Tech firms find more signs of Russian election activity

WASHINGTON: Major tech companies planned to tell Congress that they have found additional evidence of Russian activity on their services related to the 2016 US election.

Facebook, for instance, says a Russian group posted more than 80,000 times on its service during and after the election, potentially reaching as many as 126 million users.

The company planned to disclose these numbers to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, according to a person familiar with the testimony.

Twitter plans to tell the same committee that it has uncovered and shut down 2,752 accounts linked to the same group, Russia’s Internet Research Agency, which is known for promoting pro-Moscow messages.

That number is nearly 14 times larger than the number of accounts Twitter handed over to congressional committees three weeks ago, according to a person familiar with the matter. This person requested anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly about the new findings ahead of the hearing.

And Google announced in a blog post that it found evidence of “limited” misuse of its services by the Russian group, as well as some YouTube channels that were likely backed by Russian agents.

The companies are set to testify at three hearings yesterday and today as part of congressional probes of Russian election interference.

Colin Stretch, Facebook’s general counsel, plans to tell the Judiciary panel that 120 pages set up by the Russian agency posted repeatedly between January 2015 and August 2017.

The company estimates that roughly 29 million people were directly “served” posts in their news feeds from the agency over that time.

Those posts then spread widely on Facebook, although Stretch’s prepared testimony makes clear that many of the 126 million people reached this way may not have seen the posts.