A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the social media portion of Russia’s 2016 election interference opened Tuesday with portentous statements from Sens. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the latter of whom rattled off some numbers that gave the fullest picture yet of the extent of the disinformation campaign.
“Facebook has identified 470 accounts tied to the Internet Research Agency,” Feinstein said, referring to a Russian troll farm. “Twitter has identified 2,752 IRA-related accounts and almost 37,000 Russian linked accounts that generated automated election content. From what we’ve seen so far, Russian backed trolls used fake accounts on Facebook for more than 3,000 paid advertisements.”
Reports out Monday said Facebook would tell lawmakers that those advertisements reached approximately 126 million people.
The Twitter revelations, however, are far more significant: The platform appears to have identified not just the accounts run directly by Russian trolls working for the IRA (now the Federal News Agency, or FAN), but 37,000 automated accounts that generated information that would promote Russian interests in the American election.
Twitter and Facebook representatives opened their statements with apologies and began to detail how they planned to review previous posts and change rules to thwart future disinformation campaigns.
Oval Trailer Response:
Fake News, we don’t even know where Russia is…
Seriously, we are seriously screwed as long as most of our younger generations continue to rely solely on social media for all of their “news”, without applying any critical thinking skills…
37,000 bot accounts seems low. I seem to recall hundreds of 100,000s of new followers of @realDonaldTrump this Spring or Summer when something big was about to pop (can’t recall what it was ATM).
Cc: @samt
It’s not the younger generation (as a whole, though 43% of white males 18-23 voted for Trump) that necessarily screwed us over. It’s the white racist folks who did.
We’re all screwed when people don’t use critical thinking skills. Though I think that’s what the Repubs are after when they talk “educational reform.”
Either way the social media platforms need to shape up and we need to bitch slap Russia for messing with us.
Was not intending to besmirch or blame “younger generation” in toto. But when you have 126 million Facebook users exposed to highly choreographed dis-information, without ever giving it the “sniff-test”, that’s the problem.
It was definitely a combo platter of factors that got Donnie selected, but the Russians / alt-right are focusing on the most effective means of swinging public opinion, and that’s social media.
And somewhere Zuck is crying