Executives from Silicon Valley’s top tech companies will meet on Friday to discuss how to prevent meddling on their platforms during the 2018 midterm elections.
Facebook invited a dozen firms to convene at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, according to BuzzFeed News, which obtained an email detailing the meeting.
It comes as Facebook, Google and Twitter have all taken steps this week to remove accounts believed to be linked to Iranian and Russian information operations.
Executives from Silicon Valley’s top tech companies will meet on Friday to discuss how to prevent meddling on their platforms during the 2018 midterm elections
‘As I’ve mentioned to several of you over the last few weeks, we have been looking to schedule a follow-on discussion to our industry conversation about information operations, election protection, and the work we are all doing to tackle these challenges,’ Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, wrote in the email.
In addition to Facebook, representatives from Google, Twitter, Microsoft and Snapchat are all expected to be in attendance, BuzzFeed said.
Some have expressed concerns that the meeting is being held only a few months before the midterm elections in November.
The meeting will be split into three parts, Gleicher explained in the email.
First, each company will have a chance to present the work they’ve been doing to prevent misinformation, then attendees will discuss any problems they’re facing, and finally, they’ll consider whether these meetings should be held regularly.
It’s not the first time that such a meeting has occurred, however.
Facebook invited a dozen firms to convene at Twitter’s San Francisco office (pictured). Reps from Google, Twitter, Microsoft and Snapchat are all expected to be in attendance
In May, representatives from Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Oath, Snap and Twitter met with Christopher Krebs, an undersecretary at the US Department of Homeland Security, and Mike Burham from the FBI’s foreign influence taskforce.
The meeting was focused around security strategies for the midterm election, but it was said to be a relatively one-sided discussion, as tech firms provided information about their activities, yet they received few details from federal intelligence officials.
Since then, pressure has ramped up considerably for Facebook, Google and Twitter to beef up tools for preventing future misinformation campaigns.
Each firm has reported several new meddling attempts in the course of this week alone.
Google yesterday announced it had removed 58 accounts believed to be tied to Iran’s state broadcaster, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB).
Among the accounts Google deleted were 39 channels on YouTube that had 13,466 total US views, 13 Google+ accounts and six blogs on Blogger.
A Facebook exec called the meeting and described that it would be broken into three parts. Each company will present the work they’re doing to prevent misinformation campaigns, then they’ll discuss problems they’re facing, as well as whether to hold similar meetings regularly
WHAT ARE THE CLAIMS ABOUT RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE ON FACEBOOK DURING THE US ELECTION?
Google, Twitter and Facebook have come under fire for allowing the spread of bogus news – some of which was directed by Russia – ahead of the 2016 US election and in other countries.
In a blog post in September 2017, Facebook said that more than 3,000 advertisements posted between June 2015 and May 2017 had Russian links.
These ads came from a Russian company called Internet Research Agency.
According to CNN, Russia-linked Facebook ads were targeted to reach people living in Michigan and Wisconsin, both of which were won narrowly by Trump.
Facebook told Congress that the apparent political meddling included use of its image-sharing application Instagram.
Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch told a hearing that Instagram posts by suspect Russian accounts were seen by some 20 million Americans last year.
‘I’ve expressed how upset I am that the Russians tried to use our tools to sow mistrust,’ Zuckerberg said
The data on Instagram is on top of the estimated 126 million Americans exposed to Facebook posts from Russian entities seeking to create divisions during the election campaign.
‘I’ve expressed how upset I am that the Russians tried to use our tools to sow mistrust,’ Zuckerberg said.
‘What they did is wrong and we are not going to stand for it.’
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg addressed criticism over allowing disinformation and manipulation during the US presidential election, just hours after the company’s top lawyer faced a grilling at a Washington congressional hearing at the end of last year.
‘Our community continues to grow and our business is doing well,’ Zuckerberg said.
‘But none of that matters if our services are used in ways that don’t bring people closer together. Protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits.’
Facebook and Twitter also shut down hundreds of accounts that were linked to Russian and Iranian misinformation campaigns.
Facebook removed a total of 653 inauthentic pages, groups and accounts, while Twitter suspended 284 accounts linked to Iran.
Still, many believe the tech giants were too slow to respond to foreign meddling attempts on their platforms.
Facebook became a hotbed for such activity during the 2016 presidential election, when Russian ‘troll factory’ the Internet Research Agency used the platform to spread false information and sow discord among users.
Earlier this year, tech executives from Twitter, Facebook and Google faced Congressional and Senate hearings to discuss how their platforms were central to foreign meddling in the 2016 presidential election.