Facebook says 10 million people saw Russia-linked ads (FB)

pulse

October 2, 2017 11:44 PM

Facebook revealed on Monday that 10 million people saw the roughly 3,000 ads on its platform linked to Russia.

Facebook revealed on Monday that 10 million of its users saw ads placed by Russia-linked groups designed to stir division in the US before and after the 2016 presidential election.

The admission came after Facebook representatives met with US lawmakers on Monday, and it provides important new details about the scope and impact of a shadowy campaign to use the 2-billion-member social network as a propaganda tool.

About 44% of the ads were seen before the 2016 US presidential election and 56% were seen after the election, Schrage said.

And while Schrage outlined the steps Facebook is taking to prevent abuse of its largely self-service advertising platform in the future, he seemed to suggest that the problem was unlikely to be solved easily.

On Sunday, Facebook said it would hand over the ads and information about how they were targeted to government investigators responsible for probing Russia's interference with US elections. The company said on Monday that it planned to hire 1,000 more ad reviewers to help keep politically subversive and divisive ads off its platform.

The spread of fake news has caused something akin to a moral quandary for social media entities like Facebook and Twitter that have long boasted about being harbors of free speech.

"We are dedicated to being an open platform for all ideas — and that may sometimes mean allowing people to express views we — or others — find objectionable," Schrage said on Monday.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed a similar frustration in post on Saturday marking the end of the Jewish Yom Kippur holiday.

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