why is it so difficult to weed
Speaker 1: out all this bad information? Well, there's two distinctions that
Speaker 1: it's hard to make um on social networks. The first
Speaker 1: is whether or not something's political, and the second is
Speaker 1: whether or not something is an advertisement. It's not quite
Speaker 1: as simple as just looking at television and knowing when
Speaker 1: the commercial breaks start, right, and what's in What's really
Speaker 1: insidious is that message can start as one thing political
Speaker 1: activity or speech, and then transform into advertising. Right, tell
Speaker 1: us how that works. Yeah, that's actually sort of the
Speaker 1: preferred model for advertising on social networks. You would see
Speaker 1: a message, something that a group would post onto its
Speaker 1: personal Facebook or Twitter account. Um, that would just be
Speaker 1: a message, and then they'd pay the social network to
Speaker 1: promote it, to show it to people who aren't following
Speaker 1: them or might not see it otherwise. Then it's an ad.
Speaker 1: Then what happens is one of those people might retweet
Speaker 1: it or reposted or comment on it, and at that
Speaker 1: point it just becomes a message. Again. So the same
Speaker 1: message goes through several different statuses over its life cycle.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine how you begin to to regulate that,
Speaker 1: you know, And here's Mark Warner, Senator from Virginia, making
Speaker 1: basically the same point that this stuff is much harder
Speaker 1: than it looks. For Facebook, much of the attention has
Speaker 1: been focused on the paid ads that Russian trolls targeted
Speaker 1: to Americans. However, these ads are just the timp of
Speaker 1: a very large iceberg. The real story is the amount
Speaker 1: of misinformation in divisive content that was pushed for free
Speaker 1: on Russian back pages, which was then spread widely on
Speaker 1: news feeds of tens of millions of Americans. So, Josh,
Speaker 1: how much are tech companies willing to do to track
Speaker 1: this misinformation and police their own platforms. I think the
Speaker 1: tech platforms would love for this conversation to revolve completely
Speaker 1: around advertisements. To the extent that they can offer some
Speaker 1: sort of self regulation involving the paid advertisements on their platforms,
Speaker 1: the better for them. Once they start talking about regulating
Speaker 1: what they call organic content, those are those first messages
Speaker 1: that someone just posts to their own account, then they're
Speaker 1: going to have a real big problem on their hands.
Speaker 1: One of the things that they seem to want to
Speaker 1: do is rely on users to flag or report content
Speaker 1: that looks suspicious. You know, how how how big a
Speaker 1: part of the solution can that be? Yeah? I think
Speaker 1: all the solutions do involve some human interaction to a
Speaker 1: certain extent. But these are huge, sprawling platforms. There's lots
Speaker 1: of people on them, tagging things for various reasons. They're
Speaker 1: not going to manage to get everything, and also what
Speaker 1: you're going to find is people tagging things that maybe
Speaker 1: they just don't like or that they want to go
Speaker 1: away for some other reason. So it feels almost lame
Speaker 1: to bring up the business question when we're talking about
Speaker 1: the future of democracy basically. But Josh, what kind of
Speaker 1: an impact with regulations have on revenues on profitability for
Speaker 1: these social networks? Yeah, I think it really depends on
Speaker 1: how wide any future regulations go. If there's something relatively
Speaker 1: targeted that says you have to tag political advertising on
Speaker 1: the websites, I don't think that would really impact the business.
Speaker 1: It probably wouldn't even really impact the business for political ads.
Speaker 1: But once Congress starts doing things like trying to regulate
Speaker 1: so called organic speech on the site, that could really
Speaker 1: impact the shape of a Facebook in a way that
Speaker 1: might also shape its underlying business, and I think that's
Speaker 1: really what the company's want to avoid. Okay, thank you, Josh.
Speaker 1: Thanks red So because it's so hard to trace content
Speaker 1: as it moves across a huge platform like YouTube or Facebook,
Speaker 1: it's also extremely difficult to regulate effectively. But that hasn't
Speaker 1: stopped some senators from proposing new rules, right Garrett to Bink,
Speaker 1: that's true. Hi Brad, Hi Garrett. Uh So, you're our
Speaker 1: our New York based reporter and you're at the hearings
Speaker 1: last week. Tell us about one proposed piece of legislation
Speaker 1: that came up, the Honest Ads Act. You know, this
Speaker 1: is a bill that's put forward by Mark Warner. He's
Speaker 1: a name that's come up in this conversation already, as
Speaker 1: well as Amy Klobach are another Democratic senator, and they
Speaker 1: actually got John McCain, the Republican, to sign on with
Speaker 1: them to support. And what the Honest Ads Act is,
Speaker 1: what it tries to do is take the rules that
Speaker 1: already applied to radio and TV political advertisements and require
Speaker 1: online or digital ads to use those same rules. Okay,
Speaker 1: so when we hear at the end of a radio ad,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm Joe Mansion and I approved this message,
Speaker 1: that kind of same disclosure will be required for internet
Speaker 1: ads exactly. So when you see a video or a
Speaker 1: display ad on Facebook or Twitter or even on you know,
Speaker 1: a newspaper's website, it'll have to say similarly, you know,
Speaker 1: paid for by etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. But what they'll also
Speaker 1: have to include as if this bill as it is
Speaker 1: goes forward, is how many views it got who it
Speaker 1: was targeted to? And it's not just specific campaigns or
Speaker 1: candidates that will need to be disclosed. It's any issue
Speaker 1: of legislative national importance. So this could even be anything
Speaker 1: related to such a hot button no controversial issues such
Speaker 1: as gun control, that the platforms would have to go
Speaker 1: and make sure that people paying for those advertisements. You know,
Speaker 1: we know who they are. Now. Some senators suggested that
Speaker 1: it was almost a patriotic duty for the tech companies
Speaker 1: to support this bill. Here's Joe Manchion talking to the
Speaker 1: representatives from the tech companies. Then you asked this, Are
Speaker 1: you or your CEO is concerned about the threatened damage
Speaker 1: your companies can do the US with your far reaching
Speaker 1: power and you have been identified as the major distributors
Speaker 1: of fake news? Or is it basically just a business model? So, Garrett,
Speaker 1: one of the things that this bill does is is
Speaker 1: treat these internet platforms in the same way as news
Speaker 1: organizations are treated. Now, these companies have never wanted to
Speaker 1: be regulated in the same way that news organizations are.
Speaker 1: How nervous does this make them? Well, you know they
Speaker 1: are in a position of trying to push back against
Speaker 1: everything right. I mean, the last thing that they want
Speaker 1: is to sort of have to be the ones who
Speaker 1: can choose, you know, what is political speech, to censor that.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're very careful about that. They want to
Speaker 1: be neutral platforms. That's what they've always said they are,
Speaker 1: and it looks like, you know, we are coming to
Speaker 1: a point where they can't hold that line, and that's
Speaker 1: why we're seeing some resistance here. What are the chances
Speaker 1: that the Honest Ads Act passes? It's a good question.
Speaker 1: I mean we are seeing, you know, at the hearings
Speaker 1: a lot of Democratic senators and and UH representatives as
Speaker 1: well speaking out seemingly in support of it. The hope
Speaker 1: from the sponsors of the bill that after these these
Speaker 1: hearings um that a lot of other people would jump
Speaker 1: in and say, yeah, of course we need this, But
Speaker 1: we haven't quite seen that. And this is the only
Speaker 1: bill that's been proposed at this point. Right there's another
Speaker 1: bill that relates to um sex trafficking online that could
Speaker 1: affect the tech companies we all. We also know that
Speaker 1: Senator Dian Feinstein said she's working on something that hasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily come out yet. She just said during the hearings
Speaker 1: that her staff are working on a bill that would
Speaker 1: require tech companies to tell a law enforcement when they
Speaker 1: see illegal activity on their platforms, but we don't know
Speaker 1: exactly what that's going to look like. So, Garrett, were
Speaker 1: ten years into the social networking wave or twenty years
Speaker 1: into the into the Internet revolution, and these kinds of regulations,
Speaker 1: you know, they don't exist. Now, how difficult will it
Speaker 1: be for these senators to deliver on their promises of
Speaker 1: the past week. I mean, the main goal that they're
Speaker 1: trying to do here is to make sure that foreign
Speaker 1: actors aren't meddling in US elections. Right, and even if
Speaker 1: you require Facebook or you know whoever is buying this
Speaker 1: advertisement to say it was paid for by X, if
Speaker 1: you're really trying to be sneaky, there's always ways around it. Right.
Speaker 1: This is the Internet, this is technology. They can use VPNs,
Speaker 1: they can use currencies that are not you know, if
Speaker 1: this is if these are Russian actors, they can use
Speaker 1: currencies that are not from Russia. There's all these ways
Speaker 1: that you can get around it. And that's what the
Speaker 1: technology companies are saying. They said, you know, the representative
Speaker 1: from Pritter even use the phrase whack a mole when
Speaker 1: it came to trying to stop, you know, foreign actors
Speaker 1: from using nefarious ways to get onto social networks. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I do hate to end this conversation on a pessimistic note,
Speaker 1: but but it has been true throughout the history of
Speaker 1: the Internet. Bad actors do find a way around bottlenecks
Speaker 1: instilled by regulation. Ye it looks like that. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, Garrett Vinc, Thank you, and that's it for
Speaker 1: this week's episode of Decrypted. Thanks for listening. Do you
Speaker 1: have a story about fake news that has affected you
Speaker 1: to send us an email at Decrypted at Bloomberg dot net,
Speaker 1: or you can reach us on Twitter. I'm Garrett Vink
Speaker 1: and I'm at Garrett D. That's g E R R
Speaker 1: I T D and I'm at at brad Stone. If
Speaker 1: you haven't already, please subscribe to our show wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. And while you're there, I hope you
Speaker 1: take a minute to leave us a rating or a
Speaker 1: review that does so much to get us in front
Speaker 1: of more listeners. This episode was produced by Pio Gukari,
Speaker 1: Liz Smith, and Magnus Hendrickson. We'll see you next week.