If they're smart, they'll self-police before it becomes a question of legal remedies.
Whether or not it was the case, there should not be any question whether the elections of the world's supposed shining example of democracy might have been decided based on a foreign mafia state's disinformation campaign. Any companies that may have been unwitting accomplices need to own up and begin working on defensive measures immediately.
at some point human beings have to take responsibility for their own decisions instead of blaming everyone else.
The way I see it, ads work, but I feel the Russian angle is mostly overblown bullshit, and US with its history of fucking up elections worldwide should be the last to point fingers.
That said, I'd love for people to be consistent. If one believes that Russian targeted ads were so influencial that they swayed the election, they should just admit that ads are that powerful, and follow it to the natural conclusion - that the advertisement industry is evil and malicious, a disrespectable profession that's an affront to a free society. It's just people taking advantage of other people. So let's talk about that, and not about Russians.
This isn't just an abstract game of geopolitics, they're literally trying to incite racial violence.
1: http://thehill.com/policy/technology/353480-report-russian-b...
2: https://www.recode.net/2017/10/7/16439936/congressional-blac...
3: https://thinkprogress.org/armed-white-supremacist-protest-or...
Allowing a foreign national to purchase political ads is a crime. If Facebook knew the buyer for these political ads was Russian, they were breaking the law. $100k may seem like a pittance, but it is very unlikely that it constitutes the entirety of Russia's efforts on Facebook.
If there was any deeper collaboration with Russian persons seeking to influence the election there may be other crimes that were broken. This stuff is serious, especially considering the potential impact these efforts may have had.
And judging by how both Facebook and Twitter are soft-pedaling, scrubbing data, and not answering questions, both organizations probably know they're in potential legal hot water.
Doesn't that describe all advertising?
Also, shouldn't we be slightly happy that US tech companies were able to export US-audience advertising capacity to Russia, even though the dominant social network in Russia is now VKontakte? How much of this is just bellyaching because Facebook is making it too obvious that you are its product and not its customer, by selling its product (you) to foreign (to you) interests?
Russia would not have been able to get impressions for so many so cheaply if the US valued critical thinking skills over the mindless consumerism and status signaling via re-sharing certain types of content.
Second potential problem is that it is alleged that Facebook employees were embedded in the Trump campaign's digital efforts. This would not necessarily be a problem in and off itself, but there is a lot of rumbling about stolen voter data that was used for microtargetting on Facebook. If Facebook had knowledge of data that was illegally obtained by a hostile foreign intelligence service, there could be some additional culpability.
They were ads that highlighted social issues. That's it.
Maybe the fact that the majority of the ads were not explicitly promoting or attacking any particular candidate will be enough to absolve Facebook of any blame. But chances are there were far more ads purchased than just that $100k buy so the question will be what did Facebook know, when did they know, and what did they do about it. Same deal with Twitter.
If a Russian wants to tell someone in Germany that Hillary Clinton is just the worst, I don't think the US has any reason to expect it can stand between them and say they can't do that, just because she happens to be running a political campaign--especially since political campaigns in the US are interminably long and tedious, such that a public figure might be expected to be continuously connected to one political campaign or another for decades.
I think probably the best that could happen there is a disclosure rule, such that anyone that transmits such messages to a US recipient has to be able to identify the person or organization that created it, or to warn the recipient that the sender could not be identified.
Bad things happened through their products that would not have been possible, or at least as undetectable, without their products. "Bad things" refers to a foreign power running political ads to influence our democratic process. This is provoking a backlash.
I find analogy in the financial services industry's response to the 2008 crisis. Let's zoom in on Goldman Sachs creating structured products with hedge funds betting against said products [1].
Goldman created a product referencing an index. This is like an ETF [2] referencing the S&P 500 except the relationship isn't 1:1 and the index isn't the S&P 500. Goldman asked a hedge fund to help it build the index because (a) the hedge fund knew the market well and (b) Goldman hoped to sell the risky part of the product to the fund. (The risky part bet on things going down. In every trade you need a buyer (long) and a seller (short). In every structured product you need parties betting up (long) and betting down (short).)
TL; DR the hedge fund bought the risky part, Goldman marketed the other part, Goldman got paid its fee and the hedge fund made its money.
"But these were sophisticated parties!" "But Goldman were acting as a market maker! They didn't have a fiduciary obligation to anyone and their counterparties knew this!" "But the hedge fund is an independent agent!"
Doesn't matter. There was popular consensus that everyone looked like shit. If you don't say "that was shit, we won't let it happen again" you're in trouble. Society will create the laws and regulators to ensure it for you. Remember: laws are codified social constructs. The rule of law means codification precedes enforcement. But the social construct --> law process, the legislative process, is political. It's animalistic because we're animalistic.
The counter-arguments I presented above are technically correct. Just like it's technically correct to claim Facebook doesn't manually review its ads. Or like it's technically correct to say said ads probably didn't sway the outcome of the election. It doesn't matter. Russia would not have been able to micro-target fractures in American society with the precision, and without detection, from afar as they did with the algorithmically- and selectively-deployed ad platforms Facebook, Google and Twitter built. That the negative effect is an inherent consequence of the system doesn't help. In fact, making that claim is counterproductive since it implies an independent outsider, i.e. a regulator, is needed to help rebuild the system.
[1] https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/regulators-tackle-co...
Or at least, the money they told you they were getting was a pittance.
Go a little further down the rabbit hole, you'll have your answer
They hype, they hate, they hype, they hate.
Right now, it seems their getting on finger wagging band wagon.
When in 'hype' mode - the littlest, most innocuous thing is 'game changing'.
When in 'hate mode' - the littlest, most incidental act is 'an example of the entire failure of the Valley'.
Hype: Google Glasses 'will change how we interact as people'
Hate: 'An Uber rider refused to accept seeing/helper dog = Silicon Valley is Evil'
Major outlets are deeply intertwined and take cues from one another as to 'what the story of the hour' is.
All of the 'grievances' purported by the press against SV today, could have been made 10 years ago - but they weren't. Why not?
Andrew Keen at TechCrunch, or maybe the cynical guys at TheRegister were the only ones brave enough to say anything a while back. (Granted, Keen might be a cynic at heart :) ).