By Georgia Wells, Robert McMillan and Dustin Volz
A Senate investigation of Russia's social-media influence
criticized U.S. tech giants, with new attention on Google and
YouTube, for helping spread misinformation during the 2016
presidential election and pushed them to better coordinate to
prevent a repeat next year.
The Senate Intelligence Committee report released Tuesday, which
bolsters previous investigations of Russian interference,
recommends the Trump administration publicly underscore the danger
of further outside meddling in 2020, and warns political campaigns
to scrutinize social media posts before sharing them with
supporters.
The report, the result of 2 1/2 years of investigation, didn't
say that Russian propaganda influenced the election's outcome. But
it said that Russian efforts were "overtly" and "almost invariably"
supportive of Donald Trump to the detriment of Hillary Clinton's
presidential campaign.
Those conclusions are in line with previous findings from the
U.S. intelligence community and former special counsel Robert
Mueller.
Senators also called out a litany of Silicon Valley names for
their roles, including Reddit, LinkedIn, Medium, Pinterest and even
the gaming app Pokémon Go. Previous Senate reports on Russian
election efforts mostly focused on social-media sites such as
Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc.
In Tuesday's report, senators described YouTube as "the
propaganda vehicle of choice for Russia's state sponsored news
organization, RT." And Google's search algorithm, the report said,
"can elevate extremist content or disinformation to the top of
certain searches." YouTube is a unit of Google, though the
companies operate separately.
"Anyone who follows the information propaganda space knows that
video is the next frontier," said Samuel Woolley, an assistant
professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies
disinformation. "YouTube should be a primary area of focus."
A spokeswoman for Google, whose parent is Alphabet Inc., said
the company has "invested significantly to detect phishing and
hacking attempts, identify foreign interference and protect
campaigns from digital attacks."
A Facebook spokesman said the company was bolstering its
defenses.
A Twitter spokeswoman noted that the site prohibits
state-controlled media, including Russia Today or RT, from
advertising on its platform.
The report gave examples of how misinformation can spread. Days
after the 2016 election, a falsified media account of President
Trump having won the popular vote briefly ranked higher on Google
than stories that accurately reflected the U.S. popular vote, which
was won by Mrs. Clinton, according to the report.
On YouTube, the world's most popular video platform, Russian
operatives focused overwhelmingly on influencing black voters to
try to suppress their turnout and stoke racial divisions, the
report said. Senators said this fact contradicted prior testimony
from Google General Counsel Kent Walker that "videos were not
targeted to any particular sector of the U.S. population."
Mr. Walker declined to comment through a spokeswoman. YouTube
has made selling politically focused advertising a new priority
this year.
The Senate report offered numerous recommendations for tech
companies, government agencies and lawmakers to better guard
against future attempts to use the internet against American
voters.
The report also recommended that Congress consider ways to
facilitate cooperation between social-media companies and
government agencies, and encourage greater information sharing
between the public and private sectors.
Privacy concerns have hampered efforts by big technology
companies to share data with outside researchers, said Nathaniel
Persily, a Stanford University professor who studies the effect of
social media on democracy. Mr. Persily's project has been unable to
do the kind of in-depth analysis of Facebook data it initially
planned, he said, because Facebook has been unwilling to share data
on individuals, citing privacy concerns.
The Senate report also ties Russia President Vladimir Putin to
the propaganda campaign. The financial involvement of Russian
oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, and his relationship with Mr. Putin,
"point to significant Kremlin support, authorization and direction
of the IRA's operation and goals," the report said, referring to
the Internet Research Agency, a Russian group behind election
propaganda linked to Mr. Prigozhin.
The bipartisan report coincides with increasing concern about
foreign influence in U.S. politics. Mr. Trump faces an impeachment
inquiry stemming from a July call with the Ukrainian president
during which he pressed Kyiv to investigate Joe Biden, a political
rival. Democrats assert that the president abused the powers of his
office to solicit foreign interference for help with his
re-election.
Last week, Microsoft Corp. announced that suspected hackers
linked to the Iranian government unsuccessfully attempted to
infiltrate at least one email account associated with a U.S.
presidential campaign.
Technology companies and federal agencies have made strides in
collaborating on addressing foreign interference since the last
presidential election. Those improvements paid off during the 2018
midterms, when Facebook and other platforms dismantled small
networks of suspected foreign-backed disinformation accounts based
on tips from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The report is the second of an expected five volumes to be
released by the Senate Intelligence Committee from its
investigation Russian interference in the 2016 election. The first,
published in July, found the U.S. had made progress in securing its
voting infrastructure since 2016 but that some election systems
managed by states and counties remain vulnerable to attack in
2020.
The three next volumes will focus on the Obama administration's
policy responses to Russia's interference, a review of the U.S.
intelligence community's January 2017 assessment of Moscow's
intentions behind the meddling, and questions of collusion between
the Trump campaign and Russia.
"Russia is waging an information warfare campaign against the
U.S. that didn't start and didn't end with the 2016 election," said
committee Chairman Richard Burr (R., N.C.).
Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.), the committee's top ranked Democrat,
called for Congress to act. "We cannot expect social media
companies to take adequate precautions on their own," he said.
--Rob Copeland contributed to this article.
Write to Georgia Wells at Georgia.Wells@wsj.com, Robert McMillan
at Robert.Mcmillan@wsj.com and Dustin Volz at
dustin.volz@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 08, 2019 17:15 ET (21:15 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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