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BuzzFeed<\/a>\u00a0has obtained a statement from Facebook in which the tech giant admits, for the first time, that some Russia-linked accounts may have used its platform to try to interfere in the UK\u2019s European Union referendum vote in June 2016.<\/p>\n Which means Russian agents weren\u2019t just using Facebook to meddle in the 2016 US presidential election, and in other recent elections in the West \u2014 such as those in France and Germany.<\/p>\n Elections are of course a huge deal but the result can at least be reversed at the ballot box in time. The in\/out Brexit referendum in the UK was no such standard vote. And there is no standard process for reversing the result.<\/p>\n So if Kremlin agents also used Facebook to influence people in the UK to vote for Brexit that would be hugely significant \u2014 and further evidence that social media\u2019s connective tissue can be used to drive and enflame societal divisions.<\/p>\n \u201cTo date, we have not observed that the known, coordinated clusters in Russia engaged in significant coordination of ad buys or political misinformation targeting the Brexit vote,\u201d a Facebook spokesperson told BuzzFeed in a carefully worded statement.<\/p>\n Which begs the question how much Russian Facebook activity did target the Brexit vote?\u00a0 We asked Facebook how many socially divisive Russian-backed ads ran before Brexit. Facebook declined to comment.<\/p>\n While its claim not to have found \u201csignificant coordination\u201d of Russian activity ahead of the Brexit vote might sound like \u2018case closed\u2019 on the EU referendum front, the company has consistently sought to play down the impact of Facebook-distributed Russian misinformation \u2014 with CEO Mark Zuckerberg initially describing it as a \u201cpretty crazy idea<\/a>\u201d that fake news could have influenced voters in the US election.<\/p>\n Nearly half a year later<\/a>, after conducting an internal investigation, Facebook conceded there had been a Russian disinformation campaign during the US election \u2014 but claimed the reach of the operation was \u201cstatistically very small\u201d in comparison with overall political activity and engagement.<\/p>\n Then in September<\/a>\u00a0another tidbit came out when it said it now believed potential pro-Kremlin entities could have spent up to $150,000 on its platform to buy 3,000 ads to between 2015 and 2017.\u00a0It said the ads were tied to 470 accounts \u2014 some linked to a known Russian troll farm called the Internet Research Agency.<\/p>\n It also agreed to share the Russian backed US political ads<\/a> with congressional investigators looking into US election-related disinformation. Though it rejected calls to make all the ads public.<\/p>\n Finally, at the end of last month, about a year after its CEO\u2019s denial of the potency of political disinformation on his mega platform,\u00a0Facebook admitted Russian-backed content could have reached as many as 126 million people<\/a> in the US.<\/p>\n It now estimates the number of pieces of divisive content at 80,000, after being asked by congressional investigators to report not just direct Russian-bought ads but organic posts, images, events and more, which can also of course become viral vehicles of disinformation on Facebook\u2019s algorithmically driven platform.<\/p>\n So there\u2019s a reason to be cautious about accepting at face value the company\u2019s claim now that Russian Brexit meddling existed on its platform but was not significant.<\/p>\n Giving a speech<\/a> yesterday, the UK prime minister set out in no uncertain tones her conviction that Russia has been using social media platforms to try to interfere with Western democracies, directly accusing Vladimir Putin of seeking to sew social division by \u201cweaponizing information\u201d and planting fake stories.<\/p>\n Multiple Twitter accounts previously linked to Russia\u2019s Internet Research Agency have also been identified as engaging in Brexit-related tweeting, according to the Times<\/a> \u2014 linking Russian-backed election meddling troll activity to the UK\u2019s EU referendum vote too.<\/p>\n On Friday, Wired<\/a>\u00a0detailed some of the Russian-backed Twitter accounts and 2016 Brexit-related tweets \u2014 including tweets apparently seeking to conflate Islam with terrorism, and others aiming to stir up anti-immigrant sentiment such as by spreading racial slurs.<\/p>\n We asked Twitter how many accounts it has linked to pro-Kremlin entities that were also tweeting about Brexit ahead of the referendum vote. At the time of writing the company had not responded.<\/p>\n Meanwhile Russia continues to amuse itself with a spot of public Twitter trolling of the UK PM\u2026<\/p>\n The Russian Foreign Ministry’s official Twitter account is trolling our prime minister. \u2014 Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) November 14, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n
Can someone explain what this means? Hybrid warfare’s over? We’re now deep into postmodern warfare? pic.twitter.com\/la97GLe7BL<\/a><\/p>\n