Russia-linked posts reached 126m FB users in US
BBC
London: Facebook has said as many as 126 million American users may have seen content uploaded by Russia-based operatives over the past two years, reports BBC.
The social networking site said about 80,000 posts were produced before and after the 2016 presidential election.
Most of the posts focused on divisive social and political messages.
Facebook released the figures ahead of a Senate hearing where it, together with Twitter and Google. will detail Russias impact on the popular sites.
Russia has repeatedly denied allegations that it attempted to influence the last US presidential election, in which Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton.
In a separate development on Monday, an investigation by independent counsel Robert Mueller into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia produced its first charges against two former aides. It also emerged that a third former aide had pleaded guilty in early October to lying to the FBI.
President Trump has dismissed allegations of collusion with Moscow, and has repeatedly called on Mrs Clinton to be investigated. Facebook says some 80,000 posts were published between June 2015 and August 2017 and were seen by about 29 million Americans directly, according to a draft of prepared remarks seen by US media ahead of Tuesdays Senate judiciary committee hearing.
These posts, which Facebook says were created by a Kremlin-linked company, were amplified through likes, shares and comments and spread to tens of millions more people.
Facebook also said it had deleted 170 Instagram accounts, which posted about 120,000 pieces of content.
These actions run counter to Facebooks mission of building community and everything we stand for, wrote Facebooks general counsel Colin Stretch.
