It's been a couple months since Facebook confirmed that fake accounts likely originating in Russia bought ads on the platform to sow discord during the 2016 presidential campaign.
On Friday, the company revealed that its subsidiary Instagram was also used in an attempt to influence the election. And on Wednesday, as officials from Facebook, Google, and Twitter testified before Congress, House Democrats released examples of the Instagram posts in question.
The ads are similar in many ways to those posted on Facebook and Twitter, which also targeted things like Sharia law, Black Lives Matter, and gay rights.
They're similar in another fundamental way: They succeeded in reaching millions of Americans. Colin Stretch, general counsel for Facebook, said Tuesday before Congress that malicious Russian actors managed to produce 120,000 relevant Instagram posts, which reached 16 million people from October through the election.
The data before October is murkier, according to Stretch, though the company estimates that another 4 million people likely saw content from Russian accounts.
At this point I think we can safely assume that every social media platform was infected with Russian propaganda designed to alter our political points of view and make us hate each other even more.
And no, staying completely off of social media yourself does nothing to solve this problem.
Source http://ift.tt/2zjtfYj
