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Newsweek – Trolls, Bots and Fake News: The Mysterious World of Social Media Manipulation

Newsweek, Samuel Earle: “If it was once common to hear mass anti-government movements in the Middle East described as “Twitter uprisings” and “Facebook revolutions,” today these social media platforms are more likely to be linked to their potential for manipulating public opinions and influencing elections, including the one that saw Donald Trump elected as America’s “First Facebook President.” “The fact that I have such power in terms of numbers with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.,” Trump said on CBS’ 60 Minutes during the Republican primaries that he would later go on to win. “I think it helped me win all of these races where they’re spending much more money than I spent.” For Trump’s digital media director for the campaign, Brad Parscale, “Facebook was the 500-pound gorilla, 80 percent of the budget kind of thing.” Trump’s own enthusiasm for the social media giant appears to have waned: “Facebook was always anti-Trump,” he tweeted in September 2017.  Now the focus is less on Trump’s extensive personal social media following and more on the roles that Facebook and Twitter may have played in alleged Russian interference in the election. Congress is calling on Facebook and Twitter to disclose details about how they may have been used by Russia-linked entities to try to influence the election in favor of Trump…”

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