Friday, October 13, 2017

Facebook Users were targeted by a Russian Scheme



The 2016 elections were nothing short of a calamity; compromised by Russian interference, sabotage, and a lot of media drama. What took the cake though, was the Russian interference. Although consistently denied by Putin, it has been proven that there was indeed Russian interference in more than one way. Through Facebook, Hacking, and other different methods it tampered and even influenced the way voters voted.

More specifically, the Facebook ads were targeted at specific groups with divisive content and were meant to trigger these specific crowds. These crowds were typically tied down to grassroot, embedded, and systematic problems here in America. Some of these groups were African American groups against police brutality and inequality and another group that was significantly divisive, an anti immigration group. These groups, or Facebook entities, were respectively called "Blacktivist" and  "Secured Borders"

These two groups are just a couple of the hundreds of accounts on Facebook that were found to be targeting a specific group of people, usually activists and nationalists, which was really a genius move. Because both of these groups are extremely passionate and to this day have ongoing issues, they are easy targets because they cause a lot of commotion and also gain a lot of traction and publicity. With that being said, the accounts Blacktivist and Secured Borders were able to garner hundreds of thousands of followers and after they managed to capture their followers, they consistently posted election propaganda. Russians influenced American voters through Facebook; what a time to be alive.


https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-users-were-unwitting-targets-of-russia-backed-scheme-1507918659

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