Facebook: Russian Agents Created 129 U.S. Election Events
27 January 2018 15:10 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Washington - Facebook Inc said Russian agents created 129 events on the social media network during the 2016 U.S. election campaign, according to testimony to Congress. The issue shed more light on Russia's purported disinformation drive aimed at voters.
Facebook, in a written statement to U.S. lawmakers, released on Thursday and dated Jan. 8, said that 338,300 different Facebook accounts viewed the events and that 62,500 marked that they would attend. The company said it did not have data about which of the events took place.
Facebook, the world's largest social media network, said in September only that Russians had created "several promoted events."
Copies of the event pages that have surfaced since then show that at least some of them were political rallies centered on divisive subjects, such as immigration. Russia denies the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies that it tried to meddle in American democracy.
Facebook delivered the details to Congress this month in response to written questions from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee.
Facebook said that it had found "overlap" between the online marketing done in 2016 by Russian agents and by President Donald Trump's campaign and called it "insignificant." The company said it was not in a position to either substantiate or disprove allegations of collusion between the two camps.
Trump denies any collusion and has described investigations by congressional panels and a special counsel as a witch hunt.
Facebook has previously said some 126 million Americans may have seen Russian-backed political content on Facebook over a two-year period, and that 16 million may have been exposed to Russian information on Instagram.
Facebook, Twitter Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google testified about the misuse of their services before three congressional committees in October and November.
REUTERS
