Facebook admits failure to stop Russians influencing millions of American votes

FACEBOOK has promised to “do better” as it admitted Russian operatives published material on the social network seen by a 126million Americans during last year’s presidential election.

The disclosure was a dramatic increase on previous disclosures by the technology company, showing Russia’s interference reached half the country’s voting population.

It came as executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google appeared before senators in Washington to answer security concerns.

In its testimony Facebook said pages created by the internet Research Agency, an online “troll factory” in St Petersburg carrying out influence operations for the Russian government, generated 80,000 posts between January 2015 and August 2017. It bought adverts that directed people to “hot” issues like race relations, which would then be shared millions of times.

Facebook’s Colin Stretch called the Russian plot “vile and reprehensible” as he gave evidence to the Senate Judiciary subcommittee.

He said: “It goes against everything Facebook stands for. Facebook aims to bring people together. These foreign actors sought to drive people apart.”

He said Russia tried to encourage discord, attempted to exploit divisions in society, and had been “inflammatory and downright offensive” to some communities. He said: “All of these adverts and pages violated our policies.”

Facebook said it was recruiting more advert reviewers, and in future would require more details from advertisers.

Twitter said it found 2,752 accounts linked to Russian operatives and that 1.4 million tweets went out in the 10 weeks before the election. Google said Russia had set up 18 channels on Youtube, posting more than 1,000 videos.

Russia denies trying to influence an election that saw Donald Trump inflict a surprise defeat on Hillary Clinton.