Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook will give ads linked to Russian government to Congress

Jessica Guynn | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Facebook to release Russia ads to Congress Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the company is "actively working" with the U.S. government on its ongoing investigations into Russian interference into the 2016 presidential election. (Sept. 21)

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook will provide congressional investigators with more than 3,000 ads bought by entities linked to the Russian government to sway the 2016 U.S. election, a capitulation to Washington lawmakers that have criticized the social network's role in Russian election meddling.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg also pledged Wednesday that his company would do everything it could to prevent "bad actors" from again using Facebook to manipulate voter sentiment during elections. He promised Facebook would make the origin of political ads more transparent to its users and it would take greater care in reviewing political ads.

The moves, which run counter to Facebook's policy, look to shore up support for the company after the damaging revelation that shadowy buyers bought the ads and targeted them at U.S. users between 2015 and 2017.

More: There is meddling in Germany's election — not by Russia, but by U.S. right wing

More: Paper ballots are back in vogue thanks to Russian hacking fears

More: Facebook delivers Russian ad data to special counsel Robert Mueller

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House intelligence committee, said the data being turned over by Facebook "should help us better understand what happened."

"It will be important for the committee to scrutinize how rigorous Facebook's internal investigation has been, to test its conclusions and to understand why it took as long as it did to discover the Russian sponsored advertisements and what else may yet be uncovered," Schiff said in a statement.

In a public appearance streamed live from the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Zuckerberg said Facebook was determined to make it "much harder" for anyone to interfere in elections and to "use our tools to undermine democracy."

That effort will get its first test during this weekend's elections in Germany.

"It is a new challenge for Internet communities to deal with nation states attempting to subvert elections. But if that's what we must do, we are committed to rising to the occasion," Zuckerberg said.

In early September, Facebook disclosed that it sold approximately $100,000 in political ads that were used to sow political discord during last year's contentious presidential election.

Lawmakers are considering holding a hearing on the ads Facebook sold and may ask Zuckerberg to testify. And activity on Facebook has become the focus of an investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into collusion between the Russian government and Donald Trump's campaign.

The Russian affair comes on the heels of criticism for Facebook's role in spreading fake or misleading pro-Trump news in the run-up to the presidential election and as it faces a series of escalating political crises.

Facebook this week had to change its self-serve advertising system after it was revealed that marketers could target ads in discriminatory ways such as users who listed interests such as "Jew hater."

More: Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg says ads targeting 'Jew haters' failed users, pledges reform

In Europe, Zuckerberg's company is under scrutiny from antitrust regulators and in the U.S., it's facing a similar backlash in Washington, both from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — Democrats who are sounding the alarm about the growing influence and heft of U.S. tech companies — and nationalist Republicans, who are criticizing those same companies for adopting liberal stances on immigration and other social issues.

"We are starting to hear concerns out of Washington for the first time ever that Facebook is starting to get too powerful," says Siva Vaidhyanathan, professor of media studies at University of Virginia and the author of The Googlization of Everything: (And Why We Should Worry) and an upcoming book on Facebook. "Those suspicions are growing and they are putting pressure on Facebook."

Below are Zuckerberg's full remarks:

Today is my first day back in the office after taking parental leave. It was really special to be with Priscilla and August after she was born, and to get to spend some more time with Max.

While I was out on leave, I spent a lot of time with our teams on the question of Russian interference in the US elections. I made some decisions on the next steps we're taking, and I want to share those with you now.

First, let me say this. I care deeply about the democratic process and protecting its integrity. Facebook's mission is all about giving people a voice and bringing people closer together. Those are deeply democratic values and we're proud of them. 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 democracy around the world. That's why we've built teams dedicated to working on election integrity and preventing governments from interfering in the elections of other nations. And as we've shared before, our teams have found and shut down thousands of fake accounts that could be attempting to influence elections in many countries, including recently in the French elections.

Now, I wish I could tell you we're going to be able to stop all interference, but that wouldn't be realistic. There will always be bad people in the world, and we can't prevent all governments from all interference. But we can make it harder. We can make it a lot harder. And that's what we're going to do.

So today I want to share the steps we're taking to protect election integrity and make sure that Facebook is a force for good in democracy. While the amount of problematic content we've found so far remains relatively small, any attempted interference is a serious issue. Here are 9 things we'll be working on over the next few months:

1. We are actively working with the US government on its ongoing investigations into Russian interference. We have been investigating this for many months, and for a while we had found no evidence of fake accounts linked to Russia running ads. When we recently uncovered this activity, we provided that information to the special counsel. We also briefed Congress -- and this morning I directed our team to provide the ads we've found to Congress as well. As a general rule, we are limited in what we can discuss publicly about law enforcement investigations, so we may not always be able to share our findings publicly. But we support Congress in deciding how to best use this information to inform the public, and we expect the government to publish its findings when their investigation is complete.

2. We will continue our investigation into what happened on Facebook in this election. We may find more, and if we do, we will continue to work with the government. We are looking into foreign actors, including additional Russian groups and other former Soviet states, as well as organizations like the campaigns, to further our understanding of how they used our tools. These investigations will take some time, but we will continue our thorough review.

3. Going forward — and perhaps the most important step we're taking — we're going to make political advertising more transparent. When someone buys political ads on TV or other media, they're required by law to disclose who paid for them. But you still don't know if you're seeing the same messages as everyone else. So we're going to bring Facebook to an even higher standard of transparency. Not only will you have to disclose which page paid for an ad, but we will also make it so you can visit an advertiser's page and see the ads they're currently running to any audience on Facebook. We will roll this out over the coming months, and we will work with others to create a new standard for transparency in online political ads.

4. We will strengthen our ad review process for political ads. To be clear, it has always been against our policies to use any of our tools in a way that breaks the law -- and we already have many controls in place to prevent this. But we can do more. Most ads are bought programmatically through our apps and website without the advertiser ever speaking to anyone at Facebook. That's what happened here. But even without our employees involved in the sales, we can do better.

Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you we're going to catch all bad content in our system. We don't check what people say before they say it, and frankly, I don't think our society shouldn't want us to. Freedom means you don't have to ask permission first, and that by default you can say what you want. If you break our community standards or the law, then you're going to face consequences afterwards. We won't catch everyone immediately, but we can make it harder to try to interfere.

5. We are increasing our investment in security and specifically election integrity. In the next year, we will more than double the team working on election integrity. In total, we'll add more than 250 people across all our teams focused on security and safety for our community.

6. We will expand our partnerships with election commissions around the world. We already work with electoral commissions in many countries to help people register to vote and learn about the issues. We'll keep doing that, and now we're also going to establish a channel to inform election commissions of the online risks we've identified in their specific elections.

7. We will increase sharing of threat information with other tech and security companies. We already share information on bad actors on the internet through programs like ThreatExchange, and now we're exploring ways we can share more information about anyone attempting to interfere with elections. It is important that tech companies collaborate on this because it's almost certain that any actor trying to misuse Facebook will also be trying to abuse other internet platforms too.

8. We are working proactively to strengthen the democratic process. Beyond pushing back against threats, we will also create more services to protect our community while engaging in political discourse. For example, we're looking at adapting our anti-bullying systems to protect against political harassment as well, and we're scaling our ballot information tools to help more people understand the issues.

9. We have been working to ensure the integrity of the German elections this weekend, from taking actions against thousands of fake accounts, to partnering with public authorities like the Federal Office for Information Security, to sharing security practices with the candidates and parties. We're also examining the activity of accounts we've removed and have not yet found a similar type of effort in Germany. This is incredibly important and we have been focused on this for a while.

At the same time, it's important not to lose sight of the more straightforward and larger ways Facebook plays a role in elections -- and these effects operate at much larger scales of 100x or 1000x bigger than what we're discussing here.

In 2016, people had billions of interactions and open discussions on Facebook that may never have happened offline. Candidates had direct channels to communicate with tens of millions of citizens. Campaigns spent tens of millions organizing and advertising online to get their messages out further. And we organized "get out the vote" efforts that helped as many as 2 million people register to vote who might not have voted otherwise. Many of these dynamics were new in this election, or at much larger scale than ever before in history, and at much larger scale than the interference we've found.

But we are in a new world. It is a new challenge for internet communities to deal with nation states attempting to subvert elections. But if that's what we must do, we are committed to rising to the occasion. Our sophistication in handling these threats is growing and improving quickly. We will continue working with the government to understand the full extent of Russian interference, and we will do our part not only to ensure the integrity of free and fair elections around the world, but also to give everyone a voice and to be a force for good in democracy everywhere.

Thanks for tuning in, and we'll keep you updated with more soon.