Richard Burr Mark Warner investigating Russia
The U.S. House and Senate Intelligence Committees have asked executives from Google, Facebook and Twitter to appear at their respective public hearings on November 1. The hearings will seek testimony on evidence already turned over to the Committees by the companies on how Russia used social media accounts, bots, trolls and advertising to influence the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election.

The New York Times reported yesterday that "On Facebook, fake Russia-linked accounts - in which fictional people posed as American activists - promoted inflammatory messages on divisive issues. Those accounts bought advertising to promote those messages and reach a bigger audience within the Facebook universe, while promoting the incendiary posts to different locations or people with established political leanings for maximum impact."

Facebook has turned over information on 3,000 Russia-linked ads that appeared on its network in the leadup to the 2016 presidential election. Google this week disclosed that Russia-linked ads had also appeared on its platforms during the presidential campaign. Twitter has provided evidence to the Committees that RT, a Russian, state-funded television network previously known as Russia Today, had advertised on its network during the presidential campaign period.

On September 27, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, responded to the political fallout from the Russia investigation as follows:
"The facts suggest the greatest role Facebook played in the 2016 election was different from what most are saying:

"- More people had a voice in this election than ever before. There were billions of interactions discussing the issues that may have never happened offline. Every topic was discussed, not just what the media covered.

"- This was the first US election where the internet was a primary way candidates communicated. Every candidate had a Facebook page to communicate directly with tens of millions of followers every day.

"- Campaigns spent hundreds of millions advertising online to get their messages out even further. That's 1000x more than any problematic ads we've found."

"- We ran 'get out the vote' efforts that helped as many as 2 million people register to vote. To put that in perspective, that's bigger than the get out the vote efforts of the Trump and Clinton campaigns put together. That's a big deal."
On January 6 of this year, when the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released the declassified portion of its report on "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections," it appeared to be tarring Russia with a broad brush for provoking anger and outcries among U.S. citizens against the U.S. surveillance state, inequality, the serial looting of the public by Wall Street, and numerous other problems of our own making.

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