In April, when the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees summoned Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to Washington, it looked as if the nation was finally going to reckon with the outsize role that technology companies now play in American elections. Seventeen months had gone by since Donald Trump’s stunning presidential victory—a success credited by many to his campaign’s mastery of Facebook’s advertising platform, as well as to the divisive agitprop seeded throughout Facebook by Russian trolls from the Internet Research Agency, whose 470 pages and accounts were seen by an estimated 157 million Americans.
How Political Campaigns Are Messing With Your Mind
They’re using Big Data to manipulate elections—and weaken democracy.
Source