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Facebook Doesn’t Know How Many People Followed Russians on Instagram

Wired: “For more than a year, Jonathan Albright has served as something of a one-man General Accounting Office for the tech industry. The researcher at Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism has dug into the details on how political Twitter trolls manipulate the media, and unearthed an intricate web of conspiracy theory videos on YouTube. Last weekend, while digging through Facebook’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee from last fall, something else caught his eye. In written responses provided to the committee, Facebook’s general counsel Colin Stretch told senator Dianne Feinstein that 1.8 million people had followed at least one Facebook page associated with the Russian propaganda group Internet Research Agency—but the answer made no mention of how many followers these trolls gained on Instagram…”

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