Intercontinental content

Internet companies Facebook Inc., Google and Twitter Inc. Presented the Congress data on the placement of political advertising on Russian origin on their platforms, Bloomberg reports . The intervention turned out to be more ambitious than before.

According to all three companies, the content developed and promoted the "Internet research agency", known as the "Troll factory". According to Facebook, the agency paid an advertisement for 120 pages, on which about 80 thousand records were published from January to 2015 to August 2017. In addition, 120 thousand publications were posted on the Instagram from 170 accounts. Given the reposts, this content was seen by 126 million Americans, they note on Facebook. In October 2016, a month before the election, the social network blocked suspicious accounts.

In YouTube, the "Internet research agency" created 17 channels where it published its content, according to Google. They published 1,108 videos with a total duration of 43 hours. From June 2015 to November 2016, they collected 309 thousand views. All these channels were blocked.

According to Twitter Service, 2,752 accounts are associated with the agency. The tweets in them fasted automatically. From September 1, 2016 to November 15, 2016, 1.4 million messages were placed.

“Foreign intervention that we observed is reprehensible and outrageous and opened a new battlefield for our company, our industry and our society,” said Facebook representative Colin Stretch. “The fact that foreign figures hiding behind fake accounts were abused by our platform and other Internet services, trying to sow the discretion and disclosure and to undermine our election process, “This is an attack on democracy, and it violates all our values.”

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the Facebook, Google and Twitter, exploration of the US Senate Committee, will perform at open hearing devoted to Russian intervention in the elections.

On October 17, RBC reported that the "troll factory" spent about $ 2.3 million on propaganda in social networks among Americans. Of this money, about two million dollars were spent on salaries for employees for the last two years: 55 thousand rubles a month were paid to ordinary employees responsible for compiling content, community administrators received 80-90 thousand rubles a month, the salary of departments exceeded 120 thousand rubles. In total, up to 90 people worked in the "American" unit of the "factory". About 80 thousand dollars in two years, 200 thousand rubles a month, used to the purchase of IT sections: proxy servers, IP addresses, virtual SIM cards.

Also, about 120 thousand dollars, five thousand dollars a month, for two years was spent on promotion in social networks. These funds were mainly on the purchase of advertising on Facebook. The department began to work actively in June 2015. In the fall of 2017, the social networks blocked the majority of the Factory communities.