After the fact is too late.”Recent disclosures have revealed that Russian trolls and bots manipulated social media sites to spread false and inflammatory news in an apparent effort to stoke political divisions on a large scale. Regardless, the Russian accounts had a wide reach – 360,000 followed Blacktivist on Facebook – and sizable crowds showed up to the events they promoted. Claire Finkelstein, a University of Pennsylvania law professor, said Facebook could be more transparent and publicly reveal the names of Russian accounts. It appears that one of the Russia accounts even duped Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, who twice retweeted its messages. How Russia used social media to divide Americans Read moreAnother difficult question to answer is just how centrally directed the meddling was.

Source: The Guardian October 21, 2017 10:52 UTC