Misinformation and echo chambers

How Facebook, Google and Twitter helped spin the news and encouraged America’s enemies

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Facebook, Google and Twitter are talking to the Congress about how they helped Russia spread fake news and create divisions within our country during the 2016 Presidential election. They were at least complicit, and arguably enabled, what may be the biggest, and most effective anti-U.S. propaganda and destabilization operation in history.

The tally thus far: Facebook hosted 80,000 Russian generated posts on 120 web pages and more than 3,000 ads, mostly focused on divisive social issues, that may have reached as many as 126 million Americans.

Twitter supported 1.4 million Russian tweets on 2,752 user accounts. It also sold political ads to nine Russian entities that it knows of, a marginal improvement over Facebook that has no idea who its real advertisers are.

Google also sold ads to the Russians and made available 18 YouTube channels that generated 43 hours of propaganda on 1,108 videos.