RUSSIA/РОССИЯ THREAD—ASSANGE CHRGD W/ SPYING—DJT IMPEACHED TWICE-US TREASURY SANCTS KILIMNIK AS RUSSIAN AGNT
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The same president whO insulted a war hero ?? And routinely insults anyone who disagrees with him ? Why does he get the freedom of speech hmm
Grassley = POS
Exclusive: Senate ‘Russia Probe’ Is Not Investigating Russia
The Judiciary Committee may be issuing press releases about its ‘Russia Probe.’ But staffers say there’s no full-blown investigation, just routine oversight of the FBI.
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
The Senate Judiciary Committee has demanded documents on Russian meddling from the CIA, interviewed Donald Trump Jr. about his infamous Trump Tower meeting, and subpoenaed Paul Manafort, the president’s Kremlin-friendly former campaign chairman.
In May, the committee held a subcommittee hearing called “Russian Interference in 2016 United States Election.” In June, Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley issued a pair of press releases about his “Russia Probe.” One of them, produced with fellow committee Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, asked for documents from the FBI, citing the committee’s “investigations into allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.”
But the Judiciary Committee is not, in fact, running a Trump-Russia investigation—at least, not a full-fledged one.
A staffer for Grassley, speaking on the condition of anonymity to give his candid assessment, told The Daily Beast that the committee is instead engaged in routine oversight of the Justice Department—though under extraordinary circumstances.
Grassley’s role in the congressional probes into Russian meddling in the 2016 election has perplexed and concerned members of his own party, Republican staffers on the committee told The Daily Beast.
The probe appears to have already missed one of its own deadlines. And rather than publicly needling potential Russian meddlers, Grassley has primarily used his bully pulpit to rip an opposition-research firm and the FBI.
Nearly a year after Election Day, a host of investigators are working on probes specifically digging into how Russia meddled in the presidential election, who—if anyone—they colluded with in the U.S., and what they are still doing now. The Senate Intelligence Committee is investigating, the House Intelligence Committee is investigating, and the Justice Department is investigating too, through special counsel Bob Mueller.
But Grassley’s committee is not part of that. The Grassley staffer told The Daily Beast that the Judiciary Committee’s investigators are focused on the FBI.
“The American people need to be able to trust that the FBI and Justice Department are operating free from political influence,” the staffer said. “That’s what this investigation is about, and we will follow the facts wherever they lead.”
“The Judiciary Committee is not running a comprehensive Trump/Russia investigation,” the staffer added. “Intel matters are the purview of the Intelligence Committees. The Judiciary Committee is engaged in the DOJ oversight for which it’s responsible and related issues that intersect with the Russian meddling in our democratic system.”
The staffer also said Grassley’s team is not trying to determine whether anyone broke the law.
“The Judiciary Committee does not have a prosecutorial function and does not conduct criminal investigations,” the staffer said, adding that committee investigators will share any evidence of crimes they find with law enforcement.
Whatever its mission, the committee’s investigation seems to be running behind its own stated schedule. On July 25, Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein told Fox News that Paul Manafort and Donald Trump Jr. would both “hopefully” appear before the committee in September for a public hearing.
Notably, committee members questioned Donald Trump Jr. on Sept. 7 behind closed doors. Ten days later, Feinstein told CNN she and Grassley planned to bring the president’s son back for a public hearing.
“I think it’s Senator [Chuck] Grassley’s intent, and it’s certainly my intent, to have him before the committee in the open and be able to ask some questions under oath,” she said.
That hearing is nowhere on the horizon, though Grassley told CNN on Thursday that he thinks “there’s no way of avoiding it.” His committee has yet to question Manafort. As chairman, Grassley is responsible for sending out subpoenas to witnesses and scheduling public hearings.
Sens. Richard Burr and Mark Warner, the Senate Intelligence Committee chairs, recently boasted that their staff has conducted more than 250 hours of interviews, gathered upward of 100,000 pages of documents, and held 11 open hearings about their probe.
Meanwhile, a Democratic Senate aide told The Daily Beast one of the Judiciary Committee’s main focuses is the question of whether President Trump or his aides engaged in obstruction of justice, including his firing of former FBI Director James Comey.
That runs counter to the Grassley staffer’s description of the probe, as an effort primarily focused on whether the FBI was properly doing its job.
In a letter on Aug. 30, Grassley and fellow committee member Graham asked new FBI Director Chris Wray to turn over documents about Comey’s handling of the probe into Hillary Clinton’s emails. That letter cited the committee’s investigation of Comey’s firing as the reason for their interest.
And on Sept. 20, Grassley sent another letter to Wray that had the effect of blaming the FBI for the president’s current troubles. In it, Grassley asked Wray if the FBI ever warned Trump about Russian efforts to influence his campaign “so that he could take defensive action to prevent the campaign from being infiltrated.” Feinstein, the committee’s top Democrat, did not sign the letter.
Besides suggesting that the FBI could be responsible for the Trump/Russia troubles, Grassley has also dedicated significant resources into investigating Fusion GPS, an opposition-research firm that compiled the so-called Steele dossier. That document alleged, among other things, that the president has been blackmailed by Russian intelligence.
Grassley’s effort has drawn sly skepticism from at least one of his Republican Senate colleagues.
“I’m not sure that I understand exactly what they’re trying to do,” Burr told Bloomberg News in August. “They tried to subpoena Paul Manafort; we interviewed him.”
—with additional reporting by Noah Shachtman
Exclusive: Senate ‘Russia Probe’ Is Not Investigating Russia
The Judiciary Committee may be issuing press releases about its ‘Russia Probe.’ But staffers say there’s no full-blown investigation, just routine oversight of the FBI.
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
The Senate Judiciary Committee has demanded documents on Russian meddling from the CIA, interviewed Donald Trump Jr. about his infamous Trump Tower meeting, and subpoenaed Paul Manafort, the president’s Kremlin-friendly former campaign chairman.
In May, the committee held a subcommittee hearing called “Russian Interference in 2016 United States Election.” In June, Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley issued a pair of press releases about his “Russia Probe.” One of them, produced with fellow committee Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, asked for documents from the FBI, citing the committee’s “investigations into allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.”
But the Judiciary Committee is not, in fact, running a Trump-Russia investigation—at least, not a full-fledged one.
A staffer for Grassley, speaking on the condition of anonymity to give his candid assessment, told The Daily Beast that the committee is instead engaged in routine oversight of the Justice Department—though under extraordinary circumstances.
Grassley’s role in the congressional probes into Russian meddling in the 2016 election has perplexed and concerned members of his own party, Republican staffers on the committee told The Daily Beast.
The probe appears to have already missed one of its own deadlines. And rather than publicly needling potential Russian meddlers, Grassley has primarily used his bully pulpit to rip an opposition-research firm and the FBI.
Nearly a year after Election Day, a host of investigators are working on probes specifically digging into how Russia meddled in the presidential election, who—if anyone—they colluded with in the U.S., and what they are still doing now. The Senate Intelligence Committee is investigating, the House Intelligence Committee is investigating, and the Justice Department is investigating too, through special counsel Bob Mueller.
But Grassley’s committee is not part of that. The Grassley staffer told The Daily Beast that the Judiciary Committee’s investigators are focused on the FBI.
“The American people need to be able to trust that the FBI and Justice Department are operating free from political influence,” the staffer said. “That’s what this investigation is about, and we will follow the facts wherever they lead.”
“The Judiciary Committee is not running a comprehensive Trump/Russia investigation,” the staffer added. “Intel matters are the purview of the Intelligence Committees. The Judiciary Committee is engaged in the DOJ oversight for which it’s responsible and related issues that intersect with the Russian meddling in our democratic system.”
The staffer also said Grassley’s team is not trying to determine whether anyone broke the law.
“The Judiciary Committee does not have a prosecutorial function and does not conduct criminal investigations,” the staffer said, adding that committee investigators will share any evidence of crimes they find with law enforcement.
Whatever its mission, the committee’s investigation seems to be running behind its own stated schedule. On July 25, Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein told Fox News that Paul Manafort and Donald Trump Jr. would both “hopefully” appear before the committee in September for a public hearing.
Notably, committee members questioned Donald Trump Jr. on Sept. 7 behind closed doors. Ten days later, Feinstein told CNN she and Grassley planned to bring the president’s son back for a public hearing.
“I think it’s Senator [Chuck] Grassley’s intent, and it’s certainly my intent, to have him before the committee in the open and be able to ask some questions under oath,” she said.
That hearing is nowhere on the horizon, though Grassley told CNN on Thursday that he thinks “there’s no way of avoiding it.” His committee has yet to question Manafort. As chairman, Grassley is responsible for sending out subpoenas to witnesses and scheduling public hearings.
Sens. Richard Burr and Mark Warner, the Senate Intelligence Committee chairs, recently boasted that their staff has conducted more than 250 hours of interviews, gathered upward of 100,000 pages of documents, and held 11 open hearings about their probe.
Meanwhile, a Democratic Senate aide told The Daily Beast one of the Judiciary Committee’s main focuses is the question of whether President Trump or his aides engaged in obstruction of justice, including his firing of former FBI Director James Comey.
That runs counter to the Grassley staffer’s description of the probe, as an effort primarily focused on whether the FBI was properly doing its job.
In a letter on Aug. 30, Grassley and fellow committee member Graham asked new FBI Director Chris Wray to turn over documents about Comey’s handling of the probe into Hillary Clinton’s emails. That letter cited the committee’s investigation of Comey’s firing as the reason for their interest.
And on Sept. 20, Grassley sent another letter to Wray that had the effect of blaming the FBI for the president’s current troubles. In it, Grassley asked Wray if the FBI ever warned Trump about Russian efforts to influence his campaign “so that he could take defensive action to prevent the campaign from being infiltrated.” Feinstein, the committee’s top Democrat, did not sign the letter.
Besides suggesting that the FBI could be responsible for the Trump/Russia troubles, Grassley has also dedicated significant resources into investigating Fusion GPS, an opposition-research firm that compiled the so-called Steele dossier. That document alleged, among other things, that the president has been blackmailed by Russian intelligence.
Grassley’s effort has drawn sly skepticism from at least one of his Republican Senate colleagues.
“I’m not sure that I understand exactly what they’re trying to do,” Burr told Bloomberg News in August. “They tried to subpoena Paul Manafort; we interviewed him.”
—with additional reporting by Noah Shachtman
Facebook's DC Nightmare Is Just Beginning
Facebook is facing an unprecedented crisis in Washington. And it's only just beginning.
Alex KantrowitzOctober 7, 2017, at 12:01 p.m.
The same week Mark Zuckerberg delivered his live video remarks about Russian election interference on Facebook, he picked up the phone and called Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee.
At one point during the nearly 30 minute conversation, Schiff asked why Facebook took so long to find the $100,000 in ads a Kremlin-linked entity bought in an effort to disrupt the 2016 US Presidential election and its aftermath. Zuckerberg’s answer apparently did not fully satisfy, and Schiff told BuzzFeed News he plans to follow up.
The Russian ad scandal has captured lawmakers' attention in a way Facebook’s previous political crises — from allegations of bias in its Trending column to its role in spreading fake news — have not. It has crystallized a trio of individual fears — Facebook is too big, has too much influence, and cannot effectively monitor itself — into one big expression of all of them.
And now, with Congress scrutinizing it and the world watching, Facebook is scrambling to contain an metastasizing crisis that has tarnished its public image and conjured the threat of possible government regulation. In November, the House Intelligence Committee, of which Schiff is a key part, plans to hold an open hearing to discuss Russian election interference. And Schiff would very much like to see Facebook there. “We have an interest in having them come into our committee,” he said.
"Show us everything."
Schiff’s not alone in that interest. The Senate Intelligence Committee also named Facebook as one of the companies it wants to question when it holds its own open hearing on election interference in November. And conversations with members of that committee make clear that Facebook won’t be let off the hook easy there either. “I want them to be honest and forthcoming. Show us everything,” committee member Senator Joe Manchin told BuzzFeed News. Sens. Mark Warner and Richard Burr echoed that sentiment. “We want the details,” said Warner, the committee's vice chairman.
“The growth of these social media platforms has been so fast and furious that they are struggling to keep up with how [they] can be misused,” Schiff said. “The open hearing will give us a chance to explore how seriously these companies are taking this problem, and what steps they’re going to implement to protect the country and their users in the future.”
Over the next month and likely beyond it, Congress will seek answers to three main questions: whether the Russian ad buy in question reveals collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, whether it influenced the election, and, critically, what happens next to Facebook. It is an unprecedented crisis for Facebook, now extending to Instagram as well, with no end in sight. As Schiff put it: “This is going to be part of an ongoing conversation and oversight by the Congress.”
Collusion
A worst case scenario for Facebook: Congress uncovers evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government in the ad buy details. This would inextricably tie the company to foreign manipulation of a US election, and provide an easy rationale and talking point for government regulation. It would certainly keep Facebook’s name in the headlines as an example of a tech giant that used its power to lobby against disclosure rules, only to fail to monitor illegal, democracy-shaking activity within its walls.
At a press conference Wednesday, Sens. Burr and Warner declined to say whether the 3,000 ads and associated targeting data given to them by Facebook contained evidence of collusion. "I’m not going to even discuss initial findings because we haven’t any,” Burr said on the subject of collusion. Their subsequent remarks indicated a careful examination is ahead, one that will extend at least until their public hearing with Facebook and others scheduled for November.
While the two senators provided little detail on what they’d be looking for in the ad buy details, Congressman Eric Swalwell, a Democrat member of the House Intelligence Committee, spoke to BuzzFeed News at length about what he’d like to examine, providing insight into the thinking inside Congress.
Swalwell first said he wants to look at the ad creative, or the images the Russians paid to promote on Facebook, with a specific focus on whether those images appeared elsewhere on the Facebook platform. “It would be very illuminating to know if there are any duplicates that are not Russian-sourced,” he said. “Who are these people and why are they paying for an ad that is identical to a Russian-sourced ad?”
“Who are these people and why are they paying for an ad that is identical to a Russian sourced ad?”
He also plans to examine the ads for language, looking at the possibility that an American assisted in creating the messaging. “If a foreigner is trying to communicate a message in English on the topic of politics, there could be some lost-in-translation typos or idioms that they may misuse,” he said. “What I would look for — was the copy assisted by a US person?"
Ad targeting is also an area of interest. Swalwell said he’d like to see if similar data was uploaded into Facebook by the Trump campaign and the Russians. “We want to compare analytics of content the Russians used, who they targeted to, to content that the Trump campaign was using, and who they targeted it to,” he said. “And if there’s a crossover, find out if it’s just a coincidence… or if it was more than that.”
Swalwell told BuzzFeed News that he is in favor of forming an independent, bipartisan commission to review this information, and the full scope of Russian election interference, on a full-time basis with a dedicated staff. Even with these resources, it would likely take extreme sloppiness on the part of the Russians and the Trump campaign for the commission to find clear evidence of collusion in the ad buy details. “The smoking gun would be audiences that [the Trump campaign] had created for [the Russians] and then pushed to them,” Zac Moffatt, digital director of Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, told BuzzFeed News. “I think the likelihood that that happened is completely nonexistent.”
Sway
Earlier this week, Facebook shared critical information that Congress could use to help make that determination.
In a post on its Hard Questions blog Tuesday, Facebook published a number of stats that suggest the $100,000 Russian ad buy had less influence on the election than some fear. In its post, Facebook said the Russian ads were shown to some 10 million people — far less than some other estimates that ranged up to 75 million viewers. The company also noted that only 44% of the ads ran before the election.
@Kantrowitz If there is one thing I hope we can bring to the discussion it is more of this: a sense of scale
10:57 PM - 04 Oct 2017
Facebook's head of consumer hardware makes case for Russian ad buy to be kept in perspective.
Moffatt, Romney’s former digital director, said he thinks the Russian ads were a tiny sliver of the overall campaign advertising pie.
“I can promise you, in 2012 for Governor Romney, we were definitely spending more than $150,000 a day,” Moffatt said. “If you said to me they spent $150,000 in one state, in one district, even then I’d be like — okay. But when you take it across the whole country… there’s not that much there.”
Moffatt said he didn’t believe even $1 million strategically spent on Facebook could flip an election, given that each campaign spends hundreds of millions on advertising, and receives many billions more in free publicity. “I don’t understand how, of all these other things, why this would be the one thing that people think would make the difference as it goes through,” he said. “I think this is people looking for a silver bullet that explains something that they can’t understand how it happened.”
Members of Congress will readily admit that it’s impossible to ascertain the true impact of the Russians’ $100,000 ad spend. “We’ll never know what the effect was as far as how many minds were changed,” Rep. Swalwell said. “In an election that is as close as this one, could it be determinative? We’ll never know,” Rep. Schiff said, speaking of the Russians’ influence as a whole.
But as Sen. Warner put it at the Wednesday press conference, digital platforms are becoming increasingly important in the political process, as evidenced by a 700% jump in digital political ad spending from 2012 to 2016, with a similar or larger jump forecast for 2020.
In such an environment, Congress sees a duty to ensure something similar to the Russian ad buy won't take place again, especially not at a larger scale. At the very least, it’s likely to be watching Facebook closely over the next few years. “There were clear, coordinated, sophisticated efforts that Russia ran in this last campaign that we have to catch next time,” Rep. Swalwell said. “A $100,000 ad buy for 3,000 ads — we have to catch that next time.”
What Happens Now
Over the past two weeks, Facebook has introduced a number of advertising reforms. It’s effectively ended the practice of “dark advertising,” or targeted ads not visible to the public, by promising to reveal all ads run on its platform on the pages that pay for them. It’s told political advertisers they must “confirm the business or organization they represent” before they can buy ads. And it’s said it will hire an additional 1,000 people to bolster its ad review operation. Still, that hasn’t been enough to satisfy Congress.
Within the next few weeks, Sen. Warner and Sen. Amy Klobuchar are expected to introduce a piece of legislation that would require Facebook and other major online platforms to publicly disclose political ad spending on their platforms. The bill will be the first piece of legislation to respond to Facebook’s Russia ads crisis, and others may follow.
“I think this is the beginning. Certainly not the end.”
"We are open to reviewing any reasonable congressional proposals," a Facebook spokesperson told BuzzFeed News.
"They’re going to need to make concessions,” Alex Howard, deputy director of the Sunlight Foundation, told BuzzFeed News. “It’s Facebook making unilateral decisions about how this is going to work on its platform. That’s not how the United States of America works."
The Warner-Klobuchar act is an ominous sign for Facebook as Congress’s probe extends beyond advertising. On Wednesday, Sen. Warner made clear that he was interested in examining Facebook’s Trending column as well. People have a right to know whether the stories appearing in Trending are there because they’re popular with real people, he said, or with bots or foreign actors operating under false identities.
The Trending column was the subject of an earlier controversy for Facebook, when former Trending curators accused their colleagues of anti-conservative bias. The column largely escaped the attention of Congress back then, but it’s top of mind now that lawmakers are examining Facebook’s influence and vulnerabilities.
On Friday, Facebook admitted that the scope of the Russian ad buy extended to Instagram as well, yet another revelation in a crisis that is snowballing. As he spoke in a Capitol building hallway, Rep. Schiff was clear on his probe’s status: “I think this is the beginning,” he said. “Certainly not the end.” ●
Emma Loop contributed to this report
Alex Kantrowitz is a senior technology reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in San Francisco. He reports on social and communications.
Contact Alex Kantrowitz at alex.kantrowitz@buzzfeed.com.
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JMurder
SOHH Member since 01...
Crime is not a requirement for impeachment
it helps, in the eye of the public.
This clown
DaddyFresh
Superstar
Forget Russian Trolls. Facebook's Own Staff Helped Win The Election.
Facebook, Google, and Twitter all directly advised campaigns on how to influence voters — and the help may have been decisive.
October 3, 2017, at 1:22 p.m.
Scott Olson / Getty Images
Facebook’s role during the 2016 presidential election has come under extraordinary scrutiny in recent weeks. Most notably, attention has swirled around a Kremlin-backed troll farm’s purchase of $100,000 worth of ads on the platform during the election cycle. This came on the heels of controversies over the proliferation of "fake news" during the campaign.
But our research shows another, less discussed aspect of Facebook’s political influence was far more consequential in terms of the election outcome. The entirely routine use of Facebook by Trump’s campaign and others — a major part of the $1.1 billion of paid digital advertising during the cycle — is likely to have had far greater reach than Russian bots and fake news sites. And beyond this reach, our research reveals that firms such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter now play a much more active role in electoral politics than has been widely acknowledged.
Those companies had staff working hand in hand with Trump campaign digital staffers, according to Gary Coby, the director of advertising at the RNC and director of digital advertising and fundraising for Trump’s general election campaign. “I required that if people wanted to work with us, they needed to send bodies to us in Texas and put people on the ground because Hillary had this giant machine, well-built out with digital operations, and we're just a few guys and a big Twitter account,” he told us.
“Google, Twitter, and Facebook, we had people who were down there constantly and constantly working with us, helping us solve our problems in relation to how we're using the platforms,” he said. “If we're coming up with new ideas, bringing them into the fold to come up with ideas of how their platform could help us achieve our goals."
In light of Mark Zuckerberg’s recent announcement that Facebook will require disclosure and transparency around who creates and purchases political ads, it is worth considering the transparency of the behind-the-scenes work that enables the use of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to influence voters.
During and since the election, we formally interviewed dozens of staffers working on all the major 2016 campaigns, along with representatives of the big tech companies, to understand how campaigns use these platforms to reach the electorate. All of them echoed Coby’s comments that Google, Facebook, and Twitter play active roles in electoral politics.
For example, these firms offer an extensive array of campaign services — including advising campaigns on everything from the content of ads and other communications to the specific groups they might benefit most from targeting, and how best to reach them. Consider the fact that all three of these firms have dedicated partisan teams that work with campaigns. Staffers work with campaigns to guide advertising buys, boost engagement around online ads, and shepherd the use of their platforms.
One reason these firms have invested in working with campaigns is for a slice of the political ad sales market. The 2016 election alone was a $2 billion enterprise.
Technology firms and campaigns are both incentivized to work together — digital ads deliver revenue for technology companies based on engagement. This means that these firms get paid more based on higher performing ads: More click-throughs equal more revenue. For campaigns, more clicks mean greater reach and potential impact.
It’s not just the ad revenue alone that these firms are after. Presidential campaigns garner massive, worldwide attention. As such they serve as important vehicles for marketing these platforms and new tools they offer. Even more, we found that technology firms want to create relationships with campaigns to further their long-term lobbying efforts. Successful candidates become legislators, governors, and even presidents, with influence over the regulations, or lack thereof, that will apply to these firms.
Not all campaigns use Facebook, Twitter, and Google in the same way. Hillary Clinton built a large in-house staff to execute digital media on the campaign, but with a lean staff, the Trump team likely benefited more from the help provided by the tech companies. The expertise these firms provided to the campaign’s general-election San Antonio office was particularly important, and days after the election, Trump's digital director said Facebook played a "critical role" in its success.
You could consider the help provided by tech companies as a form of subsidy to the campaigns. These subsidies of expertise are mutually beneficial: The platforms get ad revenues and build relationships with campaigns and their candidates, while campaigns optimize their advertising and extend the reach of their messaging.
Ali-Jae Henke, the current head of industry, elections at Google, described the company’s routine work with campaigns during the cycle: “They say ‘like look, we really want to get attention and we want to reach as many people as possible and these are kind of the areas politically where we might have challenges or the different types of voting blocs we need to reach’ … and so then I am able to in that advisory capacity be like, ‘well this is what moms look like online, this is how we find them...’”
This work is of major importance, because even the most well-funded political campaigns are always strapped for time and resources, given the monumental task they have of contacting, motivating, and persuading the electorate. By enhancing the ability of institutional political actors to connect with citizens and make politics meaningful in an era of fragmented audiences and attention, we believe Google, Facebook, and Twitter are playing a significant role in the democratic process.
There is a troubling lack of transparency that clouds this role. Given the scope and scale of the paid uses of platforms such as Facebook by campaigns, the effects likely dwarf those of fake news or illegitimate advertising buys. This, of course, is speculation, because we will never know for certain how much impact these things had. That is why the basic lack of transparency and disclosure surrounding digital political advertising is so concerning, and Mark Zuckerberg’s recent announcement was a step in the right direction.
Google and Twitter should join Facebook in its effort around transparency and disclosure, and make the paid content posted on their platforms public so citizens, journalists, and academics can evaluate these messages. Government regulation around transparency is ideal. However, former chairperson Ann Ravel stated that the Federal Election Commission is “dysfunctional” and “deadlocked.” In the interim, these firms should work together to set standards for political advertising disclosure and open paid communications up to public scrutiny.
Daniel Kreiss is Associate Professor in the School of Media and Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research explores the impact of technological change on the public sphere and political practice.
Shannon McGregor is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at The University of Utah. Her research interests center on political communication, social media, gender, and public opinion.