Russian propaganda reached millions in US via social media: NYT
PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk
31.10.2017 13:29
Russian agents sent out inflammatory posts that reached 126 million Facebook users in the run-up to last year’s US presidential election, The New York Times has reported.
Image: TheDigitalArtist/pixabay.com/CC0 Creative Commons
Russian intelligence services also published more than 131,000 messages on Twitter and uploaded more than 1,000 videos to Google’s popular YouTube service, the paper reported, citing information from the internet giants.
The figures were sent by the three companies to the US Congress on Monday, it added.
Facebook, Google and Twitter bosses have been asked to testify before Congress as lawmakers investigate Russia’s alleged interference in the US election that saw Donald Trump winning the presidency.
Interference in US election?
The New York Times reported Facebook had told Congress that the Internet Research Agency, a Russian company linked to the Kremlin, had posted some 80,000 pieces of “divisive content” that was shown to about 29 million people between January 2015 and August 2017.
Such posts then spread to tens of millions of other users through likes and shares, the paper added.
'Levering open divisions'
Meanwhile, social media platform Twitter has revealed that it discovered more than 2,700 accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency between September and November 2016, according to The New York Times.
The new information underlines “the breadth of the Kremlin’s efforts to lever open divisions in the United States using American technology platforms, especially Facebook,” the paper said.
(pk/gs)
Source: nytimes.com