Rules requiring social media services to disclose the source of political ads purchased on their platforms likely won’t take effect before November midterms, the chair of the Federal Election Commission said Thursday.
“The commission has been reluctant to change the rules of the game in the middle of the election season, so that would be something we would want to seriously consider,” FEC Chairwoman Caroline Hunter told journalists, The Washington Post reported.
The FEC had been slated to vote on advancing rules that would subject social media services to new advertising transparency requirements in response to Russian operatives having allegedly purchased political ads displayed online during the 2016 presidential election, but dueling proposals offered by its Democratic and Republican members prompted the commission to delay that vote Thursday and revisit the topic next week instead, the report said.
The commission’s members plan to reconvene on Wednesday to unveil the negotiated proposal, but the process involved in adopting and implementing any new restrictions will “take a little bit of time,” Ms. Hunter acknowledged, notwithstanding ongoing concerns raised by the prospect of foreign actors meddling in the 2016 midterms.
“Are people really going to say, ’Oh, it’s too late in the game to run a disclaimer now’?” reacted Vice Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub, a Democrat. “Really? Really? I don’t really buy that.”
The FEC typically has six commissioners, but two vacancies have made deadlocks hard to avoid, Ms. Weintraub acknowledged.
“I would like to do more, but we’re not going to have four votes to do anything more than this very narrow rule-making,” Ms. Weintraub said, according to The Post. “If we can make progress on the very narrow front, that’s better than not making progress at all.”
Representatives from Facebook, Twitter and Google told lawmakers on Capitol Hill last year that Russian operatives exploited their platforms to push politically charged messages, disinformation and propaganda to U.S. audiences during the 2016 race.
On Facebook, Russian operatives employed by the Internet Research Agency, a St. Petersburg-based “troll farm,” spent about $100,000 on over 3,000 ads displayed during the 2016 election, according to the social network. Ultimately the trolls created content seen by upwards of 140 million account holders, ads or otherwise, including at least 129 event pages created for political rallies and other events.
“The FEC must close loopholes that have allowed foreign adversaries to sow discord and misinform the American electorate,” a group of 15 Democratic senators wrote the FEC in November. “The lack of transparency of digital ads is a threat to our national security. Without change, the misuse of online advertisements during the 2016 election will serve as a template for other foreign powers who wish to influence our elections.”
Separate from the FEC’s activities, a bill introduced in the Senate last year with bipartisan support, The Honest Ads Act, would “help prevent foreign actors from influencing our elections by ensuring that political ads solid online are covered by the same rules as ads sold on TV, radio and satellite,” according to its authors.
“In the wake of Russia’s attack on the 2016 election, it is more important than ever to strengthen our defenses against foreign interference in our elections,” Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, said in a statement after signing on to the Democrat-led bill in October. “Unfortunately U.S. laws requiring transparency in political campaigns have not kept pace with rapid advances in technology, allowing our adversaries to take advantage of these loopholes to influence millions of American voters with impunity.”
Nonetheless, the Trump administration has acknowledged as recently as this week that the 2018 midterms risk being hacked like the last presidential race.
“It’s highly likely that they will be doing something. We just don’t know how much and when and where,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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