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Tech companies grilled over Russian election interference | TheHill

posted onNovember 1, 2017
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Article snippet: Facebook, Google and Twitter officials were grilled on Tuesday by lawmakers from both parties on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who expressed frustration with the companies’ response so far to the use of their platforms by Russia in last year’s election. Lawmakers pushed the companies for more answers on how their platforms were used by both Russia and terrorist groups, and stressed that it was in the national security interests of the U.S. to find solutions. “The bottom line is that these platforms are being used to undermine and harm our way of life,” said Sen. MORE (R-S.C.), the panel’s chairman. “I want to understand why no one seems to have caught on to the Russian effort earlier,” Franken asked the firms. “How did Facebook which, prides itself on being able to process billions of data points ... somehow not make the connection that ads paid for by rubbles were paid for by Russians,” Franken continued. “Those are two data points. How could you not connect those two dots?” Testimony from the companies released on Monday revealed that posts from Russian agents on Facebook reached 126 million users over a two-year period before the election, while Twitter published more than 131,000 messages from Russia agents. More than 1,000 videos from Russian agents were uploaded to Google’s YouTube. Company representatives testified Tuesday that this represented a small number of the posts, messages and videos about the election on their services, but this point didn’t g... Link to the full article to read more

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