
Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate - aaronbrethorst
https://www.lgraham.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=212164DA-EF6F-42E4-91E6-F1544014D134
======
sova
Facebook Counsel says:

 _Our authenticity policy is the cornerstone of how we prevent abuse on our
platform, and was the basis of our internal investigation and what we found.
From the beginning, we have always believed that Facebook is a place for
authentic dialogue, and that the best way to ensure authenticity is to require
people to use the names they are known by. Fake accounts undermine this
objective, and are closely related to the creation and spread of inauthentic
communication such as spam—as well as used to carry out disinformation
campaigns like the one associated with the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a
Russian company located in St. Petersburg._

Authenticity Policy went partially out the window when non-.edu addresses were
able to register, and eventually completely out the window when new account
registration was opened to everyone. Not really sure how big F can claim they
have any sort of Authenticity Standards for user accounts. It seems to me that
they encourage people to make multiple accounts, throwaways, business only
accounts, pages for celebrities, pretty much everything but using your real
name is encouraged at this point.

They [Facebook AND Twitter] also count "impressions" as the number of times
something appeared on screen, which is laughably inaccurate for how
"impressed" some piece of news or media became on someone's psyche.

Still no mention of a veracity metric or any sort of Bullshit-o-meter by
neither Facebook, Twitter, nor Google.

Then, Finally, I got to Clinn Watts' testimony, and this human is a saint:

 _I propose "nutrition labels" for information outlets, a rating icon for news
producing outlets displayed next to their news links in social media feeds and
search engines. The icon would provide users an assessment of the news
outlet's ratio of fact versus fiction and reporting versus opinion. The opt-
out rating system would not infringe freedom of speech or freedom of press,
but would inform users as to the veracity of content and its disposition._

Clinn Watts, friend of veracity, thank you for this timely and appropriate
suggestion. I pray the big players take heed to your idea.

~~~
ruytlm
Nutrition labels treat the symptom, not the cause.

IMO the root cause is a neglected and underfunded education system, that does
not adequately prepare people for the levels of psychological manipulation the
will experience in the form of marketing.

Sure, a nutrition label might help, but it's kind of passing the buck - "We
don't need to fix our education system, people just need to be able to count
to five so they know how many truth stars this article has, then they can make
up their own mind!"

~~~
crazy1van
Education might be the root cause and it might be neglected but in the US it
certainly isn't underfunded.

Source:
[http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/apr/21/jeb...](http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/apr/21/jeb-
bush/does-united-states-spend-more-student-most-countri/)

------
Balgair
FB: $100K in ads barely made an impression on the election. Nothing to really
worry about

Also FB: Come buy our ads!

Zuck man, either you have the power or you don't. I get trying to save face,
but I didn't get that feeling from them. It felt to me that they really are
that dissonant.

~~~
jos3
Skip past the FB/Google/Twitter Lawyers at the hearings and listen to what the
Security experts are saying.

The tech companies are only reacting to whats happening on THEIR platforms,
but the big picture emerges only when looking across multiple platforms and
the dark web. This makes sense to me, as modern day marketing/targeting
happens across as many channels as your budget allows. The target is not just
spending his entire day on one site.

I am no fan of Zuck or FB and what chaos they have enabled, but things have
escalated way beyond what one tech company can counter. We are going to be
borrowing lessons from China soon to get a handle on this mess.

~~~
Balgair
Unfortunately, I agree...

Sorry Cory Doctorow, but the 'open' web is going the way of the open ranges of
cattle drives. There's too many banditos robbing stagecoaches now, we need the
Cavalry. As you say, this will end in a 'Chinese' manner. Nationalism and
borders have proved to be stronger than the net.

------
factsaresacred
> 56% of total ad impressions were after the election.

> Most of the ads appear to focus on divisive social and political messages
> across the ideological spectrum, touching on topics from LGBT matters to
> race issues to immigration to gun rights.

> Many of the ads and posts we’ve seen so far are deeply disturbing—seemingly
> intended to amplify societal divisions and pit groups of people against each
> other.

"Deeply disturbing". The contrived pearl-clutching really is something else.
Disturbing for whom, exactly? One ad apparently talked about saying Merry
Christmas again. This is the 'meddling' they speak of.

And this is what the media does 24/7\. Every day they shove divisive social
and political messages down our throats.

What is the crime here?

~~~
rrhd
You don't see the Russians attempting to influence the US elections via social
engineering as a problem?

~~~
factsaresacred
Not any more than I saw Obama's threat to put Brits to the back of the queue
in trade if they voted for Brexit.

Paying to promote ads is a pretty common thing. It's as problematic as any
other ads that are designed to influence you - so pretty much all of them.

~~~
AlexandrB
> Paying to promote ads is a pretty common thing. It's as problematic as any
> other ads that are designed to influence you - so pretty much all of them.

Right. The real problem is we've allowed ad companies to mediate not only
commercial spaces but now also personal interactions. So propaganda shows up
not only in public spaces but also in seemingly private ones like a Facebook
wall where it's hard to track and near impossible to counter.

------
ou89
Hey Russians! If you guys have worked out how to get the herd to stampede,
then why for the love of cabbage, do you need to use this skill to just cause
randomness???

I mean can't you guys get the herd to buy Russian iPhones or line up for
Russian super hero movies or something?

I really can't understand what the Russians have gained here. If Mueller's
final report says the Russians had a major influence on the election, then
what happens? I can't imagine it being good for anyone.

~~~
mathperson
Are you serious? Donald is SIGNIFICANTLY more pro-russia than Hilary would
have been. Ex-post facto that justified it. Actions of Donald: 1\. Intense
skepticism of NATO (Russia hates this). 2\. attempted to remove sanctions 3\.
Return spy compounds 4\. America turning inwards and rejecting its
international role as the hegemonic power and guarantor of western
institutions. 5\. The russians have preferred the republicans for a few years
now since they were viewed as being more real-politik.

But mostly Donald wasn't hilary. Putin HATED Hilary for complex reasons linked
to 1\. bill clinton's expansion of NATO 2\. What putin perceived as american
support for violent regime change i.e. which he viewed as an existential
threat. This included Hilary speaking in public in support of Russian
dissidents and her exulting in the overthrow and execution of gaddafi (while
she was secretary of state) 3\. Hilary was basically an anti-russia hawk in
general.

It seems the active measures campaign was never expected to result in Donald
winning. I think the reasonable expectation was that hilary would be
discredited and ineffective after winning with no clear mandate and intense
resistance by the right. It was by no means random. It is intensely idiotic to
think a nation state ruled by a canny, KBG trained, dictator would invest
substantial resources and risk American retaliation to cause 'randomness'. His
actions had chaotic results to be sure...but he had clear goals.

"If Mueller's final report says the Russians had a major influence on the
election then what happens? I can't imagine it being good for anyone."

and the alternative being we close our eyes and pretend not to see? hopefully
it would result in a return to paper ballots and hardened cyber security all
across the Western world.

At this point though, we all know what the Mueller report will say in its
generality. YES the russians had major influence on the election. Denying that
at this point is delusional! Mueller is more about what role auspices of the
trump campaign violated the law in their acceptance of russian aid...that is
still somewhat of an open question as to degree and the level of criminality
but it is quite clear that the Trump campaign had some amount of communication
and coordination with agents of the Russian government.

~~~
fareesh
To prove successful influence on elections, one would have to prove that the
content of the ad influenced a voter's choice of candidate. This is hard, if
not impossible to prove, by anyone, and Mueller certainly isn't the authority
on why someone in Ohio or Pennsylvania or Florida voted the way they did.
These 3 states sealed the deal for the election.

What is proved so far is attempted Russian influence on elections. This has
been the status quo since the cold war. Had the question been asked in 2012 or
2008, the answer would have been yes as well. In 2017, the nature of spreading
information to consumers has transformed dramatically thanks to the increased
reach of social media, and the decision of the Russian government to use
social media as an attack vector. This is par for the course in world
geopolitics, as the United States government has engaged in principally the
same thing for years across the world.

Also slightly off topic but - when a candidate says "Read my lips, no new
taxes", or "If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor", and somebody
votes for them, but instead they act against the interests of the voter, isn't
the net result that the voter has been duped, regardless of by whom?

Regardless, I am curious about this particular anti-Russia wave though because
it seems to be treated more seriously than other cases. For example when a
sitting President says "Tell Vladimir this is my last election, after the
election I'll have more flexibility", and also blasts the opposing candidate
on the debate stage by joking that "the cold war ended 30 years ago" when he
suggested Russia was a threat to American interests - is this not a good
enough case for collusion with the Russian government to ensure that
potentially objectionable geopolitical decisions are postponed till after a
Presidential election so that a debate regarding their propriety can be absent
from the political discourse during the campaign?

There is also the issue of large sums of money flowing to Washington lobbyists
to influence members of both parties in the legislative branch, which is now
being uncovered as part of the Mueller investigation - again this is not
particularly new, as Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Tony Podesta etc. made a lot
of money doing exactly this for countries all over the world for decades.

The strongest case against the President would be if there was proof that
Julian Assange's source for the DNC and Podesta emails was either the Russian
government or someone working for the interests of the Russian government.
These emails were very damaging to the Clinton campaign, but contained true
information, nonetheless. Given that Podesta chose a trivial email password,
it's also likely that some other entity had access to his emails. The
challenge then would be to prove that the Trump campaign was a co-conspirator
in this exercise, by perhaps coordinating the timing of certain releases with
the appropriate campaign rhetoric, etc. What's also equally likely is that the
campaign was clueless about the entire thing, and unwittingly profited from
it. In that case, there would need to be evidence that if there are pro Russia
decisions being taken by the executive branch or the military, and that these
decisions are being made as a result of suggestions coming from the Kremlin.
This, of course, would far exceed "influence on the elections", but "influence
on the executive branch". Given that there is already Russian money flowing
into Congress, this puts two thirds of the government in the pockets of Russia
- i.e. unprecedented levels of corruption and probably some degree of treason
as well.

For some unsolicited perspective - speaking as someone living in India - the
geopolitical impact of an America that was supposedly free of Russian
influence has not been a net positive for the world in my view. There have
been a number of bad decisions and messes created in places like Afghanistan,
Iraq, Syria, Libya and others. I'm somewhat confident that President Putin is
not all that interested in whether Gorsuch or Garland takes Scalia's place,
but is rather more interested in furthering his personal game of Risk that he
plays on the world map. If the US government is now effectively a Russian
puppet on the world stage, this is selfishly somewhat comforting since the
Russians have been political allies with India for several decades. Putin
violates the sovereignty of Russia's neighbours, as does China with India and
others, as does the USA with countless interventions around the world, often
seating a sympathetic figure as the head of state in other countries to
facilitate this kind of thing in exchange for good deals. I find it difficult
to accept that Hillary Clinton would have been a better outcome for the rest
of the world given her decision making for the past 30 years of public life,
and her track record as US Secretary of State. I don't know if we would be
better off with two Putins as opposed to one Putin and one puppet Putin, if
that turns out to be true in all of this. Major world powers like the USA,
Russia and China are in a constant battle for territory and resources, which
is something we could frankly all do without.

~~~
mathperson
To be honest I find a lot of what you wrote here irrelevant. The goal of
mueller is not to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that russian support was
effective. We can't prove what caused millions of trump voters to be
persuaded. (However, I think it is clear it had a significant effect). He is
investigating crimes not causality. Frankly whether it worked or not doesn't
really matter-the crimes committed by american citizens in the process and how
to avoid similar actions by foreign governments again are what matters.

As for your statements about 2008 or 2012 I would need a lot of citations for
claims about russian interference in those elections.

Your statement about this current anti-russian wave is wildly off base.

Comparing an innocuous diplomatic statement and a line during a debate with a
prolonged and consistent pattern of contact between campaign officials to
obtain intelligence provided by the Russian government through hacking....

Moving on-yes- lobbying is bad.

The next paragraph where you talk about Podesta is baffling to me. The
strongest case against the president (note these might not actually be crimes-
often the cover-up is more damaging and criminal) is that his campaign
officials met with agents of the russian government (who represented
themselves thusly) and intelligence services to proffer damaging material on a
domestic political opponent. Your contention that it is possible that "the
campaign was equally clueless about the entire thing" is belied by the fact
that three of the key principals (Manafort, Kushner, Don Jr) in the trump
campaign met with agents of the russian government...(among many any other
incidents).

Hell there was a new york times article this very day about how the trump
campaign was aware of the DNC hacks months before it became public knowledge.
Donald trump cheered the hackers on in debates. Claiming the campaign was
entirely unaware is dead wrong.

You then mention how there needs to be a demonstrated pattern of pro-russian
behavior. I mentioned a fair few above-adding in that trump still has not
implemented a recent round of sanctions.

To the geopolitical point-the actions of America are very far from perfect. I
have many frustrations with the actions of my government. But I do not know if
the world would be much more stable if America did not exist and neither do
you.

I assure you- the united states is not a russian puppet and will never be so.

~~~
fareesh
> However, I think it is clear it had a significant effect

How is it clear though? This is my analysis of the RCP average - there are
clear events that are showing an impact on the polls, but I am unable to see
any swing that is significant enough trending downwards for candidate Clinton
that would give merit to the theory of a significant effect.

([https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/g...](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html))

We see candidate Trump overtake candidate Clinton around July 26, which
coincides with the release of the DNC emails by Wikileaks, wherein a
systematic bias against candidate Sanders is revealed to the public. Apart
from this, candidate Trump trails in the polls by mostly 3-6 points.

The decline in numbers for candidate Clinton seems to trend again between
August 25 and September 8. August 25 is when the Clinton campaign declared
that pepe the frog is a symbol of the alt-right, and denounced the supporters
of candidate Trump's campaign as racists. Given that pepe the frog's history
as a beloved meme is widespread, including on platforms like Twitch.tv and in
several online subcultures, many of which I am a part of, and are completely
apolitical, I'm quite convinced that the reaction to this kind of failure to
connect with younger voters would have hit her in the polls.

Note also that on August 26, she went on the Jimmy Kimmel show and performed a
gag where she opened a pickle jar, to steer clear rumors of her ill health.

On September 9, she made the famous "Basket of deplorables" comment, which
shows yet another negative spike - it seems like every time she goes on the
offensive against the candidate's support base, she starts to lose favour.

On September 11, she fainted at the 9/11 memorial service. During this entire
period there is a significant downtrend in her poll numbers. The polls are
most certainly reflecting major popular stories from the campaign.

The week of October 7-14 is again significant here. The Access Hollywood
recording was released to the public on October 7, and the John Podesta emails
were released the same day. During this period, the polls appeared to have a
very sharp negative impact on candidate Trump, whereas candidate Clinton
trended upward.

On October 16, the stories from John Podesta's emails finally break in the
mainstream media, with CNN's Jake Tapper suggesting that it is illegal for the
public to read them. This is where candidate Trump begins to make a comeback
in the polls.

On October 28, Director Comey announces that the investigation into candidate
Clinton's use of a private server has been re-opened, because emails were
found on a the laptop of Anthony Weiner, during an unrelated underage sexting
scandal involving Weiner - this causes a very clear nosedive in poll numbers
for Clinton, which recovers sharply on November 6, when Director Comey once
again clears her of all charges.

For me to accept that "Russian influence" via ads or some other propaganda
machinery had a significant impact on the minds of the voters, I think it
ought to be visible somehow in the polls - since this is true of nearly every
other major development in the campaign. The only theory to validate that
would be that the Russians somehow played a part in the Wikileaks drama.
Julian Assange has offered to be a witness for the Mueller investigation but
has been ignored.

The other controversial figure who had information about what was going on
with Wikileaks was the infamous Kim Dotcom, who, in 2015 said that Assange
would be targeting candidate Clinton's campaign, as early as 2015, referenced
here:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-14/kim-
dotco...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-14/kim-dotcom-
julian-assange-will-be-hillary-clinton-s-worst-nightmare-in-2016)

Dotcom has also offered to testify, but has not been taken seriously, yet is
the only person is known to have had knowledge of the Wikileaks operation an
entire year before it happened.

The idea that there was a significant impact seems to be an unfounded
hypothesis in the face of actual data.

> As for your statements about 2008 or 2012 I would need a lot of citations
> for claims about russian interference in those elections.

Page 5 and 6
[https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf](https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf)

> Comparing an innocuous diplomatic statement and a line during a debate with
> a prolonged and consistent pattern of contact between campaign officials to
> obtain intelligence provided by the Russian government through hacking....

I don't agree that calling it innocuous makes it innocuous. It's clear that
the President wanted to take action once it was politically expedient to do
so, and promised flexibility on issues once a second term was secured. It is
rooted more in politics and less in diplomacy.

The consistent pattern of contact to obtain opposition research obtained
through hacking is identical to the effort to obtain opposition research
through spying, which is alleged in the Steele dossier. The only difference
between these dirty tactics is that the Clinton campaign maneuvered around the
law to get the opposition research, likely owing to their decades of political
experience. Both are essentially the same crime in principle. It's also
important to note that it is clearly known that coordination in the latter
case existed and it yielded a result as well - i.e. the dossier. In the former
case, there is an investigation to uncover the evidence, and until now no
evidence has surfaced that there were meetings or other discussions showing
collusion, nor that there was any sort of yield of damaging information that
surfaced as a result of the meetings. I think the distinction between the two
campaigns is important in the context of the outrage against collusion with
the Russian government or agents of the Russian government, because both
campaigns were happy to engage in it, but went about it very differently.

In the case of the famous Donald Trump Jr. email and meeting with Natalia
Veselnitskaya, she was not known to be working for the Russian government at
the time, and was retained by Fusion GPS - who was ironically working on
opposition research against President Trump. She was able to get a meeting
under the pretext of providing opposition research, there was no indication
that she was an agent of the erstwhile Russian government, so to prove that a
crime is committed because they took a meeting won't really hold up in court,
nor should it to a reasonable and fair minded person. What it does is
certainly give the appearance of impropriety and a willingness to accept
opposition research, which is certainly not unprecedented.

> The strongest case against the president (note these might not actually be
> crimes-often the cover-up is more damaging and criminal) is that his
> campaign officials met with agents of the russian government

In my comment I said that the strongest case would be that the President not
only worked to get elected but continues to do so. That would be fairly
treasonous.

> Hell there was a new york times article this very day about how the trump
> campaign was aware of the DNC hacks months before it became public
> knowledge. Donald trump cheered the hackers on in debates. Claiming the
> campaign was entirely unaware is dead wrong.

Many of us around the world cheered the hackers on - Secretary Clinton is a
very unpopular person to millions :)

Not sure why but these news sources are conflating Secretary Clinton's emails
from her private server with the DNC emails. They are not the same thing.
There are 3 classes of emails - Clinton, DNC and Podesta. The latter two
became public during the campaign. The first never came out - this is the dirt
that they allegedly had, and the public has not seen the 33,000 emails to this
day.

Given this distinction, the NYT and other reporting is a little misleading.
There was ample reporting on the possibility that Russia specifically had
compromised the Clinton private server emails prior to this. It was public
speculation for a very long time, much before the George Papadopolous email to
his professor friend. Former Defense Secretary Gates said the odds were quite
high.

Jan 2016

[http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/266674-former-defense-
se...](http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/266674-former-defense-secretary-
says-clinton-server-may-have-been-compromised)
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3412251/Former-
secre...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3412251/Former-secretary-
defense-says-odds-pretty-high-China-Iran-Russia-got-access-Hillary-Clinton-s-
private-email-server.html)

Feb 2016

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2016/02/12/...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2016/02/12/vladimir-
putin-hillary-clinton-emails/)

March 2016

[http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/16/investigation-hillary-
sent...](http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/16/investigation-hillary-sent-dozens-
of-emails-on-her-blackberry-from-russia-and-china-raising-risk-profile/)

If I were a betting man I'd wager heavily that the emails were definitely seen
by foreign governments - 33,000 were never released to the public, and still
have not been, so even if all of this were true, the fact that the emails
never became public sort of proves that the result of the alleged collusion
never materialized during the course of the campaign. The only stuff that came
out was DNC and

> I assure you- the united states is not a russian puppet and will never be
> so.

If it comes to light that the executive branch is working to further Russian
interests, and so are the members in Congress who are lobbied by folks like
Manafort and Podesta, then it would be very difficult to argue otherwise.
Currently, the jury is still very much out on the former, since what is being
trumpeted by the press is thus far betting heavily that a smoking gun will
emerge to prove that there was collusion that yielded some exchange.

------
justboxing
[RETRACTED]

~~~
hsod
Why ask pointed hypotheticals when the transcripts are right in front of you?

------
xienze
Could we just, you know, get some examples of these stunningly effective ads
that have the power to sway elections? Is that too much to ask? Or would we
find out that these ads that the Dems have been hyping up are nothing more
than run-of-the-mill memes?

~~~
nfoz
> these ads that the Dems have been hyping up

The post under discussion is an article by Republican senator Lindsey Graham.

Here's an interesting example I saw in [1], although I don't know if it was
foreign-originating. It's an official-looking ad for Democrats that tells them
they can vote from home by texting "Hillary" to a 5-digit phone number.

[1] [https://www.c-span.org/video/?436454-1/facebook-google-
twitt...](https://www.c-span.org/video/?436454-1/facebook-google-twitter-
executives-testify-russia-election-ads)

