Facebook's CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg is not ruling out the possibility that there could be a copycat of the 2016 Russian interference that used Facebook to influence votes.
"I'm sure someone's trying," Zuckerberg told CNN's Laurie Segall when asked if he thinks the social media-backed scheme could happen again. "I'm sure that there's v2 [version two] of whatever the Russian effort was in 2016, I'm sure they're working on that. And there are going to be some new tactics that we need to make sure that we observe and get in front of."
One of those tactics involves "building technology" designed to detect shady posts and clickbait, and also hiring trained personnel to stop the propaganda in its tracks. "One of the big commitments that we've made this year is to double the number of people working on security at the company. We're going to have 20,000 people working on security and content review in this company by the end of this year," he tells Segall.
Back in 2015, Facebook announced that "inauthentic" user accounts based in Russia had purchased more than $100,000 worth of political ads between 2015 and 2016. These pro-Donald Trump ads perpetuated sensational headlines and exploited divisive issues like "Black Lives Matter" and gun rights. One phony page called Being Patriotic even promoted pro-Trump flash mobs in Florida in August 2016, according to Business Insider.
According to insiders at the social network, Zuckerberg had initially been in denial about the presence of this fake news epidemic, leaving its users susceptible to the bogus content. On April 27, 2017, Alex Stamos, Facebook's head of security, released a report on "how a foreign adversary could use Facebook to manipulate people" without naming any specific parties of interest. The company contacted the FBI once it discovered that a hacking group with ties to Russia's military intelligence unit, the GRU, created fake accounts with the goal of amplifying stolen emails.
Zuckerberg is realistic about the challenges that are ahead for his company, saying, "Now the reality is, with a community of two billion people, I can't promise that we're going to find everything. But what I can commit to is that we're going to make it as hard as possible for these adversaries to do that and I think that we're going to do a much better job."
