Speaker 1: Facebook, Twitter, and Google have become increasingly important vehicles for
Speaker 1: political advertising, and all three are now at the center
Speaker 1: of concerns about Russian interference in last year's presidential election.
Speaker 1: Executives from all three companies are scheduled to testify in
Speaker 1: Congress about how Russia used their networks during the campaign,
Speaker 1: and in advance of that testimony, Senator John McCain is
Speaker 1: announced he will support legislation introduced by Democratic Senators Amy
Speaker 1: Klabachar and Mark Warner to impose new disclosure requirements for
Speaker 1: online political ads. Here to talk with us about online
Speaker 1: political advertising and how the Russians used it and what
Speaker 1: this legislation would do are Bradley Smith, a professor at
Speaker 1: Kappel University Law School who is the former chairman of
Speaker 1: the Federal Election Commission, and Bradley Moss, a partner at
Speaker 1: mark z PLC. Bradley Moss explained to us what we
Speaker 1: know so far about how Russian affiliated UH people, had
Speaker 1: you used the used the networks like Facebook, Google and
Speaker 1: Twitter to try to influence the election last year? Sure,
Speaker 1: absolutely so what we know and this is largely just
Speaker 1: from the media reports. There hasn't been a whole lot
Speaker 1: of public hearings yet on it that will happen at
Speaker 1: the beginning of next month. Is that Russian based spots
Speaker 1: or trolls everyone to identify them, used social media platforms
Speaker 1: like Twitter and LinkedIn, h even finding out we have
Speaker 1: even Tinder and Grinder and all these different different platforms
Speaker 1: by which people in the modern age communicate had used
Speaker 1: them to spread various aspects of disinformation. Um. A lot
Speaker 1: of it came through what's called the i RA or
Speaker 1: the Internet Research Agency, which was this troll farm one
Speaker 1: by the Russian government, a Russian Russian government and affiliated
Speaker 1: organizations to more or less flood the zone and just
Speaker 1: spread in such an immense amount of disinformation to particular
Speaker 1: demographics so as to confuse the populace and to the
Speaker 1: extent they could to try to either discourage people from
Speaker 1: voting or to try to place inaccurate information with those
Speaker 1: photos in the context of their voting decisions. Professor, Why
Speaker 1: have online political ads been exempt from the regulations that
Speaker 1: paid TV, radio and print ads have been subjected to
Speaker 1: for years? Well, this is a misconception. They're not actually
Speaker 1: exempt from those requirements. Rather, there has always been in
Speaker 1: the Federal Ution Campaign Act and exemption where disclaimers are
Speaker 1: impractical or the items are too small, for example, applies
Speaker 1: to bumper stickers, pens, buttons, all kinds of things like that,
Speaker 1: and for many uh Internet ads, for many small tweets
Speaker 1: and and Facebook type ads, it is simply not practically
Speaker 1: put that disclaimer there. So that is the basis on
Speaker 1: which these ads did not carry a disclaimer. Let me
Speaker 1: ask you this. Facebook did not get an exemption from
Speaker 1: the disclaimer requirement inn as Google did, so why hasn't
Speaker 1: Facebook been forced to comply or face some kind of penalties?
Speaker 1: Well at the time, one of the questions has been
Speaker 1: whether or not this exemption for what's often called the
Speaker 1: small items exemption should apply to various Internet type advertising
Speaker 1: and digital platforms, and that has varied with the question
Speaker 1: of you know, what is the cost how practical is
Speaker 1: it to do? So what you had was a series
Speaker 1: of Advisor opinion request where companies were asking, you know,
Speaker 1: in specific situations, do we need a disclaimer on this,
Speaker 1: that or the other? So there are different situations each time.
Speaker 1: In Google's case, the Commission voted that no disclaimer was necessary.
Speaker 1: In the Facebook case, the Commission ended up splitting three
Speaker 1: to three which means essentially they didn't give Facebook and
Speaker 1: opinion one way or the other. But as a practical matter,
Speaker 1: since you need uh four commissioners to vote for an
Speaker 1: enforcement action, uh, and you have three commissioners say no,
Speaker 1: you don't need a disclaimer, it was logical for Facebook
Speaker 1: to assume that they weren't going to have to go
Speaker 1: through that. Putting a disclaimer on all those ads are
Speaker 1: turning away as at was not, in their estimation practical
Speaker 1: Fred Moss, what exactly you know if they apply these
Speaker 1: standards under this bill to online advertising on a place
Speaker 1: like Facebook, what exactly will this bill do? It will,
Speaker 1: more or less to the extent that they're not already
Speaker 1: consistent with what you see on TV. It'll bring those
Speaker 1: ads in some fashion, some manner in line with what
Speaker 1: we've all typically seen all the various type of radio
Speaker 1: and television ads we've seen over the years. You know,
Speaker 1: at the end there's some type of disclaimer paid for
Speaker 1: by Hillary Clinton for president, down it's not the president, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: It's more or less trying to provide the public with
Speaker 1: at least a semblance of transparency and understating of who
Speaker 1: pays for it. The question, of course, and this is
Speaker 1: what no one truly knows right now, is will it matter?
Speaker 1: You know? Is there's the obvious part of if if
Speaker 1: the disclosure requirements are imposed, that the most egregious violations
Speaker 1: of using foreign money to pay for ads will come
Speaker 1: down a bit just because it will be too obvious.
Speaker 1: But the more subtle and nuanced ways in which I'm
Speaker 1: sure countries such as Russia could use through shell corporations
Speaker 1: to try to pay for it, it's not clear that
Speaker 1: that will ever be made really obvious enough to allow
Speaker 1: for criminal enforcement. It's not clear to what extent the
Speaker 1: public whatever died deep enough into it to see if
Speaker 1: they to find out who's paying for a particular advocy
Speaker 1: on Facebook. We're talking with Professor Bradley Smith of Capital
Speaker 1: University Law School, who is the former chairman of the
Speaker 1: Federal Election Commission, and Bradley Moss, a partner at Mark
Speaker 1: Zad about a new bill to require disclosure of who
Speaker 1: paid for online political ads in places like Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 1: and Google. Apparently Russian Russian trolls put a lot of
Speaker 1: ads onto um these sites over the course of the
Speaker 1: election last year, and Congress is now looking at the
Speaker 1: impact and what to do about it. Currently, disclosure is
Speaker 1: not required as it is for print, radio, and TV,
Speaker 1: but Congress is knew. But if this bill were adopted
Speaker 1: by Congress and signed by the President, the similar disclosure
Speaker 1: would be required online. Professor Smith, we were talking a
Speaker 1: little bit before the break about whether or not this
Speaker 1: kind of disclosure can actually be effective. I mean, given
Speaker 1: the fact that people online are very good at hiding
Speaker 1: not just who they are and using fake names, but
Speaker 1: also even where their servers are located or which server
Speaker 1: is actually putting out messages to various places, can this
Speaker 1: kind of disclosure actually work online to combat the problem
Speaker 1: that Congress is looking at now. Well, I do think
Speaker 1: it's problematic in a number of ways. One of the
Speaker 1: first things, for example, is that the press conference introducing
Speaker 1: the legislation yesterday, Senators Warner and Colbukar mentioned again that,
Speaker 1: you know, voters needed to know who was paying for
Speaker 1: the ads they were seeing. But in fact, in many
Speaker 1: of these cases, voters still won't know who's paying for
Speaker 1: the ads they're seeing. They won't know unless they go
Speaker 1: to this registry that the platforms need to keep, and
Speaker 1: voters typically aren't going to do that. And by the
Speaker 1: time they do, they won't remember what ad they saw
Speaker 1: from where, and what was paid and what wasn't. So
Speaker 1: you've got some problem there is whether you can even
Speaker 1: accomplish that basic objective of giving information that's useful to
Speaker 1: voters at a time what's useful to them. But there's
Speaker 1: are other issues here. I mean, the amounts engaged were
Speaker 1: really quite small. Mark Penn, the former Clinton strategist, has
Speaker 1: estimated that the actual amounts it was campaign related was
Speaker 1: as little as sixty dollars in the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 1: just uh this past week. But even if it was
Speaker 1: more than that, it's a small amount compared to the total.
Speaker 1: And it would be fairly easy. Although you lose some
Speaker 1: ability to target as much as we want, it would
Speaker 1: be pretty easy to just set up free accounts and
Speaker 1: just keep pumping out news through bots that are not
Speaker 1: doing paid advertising, but again are just setting up vac
Speaker 1: accounts that can be taken down. But there's kind of
Speaker 1: race going on and on again. We're talking about the
Speaker 1: Russian government interfering in our campaigns, and when you're talking
Speaker 1: about that, I don't think they're going to be easily
Speaker 1: deterred by a requirement that ads have some kind of
Speaker 1: minimal disclaimer on them. And I do want to emphasize
Speaker 1: one of the things again, David, just from the instance. Again,
Speaker 1: it's not that that Internet is treated differently than other
Speaker 1: uh uh. Media. It's just that the small exemptions uh uh.
Speaker 1: There are a small items exemption that is in the law.
Speaker 1: Seems to be something that pops up more in the
Speaker 1: case of Internet, but that small exemptions does apply to
Speaker 1: all kinds of media as well. So it's not again
Speaker 1: like the Internet has the specifically different regime, It's that
Speaker 1: it has the same regime. Brad Moss, do you agree,
Speaker 1: even if there is a chance of being able to
Speaker 1: stop some foreign interference with these online ads, shouldn't we
Speaker 1: go forward with this kinds of this kind of legislation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean an actor largely agree with the professor. I
Speaker 1: don't only have any disagree with anything he said, just
Speaker 1: that I mean the part of the problems here. Even
Speaker 1: I mean the legislation I have no problem with. It
Speaker 1: will be good from a general transparency and accountability standpoint,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't hurt anything as far as I'm concerned. Uh,
Speaker 1: the larger problem, but I don't think this legislation can
Speaker 1: truly end asks anymore so than past legislation that required
Speaker 1: disclosure for any number of different types of organizations that
Speaker 1: place political ads in print or news media or on TV.
Speaker 1: Is that as a question of does the public care
Speaker 1: to dig into the details to find out who paid
Speaker 1: for it? And do they care even if it is
Speaker 1: paid for by some you know, possibly mischievous entity. You
Speaker 1: know when you said always say people are entitled with
Speaker 1: their own opinions. These days, especially in the Internet era,
Speaker 1: it seems to be the people are entitled to their
Speaker 1: own sacks. And that's part of what was certainly exacerbated
Speaker 1: during the election with the Russian bots with this information,
Speaker 1: But it only works if if the public was willing
Speaker 1: to incorporate it into their thought process. And I think
Speaker 1: that speaks to a larger societal problem we have that
Speaker 1: no legislation can truly address so much as it's a
Speaker 1: matter of how we, as you know, as a marathon
Speaker 1: public address this various various different types of information that
Speaker 1: exists in various mediums and social platforms. Well, Professor Smith,
Speaker 1: given what you pointed out, that is the seriousness of
Speaker 1: the fact that the Russian government was attempting to um
Speaker 1: influence an American election. Is there something legislatively that could
Speaker 1: be done that would be more effective than the bill
Speaker 1: that's currently pending, Well, I don't know, off the off
Speaker 1: the top of my head. I mean I I am
Speaker 1: of the persuasion that generally know there's probably not much
Speaker 1: that can be done. And moreover, it's not apparent that
Speaker 1: this is a major problem. Again, you know, spending a
Speaker 1: few thousand dollars um is not necessarily have hot Remember,
Speaker 1: Russia runs a twenty four hour news station in the
Speaker 1: United States to influence American elections. Uh, and we let
Speaker 1: them do that. And that's the important thing to remember
Speaker 1: is that whatever burdens were putting here and here, this
Speaker 1: bill is talking about requiring grassroots groups that spend as
Speaker 1: little as five hundred dollars in the aggregate over a
Speaker 1: two year period to start having various reports and filings
Speaker 1: and so on. And it's going to suppress some of
Speaker 1: that activity. And we need to say, you realize that
Speaker 1: while the target maybe Russian interference, main people that are
Speaker 1: going to be hit are going to be American citizens
Speaker 1: who have to do more. And it's going to be
Speaker 1: you know, these very little thresholds aimed at the most
Speaker 1: grassroots of political activity that are using the net to
Speaker 1: reach folks where they never could before in traditional broadcasting.
Speaker 1: You know, you couldn't do anything for five So I
Speaker 1: think that's it's just a real cautionary note that we
Speaker 1: need to keep in mind. Well, this is obviously an
Speaker 1: issue that we're gonna be talking about for some time
Speaker 1: to come, as we have midterm elections coming up and
Speaker 1: then another presidential election actually only a few years away.
Speaker 1: So our thanks to Professor Bradley Smith of Capital University
Speaker 1: Law School and Bradley Moss of Mark's Aid for being
Speaker 1: here on Bloomberg. Later talk about legislation pending to create
Speaker 1: online advertisement political disclosure. Uh. Coming up on Bloomberg Law,
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about Johnny Depp, the actor.
Speaker 1: Johnny Depp has lost a fortune of money, and he
Speaker 1: say he's been very profligant in the way he has
Speaker 1: spent his money, but he has had claims that his
Speaker 1: financial managers have mismanaged it to his detriment and took
Speaker 1: money that should have gone to him. He's now claiming
Speaker 1: that his lawyer did the same thing and colluded with
Speaker 1: his managers. He's brought a lawsuit for thirty million dollars
Speaker 1: in fees, and we'll be talking about that coming up
Speaker 1: straight ahead on Bloomberg Law. This is Bloomberg