Fact-Checking a Facebook Executive’s Comments on Russian Interference

Fact-Checking a Facebook Executive’s Comments on Russian Interference
The grand jury indictment secured by Mr. Mueller asserts
that the goal of Russian operatives was to influence the 2016 election, particularly by criticizing Hillary Clinton and supporting Mr. Trump and Bernie Sanders, Mrs. Clinton’s chief rival for the Democratic nomination.
Mr. Goldman later wrote in another tweet that “the Russian campaign was certainly in favor of Trump.”
Mr. Goldman asserted that those figures were not published by the “mainstream media” — however, many
mainstream news outlets did print those numbers, including CNN, Reuters and The Wall Street Journal.
A recent survey in Finland found that 67 percent of respondents “think fake news affects Finns’ perceptions on issues ‘a lot’ or to an ‘extreme’ degree.” Officials in Sweden
and the Netherlands have also recently warned that fake news poses a threat to their governments.
The Russians “engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz
and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump,” the indictment said.
also reported earlier this month on an attempt by a shadowy Russian figure to sell stolen American
cyberweapons, as well as compromising material on President Trump, to the United States.