For the record, both Facebook and Twitter, after first denying they were spreading false information, eventually did some due diligence, uncovered hundreds of Russian accounts and millions of posts and likes, and shared what they found with Congress. After they took down the fake accounts, however, they did not provide journalists access to them. Most often, the sites, produced by Russia’s Internet Research Agency focused on divisive American issues: race, guns, and immigration; they also created fantastic fictions that tens of millions of Americans believe.
Notes and Sources
Levitsky and Ziblatt, How Democracies Die, (Broadway Books, 2018), 162.
Ibid., 145.
Ibid., 146. Also: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/mcconnells-fabricated-history-to-justify-a-2020-supreme-court-vote/
Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, (Crown, 2018), 257.
Snyder, 258.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2017/10/17/how-the-russians-pretended-to-be-texans-and-texans-believed-them/ | For more on Russia’s Internet Research Agency and its work in the U.S. and elsewhere:
Snyder, especially pp. 159-278.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/opinion/russia-meddling-disinformation-fake-news-elections.html?
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-long-history-of-russian-disinformation-targeting-the-u-s
https://www.npr.org/sections/trump-impeachment-trial-live-updates/2021/02/13/967701180/after-vote-mcconnell-torched-trump-as-practically-and-morally-responsible-for-ri | https://www.npr.org/sections/trump-impeachment-trial-live-updates/2021/02/13/967098840/senate-acquits-trump-in-impeachment-trial-again
