After Facebook announced it would endorse and implement the disclosure requirements outlined in the Honest Ads Act on Friday, lead sponsors Klobuchar and Warner wrote to Alphabet and Twitter CEOs asking their companies to do the same

WASHINGTON- U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Mark Warner (D-VA) today called on Twitter and Alphabet, Inc., the parent company of Google, to implement stronger transparency and accountability standards for online political advertisements. Specifically, the senators called on the companies to voluntarily implement the provisions in the Honest Ads Act, bipartisan legislation introduced by Senators Klobuchar, Warner and John McCain (R-AZ) that would require online political advertisements to abide by the same disclosure rules as television and radio ads.

Russia attempted to influence the 2016 presidential election by buying and placing political ads on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Google. However, Americans had no way of knowing who was behind the ads, because, unlike radio and television ads, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has exempted large swathes of online ads from general requirements to include disclaimers about who is responsible for the content, and platforms are not required to make public information about political ad purchases as cable, satellite, and broadcast providers must.

On Friday, April 6, Facebook announced that it would endorse and implement the disclosure requirements outlined in the Honest Ads Act. In today’s letters, Klobuchar and Warner asked Alphabet Inc. CEO Larry Page and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to do the same. 

“The dramatic increase in digital political advertisements—with $1.4 billion spent on online political ads during the last election—and the growing centrality of digital platforms in the lives of Americans, requires Congress to take meaningful action to ensure that laws and regulations provide fundamental accountability and transparency. As sponsors of the Honest Ads Act, we were pleased to see Facebook endorse our legislation and announce a series of measures to voluntarily comply with the bill’s provisions. As we work to pass the legislation in Congress, we believe that companies selling the most political advertisements should act immediately to ensure people have a clear understanding of who is paying to influence our elections,” the senators wrote. “This lack of transparency has dangerous implications for our democracy. As we saw in the 2016 presidential election, foreign actors can seek to influence the electorate without voters’ knowledge through online political advertising.

As Ranking Member of the Senate Rules Committee with oversight jurisdiction over federal elections, Klobuchar has introduced legislation to improve the security of U.S. election systems and protect our country’s elections from future foreign influence. Last month, Klobuchar and Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) called on Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) to hold a hearing at which Senators could publicly question the CEOs of technology companies. They sent a bipartisan letter following reports that Cambridge Analytica misused the data of 50 million Facebook users. Even before the breach, Klobuchar and Kennedy began calls for the technology companies to come before the Judiciary Committee.

In December, Klobuchar introduced the Secure Elections Act with Senators James Lankford (R-OK), Kamala Harris (D-CA), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to strengthen election cybersecurity in America and protect against foreign interference in future elections. The Secure Elections Act streamlines cybersecurity information-sharing between federal intelligence entities and state election agencies; provides security clearances to state election officials; and provides resources for states to upgrade election security. This bipartisan solution would bolster our election systems against future threats while protecting states’ primacy in running elections.

Klobuchar and Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) have also introduced the bipartisan Stop Foreign Donations Affecting Our Elections Act to strengthen disclosure by requiring federal campaigns to use existing credit card verification protocols to help verify that online credit card donations come from U.S. sources. In June, Klobuchar introduced the Helping State and Local Governments Prevent Cyber Attacks Act to help combat foreign interference by providing state and local governments with the information and resources they need to keep our elections secure and improve voter confidence.

The full text of the senators’ letters are below: 

Dear Mr. Page:

We write to urge you to implement stronger transparency and accountability standards for online political advertisements sold by Google. The dramatic increase in digital political advertisements—with $1.4 billion spent on online political ads during the last election—and the growing centrality of digital platforms in the lives of Americans, requires Congress to take meaningful action to ensure that laws and regulations provide fundamental accountability and transparency. As sponsors of the Honest Ads Act, we were pleased to see Facebook endorse our legislation and announce a series of measures to voluntarily comply with the bill’s provisions. As we work to pass the legislation in Congress, we believe that companies selling the most political advertisements should act immediately to ensure people have a clear understanding of who is paying to influence our elections.

As you know, a combination of statutes, FEC rules, and FCC rules currently create a disclaimer and disclosure framework for political advertisements disseminated by broadcast, cable, and satellite providers. However, a provider like Google—whose base of active users of multiple products and services are each larger than the subscriber base of the largest cable or satellite provider—faces significantly fewer transparency requirements.

This lack of transparency has dangerous implications for our democracy. As we saw in the 2016 presidential election, foreign actors can seek to influence the electorate without voters’ knowledge through online political advertising. Recent revelations about the misuse of user data for political ad targeting have only heightened our concerns regarding the ability for bad actors to abuse technology developed and managed by your company. Reports also indicate that Google worked directly with a secretive political group to target carefully tailored anti-Muslim ads to voters in key swing states, with Google’s sales staff and creative advisors providing technical assistance to the group to narrowly target the racially insensitive ads to key audiences.

The Honest Ads Act would apply analogous rules to online political advertisements that currently exist in traditional media, bringing long-overdue transparency to the opaque market of online political advertising. It would extend existing disclaimer obligations that print, broadcast, and cable ads must already meet to analogous political ads disseminated on online platforms like YouTube and Google Search. And it would require digital platforms to maintain a public record of political ads purchased by an advertiser who spends more than $500 in any 12-month period. Lastly, it requires that all advertising platforms — whether broadcast, radio or digital — make reasonable efforts to ensure that the prohibition on foreign nationals attempting to influence our elections through donations, expenditures or other things of value is not violated. These measures not only increase transparency in political advertising, but also promote accountability—both of platforms and of political advertisers.

We were pleased to see both Twitter and Facebook announce voluntary commitments that embody at least some of the proposals contained in the Honest Ads Act. We encourage Google to take this issue seriously and adopt similar commitments to enhance transparency for their users. In addition, we encourage you to follow Facebook’s lead and endorse the Honest Ads Act.

Sincerely,

 Dear Mr. Dorsey:

We write to urge you to implement stronger transparency and accountability standards for online political advertisements sold by Twitter. The dramatic increase in digital political advertisements—with $1.4 billion spent on online political ads during the last election—and the growing centrality of digital platforms in the lives of Americans, requires Congress to take meaningful action to ensure that laws and regulations provide fundamental accountability and transparency. As sponsors of the Honest Ads Act, we were pleased to see Facebook endorse our legislation and announce a series of measures to voluntarily comply with the bill’s provisions. As we work to pass the legislation in Congress, we believe that companies selling the most political advertisements should act immediately to ensure people have a clear understanding of who is paying to influence our elections. While Twitter has announced a set of similar measures, we urge the company to enhance these efforts and support legislation to formalize these commitments.

As you know, a combination of statutes, FEC rules, and FCC rules currently create a disclaimer and disclosure framework for political advertisements disseminated by broadcast, cable, and satellite providers. However, a provider like Twitter—whose base of active users of multiple products and services are each larger than the subscriber base of the largest cable or satellite provider—faces significantly fewer transparency requirements.

This lack of transparency has dangerous implications for our democracy. As we saw in the 2016 presidential election, foreign actors can seek to influence the electorate without voters’ knowledge through online political advertising. Recent revelations about the misuse of user data for political ad targeting have only heightened our concerns regarding the ability for bad actors to abuse technology developed and managed by your company. Reports also indicate that two of the largest platforms worked directly with a secretive political group to target carefully tailored anti-Muslim ads to voters in key swing states, with Google’s sales staff and creative advisors providing technical assistance to the group to narrowly target the racially insensitive ads to key audiences.

The Honest Ads Act would apply analogous rules to online political advertisements that currently exist in traditional media, bringing long-overdue transparency to the opaque market of online political advertising. It would extend existing disclaimer obligations that print, broadcast, and cable ads must already meet to analogous political ads disseminated on online platforms like Twitter. And it would require digital platforms to maintain a public record of political ads purchased by an advertiser who spends more than $500 in any 12-month period. Lastly, it requires that all advertising platforms — whether broadcast, radio or digital — make reasonable efforts to ensure that the prohibition on foreign nationals attempting to influence our elections through donations, expenditures or other things of value is not violated. These measures not only increase transparency in political advertising, but also promote accountability—both of platforms and of political advertisers.

We were pleased to see both Twitter and Facebook announce voluntary commitments that embody at least some of the proposals contained in the Honest Ads Act. We encourage Twitter to build on these efforts, particularly in the treatment of so-called ‘issue ads.’ In addition, we encourage you to follow Facebook’s lead and endorse the Honest Ads Act.

Sincerely, 

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