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News > World

Facebook to Tell Users If They 'Fell' for Russian Propaganda

  • The Facebook logo is pictured at the Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California January 29, 2013.

    The Facebook logo is pictured at the Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California January 29, 2013. | Photo: Reuters

Published 23 November 2017
Opinion

In a row of social media outlets taking action against ‘foreign meddling’, Facebook seeks to show users if they were affected by Russian ‘disinformation.’

Facebook is set to release a new tool that will allow users to see if they were duped by ‘Russian propaganda’ during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, according to an announcement made on Wednesday.

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This tool will tell users whether or not they interacted with any accounts on Facebook or Instagram, both platforms which are owned by Facebook, Inc., used by the ‘Internet Research Agency’, a company based out of St. Petersburg that was allegedly commissioned by the Russian government to spread disinformation.

Not all ‘propaganda’ content will register as flagged but will rather show users content from the time of the election cycle which they believe was influenced by a concerted Russian effort, Jan. 2015 to Aug. 2017.

This move by Facebook follows a Senate hearing in which top Facebook reps were grilled for their mishandling of their own platform by allowing Russia to ‘meddle’ in the presidential election. Many senators, including those on the hearing committee, publicly attacked the social media for not doing more to prevent the ‘attack.’

“It is important that people understand how foreign actors tried to sow division and mistrust using Facebook before and after the 2016 U.S. election,” the company said in its announcement.

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It was reported by Facebook that Russian agencies spent $100,000 on Facebook ads to target eligible votes with disinformation, an amount that is miniscule in comparison to the well over $2 billion spent during the campaign cycle. However, it is reported that nearly half of all eligible voters were exposed to the so-called propaganda during the time frame that the platform is embedding within their user tool.

Analysts believe that Facebook’s admission that Russian-based agents spent 0.000037 percent of the election’s total price tag legitimizes a U.S. intelligence agency released shortly after the election that accused the Kremlin of “covert intelligence operations – such as cyber activity – with overt efforts by Russian government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users, or ‘trolls’.”

It is unclear if Facebook plans to expose ads originating from other foreign actors.

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