Sept. 27 (UPI) — The Senate intelligence committee plans to meet with Facebook and Google on potential Russian intervention in the 2016 election.
The committee intends to summon Google to appear at a forthcoming hearing, Politico reported, Wednesday, and the Hill reported the committee has already requested that Facebook representatives also meet with lawmakers.
The committee’s Russia probe is looking into whether social media played a part in helping Russian agents who possibly tried to sway the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. It’s also investigating whether President Donald Trump’s campaign colluded Moscow.
Intelligence agents have said the Kremlin-linked actors hacked computers belonging to the Democratic National Committee.
Officials worry that those bad actors also could have taken advantage of Google’s algorithm to influence voters’ search-engine results. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday that his company would relay information to Congress about more than 3,000 advertisements that Russia-linked, “inauthentic” accounts had bought between June 2015 and May 2017.
Those ads were focused “on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum,” the company has said.
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