Senators blast Facebook, Twitter, Google in Russia probe

THE HINDU, 01st NOVEMBER, 2017-
Exasperated U.S. senators harshly criticized representatives of Facebook, Twitter and Google at a hearing on Tuesday for not doing more to prevent Russian agents interfering with the American political process as early as 2015. At one point, Sen. Al Franken shook his head after he couldn’t get all the companies to commit to not accepting political ads bought with North Korean currency.

The hearing by a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary panel was moved last week into a cavernous hearing room usually reserved for high-profile events like Supreme Court confirmations. About 50 people waited to get in as senators fired pointed questions and waved at cardboard displays of outrageous ads.

“People are buying ads on your platform with rubles. They are political ads,” Franken fumed. “You put billions of data points together all the time. ...Google has all knowledge that man has ever developed. You can’t put together rubles with a political ad and go like, ‘Hmmm, those data points spell out something pretty bad?’ ”