Facing stricter federal oversight, top officials from Facebook and Twitter on Wednesday promised to devote more resources to protecting users from disinformation campaigns by foreign adversaries trying to influence elections.
In advance of the 2018 midterms, Republican and Democratic lawmakers have expressed grave concern over the growing efforts by Russia and Iran to sway U.S. voters. Both Facebook and Twitter say they have shut down troves of accounts linked to politically motivated misinformation campaigns from the countries.
Facebook’s chief operating officer admitted the company was “too slow to act” in 2016 and failed to protect users, but said the platform is investing heavily in buoying safeguards and implementing new transparency requirements, like disclosing who’s behind political ads on the site.
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“Finding inauthentic behavior is a challenge and I think you’re seeing us put real resources to bear,” Sheryl Sandberg told the Senate Intelligence Committee. “Being able to see if people bought political ads, where they’re located … these are steps we think are really important.”
As Facebook increases its security, opponents are also becoming more sophisticated, Sandberg said. She noted that by monitoring the various disinformation techniques being deployed in elections all over the world, Facebook can better “connect the dots and prevent those threats going forward.”
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey said the platform is unable to recognize in real-time the location of a user engaged in a bad-faith campaign and instead focuses on identifying patterns of suspicious behavior.
“We found ourselves unprepared and ill-equipped for the immensity of the problems we’ve acknowledged,” Dorsey told the panel. “We have been building a lot of our machine learning … to recognize these patterns and shut them down before they spread to quickly and also link them to other accounts.”
Twitter is also focused on providing users more information if they are targeted by foreign adversaries.
“We do believe transparency is a big part of where we need the most work and improvement,” Dorsey said. “We need to meet people where they are, and if we determine that people were subject to any falsehoods or manipulation of any sort, we do need to provide them the full context of that.”
Dorsey said Twitter is examining whether it can release a report detailing the accounts it has suspended for improper activity, based on legal considerations.
Facebook and Twitter’s efforts to stop foreign influence on the platforms has been met with a tepid response from investors. After Facebook disclosed lower-than-expected revenue and decreased user growth amid efforts to bolster security measures, the stock dropped nearly 20 percent.
Twitter’s stock fell 5.37 percent to $32.97 in New York trading midway through Wednesday’s hearing. Facebook’s slid 1.78 percent to $168.12.
