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Twitter joins Facebook in supporting the Honest Ads Act
Twitter has officially announced its support for the Honest Ads Act a week after Facebook did the same via the latter's CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Which is appropriate given the bill exists because election-influencing ads ran rampant on both platforms leading up to the 2016 presidential election. The legislation was introduced last year to enforce transparency about who backed and paid for online political ads.
What to expect from Mark Zuckerberg’s congressional hearings
The next stop on Mark Zuckerberg's apology tour is the United States Congress. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the Facebook co-founder and CEO will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee. This comes after weeks of uncertainty over whether Zuckerberg would agree to meet with lawmakers following the Cambridge Analytica (CA) scandal, which may have exposed the private information of up to 87 million users.
Facebook, Twitter and social media’s road to federal regulation
The extent of Russia's meddling in the 2016 US presidential election remains unclear, but it's no secret that social media played a major role. This year brought with it a great deal of scrutiny for tech giants, particularly Facebook, Twitter and Google. These three companies came under the US government's microscope after news that Kremlin bots and trolls, spearheaded by a group known as the Internet Research Agency, used their sites to tamper with the 2016 presidential election. They spread misinformation (fake news!) and dubious ads across Facebook, Twitter and Google to hundreds of millions of users in the US, with the aim of fomenting hostility among Americans. And it's safe to say they succeeded.
Congress seeks transparent online political spending with Honest Ads Act
Following revelations that Kremlin-backed online actors bought and ran divisive social media advertising during the 2016 presidential election, three Senators introduced a bipartisan bill aimed at regulating online ad buys. If passed, it would require Google, Facebook, Twitter and the rest of their ilk to follow the same rules as traditional media.
