Speaker 1: Between June two thousand fifteen and May two thousand seventeen,
Speaker 1: four hundred seventy Facebook accounts purporting to be legitimate American
Speaker 1: organizations flooded Facebook with political ads. The big problem these
Speaker 1: profiles linked back to Russia. I'm John and Strickland and
Speaker 1: this is tech stuff Daily. Let's start at the beginning.
Speaker 1: In two thousand fifteen, as the road to the election
Speaker 1: was solidifying, political ads and related content found their way
Speaker 1: on all major forms of media. That includes everything from
Speaker 1: billboards on the side of the highway up to expensive television.
Speaker 1: Add time, social networks like Facebook were also popular platforms.
Speaker 1: An ongoing investigation into the ten election and the possibility
Speaker 1: that foreign powers interfered with it uncovered an issue with
Speaker 1: some of those ads. A collection of them on Facebook,
Speaker 1: numbering more than three thousand ads in tow total, came
Speaker 1: not from legitimate sources in America, but rather from Russian accounts.
Speaker 1: Those three thousand ads may have reached as many as
Speaker 1: ten million people and yet cost only one thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty big reach for relatively small investment, and
Speaker 1: considering the goal was to influence the outcome of a
Speaker 1: major election, it's a real wake up call. But wait,
Speaker 1: it gets worse. According to the Pew Research Center, of
Speaker 1: Americans get their news from Facebook rather than from traditional
Speaker 1: sources like newspapers or television, and researchers have been looking
Speaker 1: into how clickbait sites use tools like Facebook's early ads
Speaker 1: spending to get widespread notice. By spending some money on Facebook,
Speaker 1: you can boost a post's reach to hit a larger audience.
Speaker 1: Numerous clickbait sites, which exists solely to rack up as
Speaker 1: many page views as possible, use these tactics to entice
Speaker 1: people into clicking on various articles, and both the Russian
Speaker 1: ads and the clickbait articles tend to rely heavily on
Speaker 1: some ugly tactics. The ads, for example, didn't focus so
Speaker 1: much on specific candidates. Perhaps this was the Russian actor's
Speaker 1: attempts to create a plausible distance between Russia and the
Speaker 1: specific people running for office. Instead, the ads focused on
Speaker 1: divisive issues, including ones about racial equality, gay rights, gun control, immigration,
Speaker 1: and similar subjects. Most of the ads didn't point at
Speaker 1: a specific candidate to support or oppose, but implied very
Speaker 1: heavily a support for Donald Trump as president. And so
Speaker 1: we now have an investigation looking at Facebook as well
Speaker 1: as other online platforms including Google and Twitter, to see
Speaker 1: how foreign agents may have used those platforms in order
Speaker 1: to sway the American public to support or oppose particular candidates.
Speaker 1: The evidence seems to suggest that this sort of hanky
Speaker 1: panky was definitely happening. The extent of its effectiveness is
Speaker 1: still up for debate. Facebook's chief operating officer, Cheryl san Berg,
Speaker 1: has said the company apologizes for its permissive ad policies.
Speaker 1: She also says that people at Facebook are sad and
Speaker 1: angry that their tools have been used to manipulate voters.
Speaker 1: According to some x Facebook employees who spoke with Variety
Speaker 1: on the subject, many feel a deep sense of regret
Speaker 1: for having developed the tools in the first place. To
Speaker 1: be a little fair to Facebook, the company is a business.
Speaker 1: It's a business that makes its revenue from advertising. Add
Speaker 1: companies pay Facebook to serve ads up against the social
Speaker 1: media content on the site. From a purely financial standpoint,
Speaker 1: Facebook had little incentive to look too closely at any
Speaker 1: particular ad. After all, that was money coming into the company.
Speaker 1: Why look a gift horse in the mouth. In the
Speaker 1: wake of this scandal, Facebook is taking steps to make
Speaker 1: sure similar scenarios don't play out in the future. There's
Speaker 1: another election coming up in eighteen in the United States,
Speaker 1: and Facebook doesn't want to repeat of sixteen. To that end,
Speaker 1: the company is hiring one thousand people to help hand
Speaker 1: review ads that are political in nature or ones that
Speaker 1: target issues like racial equality. The reviews will attempt to
Speaker 1: determine the real origin for such ads and make sure
Speaker 1: foreign entities aren't meddling in the political affairs of the
Speaker 1: United States. Facebook's chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, has said
Speaker 1: that the company's goal is to create automated technical solutions
Speaker 1: to this problem. Facebook is an enormous platform that serves
Speaker 1: more than a billion people. At that scale, reviewing everything
Speaker 1: by hand isn't really feasible or practical, but the company
Speaker 1: needs to make sure that the automated approach is a
Speaker 1: really reliable approach before handing over the controls. Meanwhile, Russia
Speaker 1: has denied all allegations that any state agents were responsible
Speaker 1: for meddling, and Donald Trump's administration has dismissed any suggestion
Speaker 1: of collusion, and Facebook's general counsel is preparing to stand
Speaker 1: in front of an investigative panel acting on behalf of
Speaker 1: the United States House of Representatives. The panel also expects
Speaker 1: to hear from representatives from Google and Twitter on the matter,
Speaker 1: and that will all begin on November one. You as
Speaker 1: politicians have started to formulate demands that social networking sites
Speaker 1: disclose who is actually funding online political advertising. The industry
Speaker 1: is mobilizing efforts to put lobbyists and lawyers in place
Speaker 1: to help shape any potential legislation and presumably minimize the
Speaker 1: financial impact the companies would encounter as a result of
Speaker 1: new laws. The bottom line is that while the Internet
Speaker 1: continues to play an increasingly important role as a source
Speaker 1: of information, there are not nearly as many measures in
Speaker 1: place to guide how that information is funded and rolled
Speaker 1: out to an audience. The question now is will social
Speaker 1: media companies find ways to address this problem that will
Speaker 1: stave off regulatory legislation. That's all for today. To learn
Speaker 1: more about the power of social media and everything else
Speaker 1: tech related, subscribe to the Tech Stuff podcast. I'll see
Speaker 1: you again soon.