Seeking to diminish foreign influence on the 2020 election, two members of Congress have introduced a bill that would prohibit foreign groups from buying campaign ads on the internet and other media.
The Preventing Adversaries Internationally from Disbursing Advertising Dollars Act, or PAID AD Act, specifically prohibits paid campaign advertising targeting U.S. candidates by foreign governments, foreign companies, and foreign individuals. The bill, introduced by Reps. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., and Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., prohibits foreign campaign advertising on television and the radio as well as the internet.
The bill would not only prohibit foreign advertising aimed at candidates but would also ban ads about national legislative issues. The goal is to stop foreign groups from placing ads focused on “divisive” issues aimed at influencing voters, according to Slotkin.
Under current law, foreign groups are prohibited from contributing directly to political campaigns, but they can purchase ads on social media at any time during the campaign and can purchase TV ads up to 60 days before a general election or 30 days before a primary election.
Michigan residents were targeted by Russian-generated ads during the 2016 presidential election, Slotkin said in a statement.
“Stopping foreign entities from influencing U.S. elections is not a partisan issue,” she added. “As a former CIA analyst and Pentagon official, I believe it’s an issue of national security and preserving our democracy.”
The bill is similar to an amendment Slotkin added to the For the People Act, an ethics and elections bill that passed the House of Representatives in March. That bill, however, is unlikely to pass in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Slotkin and Stefanik’s bill takes a different approach than the Honest Ads Act, introduced in both the House and Senate in May. The Honest Ads Act, which was also introduced in 2017 but failed to pass, would require buyers and publishers of online political ads to disclose the funding for those ads but wouldn’t prohibit them.
The new bill’s approach received mixed reviews, with some observers saying it would help limit the influence of foreign groups on U.S. elections and others suggesting the bill would do little to stem the tide of fake news, which typically isn’t delivered through advertising. It has also been criticized for containing few penalties for offenders of foreign advertising limits.
Both the PAID AD Act and the Honest Ads Act “have no teeth,” said David Reischer, CEO of LegalAdvice.com. “Washington must ramp up enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and expand U.S. counterintelligence efforts against foreign entities that use social media to either promote a particular candidate or simply to sow dissent.”
He said the U.S. government should “automatically” sanction any country that interferes in its elections and that Congress should pass specific sanctions targeting any foreign group that attempts to interfere through the purchase of election ads.
Meanwhile, internet companies should focus on technological ways to limit fake news and foreign influence on their sites, recommended Cody Swann, CEO of software development firm Gunner Technology.
Government regulation of social media and other websites is “a terrible idea,” he said. Instead, social media sites could treat foreign election content like spam and filter it out.
“With email, if a single email reaches a high enough score, it’s labeled spam and the recipient doesn’t see it,” he said. “This should happen with posts and ads, too.”
If a single advertiser or news-like service reaches a foreign influence threshold, “their entire account is labeled spam and recipients see nothing that comes from them,” Swann explained of his proposed approach. “Applying this to both posts and ads would certainly be a better way of dealing with the problem.”
