Democrats in the House and Senate are pushing the Federal Election Commission to develop new rules order political advertising on societal metier after Facebook reveal that Russian trolling routinelypurchased ad on its platformduring the 2016 election Hz .
“ extraneous nationals were shown to have routinely deployed advanced tactic in have political expenditure to evade detection , with the express purpose of sabotage the wholeness of our elections , ” the group wrote in aletterto FEC chairman Steven Walther . “ Social media platforms put up the ability to point trillion of users based upon a wealth of extremely - detailed information . As we have seen , the low cost of reaching these user equips hostile foreign actors with a potent new tool for disruption of our democratic unconscious process . Therefore , it is incumbent that the Commission take immediate action to keep the integrity of our election law and our elections . ”
The letter of the alphabet is signed by a bevy of Democrats in the House and Senate , including Reps . John Sarbanes , John Conyers , Elijah Cummings , and Derek Kilmer and Senators Martin Heinrich , Ron Wyden , Tom Udall , Elizabeth Warren , Maggie Hassan , Ben Cardin , Al Franken , Jack Reed , Ed Markey , Chris Van Hollen , Sherrod Brown , Cory Booker , Bob Menendez , Catherine Cortez Masto , Sheldon Whitehouse , and Kamala Harris .
The FEC is also being asked how it would “ supervise illicit coordination between a crusade and a third political party political expender , including foreign actors , ” which sure enough seems like a reference to acertain special counsel investigation into a sure presidential campaign .
Foreign nationals , ship’s company , andsketchy quasi - governmental troll farmsare already banned from making contributions to federal US elections , but societal media companies make it inexpensive and easy to duck that rule . Facebook allege that it delineate $ 100,000 in ad buy made during the 2016 election cycle to a Russian trolling farm . Representatives of the company areexpected to testifyat an upcoming Senate auditory modality , and Twitter has beenasked to make standardized disclosuresabout foreign ad buy on its platform .
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