Marck Zuckerberg has been under immense pressure from U.S. Congress over the last few days, and this isn’t going to help.

Practicing humility of late, Zuck and his crew owned up to 270 million Facebook accounts that have are either fake or duplicates. That’s around 10% of the platform’s two billion users, which is also pretty much the population of U.S.A.

AU News has the intel on the fake profiles:

The news comes after Facebook testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that a Russian group posted more than 80,000 times on its service during and after the 2016 election, potentially reaching as many as 126 million users.

Facebook wasn’t the only target for the Russian propagandists, as:

Twitter also told the committee that it has uncovered and shut down 2752 accounts linked to the same group, Russia’s Internet Research Agency.

That’s 14 times more than the amount of accounts Twitter handed over to congressional committees three weeks ago.

Colin Stretch, Facebook’s General Counsel, told the Judiciary panel that:

120 pages set up by Russia’s internet Research Agency posted the material between January 2015 and August 2017. Roughly 29 million people were directly served these items in their news feeds from the agency over that time period.

This isn’t being taken lightly by Facebook and Twitter as both social giants have publicly outlined the steps they are taking to keep the public informed about political agenda on their platforms.

But this isn’t just about advertising:

Fake news, fake events, propaganda and other misinformation spread far and wide on the platforms in 2016 without the need for paid advertisements.

In case you missed it, check out an example of fake adverts created by the Russians here.

This clearly isn’t an easy fix, and automated advertising platforms allow almost anyone with access to the Internet to “place an ad with little or no oversight from the companies”.

Let’s just hope the U.S. government’s proposed regulation doesn’t filter into what our beloved social media were found upon; freedom.

[source:aunews]