UPDATED 16:48 EDT / NOVEMBER 22 2017

NEWS

Did you see secret Russian propaganda on Facebook? Soon you can find out

Facebook Inc. announced today that it will release a new tool that will allow users to see if any of the pages they have liked or followed were secretly created by the Internet Research Agency, an organization backed by the Russian government as part of a misinformation campaign to influence U.S. elections.

Facebook will release the tool by the end of the year through the Facebook Help Center, and the new portal will specifically show pages and Instagram accounts created by the Internet Research Agency between January 2015 and August 2017.

According to Facebook, the Russian-bought ads were seen by more than 10 million users, and many of those pages were dedicated to divisive topics such as gun control, immigration, LGBTQ rights and abortion. But the actual numbers of targeted people is far higher. About 29 million U.S. users saw content in their News Feeds produced by the Internet Research Agency, according to Facebook. And more than 140 million people on Facebook and Instagram potentially saw Russian-sent stories because friends interacted with them.

“It is important that people understand how foreign actors tried to sow division and mistrust using Facebook before and after the 2016 US election,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. “That’s why as we have discovered information, we have continually come forward to share it publicly and have provided it to congressional investigators. And it’s also why we’re building the tool we are announcing today.”

facebook-russian-propaganda-alertFacebook is one of several tech giants that were forced to appear before Congress within the last few months to explain their role in unwittingly selling ads to Russia-backed organizations. In September, Facebook agreed to give Congress copies of all of the ads that were bought by Russian groups, and last month the company pledged to be more transparent about the sources of its ads.

For example, Facebook is adding a “View Ads” button that will allow users to see all of the ads a page is running across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, whether they are the intended target of those ads or not. The company is also requiring political advertisers to verify their identity.

“When it comes to advertising on Facebook, people should be able to tell who the advertiser is and see the ads they’re running, especially for political ads,” said Rob Goldman, vice president of ads at Facebook. “That level of transparency is good for democracy and it’s good for the electoral process. Transparency helps everyone, especially political watchdog groups and reporters, keep advertisers accountable for who they say they are and what they say to different groups.”

Google LLC and Twitter Inc. also were supposed to tell Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the Democrat who wrote several tech giants a letter in November asking them to inform their users of potential Russian influence, of what they planned to do, but there was no word from them today.

Image: geralt/Pixabay

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