'Not going to be a cakewalk': Social media sites face hurdles curbing foreign political ads

A series of Russian-linked ads that flooded Facebook during the U.S. 2016 election has sparked concerns of foreign interference in the democratic process, prompting calls for increased regulation of political advertising on social media platforms.

Yet some are worried such measures don't sufficiently address the problem or could go too far and serve to violate freedom of speech rights.

Lawyers for Facebook, Twitter and Google appeared this week before a U.S. Senate subcommittee, answering questions about Russian-linked accounts that began purchasing advertising on their services. For example, Facebook said one Russian group posted more than 80,000 times on its service during the election, reaching as many as 126 million users.

Dave Karpf, an associate professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, said the ads that appeared on social media sites were just the "tip of the iceberg" and it's clear there need to be more regulations, whether they come from Congress or the industry itself.

"If the social media companies don't respond vigorously and rigorously, I think we should expect in 2018 and 2020 … more of this behaviour, and that's going to make it that much harder for us to have a national election electoral system."

He suggested new regulations could mirror those already in place for TV political advertisements.

"Or at least figure out what modifications to that model are appropriate for social media as opposed to what the [Federal Election Commission] has so far, which is just punt on this and ignore it entirely," he said.

(The Federal Election Commission, or FEC, is the independent regulatory agency that administers and enforces U.S. federal campaign finance law.)

Barry Sookman, a Toronto-based lawyer and expert on internet law, said these platforms need to be treated the same as other platforms in the media, when it comes to election ads. 

"I think the gravity of the situation has been recognized, I think quite poignantly in this election, where not only are there allegations of collusion, but there was what appears to be a clear, concerted attempt by the Russians to influence the election.

"This goes to the heart of democracies."

Some ads only featured hot button issues

But whether the ads that appeared on Facebook contravened any laws seems to be an open question. 

A foreign individual, entity or government cannot spend money for ads on TV, radio or online that expressly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate for office. (For example, an ad that said "Vote for Donald Trump.")

They also can't spend money on TV and radio ads close to the election that are considered "electioneering communication" — for example, an ad that said Hillary Clinton was a great secretary of state and a great leader but didn't explicitly state to vote for her.

Some of the ads that ran this election on social media sites mentioned the candidates but were not expressly election ads,  said Richard Hasen, a political science and law professor at the University of California at Irvine. And many of them appeared to be neither election ads nor ads mentioning candidates but instead were aimed at hot button issues like immigration, gay marriage and Black Lives Matter.

Hasen also said it's not clear whether the restrictions on electioneering communication by foreign entities apply on digital-only platforms. 

"It appears, from what little we know, most of these ads would not be illegal under current U.S. law."

To address this, a bill named the "Honest Ads Act" has been drafted by two Democratic senators and has received support from Republican Sen. John McCain.

The bill seeks to regulate political advertising by expanding the "electioneering communication" to social media ads and would require online platforms to make "all reasonable efforts" to ensure that foreign individuals and entities are not purchasing political advertisements in order to influence the American electorate. 

As well, it would require digital platforms with at least 50,000,000 monthly viewers to maintain a public file of all electioneering communications purchased by a person or group.

Verifying ad sponsors

Last week, Facebook said it would verify political ad buyers in federal elections and build transparency tools to link ads to the Facebook pages of their sponsors. Twitter has also said it will require election-related ads for candidates to disclose who is paying for them and how they are targeted.

Google announced on Monday that it would also verify the identity of election-related ad buyers and identify these advertisers publicly via an ad icon. But when lawyers for the companies were asked by members of the Senate committee whether they would support the Honest Ads Act, they offered only qualified support.

Karpf said it's not going to be enough for companies like Facebook to just agree to create some transparency standards.

"They're going to need to proactively put a lot of talent into figuring out how this system is being used to manipulate the election going forward next time because you're gonna have more people trying more dirty things."

Techs will need engineering talent

However, he did acknowledge the challenges social media companies will face trying to clamp down on thousands of foreign political advertisements. 

"That's not going to be a cakewalk," Karpf said. "There's going to be some hard problems. It needs an engineering talent."

Meanwhile, some are already criticizing the proposed legislation. Leonid Bershidsky, founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomost, wrote in Bloomberg News that a troll "cleverly disguised as Jane Doe or John Smith and ostensibly based in Random Location on Google Maps, U.S.A ., will still be able to buy and run any kind of political ad — all from the outskirts of St. Petersburg."

The Institute for Free Speech said the bill fails "to meaningfully address foreign interference while placing considerable limits and burdens on the online political speech of Americans."

"Legislation that attempts to limit foreign interference in our democracy by broadly regulating the free speech rights of Americans would, in fact, undermine our democracy and directly advance Vladimir Putin's agenda," wrote Eric Wang of the institute.