Twitter, the president’s favorite form of electronic communication, is flagging 9.9 million accounts a week for suspicious activity as social media firms work to prevent misuse of their platforms before midterm elections in November.
That’s a fourfold increase from the same time a year ago, Nick Pickles, a senior strategist for public policy at the company, told the House Judiciary Committee in a Tuesday hearing where he joined representatives of Google subsidiary YouTube and Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook.
While the increase reflects the implementation of new software tools, he said, “we have a dedicated information-quality team at the company to focus on these issues, understand the behavior of bad actors and reinforce our technology.”
Throughout the often raucous hearing, Pickles and the other witnesses faced questions from the planned topic of whether content-filtering practices are biased against conservatives to the level of Russian interference in the 2016 election as well as commentary on President Trump’s snub of U.S. intelligence agencies’ work during a Helsinki press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Clearly the majority would prefer to focus on fabricated, phony and made-up threats,” said Jamie Raskin, the second highest-ranking Democrat on the panel. “Today, we resume consideration of the entirely imaginary narrative that social media companies are biased against conservatives — companies, I should add, whose platforms were used to spread vicious Russian propaganda that helped elect Donald Trump president.”
Social media firms have spent much of Trump’s presidency cracking down on false content following criticism that misleading posts and phony news articles were placed on their platforms by Russian agents seeking to influence the 2016 race, in which the New York real estate developer won an unexpected victory against Hillary Clinton.
Their deletion and blocking of some accounts deemed to be under the control of foreign agents or spreading misleading information on hotly debated topics prompted an outcry, however, from conservatives who said their accounts were erroneously flagged.
Video bloggers Diamond & Silk, whose real names are Lynette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, were among the most outspoken. The sisters, who built a brand as black women supporting Trump, appeared at a Judiciary Committee hearing in April where they hammered Facebook for censorship.
That session was largely dismissed by Democrats, who claimed it was an effort by the Republican majority to distract from more pressing issues that might hurt the party’s reputation.
They stuck to that theme on Tuesday, with Rep. Gerrold Nadler of New York seeking a vote on scrapping the hearing’s planned topic and focusing instead on evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and Trump’s widely-criticized statements in Finland. The motion failed on a 12-10 vote.
“This committee needs to proceed with hearings involving the question of Russian intrusion and stealing of the 2016 election,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat who reiterated her party’s concern. “I’ve come to the conclusion now that it was truly stolen.”
Rep. Louie Gohmert, however, attempted to steer the focus elsewhere. The Texas Republican asked all three witnesses whether their companies had found evidence of interference by other countries, including China and North Korea.
When none of them were able to answer, he accused them of coming to the session solely to buttress the political fortunes of committee Democrats.
“I want to thank my colleagues across the aisle for their concerns about Russian interference,” Gohmert said, arguing that Russia had been assisting their party for 70 years. He cited complaints by Republican Dwight Eisenhower that the Soviet Union helped elect Democrat Harry Truman in 1948 and Premier Nikita Kruschev’s claim that his country influenced voters who put Democrat John F. Kennedy in the White House in 1960.
“I am thrilled that we are going to get help across the aisle to get the Russian input stopped,” he said.
The witnesses, who committed to following up with Gohmert, insisted that their companies attempt to provide a safe platform for the widest possible range of voices while blocking attempts by foreign states to influence the democratic process.
“We are committed to working with Congress to ensure the integrity of our elections,” said Juniper Downs, the global head of public policy and government relations for YouTube.
Her employer, Facebook and Twitter all reported finding accounts linked to Russia’s Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-linked digital propaganda group, which were removed.
Facebook, in particular, has faced heightened scrutiny this year after admitting that a consultant for President Trump’s campaign, Cambridge Analytica, improperly gained access to information on 87 million of its users.
The company, which committed to new and better tools to better protect user data, has also revised its policies to require showing who paid for political advertisements.
“Our goal is transparency, and we will continue to strive to find the right balance that is not over-inclusive or under-inclusive,” said Monika Bickert, the firm’s head of global policy management. “We hope these improvements will ensure that Facebook remains a platform for a wide range of ideas.”
