Russia, social media, fake news and the 2016 presidential election

In May, Facebook refused to remove a deceptively edited viral video that made Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi look drunk — a decision that does not bode well for how Silicon Valley will handle disinformation and election interference in 2020, Rep. Adam Schiff says.

And for that matter, he said on the latest episode of Recode Decode with Kara Swisher, Congress and the voting public aren’t prepared to deal with those things either.

Facebook is still finding — and banning — accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency, the Russian troll army with ties to the Kremlin that tried to sway public opinion on Facebook during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Facebook announced on Tuesday that has removed more than 270 Facebook and Instagram accounts controlled by the IRA. Unlike the other IRA accounts Facebook was aware of — the one’s targeting U.S. voters that were removed last fall — these accounts were “targeting people living in Russia,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post.

It’s widely known that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were used by Russian sources during the 2016 U.S. presidential election to try and sway public opinion.

Now we know for certain that Reddit was also part of Russia’s disinformation strategy.

We’ve known for more than a year that Russian actors used social media to try and influence the 2016 presidential election.

Now we know more about those campaigns, thanks to a lengthy indictment by special counsel Robert Mueller which details the Russian effort.

President Donald Trump found an unlikely ally in his mission to convince the internet that Russia’s attempts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election didn’t actually help get him elected: Facebook advertising executive Rob Goldman.

Goldman, Facebook’s VP of ad products, sent a series of tweets late Friday that said, among other things, that “swaying the election was *NOT* the main goal” of the thousands of dollars of Facebook ads bought by Russian actors during and after the 2016 election.

Facebook has rolled out its new hub to help some users figure out if they interacted with Russian propaganda during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The social giant’s tool — available here, through its Help Center — specifically allows users to see if they followed or “Liked” any pages and accounts set up by Kremlin-backed trolls on either Facebook or Instagram.

Facebook is trying to alert some U.S. users that they fell victim to Russian propaganda during the 2016 presidential election.

In the coming weeks, the social giant plans to roll out a new tool so that users can check if they followed or “Liked” pages and accounts — on both Facebook and Instagram — that the Kremlin quietly set up over the past two years in order to sow social and political unrest, the company announced Wednesday.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said Thursday he’s “absolutely” willing to come talk to the U.S. Congress as lawmakers continue to probe Russia’s efforts to spread disinformation on social media during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Thing is, lawmakers previously and repeatedly called on Dorsey and other tech executives to make the trip to Capitol Hill — and they’ve apparently declined.

Facebook and Twitter received major investments from a firm with ties to Kremlin-owned corporations, a new trove of confidential documents revealed.

That cache of confidential documents, called the Paradise Papers, was obtained by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. The documents were reviewed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and a series of news outlets.

From major national U.S. newspapers like the Washington Post to websites for Patch and local ABC stations, for years, reporters around the country appear to have been unknowingly including tweets from Russian trolls in their news stories, as Recode first reported this week, with help from Meltwater, a media intelligence firm.

Today, we’re sharing an expanded version of the dataset, revealing the extent to which these Twitter accounts repeatedly made the news in the U.S.

The Republican leader of the U.S. Senate suggested on Saturday that tech giants like Facebook, Google and Twitter could help the United States “retaliate” against Russian forces that spread disinformation on social media around the 2016 presidential election.

In doing so, though, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also revealed that he is “skeptical” of new efforts to regulate political ads that appear on top tech platforms.

The tweet that opened a story in the Washington Post on Feb. 11, 2016 seemed innocuous: It was an attempt to illustrate Syrian territory occupied by clashing government and ISIS forces.

Problem is, the account behind that tweet — @WarfareWW — was one of 2,752 Twitter trolls identified this week as tied to the Russian government and suspended for spreading disinformation.

U.S. lawmakers nudged Facebook on Wednesday to inform individual U.S. users — millions in total — that they saw Russian propaganda on the site during the 2016 presidential election.

The call for the company to proactively alert these users originated at a hearing before the House Intelligence Committee, where Facebook once again acknowledged that 140 million U.S. users — including on apps it owns, like Instagram — may have seen posts, pages or other content posted by Kremlin-backed trolls.

Mark Zuckerberg did not testify in front of Congress this week to explain how Russian actors used Facebook to try and spread disinformation during last year’s U.S. presidential election.

Facebook sent the company’s top lawyer instead.

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee released copies of 14 Facebook ads purchased by Russian trolls around the 2016 U.S. presidential election, including sponsored posts on Instagram trying to link “Killary Clinton” to the death of U.S. troops.

Some of the political ads targeted Facebook or Instagram users based on their interests in Christianity, Rush Limbaugh, the war in Afghanistan and more, according to details shared by the panel. In some cases, they garnered thousands of impressions — views, but not necessarily “Likes” or clicks — on Facebook platforms.

After three congressional hearings in two days, there seems to be no doubt in the minds of U.S. lawmakers that Russia weaponized Facebook, Google and Twitter to spread disinformation and sow social unrest around the 2016 presidential election.

That doesn’t mean, however, that their investigation is finished.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton spent big on Facebook ads last year ahead of November’s presidential election.

The two candidates and their campaigns spent a combined $81 million on ads, according to Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch, who unveiled the number during a congressional hearing Wednesday focused on Russia’s attempt to use social platforms to interfere in the election. Facebook made about $28 billion in revenue in 2016, most of it from advertising.

Representatives from Facebook, Google and Twitter were in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to explain to Congress how Russian sources used their respective platforms to try and spread misinformation during last year’s presidential election.

The three companies took questions from U.S. senators, many of whom seemed skeptical of the power and influence that companies like Facebook have over the U.S. electorate.

Senior executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter submitted on Tuesday to the first of three hearings by the U.S. Congress as lawmakers investigate the extent to which Russia spread disinformation on their platforms during the 2016 presidential election.

And those companies got exactly what they expected: A wide-ranging grilling that called into question the industry’s size and influence, its commitment to combating the Kremlin, and even its ability to provide neutral platforms for their users’ content.

Senior executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter will submit on Tuesday to the first of three grueling grillings before U.S. lawmakers who are investigating Russia’s suspected interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Kicking it off is the Senate Judiciary Committee’s top crime and terrorism panel, chaired by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. The focus is on the extent to which Kremlin-backed agents and trolls sought to spread disinformation and extremist content on major social media platforms — and what, exactly, the U.S. Congress should do about it.

More than half of the United States saw Facebook posts tied to Russian trolls during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, while the Kremlin had ties to thousands of accounts on Twitter. And in the eyes of Sen. Mark Warner, who’s leading a probe into the matter, the fear is that these and other tech giants have only scratched the surface in their findings.

A day before the Senate Intelligence Committee is set to grill senior Silicon Valley executives, the panel’s top Democrat, Warner, told Recode that he still isn’t sure if the tech industry has done the fullest accounting of Russia’s disinformation efforts on their platforms. To that end, he pledged to press all three companies during questioning, while urging his colleagues to support new regulations targeting online political ads.

Here’s what the tech industry says it wants if the U.S. Congress tries to write a new law about online political ads: Rules that are clear, apply to everyone, emphasize disclosure but not too much, and certainly don’t inhibit free speech.

And here’s what that really means: The biggest brands in Silicon Valley aren’t exactly ready to embrace a new, bipartisan bill in the U.S. Senate that would subject them to a whole host of tough regulations.

Facebook, Google and Twitter plan to tell congressional investigators this week that the scope of Russia’s campaign to spread disinformation on their sites — and to potentially disrupt the 2016 U.S. presidential race — is much broader than the companies initially reported.

At Facebook, roughly 126 million users in the United States may have seen posts, stories or other content created by Russian government-backed trolls around Election Day, according to a source familiar with the company’s forthcoming testimony to Congress. Previously, Facebook had only shared information on ads purchased by Kremlin-tied accounts, revealing that they reached more than 10 million U.S. users.

A powerful Democratic lawmaker from Silicon Valley’s own backyard is demanding that Facebook and Twitter turn over reams of new data about Russian disinformation spread on their platforms during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The new scrutiny comes from California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and her requests — detailed in exhaustive letters to the two tech giants’ chief executives — are part of her broader probe into the Kremlin’s potential coordination with Donald Trump’s campaign.

Facebook is trying to make it easier to identify political ads in your News Feed.

The social giant announced on Friday it will soon require advertisers — especially political candidates — to disclose more information about their advertising efforts on the platform as the company seeks to temper concerns from the U.S. Congress about Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.