Colin Stretch, general counsel of Facebook, testifies before Congress on Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections. Photo credit: Diego Radzinschi/ALM.

In the first of three hearings with congressional committees scheduled for this week, attorneys from Facebook Inc., Google Inc. and Twitter Inc. gathered Tuesday in Washington, D.C., to testify about Russia's efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

At the hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee's crime and terrorism subcommittee, Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch, Twitter acting general counsel Sean Edgett and Google director of law enforcement and information security Richard Salgado took center stage in explaining the scope of Russia's campaign to influence the election through the spread of disinformation. From the start, these three tech attorneys divulged that Russia's reach was much broader than previously reported.

Facebook revealed in early October that roughly 10 million people in the United States saw Russia-linked content that focused “on divisive social and political messages,” but according to Stretch's prepared testimony Tuesday, this figure is actually closer to 126 million U.S. users. “When it comes to the 2016 election, I want to be clear: We take what happened on Facebook very seriously,” Stretch said in his prepared remarks, adding that “the foreign interference we saw is reprehensible.”

Stretch added: “That foreign actors, hiding behind fake accounts, abused our platform and other internet services to try to sow division and discord—and to try to undermine the election, is directly contrary to our values and goes against everything Facebook stands for.”

Going forward, Stretch said Facebook will hire more ad reviewers, increase security engineering efforts, put in place tighter ad content restrictions, launch new tools to improve ad transparency and require more information from political ad buyers.

According to Edgett's prepared remarks, Twitter discovered north of 2,700 accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency, a Russian organization with ties to the Kremlin, between September and November 2016. This far exceeds the previously reported number of about 200 known accounts connected to Russia. To thwart similar incidents in the future, Edgett pointed to changes at Twitter, such as enhanced safety policies, better tools to detect and stop malicious activity and tighter advertising standards.

Google's Salgado reported in his prepared statement that the company found evidence of ads and YouTube channels designed to spread divisive messages. Specifically, there were 18 YouTube channels with roughly 1,100 videos likely associated with government-backed entities, according to Salgado. Google's efforts in the future, Salgado said in his remarks, will include more transparency around political ads and a transparency report to be released in 2018 for election ads.

All three attorneys emphasized in their prepared remarks that the Russia-linked content disseminated on each company's platform, though highly concerning, amounted to only a small portion of content available on their respective sites. This did little to assuage concerns from senators, though, as the in-house lawyers were pressed about everything from how they will ensure this doesn't happen again to whether they'd back the Honest Ads Act.

Committed to a Plan

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who is a ranking member of the subcommittee, asked whether the companies “have moved beyond any notion that your job is only to provide a platform and whatever goes across it is not your affair.”

Stretch responded that Facebook's commitment to addressing this problem is “unwavering” and that the company is “committed to investing as necessary to prevent this from happening again.” Edgett and Salgado similarly expressed dedication to dealing with the issue.

The Honest Ads Act

Sen. Amy Klobuchar asked the three attorneys whether their respective companies would support the Honest Ads Act, which aims to regulate online political advertising in the same way as television, radio and print.

While all three in some way expressed support for the goals behind the Honest Ads Act, not one of the attorneys said yes to the question from Klobuchar, who is a backer of the bill.

“Just to clarify, while you are taking responsibility for a lot of what's happening here and trying to make some changes, there wouldn't be an outside enforcer of any of your policies, right? It'll just be you. Is that true?” Klobuchar asked.

That's correct, was the answer provided by one of the attorneys.

Content Regulator or Neutral Platforms?

Later in the hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz homed in on a major problem for these three companies, which is that they regulate content—Cruz pointed to an ad from U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn that was recently pulled by Twitter, as an example—all the while considering themselves neutral platforms.

“We think of Facebook as a platform for all ideas,” said Stretch, in response. “We have boundaries in the sense that we don't permit certain categories of content, such as hate speech. But within those guidelines, we do not in any way discriminate on the basis of viewpoint or ideology.”

Stretch, however, wouldn't explicitly say Facebook considers itself a neutral platform, saying: “we don't think of it in the terms of 'neutral.'”

Cruz went on to press Stretch and Edgett on how they respond to the concern that “your companies and other Silicon Valley companies are putting their thumb on the scale of political debate and shifting it in ways consistent with the political view of your employees.”

“We are acutely aware of the possibility of unconscious bias across a range of issues, not just politics. And we train our employees on that for that precise reason,” Stretch replied. “We want to make sure that people's own biases are not brought to bear in how we mange the platform.”

Twitter is similarly training employees on these issues, said Edgett, adding that the company's goal is to remain impartial.

Tuesday's hearings concluded after more than three hours. Wednesday, Stretch and Edgett will be joined by Google general counsel Kent Walker as they testify about Russian interference in the election before the Senate and House intelligence committees.