Speaking at a conference shortly after the presidential election, Zuckerberg claimed the idea that fake news on Facebook influenced the election in any way was “pretty crazy.” When testifying in front of Congress in April 2018, Zuckerberg said the company learned about new Russian “information operations” on the platform “Right around the time of the 2016 election itself.”
But according to an excerpt from “An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination,” a book by New York Times reporters Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang, the company’s security team first detected Russian activity on the platform in March, eight months before the election. The authors write that Facebook’s chief security officer at the time, Alex Stamos, “‘felt he had been trying to sound the alarm on Russia for months,’” and had briefed the people in his “’reporting chain.’” The book excerpt says Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg weren’t notified about the extent of Russia’s meddling until Stamos briefed them in December.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/28/politics/facebook-public-internal-contradict-wsj/index.html
Isn't it odd that the only time "The Russians" quietly tand secretly tried to infdluence a US election (in theory a bad thing, althoiutrgh thge US did it to Russia whgen it got Boris Yeltsin elected, then bragged about ot on the cover of Time) ever tried to infkluence a US election was the one time Hillary CLinton ran for office. Since then, nothing. Russia asked "why would we do that" and rolled their eyes while the world watched Hillary clinton get ris of the BErnie Saunders that both left and right wanted and who the 1% really didn't like. BErnie drew crows of thousands. A white dove landed on his hand at a speech, things thzt mwould make Jesus say "noice, I'm using' that mate". Contrasted withthe few crowds of suburban women CLinton had a hrd time drawing and well, she was no match for Trump - who the GOP didn't like any more than old Hil did, but rallied around him because they were scard of him and knew he had a beter chance than Hillary of connecting with actual poeple; hil was great with the 1%, shew had dirt on everybody, but that kind of twisted mojo only works on fellow elites, farmers in Idaco could give a fuck.
In 2008, Obama spent an unprecedented 10% of his paid media budget on digital advertising. That equated to $8 million, (Forbes) and utspent ROmney 2 to 1 (CNN) "President Barack Obama's re-election campaign is spending record amounts of money for online advertising and more than twice as much as his opp..." In 2016 Hillary Clinfon spenf almost $400M on media, and lost, trump spent a hundrted miullion less. file:///home/richard/Documents/0PDF/polisci/WilliamsandGulatiSSCR2017.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319604628_Digital_Advertising_Expenditures_in_the_2016_Presidential_Election