Clinton: Facebook must ‘own up’ to its role in spreading fake news

Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton pushed on Thursday for Facebook to “own up” to its role in allowing fake news to spread after the platform revealed it had published thousands of political ads over the past two years that were linked to fake Russia-based accounts. 

“We may have our disagreements among Americans, we’re not going to let the Russians come in and divide us. And so we’re going to make Facebook own up to everything. They’ve just begun to own up. They have a long way to go before they get to where they need to be, in my opinion,” Clinton told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. 

“Other tech companies, we’re going to go after these provocateurs, these Russians posing as Americans, these content farms in Macedonia, these thousand trolls, these tens of thousands of bots, because you know what, we have every right to have a rigorous debate in America, but we don’t want it being interfered with and suborned by Putin and his allies,” she continued.

{mosads}

Clinton’s comments come after Facebook announced last week it discovered that 470 inauthentic accounts spent about $100,000 to buy roughly 3,000 ads during the presidential campaign

While the majority of the ads did not reference Clinton or President Trump, they were largely promoting divisive social issues, like immigration and gun control.

“We know we have to stay vigilant to keep ahead of people who try to misuse our platform,” Facebook’s chief security officer Alex Stamos said in a statement last week. “We believe in protecting the integrity of civic discourse, and require advertisers on our platform to follow both our policies and all applicable laws. We also care deeply about the authenticity of the connections people make on our platform.”

The Daily Beast reported on Tuesday that Russian agents used the social media platform to promote U.S. protests, including one anti-immigrant protest during the 2016 presidential campaign. 

The revelations come as special counsel Robert Mueller expands his federal probe into Russia’s election meddling, and has reportedly focused on Moscow’s role in using social media to interfere in the election.