Senator Al Franken blasts Facebook for failure to notice Russian election meddling

In the run-up to the 2016 election, Facebook sold at least $100,000 worth of adverts to a shadowy Russian Internet company

US Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, attends a US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism hearing on Russian influence with representatives from Facebook, Twitter and Google. (SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

Democratic Senator Al Franken has blasted Facebook’s general counsel for the social platform’s failure to recognise earlier that Russia was attempting to meddle in last year’s presidential race.

In the run-up to the 2016 election, Facebook sold at least $100,000 worth of adverts to a shadowy Russian Internet company, the company has said, with several payments being made in rubles, the Russian currency.

The revelation rattled Capitol Hill, which will host executives and other representatives from the social media giants over the next few days as members of Congress seek to get to the bottom of the issue about what happened.

“How does Facebook, which prides itself on being able to process billions of data points and instantly transform them into personal connections for its users, somehow not make the connection that electoral ads, paid for in roubles, were coming from Russia?” Mr Franken said during one of the few loud and tense moments during a Senate judiciary subcommittee hearing on Tuesday afternoon.

“American political ads and Russian money, rubles: How could you not connect those two dots!” Mr Franken said.

Colin Stretch, the platform’s general counsel, attempted to explain that it was something Facebook should have addressed.

“In hindsight we should have had a broader lens. There were signals we missed,” he said.

Mr Franken also demanded to know if Facebook would refuse to sell American political ads in the future that are paid for in rubles or the won, North Korea’s currency.

Mr Stretch said the platform was going to try to stop political manipulation by foreign actors. However, the type of payment is not the most important factor, he said.

“It's relatively easy to change currencies,” he added.

In another tense moment during the hearing, Senator John Kennedy worked to get Mr Stretch to admit that Facebook currently doesn’t have the capability to find the true identity of all of the parties that advertise on its platforms.

Facebook has about 5m advertisers on a monthly basis, according to Mr Stretch.

“You have 5 million advertisers that change every year, every month, probably every second... You do not have the ability to know about every one of those advertisers, do you?” Mr Kennedy asked.

Mr Stretch eventually acknowledged that advertisers likely can obscure their identities.