Facebook to brief Congress on purchases of political ads for Russia

MOSCOW, Sep 22 (PRIME) -- Facebook will inform Congress on purchases of political advertisements in the interests of Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign and related fake accounts, the U.S. social network’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said late Thursday on its Facebook page.

“We are actively working with the U.S. government on its ongoing investigations into Russian interference. We have been investigating this for many months, and for a while we had found no evidence of fake accounts linked to Russia running ads. When we recently uncovered this activity, we provided that information to the special counsel. We also briefed Congress, and this morning I directed our team to provide the ads we’ve found to Congress as well,” Zuckerberg said.

“We will continue our investigation into what happened on Facebook in this election. We may find more, and if we do, we will continue to work with the government. We are looking into foreign actors, including additional Russian groups and other former Soviet states, as well as organizations like the campaigns, to further our understanding of how they used our tools. These investigations will take some time, but we will continue our thorough review.”

Facebook will make political advertising more transparent. “When someone buys political ads on TV or other media, they’re required by law to disclose who paid for them…So we’re going to bring Facebook to an even higher standard of transparency,” the Facebook CEO said.

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