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A new report details how a covert influence operation linked to the Kremlin continued to place ads on Facebook despite U.S. and E.U. prohibitions on doing business with the organization.
By Steven Lee Myers and Adam Satariano
The authors have written extensively about Russia and the phenomena of disinformation and foreign propaganda on social media.
A Russian organization connected to the Kremlin’s covert influence campaigns has run more than 8,000 classified political ads on Facebook despite European and U. S. restrictions banning corporations from doing business with the organization, according to three organizations that track disinformation online.
Russia’s Social Design Agency organization circumvented Facebook’s lax measures by serving an estimated $338,000 worth of classified ads targeting European users over a 15-month period ending in October, despite Facebook itself platform flagged the threat, the three organizations said. report released on Friday.
The Social Design Agency faces punitive sanctions in the European Union from 2023 and in the United States from April for spreading propaganda and disinformation to unsuspecting users on social media. Facebook’s ad campaigns raise “crucial questions about the platform’s compliance” with US and European laws. , according to the report.
The report follows the announcement by Facebook’s parent company, Meta, that it was changing its rules for content it allows on its social media platforms, including eliminating fact checks that flagged or removed posts. The changes will almost certainly intensify Meta’s confrontation with regulators in Europe over how it handles disinformation and other corrosive content.
The tweaks come with the lifting of automatic limitations on race and gender-related content that can run counter to the European Union’s Digital Services Act, which requires social media platforms to limit illegal and destructive online activities and the spread of misinformation. The 27-nation bloc announced last year that it had launched an investigation into Meta for poor tracking of misleading classified ads on Facebook and Instagram.
When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the content policies last week, he appeared to allude to the company’s regulatory fight with the European Union, calling on President-elect Donald J. Trump to “push governments back. ” foreigners” who, according to him, were seeking to limit freedom of expression.
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