Facebook Denies Knowledge of Russian Propaganda Campaign Before Public Exposé

Nov. 15, 2018

“In the final months of Mr. (Donald) Trump’s presidential campaign, Russian agents escalated a yearlong effort to hack and harass his Democratic opponents, culminating in the release of thousands of emails stolen from prominent Democrats and party officials,” said the Times report on Wednesday.

Facebook said in a statement that it had already acknowledged publicly on many occasions – including before Congress – that it was too slow to spot Russian interference on Facebook, as well as other misuse.

“While we still have a long way to go, we’re proud of the progress we have made in fighting misinformation, removing bad content and preventing foreign actors from manipulating our platform,” the statement added.

Responding to the criticism of Facebook’s decision on keeping a post in which Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown” on Muslims entering the US, Facebook said the post remained because it did not break the company’s Community Standards “for the same reasons The New York Times and many other organisations covered the news: Donald Trump was a candidate running for office.”

“To suggest that the internal debate around this particular case was different from other important free speech issues on Facebook is wrong,” Facebook said.

Facebook said that it used the consultant Definers Public Affairs to look into the funding of “Freedom from Facebook” to demonstrate that it was not simply a spontaneous grassroots campaign, as it claimed, “but supported by a well-known critic of our company,” presumably liberal financier George Soros.

“To suggest that this was an anti-Semitic attack is reprehensible and untrue,” the company said.