Facebook now estimates that Russian trolls reached more than half of U.S. users during 2016 election

Facebook.
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Facebook will tell Congress this week that its current "best estimate is that approximately 126 million people may have been served" at least one story posted by the Kremlin-linked troll farm the Internet Research Agency (IRA) between June 2015 and August 2017, according to copies of the prepared testimony of Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch obtained by CNNMoney and Axios. Facebook has 213 million monthly active users in the U.S., so that would suggest Russian ads hit more than half of U.S. Facebook users during the 2016 election.

Facebook says those posts were "a tiny fraction of the overall content on Facebook," but as CNN's Dylan Byers points out, it's also a big uptick from Facebook's earlier estimates.

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.