Learning to Love McCarthyism

Trying to appease Congress and fend off threats of government regulation, the rich tech companies displayed their eagerness to eradicate any Russian taint.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

@ 00:39:07
WHITEHOUSE: And ultimately you are American companies and threats to American election security and threats to our peace and order are things that concern you greatly. Correct?
STRETCH: That is certainly correct.
SALGADO: That's right.
WHITEHOUSE: What I would like to do, and I don't have the time for here is to ask you all to answer a question for the record that I will ask now which is, Give us the key benchmarks of how you have improved with dealing with this problem in recent months or recent years; what your goal posts are ahead that you have not yet achieved but you're slated or intend to achieve to deal with this problem? Now that's two. Three would be, What does success look like to you? What can you come to us to say, We have accomplished X, therefore you as a congress don't need to worry about legislating in this space or creating regulations or holding more hearings because we have now gotten America's back? Can you do that for me?
STRETCH: Yes.
WHITEHOUSE: You are all also corporations have I believe headquarters and significant operations in the state of California. California has a state law regarding disclosure. Presumably you comply with that state law with regard to customers in California ah Are there lessons and recommendations that you would have for us in evaluating the effectiveness of the California disclosure law? [PAUSE] And given the short amount of time I have, I suppose, give me just a very very brief do you follow that law and, and very brief response to it, and then we can flesh out any question for the record how much of a model that might be for this committee to look at.
STRETCH: So, Senator, we comply with all applicable law. In terms of disclosure going forward we made an announcement last week that we drew on some of the ideas from the ah Honest Ads Act which Senator Klobuchar had introduced ah intended to ah bring ads' transparency um really into the political realm, creating a repository of searchable ads, providing innovative ways to  for advertisers to meet their disclosure requirements, and requiring documentation and information so that we can ensure that advertisers are not running political ads on Facebook in violation of federal election law.
WHITEHOUSE: So let me ask what will probably be my last question of this round anyway which is that you are all prepared as I understand it to undertake to make sure that you can trace content that goes across your platform that qualifies for concern in this area back to a legitimate source. So you know if it's a Russian who's actually running it, so if you know it's an imaginary entity that's actually running it. How do you deal with the problem of a legitimate and lawful but phony American shell corporation? One that calls itself, say, Americans for Puppies and Prosperity has a drop box as its address and a fifty million dollar check in its bank book that it''s using to spend to manipulate election outcomes?

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.