The ongoing investigation into Russian influence in the US election is looking more and more like an existential threat to big tech. A couple of weeks back, Facebook, hauled up in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, revealed that up to 126 million people saw political adverts that had been purchased by the Kremlin backed ‘Internet Research Agency’, between 2015-2017. It turned over 3,000 ads to investigators, which had been placed through almost 500 accounts and 120 pages.
It’s not just Facebook, of course. Twitter also provided Congress with the handles of around 36,000 Russian linked bots who tweeted a total of 1.4 million times in the two months before the election. The company estimates that their tweets were viewed nearly 300 million times. Google found 1,108 videos uploaded by Russian-linked accounts, netting 309,000 YouTube views altogether. The intention, it seems, was to both help Trump and generally gaslight Americans by sowing disunity and confusion.
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