Facebook said on Wednesday it plans to inform millions of users who followed or liked any of the nearly 300 Russian-linked Facebook and Instagram pages that attempted to meddle with U.S. elections. Facebook estimated the IRA disseminated a total of about 80,000 posts and ads to users by creating fake accounts and posing as U.S. citizens. While Facebook's tool is a notable step toward transparency around the extent of Russian interference on its platform, the feature will only help users who actively liked or followed the Russian-backed pages, not the millions of people who saw content by the pages without following them. Sen. Blumenthal had asked Facebook in a letter to show users “exactly what content they saw so they can understand and evaluate what they may see in the future." Google said Russian-backed accounts uploaded more than 1,000 videos to Google-owned YouTube.

Source: Forbes November 22, 2017 19:05 UTC