friday, february 21 , 2020. the washington post eZ re A
vatives came soon after, when
face book rebuffed calls to limit
the ability of politicians to use
advertising tools that allow the
narrow targeting of individuals
based o n their h ome address, gen-
der, education l evel, i ncome, mar-
ital status, job or other character-
istics. Brad Parscale, a digital ad-
viser to Trump’s 2016 campaign
and now campaign manager for
the reelection effort, had boasted
of the power of these targeting
tools and made clear his eager-
ness to use them again.
Some Democratic political op-
eratives and the Democratic Na-
tional Committee also expressed
concern to facebook about losing
access to such cheap, effective
means for reaching voters. But
other prominent Democrats, as
well as politically independent
technology researchers, warned
that what they called “microtar-
geting” c ould threaten the sancti-
ty o f elections by undermining the
accountability and transparency
of political speech.
These critics warned that vot-
ers had no way to know what
messages reached their friends or
neighbors, giving politicians li-
cense to tailor messages based on
what people wanted to hear rath-
er than what was best for the
public overall. A lie delivered to
just 100 carefully targeted people
on facebook, for example, was
much less likely to be caught and
corrected than one delivered on a
billboard or in a television ad.
Ellen L. Weintraub, a Democrat
who then was chair of the federal
Election Commission, warned in
a Washington Post opinion piece
that such targeting had a history
as “a potent weapon for spreading
disinformation and sowing dis-
cord.”
for these reasons, Google pro-
hibited politicians from using its
most powerful targeting tools.
Twitter decided to ban political
ads altogether. Sen. ron Wyden
(D-ore.) urged facebook to follow
the lead of these other companies
“rather than continuing to chase
political advertising dollars.”
facebook seriously considered
such a move during a months-
long internal debate that weighed
several types of restrictions, in-
cluding possibly banning political
ads altogether, company officials
said, p ointing out that such a dver-
tising produces a very small per-
centage of its multibillion-dollar
revenue streams while generating
a disproportionate amount of
headaches.
But when news leaked that
face book was considering such
changes, Trump made clear
his opposition. His campaign
tweeted, amid red siren emoji,
“ ImPorTANT @facebook wants
to take important tools away f rom
us for 2020. To ols that help us
reach m ore great Americans & lift
voices the media & big tech choose
to ignore!”
facebook ultimately an-
nounced in January that it would
increase the transparency of ad
targeting ahead of the 2020 elec-
tion but impose no new limits for
politicians.
In a blog post, rob Leathern,
facebook’s director of product
management, made clear that the
company had heard the political
clamor on the issue.
“Unlike Google, we have chosen
not to limit targeting of these ads,”
Leathern wrote. “We considered
doing so, but through extensive
outreach and consultations we
heard about the importance of
these tools for reaching key audi-
ences from a wide range of NGos,
non-profits, political groups and
campaigns, including both re-
publican and Democratic com-
mittees in the US.”
[email protected]Josh Dawsey contributed to this
report.fellow republican, former federal
Communications Commission
chairman Kevin martin, as his
deputy — strengthening the con-
servative cast of the office at its
highest levels.
Kaplan proved to be adept at
assuaging conservative concerns
about facebook. Even before
Trump won the presidency, the
company faced a crisis in may
2016 when tech publication Giz-
modo published a story asserting
that contractors managing face-
book’s “Trending” module were
suppressing conservative stories.
Kaplan tapped a small team of
republicans, including Harbath,
to organize a visit for prominent
conservatives, such as political
commentators Glenn Beck and
Tucker Carlson, to facebook
headquarters. The meeting with
Zuckerberg and Sandberg calmed
the controversy — at least for a
time — but conservatives soon
would come back with other com-
plaints.
“It’s the squeaky wheels who
get the grease,” said another per-
son familiar with the company’s
effort to mollify conservatives,
who spoke on the condition of
anonymity. “They were the
squeaky wheels.”
As for the “Trending” topics
feature, facebook fired the con-
tractors described in the Gizmodo
story and gave the job for deter-
mining “Trending” topics to an
algorithm. That allowed the fea-
ture to become a vehicle for
spreading the false news reports
that marred facebook in the
months leading up to the e lection.
one recommended story claimed
— falsely — that fox News host
megyn Kelly had been fired for
supporting Clinton.
Russia campaign and fallout
Security researchers at face-
book found the first signs that
russians were seeking to influ-
ence the U.S. election months be-
fore the 2016 vote, discovering
accounts apparently under con-
trol of foreign military hackers.
Those initial discoveries, al-
though shared with the fBI, were
not made public. But when U.S.
intelligence officials announced
in January 2 017 that they, t oo, had
detected russian interference on
social media, an internal debate
developed within facebook about
what to reveal publicly and when.
The result, after three months
of wrangling, was a 13-page white
paper i n April that did not include
the words “russia” or “russian.”
Instead, there was this oblique
reference: “our data does not con-
tradict the attribution provided
by the U.S. Director of National
Intelligence in the report dated
January 6, 2017.”
Several issues were at play in
these debates, including whether
facebook’s researchers had
enough clear evidence to name
russia definitively, and company
officials pushed to make sure the
white paper was rigorous enough
to be defended in the face of the
expected republican backlash.
But some company employees
found the resulting document in-
complete, and t he caution of com-
pany officials fueled complaints
that they were acting in part to
avoid inflaming tensions with a
White House consumed with bat-
tling allegations that russia had
helped elect Trump.
“If we say russia, it will center
us in this discussion a nd anger the
administration,” a person familiar
with the political dynamics in
face book’s Washington office re-
called hearing.
Stone, the facebook spokes-
man, said, “The goal of the white
paper was to share our findings in
a straightforward manner, which
is why there was broad agreement
with the security team’s recom-
facebook from a
us,” said Norquist, president of
Americans for Tax reform.
Two important victories for
Trump and conservatives came
amid this outreach by Zucker-
berg.
The first was when Nick Clegg,
facebook’s vice president for
global affairs and communica-
tions, announced in September
that the company’s system of
third-party fact-checkers would
not review claims by politicians.
Although facebook said this was
merely the ratification of existing
practice, the announcement pro-
voked fury among Democrats
weary from thousands of well-
chronicled falsehoods, embellish-
ments and misstatements by
Trump and worried that h e would
exploit the l oophole in the coming
campaign season.
An immediate test further un-
derscored these fears: A Trump
campaign ad made claims against
former vice president Joe Biden,
at the time leading in the polls for
the Democratic presidential nom-
ination, that independent fact-
checkers called dubious. Biden’s
campaign demanded the ad be
removed, but facebook refused,
reiterating it would not act
against f alse statements from pol-
iticians.
Those defending the decision,
inside and outside the company,
pointed to the traditional leeway
given to political speech in the
United States and to Zuckerberg’s
own reluctance to curb user ex-
pression in all but the most ex-
treme circumstances.
He said in a speech at George-
town University in october that
restricting p olitical speech threat-
ens “the ability to speak freely
[that] has been central in the f ight
for democracy worldwide.”
But critics saw yet another ef-
fort by facebook to steer clear of
republican wrath.
“right now Trump is president,
and the company is o bviously very
attuned to the political winds,”
said Vanita G upta, president of the
Leadership Conference on Civil
and Human rights, a Washington-
based umbrella group. “They all
know [at facebook] that the Jus-
tice Department and state attor-
neys general are sniffing around at
regulations and litigation.”
The second victory for conser-rency’ will have little standing or
dependability,” Trump tweeted in
July, making clear his intention to
impose federal regulations on
such an initiative. “We have only
one real currency in the USA, and
it is stronger than ever, both de-
pendable and reliable. It is by far
the most dominant currency any-
where in the World, and it will
always stay that way. It is called
the United States Dollar!”
About the same time, the Jus-
tice Department began a broad
antitrust review of major technol-
ogy companies, including face-
book.
Zuckerberg — who had lashed
out at Warren over her calls to
break up facebook, telling em-
ployees in a July meeting that he
would “go to the m at a nd... fight”
any such effort — took a more
conciliatory tone with Trump.
As t alk of federal investigations
grew in September, Zuckerberg
visited the White House. Trump
tweeted, “Nice meeting with mark
Zuckerberg of @facebook in the
oval office today.” Included was a
picture of the young tech billion-
aire shaking hands with the presi-
dent.
Zuckerberg also hosted a group
of conservatives at his home in
Palo Alto, Calif., in June. one par-
ticipant, longtime anti-tax activist
Grover Norquist, praised the com-
pany for hiring staff specifically to
work with conservatives.
“There has been what seems to
be a serious effort to reach out tophotos; the result was to allow
antiabortion groups to depict pre-
mature babies reliant on feeding
and other medical tubes in politi-
cal messaging.
The audit and its concessions
pleased many conservatives but
rankled some on the other side of
the political spectrum, who had
begun to sense that, in their deal-
ings with facebook, they were on
a losing streak to an organized,
forceful and consistent campaign
of pressure by conservatives. Civil
rights leaders, for example, had
been asking for an audit of racism
on the platform for several years.
It finally got announced the same
day, in may 2018, as the conserva-
tive bias audit.
“We’ve been in conversation
with them, in some iteration, for
four years, without much suc-
cess,” said malkia Devich Cyril, a
senior fellow for the activist group
mediaJustice who was part of a
Black Lives matter delegation
that visited facebook in 2016. “A s
individuals they might have liber-
al or progressive leanings, but as a
company their interests are being
served by conservative economic
policy.”fact checks and ad tools
The political stakes for face-
book became increasingly clear
last summer. A major corporate
initiative, a cryptocurrency called
Libra, landed in Washington with
a discernible thud.
“facebook Libra’s ‘virtual cur-mendation to refer to the Intelli-
gence Community Assessment
and not name any specific na-
tions.”
The worry about political fall-
out grew in subsequent months as
facebook’s security researchers
discovered that the Internet re-
search Agency, whose owner was
a close ally of russian President
Vladimir Putin, had used 470 fake
accounts and pages to manipulate
U.S. voters. When facebook re-
vealed this russian interference
in September 2017, the fears of
angering the White House proved
prescient.
Trump soon began tweeting
about the c ompany, a nd conserva-
tives in Congress used the result-
ing hearings to accuse facebook
of bias a gainst conservative voices
on the platform. Such complaints
grew the following year, when the
Cambridge Analytica scandal
broke regarding the use of sensi-
tive facebook data to direct cam-
paign messaging.
Zuckerberg’s visit to Capitol
Hill in April 2018 to address the
Cambridge Analytica scandal fea-
tured frequent allegations of bias.
Sen. Te d Cruz (r-Te x.) cited face-
book’s warning to Diamond and
Silk as exemplifying “a pervasive
pattern of political bias.” In a
House hearing the next day, rep.
Billy Long (r-mo.) asked Zucker-
berg, “What is ‘unsafe’ about two
black women supporting Donald
J. Trump?”
While Zuckerberg attributed
the incident to “an enforcement
error,” t he next month the compa-
ny announced it would conduct
an audit of allegations of bias
against conservatives at face-
book. Leading this inquiry was
not an independent social media
researcher but a prominent con-
servative lawyer, former senator
Jon Kyl (r-Ariz.).
The resulting interim report,
completed in August, catalogued
numerous complaints by conser-
vatives but offered no concrete
evidence of bias or any systematic,
data-based review of the question.
Still, it offered two concessions:
facebook would hire more staff
“dedicated to working with right-
of-center organizations and lead-
ers.” A nd the company w ould loos-
en a long-standing advertising
policy against graphic medicalmatt mcclain/the Washington Post
facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance at a Senate hearing in 20 18 to address the cambridge analytica scandal featured
frequent allegations of bias. Last month in Davos, Switzerland, President Trump said of Zuckerberg on cNbc, “He’s done a hell of a job.”samuel corum/getty images
Zuckerberg and Joel kaplan, the company’s most senior
Republican, make the rounds with lawmakers in September.(202) 919-(703) 650-(301) 778-UPLOADED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws