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Radio News: Social media sites to testify about Russian interference
Oct 30, 2017 10:55 pm
CNN reports that roughly 126 million Americans were exposed between June 2015 and August 2017 to Facebook content created by the Russian government-linked troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency. Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch wrote to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism saying 29 million people got direct links from the Russian troll farm, and those Americans shared it with about half the U.S. voting population. The Internet Research Agency also ads seen by 11.4 million Americans between 2015 and 2017. Representatives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google will testify at public hearings before a Senate Judiciary subcommmittee and the Senate and House Intelligence Committees later this week about how Russia attempted to manipulate the 2016 American election. Twitter found a total of 36,746 accounts that generated automated, election-related content last year, with 288 million impressions. "Most of the ads appear to focus on divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum, touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights," Stretch wrote to the subcommittee. "A number of the ads encourage people to follow Pages on these issues, which in turn produced posts on similarly charged subjects."