Brexit: MPs Question Russia’s Role

British MPs want to know what influence Russia played on social media in the run-up to the Brexit referendum.

Damian Collins, the Conservative MP who chairms the House of Commons select committee for digital, culture, media and sport, has written to Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg asking about any Russia’s role in the Brexit campaign and this year’s general election.

The parliamentary inquiry comes after Western intelligence agencies have warned that Russia has been seeking to undermine the EU by secretly funding nationalist causes and far Right groups across Europe.

Marine Le Pen of France’s National Front has admitted receiving loans from a Kremlin-backed Russian bank, and Nigel Farage of UKIP has echoed her praise of Vladimir Putin and her claims that the EU provoked Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

“I am writing to you to request information regarding the use of Facebook advertising and pages by Russian-linked accounts up to, and during, the 2016 Referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union and the 2017 British General Election,” Collins wrote.

A former advertising executive who opposed Brexit in the referendum campaign, Collins (below) said he believed the information he is seeking “is in line with that already supplied by Facebook to several US Senate committees, including the Senate Intelligence Committee, in relation to the 2016 US Presidential Election.”

Russian Meddling

The request came as the committee’s five Tory MPs, five Labour MPs and one Scottish Nationalist Party MP investigate the effect of “fake news” on British politics, and as US politicians and criminal investigators continue to investigate the extent of Russia’s interference in the election of Donald Trump last year.

Facebook disclosed last month that an “influential operation that appeared to be based in Russia” had spent US $100,000 (around £75,000) on adverts in the US to promote divisive political and social messages over a two-year period.

Collins explained to Zuckerberg that part of his committee’s fake news inquiry would focus on the role of “foreign actors abusing platforms such as yours” to interfere in the political discourse of other nations. Facebook has 32m users in Britain.

“It is for this reason that I am requesting that Facebook provides my committee details relating to any adverts and pages paid for, or set up by, Russian-linked accounts,” he said.

Pressing Facebook

The Commons committee has asked for examples and details of adverts purchased by Russian–linked accounts, pages set up by such accounts, the targeting and total funding of those adverts and pages, and how many times they were viewed.

The fake news inquiry began in January but was suspended when the general election was called. The closing date for submitting evidence is November 7.

Collins has already met Facebook executives in the UK and the US a number of times over the social media giant’s strategy for dealing with fake news and has called on it to act just as strongly on that issue as it has pledged to act on child abuse images and copyright privacy.

Facebook said earlier this month that some 10m people in the US saw politically divisive adverts on its network that were purchased in Russia in the months before and after the presidential election. Russia denies interfering in the internal affairs of other countries.

Facebook says it updated its software in January to prevent hoax news from appearing in its “trending topics” section but the problem continues to preoccupy politicians and media executives across the Western world.

 

by Bob Graham

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