theSkimm update today on this issue:
The Story
Congress is not happy with Silicon Valley.
What’s this about?
Russia attacked last year’s US election by doing things like hacking institutions (think: the DNC) and spreading propaganda on social media. The US intelligence community says this was ordered by Russian President Putin. Russian agents pushed content to as many as 126 million Facebook users, uploaded more than 1,000 videos to YouTube, and sent millions of fake news tweets — including incorrect info on how to vote.
What’s the latest?
This week, Congress invited Facebook, Google, and Twitter to Capitol Hill for a little chat. Their reps testified on how exactly Russia manipulated their platforms. This is what we learned: one, millions of Instagram users were also pushed ads. And two, Russian ops targeted social media users based on location, race, religion, and political preferences. Lawmakers were not impressed that the companies’ lawyers were there to answer Qs, instead of the CEOs. And threatened to increase regulation if the companies don’t move quickly to prevent a repeat in 2018.
Anything else?
Yesterday, Facebook reported earnings that beat investor expectations. Its advertising biz grew by nearly 50%. Russia shmussia. But CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company’s wallet will likely take a hit as it puts more money into upping cyber security in the wake of the election interference.
theSkimm
Last year’s election was decided by about 100,000 votes in key swing states. Now we know that millions of people, across multiple platforms were exposed to propaganda pushed by an unfriendly foreign power.
So are bay area bros still shocked that people outside America managed to figure out how to advertise ideas to us by analyzing demographics?
I’m still shocked that people can think so highly of themselves and jingoistic supremacism that it’s unimaginable to them that this could happen.
Sorry to burst the bubble, but Americans actually aren’t inherently and uniquely better at everything than everyone else on earth.
