[King:] It seemed like a miracle, or at least a piece of extraordinary good luck, an offer to write for a new online publication not long after losing his job because of the coronavirus. Aspiring writer, Jack Delaney, jumped at the opportunity, not knowing he was being used, according to the FBI, in a new Russia propaganda operation aimed at interfering in the 2020 election. CNN business reporter, Donie O'Sullivan, is here with the details. It's literally feels like a spy novel.
[Donie O'sullivan, Cnn Business Reporter:] Hey, John. Yes, that's right, it does. Jack Delaney was over the moon when he heard from an editor from what looked like an independent and legitimate left-wing news Web site. But all was not what it appeared to be. Have a listen.
[Jack Delaney, Freelance Journalist:] The message was, you know, saying, hey, we like your work. We've seen your work before. Would you like to write for us? Would you like to be a part of our publication? We can offer you about 200, 250 per article. And at that time I was like, sound like a food opportunity for me. I can make money, get my work published.
[O'sullivan:] It must be quite surreal to hear about this and say, oh, my god, I'm am I part of a Russian disinformation campaign?
[Delaney:] Yes. Totally surreal. I was completely unwittingly doing it. I had no idea they were linked to the Kremlin or anything. You know, obviously, if I had known, wouldn't have done that. But, you know, I mean, it seemed like it seemed legitimate from what I saw. I'm obviously no fan of Putin or Russian government. So it's it was concerning. Obviously, you know, I I don't want to have any association with an authoritarian regime. So it was it was I can't put it in any other words, like it was one of the strangest experiences of my life.
[O'sullivan:] And you might wonder, John, you know, why would Russia go to the trouble of doing this. It's all about adding fuel to the fire and inflaming existing divisions here in the United States, using real unwitting Americans to make it seem all the more credible. This particular Web site, it was a left-wing Web site. And it was using the sort of tactics that we saw the Russian troll group use in 2016, which was essentially trying to split the Democratic vote, attacking Joe Biden, Kamala Harris from the left, accusing them being basically too conservative to be Democrats. For its part, the people behind this Web site posted an anonymous post after Facebook and the FBI revealed this earlier this week denying that they were Russian trolls. The Russian government has not yet responded to this. But, John, as we know from U.S. intelligence officials here in Washington, Russia is trying to interfere in this year's election. And they are using social media to do it. And this is just one of the examples of the tactics that they are using.
[King:] Donie O'Sullivan, as always, grateful for the reporting. Very important that we keep reminding people of what's happening out there. And Facebook says it's working harder this election cycle to identify foreign actors and remove or flag misleading information. The CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, says the social media giant now also working to stop the spread of misinformation about the voting process and the integrity of that process. Because, with a surge in mail-in voting, it could take several days to fully count ballots.
[Mark Zuckerberg, Ceo, Facebook:] There's, unfortunately, I think, a heightened risk of civil unrest in the period, you know, between between voting and a result being called or after that. And I just think that we need to be doing everything that we can to reduce the chances of violence or civil unrest in the wake of this election.
[King:] Still, there are many critics who say Facebook simply isn't doing enough. Joining us now is Nick Clegg, the vice president of global affairs and communications at Facebook. Mr. Clegg, grateful for your time. Let me pick up where Donie O'Sullivan was talking, first, about this tip from the FBI about this Russian group that was pretending to be a left-wing media site essentially. Can you talk to me about without, you know, taking us too far behind the curtain. I know there's sensitive intelligence matters involved. Is there communication with the FBI and other law enforcement officials about foreign interference, is it far superior now than it was four years ago?
[Nick Clegg, Vice President Of Global Affairs & Communications, Facebook:] Yes, I think it's transformed out of all recognition. In 2016, Facebook didn't remove a single foreign network seeking to interfere in elections, both in the U.S. and elsewhere. Over the last two to three years, we've removed about 100, about 12 of those related to Russian organizations, including the IRA, the one that was involved that was in Donie's piece earlier. And we I think the the thing that is really equally transformative is that we work hand in glove with other with other tech companies in the same sector so we share intelligence, we share data. And so because, you know, almost always these kinds of interference network don't play out on Facebook. They play out on Twitter as well and YouTube and so on. And so the level of cooperation across the industry, the scale of things that we're blocking. And just to give you an example of how we're getting better and better at getting these and identifying and removing these networks earlier, I think in the case of the network that was just described in your piece, the English-speaking page, I think had only about 200 followers. So it had almost no meaningful impact whatsoever because we were able to get at it early. But it doesn't mean, that, you know, we're complacent. And it doesn't mean that there aren't attempts being made that ourselves, intelligence services and other parts of the industry are not yet aware of. But the level of cooperation and the amount of the resources going into it. I mean, Facebook is a company, over the last year or so, that now spends new invests billions of dollars into integrity security, not least to safeguard the integrity of our elections. To the amount, the amount that is now invested, and that's about slightly more than the total revenues of the company when it was floated back in 2012. So that shows a huge shift in resources and technology, personnel and efforts to do a lot, lot better this time than happened in 2016.
[King:] Let's try to go through some of this. We heard Mark Zuckerberg talking about the fear of civil unrest if we have a delay between Election Day and certified results. A lot of that fear is a lot of people in the town I work in, Washington, is that the president of the United States will declare victory on election night if he's leading in the vote in some states but they haven't counted millions of mail-in ballots and it could be some time.
[Clegg:] Right.
[King:] If the president of the United States, if he is the one spreading misinformation, if he says, I have won the election, stop counting ballots, it is a rigged system, what will Facebook do?
[Clegg:] So, firstly, what we are going to do is, starting very soon, at the top of the feed, millions of Americans will see on an almost daily basis huge amounts of very granular detail of the voter information center, not only explaining exactly the deadlines for mail-in ballots, when to fill them, when they have to send them, when they have to be received. Because as you know, the rules differ from state to state and county to county. But crucially, also, seeking to accustom American voters through the voter information center at the top of their feeds, in Instagram, as well, to the idea that they will not take the results soon. It might take weeks, days. It might take weeks. But there is going to be a significant time lag
[King:] But will you Will you Will you block the president? Will you block the president? Will you block the president? Take his content down, knock it down, forbid it, if it is wrong and misleading?
[Clegg:] We'll do something very specific. If Donald Trump or anybody prematurely declares victory, we'll put a prominent label on the post, no one can miss it. You can't read the post without reading that label. Saying that that's declaration is premature. And that we will provide people with the real result. We're working with Reuters and others to make sure that our users, that our platform are not susceptible to people declaring victory without that being labeled and get the result when it's fully certified.
[King:] There's been there's a new policy announced that you can't launch a political ad in the final week of a campaign. Facebook is not going to allow that because you know think there's enough time for people to fact-check it and the like. But if I buy the ad 10 days before the campaign, it is OK. The current policy implies I'll call you a reform politician. You know how this works. You know what it's like to be on the end. So if Nick Clegg is running for office, and he's a working-class guy, he's the candidate of the working people. If I, in the last week of a campaign, I buy an ad. But 10 days out, I can buy an ad that says Nick Clegg is lying to you, he's on the take of the billionaires, he drives out to the countryside on the weekend and shoots bunny rabbits. Why would that not be taken down as false, no matter when I buy it?
[Clegg:] So, look, the reason we have put the guardrails in and by the way, they're part of a sort of bunch, about 10 ten extra measures, including a tightening of voter suppression policies that will lead to more posts being taken down. We have taken, by the way, a number of posts down from the president himself, not least and just recently, last month, about a post about COVID, which we have taken down. So we remove content when
[King:] But people see forgive me for interrupting. Forgive me for interrupting. But people see a double standard there actually. But you mentioned that point. And good for Facebook. The president said something that's not true about COVID and children whether or not children So you take down the medical information, which is good. But political junk can stay up. Why? Seems like a double standard. If it is not true, it is not true.
[Clegg:] Let me explain. Let me explain. Let me try to explain why that's not a double standard. We take stuff down where we think there's a very clear and imminent harm to people. Around COVID where we feel that information will lead to people being believing that COVID is not serious or a hoax. Or in the case of voting, if there's a clear falsehood about where, when and how to vote, which will lead to people forfeiting their right to vote. What we do not eliminate, but in some cases, we do, if it is from PACs, super-PACs. We fact-check it. Or in other cases, we will label a post from Donald Trump just yesterday, about mail-in voting. In those other cases, we don't want to eliminate I don't think anyone wants us to eliminate legitimate, often aggressive, hyperbolic debate about different voting methods. That's happen it is as old as the hills in America and elsewhere. We cannot, as a private company by the way, not a single tech company I'm aware of fact-checks or vets politician speech at scale with any precision. No one does for the simple reason, all politicians exaggerate their own virtues and exaggerate the vices of their own opponents. All politicians indulge in caricature, hyperbole, exaggerations and selective facts. The idea that a private company can vet everything that comes out of a politician's mouth as absolutely gospel accuracy is not something that any tech company has tried. We, on the other hand, have removed a huge amount of content where it poses real harm. We have 70 fact-checkers around the world who fact- check, not politicians themselves but a lot of political organizations. And we put these new guardrails in place at the very end of the campaign so no one can run an ad which hijacks the whole campaign unchallenged at the very last minute.
[King:] Nick Clegg, appreciate your time today. I hope you'll come back. This is going to be an issue obviously for the election. And a lot of people kicking the tires. And we'll give you a platform to explain it. And we may kick back a little bit, too, as we go through. But that is part of the process. Appreciate your time, sir.
[Clegg:] It is.
[King:] Thank you.
[Clegg:] Thank you.
[King:] Thank you very much. And before we go to break, more than one million people in Africa have been infected with the coronavirus. And experts warn that number might be much higher because of low testing and a struggling health care system. Anderson Cooper tells us what three "CNN Heroes" are doing to slow the spread of the virus across Africa.
[Anderson Cooper, Cnn Host:] These "CNN Heroes" are hard at work, temporarily transforming a business to provide and push for safety measures in Ethiopia.
[Unidentified "cnn Hero":] We have produced over 50,000 clothes masks to help out the most vulnerable women and children in our community. And I speak out to the need to wear mask and social distance.
[Cooper:] Bringing medical care and crucial awareness to remote areas of Kenya.
[Unidentified "cnn Hero":] There's a lot of misinformation that it's a disease that's not going to come all the way to the rural areas. Information sharing is a number one key. We set up all the billboards on the entry ways covering the messaging around COVID-19.
[Cooper:] And providing supplies and protective gear to those that need it most in Cameroon.
[Unidentified "cnn Hero":] We focus today, International Express Coalition, due to the crisis in Cameroon. We focus to orphanage. And I hope this will reduces the number of people that die due to coronavirus. That's my dream.
[King:] That's remarkable work. For more details on the work these heroes are doing, go to CNN heroes.com.