‘Horribly worried’: Sen. Warner voices concern over election interference via social media

LYNCHBURG, Va. (WSET) — We are just 47 days away from election day and lawmakers are discussing the possibility of election interference.

Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia) said he’s extremely concerned about interference in the upcoming election, specifically stemming from social media.

We need the public to be more concerned. The truth is, Americans have a First Amendment right, they can say crazy things and be protected. Unfortunately, sometimes when political candidates say crazy things and get amplified, that is a problem but it’s a First Amendment right. What’s not is to have foreign government spy services take that information and amplify it, or create very similar stories, that are 100% false,” Warner said.

Warner said TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, answers to the Chinese Communist Party.

“The difference with TikTok and why 80 percent of the Congress, Democrat and Republican alike, House and Senate alike, said ‘This one’s different,’ is because at the end of the day, Chinese law… says ‘That company has to answer to the Communist Party of China,” Warner said.

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Warner helped lead the charge against TikTok, but ByteDance is still in a legal battle to determine whether or not the app will be banned in the U.S. The fate of that app is now in the hands of a judge and won’t be decided before the election.

ABC13 asked Sen. Warner if that worries him.

Q: “Since the decision won’t be reached on a TikTok ban until after the November election, are you particularly concerned that foreign agencies could exploit that site’s vulnerabilities for election interference?”

Am I concerned? Absolutely. We’ll see what the courts have to say, but you’re one hundred percent right, none of this is going to be changed by law prior to the election,” he said.

Warner said that with TikTok, the algorithm can be twisted to show the news the Communist Party of China wants to relay, which he thinks is dangerous.

“The idea that the Communist Party of China could at the end of the day twist those algorithms so that suddenly the news they’re seeing, it doesn’t have to be fake news, but what they emphasize would be stories that say you know, ‘America is a bad place, Putin oughta win in Ukraine, Taiwan is not worth America’s interest.’ Those may even be legitimate points of view, I don’t agree with them, but they may be points of view offered even by Americans. But if suddenly the algorithm says ‘that’s all you see on TikTok, we oughta be concerned,” Warner said.

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Sen. Warner said it’s easy to spread misinformation on social media, and lawmakers are hoping to crack down on those tech firms, but he said it’s also important for you to stay on high alert and try to spot these posts before it’s too late.

We oughta be raising our voices… I am horribly worried that the last couple of days, the last few hours before the election… those hours after the polls close when those votes are being counted. You talk about a perfect time for mischief, you talk about the ability for a foreign spy agency to put up a video that looks like it’s an election official destroying ballots or doing something crazy… you have a tinder box that could create violence in this nation,” Warner said.