By Georgia Wells and Robert McMillan
Facebook Inc. is contending with a new wave of criticism
prompted by the U.S. indictment detailing how Russia manipulated
social-media platforms -- and by a Facebook executive's attempts to
address the issue.
The indictment against Russian companies and individuals
described how an organization called the Internet Research Agency
systematically used Facebook, Twitter Inc., and the YouTube arm of
Alphabet Inc.'s Google to sow discord in the U.S. starting in 2014.
The document's description of events showed that Facebook and its
Instagram photo-sharing unit were particularly central to the
alleged Russian attempts to influence U.S. public opinion.
Researchers who study social media said the indictment, secured
by special counsel Robert Mueller, showed that Facebook was
ill-prepared for such efforts. Facebook has more than 25,000
employees, but fewer than 100 Russian provocateurs armed with
social-media savvy and widely available technological tools were
able to manipulate its platform for years, the indictment says.
Comments by Facebook's head of advertising, Rob Goldman, after
the indictment was handed up Friday fueled further criticism. Mr.
Goldman, writing on Twitter, said there are "easy ways to fight"
the Russian campaign, starting with having a "well educated
citizenry." He also tweeted that the Russian's main goal wasn't to
sway the 2016 election, but more broadly to sow division in the
U.S.
Mr. Goldman's series of eight tweets provoked more than 9,000
responses on Twitter, many of them angry.
"You really are not in a position to preach and your astonishing
tweets have created confusion and anger," Mainardo de Nardis, a
senior executive at advertising giant Omnicom Group Inc., said in a
tweet Sunday. "Enough damage done over the past 2+ years. In the
absence of real actions silence would be appreciated." Mr. de
Nardis didn't respond to requests for comment.
A Facebook spokesman said Mr. Goldman, who didn't respond to a
request for comment, had sent his tweets in a personal capacity.
The company pointed to a statement from Joel Kaplan, Facebook's
vice president of global public policy, saying, "Nothing we found
contradicts the Special Counsel's indictments."
Russia's government has repeatedly denied any government effort
to influence the U.S. election.
Facebook has struggled for much of the past year to respond to
mounting ire from users, politicians, customers and others over its
role in facilitating the spread of misinformation and divisive
content.
The indictment shows that "there are lots of levers that get
pulled in social media for the sake of manipulation and a lot of
those levers aren't even known by the companies themselves," said
Sam Woolley, an Oxford University research associate who has
studied propaganda efforts on social-media platforms.
The indictment documented an unprecedented manipulation campaign
targeting Facebook, its Instagram platform, Twitter and YouTube.
Starting in 2014, the Russians built an influence operation that
drew followers to bogus accounts that spread disinformation,
organized U.S. demonstrations and even paid a person to dress up
like Hillary Clinton in a prison uniform at a West Palm Beach,
Fla., rally, the indictment says.
While much of the attention around the Russian manipulation
focused on its efforts to stoke divisions ahead the 2016 U.S.
presidential election, it is clear the campaign continued since
then. The Wall Street Journal reported in October that some of the
Russian-backed social-media accounts posted divisive messages at
least as recently as last August.
The Twitter comments of Mr. Goldman, Facebook's head of
advertising, also fueled disagreement about the intent of the
Russian efforts. One of Mr. Goldman's tweets said "swaying the
election was *NOT* the main goal" of the Russian ads, and that "the
majority of the Russian ad spend happened AFTER the election."
On Saturday, President Donald Trump cited Mr. Goldman's comment
in support of the idea that Russia's actions didn't affect the
election.
Following criticism that he was obscuring the intent of the
Russians, Mr. Goldman later tweeted that "the Russian campaign was
certainly in favor of Mr. Trump." He also dialed back some of his
claims. "I am only speaking here about the Russian behavior on
Facebook. That is the only aspect that I observed directly," he
tweeted.
Clint Watts, a fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute
who studied the Russian influence campaign, said the ads bought on
Facebook were only "a much smaller part of a very large
effort."
"Mr. Goldman should have stayed silent," Mr. Watts said, adding
that playing down the effect of the influence campaign risked
further angering Americans. "The public is upset that they got
duped on Facebook's platform. Facebook got duped," he said. "It
makes it seem like they don't get it."
While Facebook's role in the Russian campaign is in the
spotlight, some researchers who have studied the efforts note that
it was far from the only institution to fall short.
"Let's not mince words. The Obama administration did not react
quickly enough to this problem. The intelligence community did not
react quickly enough to this problem," said Thomas Rid, professor
of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University.
Facebook has said it is taking a number of steps to prevent
efforts like the Russian campaign from happening again, including
hiring 10,000 employees tasked with policing hate speech, as well
as coming up with ways to uproot fake accounts. Facebook officials
also have emphasized that the company provided information to Mr.
Mueller.
Mr. Goldman, too, said Facebook is taking "aggressive steps to
prevent this sort of meddling in the future," including
verification for all political advertisers. Still, his comments
struck some observers as tone deaf.
"It was an almost perfect example of Silicon Valley
overconfidence and lack of sophistication when it comes to
politics," said Josh Hendler, former director of technology for the
Democratic National Committee, which suffered a cyberattack ahead
of the 2016 election that U.S. officials blamed on Russia.
--Deepa Seetharaman contributed to this article.
Write to Georgia Wells at Georgia.Wells@wsj.com and Robert
McMillan at Robert.Mcmillan@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 19, 2018 19:19 ET (00:19 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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