Social media interference in the 2016 election has been on the radar since President Trump took office. Facebook and Twitter are set to appear before U.S. lawmakers and publicly testify regarding Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Both companies have agreed to appear before Congress to testify. We currently don’t know if their chief executives — Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, respectively — will be there to testify. Google has also been invited to testify at the hearing that is scheduled for November 1, but has not replied on what it plans to do.
“As we noted in our blog post last week, we are cooperating with these investigations in Russian interference in the 2016 election,” a Twitter spokeswoman said. “Twitter deeply respects the integrity of the election process, and will continue to both work with the investigations and to share details of our findings with the public as we are able.”
Facebook recently handed over data to Congress that gave us some insight to Russian interference. The social media giant at one point stated that nearly 10 million people saw Russian-backed ads on its platform. Both social media platforms appearing before the most powerful panels could make them feel quite uncomfortable. Their platforms were taken advantage of ahead of Election Day to persuade voters.
