On Wednesday, Facebook finally disclosed what they had known for awhile: Russia “interfered” in the 2016 election via more than $100,000 worth of ads. Divisive in nature, they were all about “hot-button issues” and purchased by a Russian company linked to the Kremlin. (A Time magazine article from May of this year first questioned whether or not Russia had placed Facebook ads but this was Facebook’s first acknowledgment.)
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“Most of the 3,000 ads did not refer to particular candidates but instead focused on divisive social issues such as race, gay rights, gun control and immigration, according to a post on Facebook by Alex Stamos, the company’s chief security officer. The ads, which ran between June 2015 and May 2017, were linked to some 470 fake accounts and pages the company said it had shut down.
Facebook officials said the fake accounts were created by a Russian company called the Internet Research Agency, which is known for using ‘troll’ accounts to post on social media and comment on news websites.” 1
Although Zuckerberg first denied that “fake news” on Facebook could have had any influence on the election, he’s since changed his tune and committed to doing more. And so, in order to protect us all from having to use our own brains or decide if we believe what we read, Facebook has begun its insane crackdown on what we see. And be careful, if they don’t like what they read, they will flag you as false. There is no room for a truth that Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t subscribe to.
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In January the FBI, CIA, and NSA published a report which concluded that- on direct orders from Vladimir Putin- the Russian government had hacked Democratic targets and leaked “thousands of emails and other documents in an attempt to hurt Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and mar her reputation.” 2 (Biting my tongue.) The report also detailed that hundreds of Russian “trolls” had posted anti-Clinton messages.
That intelligence report also said “the ‘likely financier’ of the Internet Research Agency was ‘a close Putin ally with ties to Russian intelligence.’ The company, profiled by The New York Times Magazine in 2015, is in St. Petersburg and uses its small army of trolls to put out messages supportive of Russian government policy.” 3
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There are still questions that need to be answered; when did Facebook first become aware of the problem, were there warning signs, was the hack was sophisticated, etc., but investigators won’t be giving this up anytime soon- especially now that they know Russia was involved. (It is illegal, under federal law, for foreign governments, companies or citizens to spend money to influence American elections.)
