The Technology 202: Snap launches political ads library

Snap told me it has launched a political ad library in recent days that will list all political and advocacy ads on its platform; so far, the library includes more than 1,000 ads purchased in 2019 promoting President Trump, and 2020 rivals former vice president Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) The database also includes third-party ads touching on hot-button issues, including ads from Planned Parenthood and even ads about criminal justice restructuring from the ice cream company Ben and Jerry’s.

The library includes how much each advertiser is spending on its ad buy.

Snap is just the latest firm to proactively create a database of its political ads as 2020 gets underway. Snap said it didn't find evidence that Russian actors bought ads on its platform after an internal audit following the 2016 election so it hasn't confronted the same political blowback in Washington as larger platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google, which have previously rolled out similar databases. 

But it highlights a growing awareness that smaller social media companies are targets of malign influence operations, and need to be regulated like everyone else when it comes to political activity, according to lawmakers. Right now, companies are left up to their own devices in policing such ads and their individual rules are inconsistent and vary in quality.

Brendan Fischer, director of federal reform at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, told me Snap's database is a “positive step.” But he warned of the general inconsistency governing such efforts.

“The big shortcoming in any of self-regulatory efforts is that any effort by a particular platform is not going to apply to any other platform,” he said. 

That's worrying lawmakers on Capitol Hill who have been trying to pass the bipartisan Honest Ads Act, which would force social media companies to abide by the same rules that apply to political ads on television and radio, and require large companies to keep a public file of the political ads they're selling.

One senator co-sponsoring that bill says Snap's new library doesn't go far enough. 

“It’s commendable that more companies are increasing transparency when it comes to political advertising; however, a patchwork of voluntary measures from tech companies isn’t sufficient — we need to pass the Honest Ads Act,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) told me.

“The goal of my legislation is to ensure that all major platforms that sell political advertisements are held to the same rules of the road, something that is already required for television, radio and print political advertising. Americans have a right to know who is paying to influence them regardless of where ads are sold.”

Klobuchar introduced her legislation in 2017 with Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and the late senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) as a response to findings that Russian actors targeted American voters with social media ads designed to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. Some ads attacked Hillary Clinton or boosted Trump, but others sought to exploit divisive social issues. Klobuchar said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has blocked the bill from coming up for a vote. 

Fischer warns that without government regulation, there is no accountability for smaller social media companies that might be selling political ads. 

“Ads on platforms other than those big four are not going to be disclosed,” he said. 

There is some was evidence Russia also influenced smaller social networks in 2016 including Pinterest, where Americans unwittingly posted political content created by Russian operatives. Pinterest and other emerging social networks like TikTok have policies that prohibit the sale of political ads on their platforms. 

But other platforms, like Reddit, continue to allow such sales — under tight rules that require the company to preapprove political ads and require the advertiser to disclose who paid for it. But the company does not maintain any sort of ongoing library of ads.

“Under the Honest Ads Act, the threshold is a site having at least 50 million monthly active users and, to the extent Reddit sells political ads, it should follow the lead of other large platforms and establish a political ad library,” Warner told me. 

Researchers and journalists also argue that databases maintained by Facebook, Twitter and Google are imperfect. 

“All three are doing things right, and all are doing things wrong,” said Laura Edelson, a PhD candidate at New York University. 

Facebook was the first company to create an ad library. But researchers and journalists using the tool have encountered technical challenges, as the New York Times first reported. Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesman, tells me since that story was published, the company has made a number of changes to improve its developer tool, including fixing bugs. 

Edelson says Google has one of the best ad libraries from a technical perspective, but it doesn’t include as many ads as other platforms. Google’s library only includes ads related to current federal officeholers or people running for federal offices like the presidency and Congress, so it’s missing key issue ads and ads related to local elections. 

Google spokeswoman Charlotte Smith said the company is committed to more transparency. Google is "working with experts in the U.S. and around the world to explore tools that capture a wider range of political ads—including issue ads, state and local election ads, and political ads in other countries," she said. 

Twitter’s ad library has come under fire because it doesn’t allow researchers to download the full data set. The company does take a broader approach and includes issue ads in its database, but French researchers have questioned whether it offers a complete picture of political activity on its platform. 

Edelson said Snap's database offers good detail about how its users were targeted by political players' advertising efforts.

But there are comparably a smaller number of ads on Snap than the large platforms

“It will be important to see how they maintain this as political advertising ramps up in 2020,” she said.

BITS, NIBBLES AND BYTES

BITS: A bipartisan pair of senators is slamming Amazon after a report from the Wall Street Journal's Dana Mattioli revealed that the company optimized its search algorithm to give preference to products that are more profitable to the company.

Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.) accused the company of "lying" to Congress during a July antitrust hearing. At the time, Amazon associate general counsel Nate Sutton insisted the company's search algorithms were “optimized to predict what customers want to buy regardless of the seller.”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said the report deserved "scrutiny." 

The changes could provide ammunition to lawmakers  investigating Amazon's business practices for anti-competitive behavior. Sources familiar with the project told Dana that despite internal divisions, the company pushed ahead with the changes to the algorithm that could result in a boost to its own brands. Executives from Amazon’s retail divisions have frequently pressured the engineers on the product search and ranking algorithm team to surface their products higher in search results, people familiar with the discussions told Dana. Sources were uncertain whether recent changes improved Amazon’s own sales.

Amazon has denied the story, both in a comment to the Journal and on Twitter. Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.

NIBBLES: Palantir faces more scrutiny over its work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement — and this time it’s students leading the charge. Yesterday the group #NoTechForIce released a petition signed by more than 1,200 students representing 17 campuses pledging to not work with the company so long as it provides technology to ICE. 

The student-led protest effort follows months of growing concern in the tech industry over partnerships between the industry and the agency. Over 200 Palantir employees signed a letter last year criticizing the company's contract with ICE, which provides the agency software to collect data on immigrants. But CEO Alex Karp has remained adamant over continuing the relationship, writing in a recent Washington Post op-ed that “immigration policy is not a software challenge.”

Palantir spends tens of thousands of dollars a year to gain special recruiting access to top universities, a practice that organizers hope to end. Organizers also plan to target Amazon, Microsoft, and Salesforce — all of which have contracts with ICE or Customs and Border Protection — with future efforts. 

BYTES: Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) are calling on Google to remove misinformation from Google Maps that directs women seeking an abortion to nonexistent or fraudulent providers. The letter follows a recent analysis by Vice's Carter Sherman and David Uberti showing that searches for abortion clinics in at least 21 cities led women to facilities that did not offer abortions and, in many cases, instead actively try to discourage the procedure.

“During this time of unprecedented attacks on women's health and restrictions on women's access to health care, it is as important as ever that Google be a reliable source of information for women seeking care,” the senators wrote in a letter to the company. “Clearly efforts to date have not been sufficient as women seeking abortion care continue to be directed to misidentified businesses and false businesses, rather than legitimate reproductive health care providers.” 

Google told Vice that some of the mistaken Maps search results stemmed from mistakes in its certification process for groups seeking to run abortion-related ads, a policy it introduced in June.

The senators are asking Google to increase the number of employees it has to verify and monitor business listings, introduce periodic reviews of the accuracy of its results and brief congressional staff on its efforts.

PUBLIC CLOUD

— News from the public sector:

California Lawmakers Pass Only Minor Changes to Privacy Measure (Wall Street Journal)

Senators want FCC to review Chinese telecom approvals to operate in U.S. (Reuters)

California bill looks to close data gaps in the criminal justice system (TechCrunch)

PRIVATE CLOUD

— News from the private sector:

Facebook and JP Morgan meet with global central banks to discuss cryptocurrencies (CNBC)

Facebook’s "undesirable" appearance policy keeps blocking the wrong people (The Verge)

NRA Ramped Up Facebook Advertising Immediately After Mass Shootings in El Paso and Dayton (The Intercept)

#TRENDING

—  Tech news generating buzz around the Web:

After 6 Years in Exile, Edward Snowden Explains Himself (Wired)

A Century of “Shrill”: How Bias in Technology Has Hurt Women’s Voices (The New Yorker)

CHECK-INS

—Today:

• PEN America, the Global Digital Policy Incubator at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center, and the Chair of the U.S. Federal Election Commission, Ellen L. Weintraub, will convene a half-day symposium in Washington, D.C. to examine the urgent challenge that digital disinformation poses to  the 2020 elections. 
• The Senate Judiciary Committee will host an oversight hearing on the enforcement of antitrust laws at 2:30 p.m. Eastern time.

— Coming soon

• The Senate Commerce Committee will has a hearing on "Mass Violence, Extremism, and Digital Responsiblity" with representatives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google on Wednesday at 10 a.m.
• The Senate Judiciary Committee will host a hearing to “explore issues relating to competition in technology markets and the antitrust agencies’ efforts to root out anticompetitive conduct” on September 24.