The MP leading the parliament's inquiry into fake news has accused Facebook of doing "no work" to identify Russian influence on its platform around the Brexit vote. Damian Collins hit out at the company after it identified three Russian-linked posts that it had already discovered as part of investigations in the US.
Facebook said the three ads it highlighted as targeting the Brexit vote cost 73p. But Collins argues the number is so small because Facebook only gathered data from accounts that primarially posted about US politics and had not looked for accounts specifically set up around the EU referendum.
In September, Facebook's chief security officer Alex Stamos revealed that Russian propaganda outlet The Internet Research Agency spent $100,000 on adverts across the social network around the presidential election. This cash brought the IRA 3,000 ads that appeared in more than 100 million Americans' News Feeds. Facebook revealed the details as part of an official investigation into Russia's influence on the vote.
The US investigation into Russian social media activity, which also covers online misinformation on YouTube, Facebook and Google, has led to the UK creating its own versions into the highly divisive Brexit vote. It's been revealed that thousands of Kremlin-linked accounts posted about Brexit on Twitter and British lawmakers have demanded social media companies reveal the full extent of interference.
Parliament's inquiry into fake news has asked Twitter, Facebook and Google for evidence about IRA accounts posting around UK affairs. It was followed by a second investigation from the Electoral Commission, which Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and Sundar Pichai's companies have agreed to work with.
Read more: Here's the first evidence Russia used Twitter to influence Brexit
Facebook today responded to the Electoral Commission with details of whether any IRA pages or profiles it knows about paid for adverts around the referendum. The company says that just $0.97 (£0.73) was spent on targeting three adverts at people in the UK.
These three adverts ended-up "delivering approximately 200 impressions to UK viewers over four days in May 2016," the company says. These posts were about immigration and didn't directly mention the EU vote. In addition, it also says the three adverts were targeted at people living in the US as well as those in the UK. In the EU referendum 52 per cent of people were in favour of leaving the Union and the side won the vote by 1.3 million ballots.
On an initial view, the ad spending on Facebook by IRA accounts around the referendum hugely dwarfs that around the US presidential election. But this is highly unlikely to be the full extent of Russian activity targetting the vote. For starters, Facebook's information provided to the Electoral Commission only looks it IRA accounts it has already identified for the investigation it faces in the US.
Collins, the MP leading parliament's fake news inquiry, criticised Facebook's efforts. "Facebook responded only with regards to funded advertisements to audiences in the UK from the around 470 accounts and pages run by the Russian based Internet Research Agency, which had been active during the US Presidential election," he said in a statement.
“It would appear that no work has been done by Facebook to look for Russian activity around the EU referendum, other than from funded advertisements from those accounts that had already been identified as part of the US Senate's investigation. No work has been done by Facebook to look for other fake accounts and pages that could be linked to Russian backed agencies and which were active during the EU referendum, as I requested."
The details published by Facebook also don't take into account any organic posts and pages of Russian accounts. Facebook has only shared details about adverts surrounding the Brexit vote and hasn't provided any information about other posts created by Russian accounts.
However, the evidence to the Electoral Commission is the first time Facebook has explicitly admitted Russian accounts were active around the referendum in May 2016. Throughout the US and UK investigations into misinformation, the position of Facebook has consistently changed to reveal a greater amount of influence than was originally believed to have taken place.
Read more: Yup, the Russian propagandists were blogging lies on Medium too
In November, Facebook told BuzzFeed it had not "observed ... significant co-ordination" on its network around Brexit. Earlier in the same month Facebook's vice president of EMEA, Nicola Mendelsohn, said the company had "seen nothing" to indicate the "known clusters" of IRA accounts had been posting about UK political events.
In the US, in October, the social network said 10 million people saw political adverts purchased by the IRA. This was upped to 156 million people by the end of the month.
In November 2016, Zuckerberg said it was a "pretty crazy idea" that fake posts on its site influence the outcome of the presidential vote. "Calling that crazy was dismissive and I regret it," Zuckerberg said under a year later.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
