Investing.com - Over the past two days, executives from Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL), and Twitter appeared before US Senate and House committees to answer questions regarding the selling of ads to Russians that potentially influenced last year’s US elections.
The hearings were in response to a perceived lack of transparency in political advertising on social media, especially after Facebook admitted that Russian nationals purchased 3,000 ads during the 2016 election and posted 80,000 pieces of content that reached as many as 126 million Americans.
The Internet giants are doing better than ever. After reporting Q3 earnings last month, Twitter said they were on the verge of profitability for the first time since going public. Google reported $24 billion in ad revenue. And yesterday, Facebook said their net income had grown .
But CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that he has directed “teams to invest so much in security …that it will significantly impact our profitability going forward.”
The Internet Association says lawmakers should balance transparency requirements and the need to mitigate abuse with free speech and privacy. On their end, lawmakers are considering extending regulations on political advertisement currently applied on traditional media to include the internet as well.
If US lawmakers crack down too hard on Google, Facebook, and Twitter, the social media giants could suffer.