Two Democratic senators are upping the pressure on Google and Twitter to follow Facebook and endorse legislation that regulates political ads on social media platforms.
Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. sent letters Monday to the CEOs of Twitter and Alphabet, Google’s parent company, urging them to endorse the Honest Ads Act.
Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his company will endorse and implement the legislation, first introduced in October.
“This lack of transparency has dangerous implications for our democracy. As we saw in the 2016 presidential election, foreign actors can seek to influence the electorate without voters’ knowledge through online political advertising,” they wrote today to Alphabet CEO Larry Page and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
The legislation was introduced as a response to the revelation that Russian entities were buying ads to influence the 2016 presidential election.
Dorsey and Google CEO Sundar Pichai have been previously called to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee with Zuckerberg. But Zuckerberg will appear by himself before a joint hearing with the panel and the Senate Commerce Committee on Tuesday.
Facebook is facing pressure on how the data of more than 87 million users was improperly harvested by a research firm and its contractor ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Though there has been no publicly reported breach of the like by Twitter or Google, the two global media giants are facing pressure to act ahead of the 2018 midterms and beyond to prevent influence from foreign adversaries like Russia.
