The top ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), is warning that Russia’s six figure ad spending to spreading propaganda during the 2016 election may be the tip of the iceberg.
According to CBS News, Sen. Warner told reporters:
“I think we may just be seeing the tip of the iceberg. They had a fairly narrow search,” Warner said, adding that he has been raising the issue for months, and Facebook has been dismissing it for just as long. “We’ve seen them take down certain pages. It’s rather minor compared to the 50,000 accounts they took down before the French election.”
Warner says he still has several questions, for instance: “How extensive was the Russian involvement of using Facebook, Twitter and other social media forums?” He also wants to ensure that Americans have the tools to know — when they’re seeing something in a political context — what the source of information is.
While the vast majority of Americans still get their news from television, social media is a great place for Russia to influence the discussion on cable news and get their false information into the mainstream media. Russia’s involvement in the election might not have been limited to helping and potentially colluding with Trump.
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Putin launched an all out misinformation campaign that the mainstream media’s mentality of getting the story first instead of getting it right, allowed them to fall right into.
If the Russians bought this advertising to support Trump, or if the Trump campaign was involved with the ads, then Trump’s Russia problem will get even worse because those are both violations of federal law. It would be even more sinister if a hostile foreign power launched a social media campaign to dupe and mislead the American people with false information.
Sen. Warner is probably right. The worst is yet to come, but the Facebook ads alone were an act of war against American democracy.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
