US Senators issued stark warnings to social media giants Facebook and Twitter, telling the companies to better police misuse of their platforms or face regulatory interference.

The admonitions came during a hearing of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, which is exploring overseas use of the popular apps to spread misinformation during the 2016 US election.

During the hearing, Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch reported an estimated 126 million people viewed content from Russia-linked pages during the election cycle. Twitter general counsel Sean Edgett revealed his company identified 36,746 Russia-linked accounts which sent out automated content related to the election. Some of those Tweets encouraged citizens to “vote by text,” which is not a valid voting method in the US.

“Huge problem”
Senator Dianne Feinstein flagged the revelations as a “very big deal” and warned the social media giants have a “huge problem” on their hands. The companies must quickly rein in misuse of their platforms or face legislative intervention, she added.

“I don’t think you get it…What we’re talking about is a cataclysmic change. What we’re talking about is the beginning of cyberwarfare,” Feinstein said: “You bear the responsibility, you created these platforms, and now they’re being misused. You have to be the ones to do something about it, or we will.”

Stretch said Facebook became aware of malicious activity on its platform “as early as 2015”, though he noted it wasn’t immediately apparent the goal was to influence the election. Senator Mark Warner retorted the latter assertion “strains credibility”, and accused the companies of showing “a lack of effort and a lack of genuine commitment” to protecting users.

Edgett and Stretch indicated Facebook and Twitter are taking the issue seriously and are moving to put protections in place to prevent similar incidents in the future.

Social media reach
As of the end of Q2, Facebook reported it had just over 2 billion active monthly users, with the US and Canada accounting for 236 million of the figure. Around 183 million users in the US and Canada log on to the platform every day, Facebook noted. The company indicated “substantially all” of its daily and monthly active users log in to Facebook on mobile devices.

Twitter had a monthly active user base of 328 million as of the end of Q2.