Facebook to enable users to know if they were exposed to anti-Hillary Russian propaganda
23 Nov 2017
Facebook has announced it will be making a portal that will allow users to find out if they liked pages or followed Instagram accounts made by the Internet Research Agency, the Russian internet company that was exposed after the 2016 election.
The portal aims to provide a database of those potential pages and accounts that would have been liked or followed between January 2015 and August 2017, before and after the 2016 election.
''This is part of our ongoing effort to protect our platforms and the people who use them from bad actors who try to undermine our democracy,'' Facebook wrote in a press release announcing the tool.
The portal will not feature specific ads or posts that users might have seen and will only show the pages and accounts a user has liked or followed that have been linked to Russian meddling.
The tool would become available by the end of the year.
According to commentators the move comes as the latest by Facebook to respond to public and political pressure to reveal the extent of the Russian disinformation campaign waged on its social media platform and on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.
Together nearly 150 million Facebook and Instagram users might have had pieces of Russian disinformation content including paid ads and free posts reach their accounts, according to the company, though it also said there is no way to know how many had actually seen that conten
"It is important that people understand how foreign actors tried to sow division and mistrust using Facebook before and after the 2016 US election," Facebook said in its announcement Wednesday. "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."
