To create rifts, Russians liked Facebook most
The social media platform, used by more than 2 billion people, became critical to the campaign to disrupt the 2016 election
In 2014, Russians working for a shadowy firm called the Internet Research Agency started gathering American followers in online groups focused on issues like religion and immigration. Around mid2015, the Russians began buying digital ads to spread their messages. A year later, they tapped their followers to help organize political rallies across the United States.
Their digital instrument of choice for all of these actions? Facebook and its photo-sharing site Instagram.
The social network, more than any other technology tool, was singled out on Friday by the Justice Department when prosecutors charged 13 Russians and three companies for executing a scheme to subvert the 2016 election and support Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. In a 37-page indictment, officials detailed how the Russians repeatedly turned to Facebook and Instagram, often using stolen identities to pose as Americans, to sow discord among the electorate by creating Facebook groups, distributing divisive ads and posting inflammatory images.
While the indictment does not accuse Facebook of any wrongdoing, it provided the first comprehensive account from officials of how critical the company’s platforms had been to the Russian campaign to disrupt the 2016 election. Facebook and Instagram were mentioned 41 times, while other technology that the Russians used were featured far less. Twitter was referenced nine times, YouTube once, and electronic payments company PayPal 11 times. Far-reaching exposure
Facebook, with more than 2 billion members on the social network alone, has long struggled with what its sites show and the kind of illicit activity it may enable, from selling unlicensed guns to broadcasting live killings. The company’s business depends on people being highly engaged with what is posted on its sites, which in turn helps make it a marquee destination for advertisers.
When suggestions first arose after the 2016 election that Facebook may have influenced the outcome, Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, dismissed the concerns. But by September, Facebook had disclosed that the Internet Research Agency had bought divisive ads on hot-button issues through the company. It later said 150 million Americans had seen the Russian propaganda on the social network and Instagram.
The resulting firestorm has damaged Facebook’s reputation. Company officials, along with executives from Google and YouTube, were grilled by lawmakers this past fall. Facebook has since hired thousands of people to help monitor content and has worked with Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel leading the investigation into Russian election interference. It has also changed its advertising policy so that any ad that mentions a candidate’s name goes through a more stringent vetting process. Zuckerberg has vowed to not let Facebook be abused by bad actors.
Yet Facebook’s multiple mentions in Friday’s indictment renew questions of why the world’s biggest social media company didn’t catch the Russian activity earlier or do more to stop it. How effective the company’s new efforts to reduce foreign manipulation have been is also unclear.
Rob Goldman, Facebook’s vice president of advertising, waded into the discussion Friday with a series of tweets that argued that Russia’s goal was to sow chaos among the electorate rather than to force a certain outcome in the election. On Saturday, Trump cited those tweets as evidence that Russia’s disinformation campaign was not aimed at handing him a victory. “The Trump campaign did nothing wrong — no collusion!” he wrote on Twitter.
In Silicon Valley, where Facebook has its headquarters, some critics pilloried the company after the indictment became public.
“Mueller’s indictment underscores the central role of Facebook and other platforms in the Russian interference in 2016,” said Roger McNamee, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who had invested early in Facebook. “In its heyday, television brought the country together, giving viewers a shared set of facts and experiences. Facebook does just the opposite, enabling every user to have a unique set of facts, driving the country apart for profit.
Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president of global policy, said that Facebook was working with the FBI before this year’s midterm elections to ensure that a similar manipulation campaign would not take place. “We know we have more to do to prevent against future attacks,” he said. Multitude of followers
Facebook has previously questioned whether law enforcement should be more involved in helping to stop the threat from nation state actors. Facebook said it worked closely with the special counsel’s investigation.
YouTube did not respond to a request for comment, while Twitter declined to comment. PayPal said in a statement that it has worked closely with law enforcement and “is intensely focused on combating and preventing the illicit use of our services.”
According to the indictment, the Internet Research Agency, created in 2014 in St. Petersburg, Russia, and employing about 80 people, was given the job of interfering with elections and political processes.
The group began using U.S. social media to achieve those aims in 2014, when it started making Facebook pages dedicated to social issues such as race and religion. During the next two years, the indictment said, the Russians stole the identities of real Americans to create fake personas and fake accounts on social media. The group then used those to populate and promote Facebook pages like United Muslims of America, Blacktivist and Secured Borders.
By 2016, the indictment said, the size of some of these Russiancontrolled Facebook groups had ballooned to hundreds of thousands of followers.
The Russians then used these groups to push various messages, including telling Americans not to vote in the 2016 election for either Trump or his opponent, Hillary Clinton.