Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the firm will give Congress copies of more than 3,000 ads it sold to accounts linked to Russia during the campaign.
The firm has already handed over the ads to special counsel Robert Mueller, but has resisted giving it to Congress, citing privacy concerns of its clients.
Zuckerberg explained the decision in a video posted on the site Thursday.
‘I care deeply about the democratic process and protecting its integrity,’ Zuckerberg said, speaking directly to the camera.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says his company will turn over to Congress copies of ads it sold to accounts linked to Russia during the campaign
‘I don’t want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy. That’s not what we stand for. The integrity of our elections is fundamental to democracies around the world.’
Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch wrote in a blog post: ‘We believe it is vitally important that government authorities have the information they need to deliver to the public a full assessment of what happened in the 2016 election.’
‘That is an assessment that can be made only by investigators with access to classified intelligence and information from all relevant companies and industries — and we want to do our part,’ he continued int he post. ‘Congress is best placed to use the information we and others provide to inform the public comprehensively and completely.’
‘I don’t want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy,’ Zuckerberg said
Zuckerberg, who has been increasing his political activities and even shows up on lists of possible presidential contenders, said: ‘I wish I could tell you that we are going to be able to stop all interference but that just won’t be realistic.’
‘There will always be bad actors in the world and we just won’t be able to prevent all interference. But we can make it harder, much harder,’ he said.
Zuckerberg, who has been under pressure to do more to prevent the use of Facebook for election manipulation, said in a live broadcast on Facebook that he supported the investigation by the U.S. Congress.
He said the firm would continue its own internal investigation, where it was looking at ‘foreign actors, including additional Russian groups and former Soviet states.’
Zuckerberg laid out nine steps that he said Facebook was taking to deter governments from using the world’s largest social network to interfere with elections
Zuckerberg laid out nine steps that he said Facebook was taking to deter governments from using the world’s largest social network to interfere with elections.
In one major change, Facebook will make political ads on the social network more transparent, so that people can see which ads are being run in connection with an election, he said.
Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch said in a separate blog post that the social network does not disclose content lightly under any circumstances, but that the company wants to help protect the integrity of U.S. elections.
‘We believe the public deserves a full accounting of what happened in the 2016 election,’ Stretch wrote.
Facebook disclosed this month that a Kremlin-linked company had spent $100,000 purchasing divisive ads during the campaign on such hot-button topics of race, immigration, and gun control.