{"id":88224,"date":"2017-11-02T06:21:27","date_gmt":"2017-11-02T10:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=88224"},"modified":"2017-11-02T06:21:27","modified_gmt":"2017-11-02T10:21:27","slug":"while-many-considered-obama-the-antichrist-the-nyt-links-hillary-to-satan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=88224","title":{"rendered":"While many considered Obama the Antichrist, the NYT links Hillary to Satan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia-Financed Ad Linked Clinton and Satan<\/h1>\n

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By CECILIA KANG, NICHOLAS FANDOS and MIKE ISAAC
\nThe New York Times<\/p>\n

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Sean Edgett, Twitter\u2019s acting general counsel, testified Wednesday in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Credit Eric Thayer for The New York Times<\/p><\/div>\n

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WASHINGTON \u2014 Lawmakers released\u00a0scores of political ads<\/a>\u00a0on Wednesday purchased by Russian agents on Facebook and Twitter that showed the extent of the Kremlin\u2019s\u00a0attempts to polarize the American voting public<\/a>\u00a0on issues like race, police abuse and religion.<\/p>\n

Russia-linked actors created accounts with names like Blacktivists and Back the Badge aimed at voters concerned about police relations with their communities, and other accounts that called for secure borders that were aimed at immigration hard-liners. One account, Army of Jesus, published an illustration of an arm-wrestling match between Christ and the devil. \u201cSatan: If I win, Clinton wins!\u201d the headline read.<\/p>\n

The sampling of ads, some of which had been made public earlier, came during a second day of hearings with the top lawyers for Facebook, Twitter and Google and were intended to show the executives how pervasively Russia used their platforms to further its campaign of misinformation. Lawmakers of both parties expressed frustration with answers that fell short of what they had hoped and insisted that the companies, long the darlings of American technology, do better.<\/p>\n

\u201cI must say, I don\u2019t think you get it,\u201d said Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who was also at the first hearing a day earlier. \u201cI went home last night with profound disappointment. I asked specific questions, I got vague answers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Facebook, Google and Twitter said their general counsels were best equipped to dive into policy and legal questions. But counsels\u2019 appearances on Capitol Hill also allowed the companies\u2019 chief executives to escape high-profile scrutiny.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m disappointed that you\u2019re here, and not your C.E.O.s,\u201d said Senator Angus King, independent of Maine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Lawmakers also complained that the companies had taken months to acknowledge Russia\u2019s interference on their sites.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have more than a little bit of frustration that many of us on this committee have been raising this issue since the beginning of this year, and our claims were, frankly, blown off by the leadership of your companies,\u201d said Senator\u00a0Mark Warner<\/a>\u00a0of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.<\/p>\n

Facebook\u2019s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, and chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, spent Wednesday at the company\u2019s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., talking to investors and analysts as they reported blockbuster quarterly earnings. The stocks of both Google and Facebook, which faced the most criticism in the hearings, are at record highs.<\/p>\n

During the earnings call, Mr. Zuckerberg was unequivocal in his stance on the issue of Russian meddling in the election.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve expressed how upset I am that the Russians used our tools to sow mistrust,\u201d Mr. Zuckerberg said, noting that Facebook\u2019s profits will probably be affected by the amount of money the company will spend fighting abuse of its platform. Facebook said it plans to double the number of content reviewers it employs, to 20,000, and will try to add a greater degree of transparency into its advertising system.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they did is wrong, and we\u2019re not going to stand for it,\u201d Mr. Zuckerberg said.<\/p>\n

The tech companies also provided new numbers on the reach of Russia\u2019s influence campaign. Facebook said an estimated 150 million users of its main site and its subsidiary, Instagram, were exposed to the posts, a larger figure than it provided even as recently as Monday.<\/p>\n

During the last of the three hearings, members of the House Intelligence Committee spoke in front of posters displaying the content, complaining that it was divisive.<\/p>\n

Representative Andr\u00e9 Carson, Democrat of Indiana, said an account called Being Patriotic, which amassed 200,000 followers, pushed out content that \u201ccynically exploits grieving officers and their loved ones in order to pit Americans concerned about our law enforcement personnel against Americans concerned about African-American lives lost during police encounters.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A collection of ads that were created by Russia-linked social media firms tasked with creating influential content.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The account was created by the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy concern is that a dictator like Vladimir Putin abused flaws in our social media platforms to inject the worst kind of identity politics into the voting decisions of at least 100 million Americans,\u201d Mr. Carson said, referring to the Russian president.<\/p>\n

Facebook has found a particularly vocal set of\u00a0critics on the Congressional Black Caucus<\/a>, of which Mr. Carson is a member along with Representative Terri A. Sewell, Democrat of Alabama. Together, they pressed Facebook to grapple with its role in promoting racial animus.<\/p>\n

Ms. Sewell cited figures showing few blacks in Facebook\u2019s work force and its leadership \u2014 a lack of diversity that she said made it hard to believe that those reviewing socially divisive ads could spot problematic posts.<\/p>\n

The hearings exposed a growing rift between Silicon Valley and Washington, where\u00a0sentiment toward big tech companies has drastically shifted<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While the lawyers showed humility and promised to beef up security and improve technology to prevent foreign interference in elections, they admitted they could not guarantee they would prevent future intrusions. Google\u2019s general counsel, Kent Walker, said the company would work on creating new technologies to detect foreign actors and misinformation on its site. All three said they would build artificial intelligence tools to combat fake and problematic content.<\/p>\n

Some lawmakers\u00a0used the hearings to stake a position on the influence of the Kremlin\u2019s\u00a0<\/a>social media use<\/a>\u00a0in the election. The conclusions, particularly among senators, split along political lines. Republicans offered an implicit defense of the legitimacy of President Trump\u2019s victory and dismissed the effect of Russian meddling.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of folks, including many in the media, have tried to reduce this entire conversation down to one premise: Foreign actors conducted a surgically executed covert operation to help elect a United States president,\u201d said Senator Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. \u201cI\u2019m here to tell you this story does not simplify that easily.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, emphasized that the real intent of Russian propaganda was to broadly spread misinformation and create chaos.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese operations \u2014 while we\u2019re talking about the 2016 presidential race \u2014 they\u2019re not limited to 2016, and they were not limited to the presidential race, and they continue to this day,\u201d he said. \u201cThey are much more widespread than one election.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such comments offered a rare view into the Senate\u00a0committee\u2019s investigation<\/a>, which has largely played out over the past nine months in secured briefing rooms. Publicly and in private, Mr. Burr and Mr. Warner have taken pains to preserve bipartisan comity, and their success has set the committee apart from the other panels investigating Russia\u2019s efforts.<\/p>\n

But the difference in their emphasis on Wednesday also underscored the political realities buffeting their work. In advancing an investigation tied to Mr. Trump, Mr. Burr has been careful to make clear that the committee\u2019s work is larger than an individual candidate, and he has repeatedly tried to tamp down expectations about what it might find.<\/p>\n

Democrats did not have such reticence.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether the Russians and the campaign coordinated these efforts, we do not yet know, but it is true that the Russians mounted what could be described as an independent expenditure campaign on Mr. Trump\u2019s behalf,\u201d said Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.<\/p>\n

Senator Martin Heinrich, Democrat of New Mexico, also took aim at Mr. Trump\u2019s dismissal of the role of Russia-linked social media in his win. Mr. Heinrich challenged Colin Stretch, Facebook\u2019s general counsel, to acknowledge such content and the role that fake accounts linked to Russia and other misinformation had in the election.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast month, President Trump called Russian-purchased Facebook ads a\u00a0\u2018hoax,\u2019\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Mr. Heinrich said. \u201cI\u2019ve looked at those Russian-sponsored Facebook ads. I certainly hope you\u2019ve had a chance to review them. Are they, in fact, a hoax?\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Stretch said no. \u201cThe existence of those ads were on Facebook,\u201d he said, \u201cand it was not a hoax.\u201d<\/p>\n