Before the 2016 presidential election, Russians using fake identities organized inflammatory protests in the United States and advertised them on Facebook, including an anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rally in Twin Falls, Idaho, The Daily Beast reports.
Last week, Facebook announced that Russians hiding behind false names had paid to promote about 3,000 divisive political Facebook posts in the U.S., and a spokesperson confirmed to The Daily Beast that they also paid to share events. While most of the events have been deleted, The Daily Beast was able to find in a search engine cache a Facebook event scheduled for August 27, 2016, hosted by a group calling itself SecuredBorders, which earlier this year was revealed to be a Russian front. When SecuredBorders' page was shuttered by Facebook last month, it had 133,000 followers.
Their event was a protest called Citizens Before Refugees, to be held at the Idaho Falls City Council chambers. It said it was time to "stop taking in Muslim refugees! We demand open and thorough investigation of all cases regarding Muslim refugees!" The Daily Beast says 48 people said they were interested in attending, and only four said they showed up. Whether or not an event is ever actually held, people can RSVP to it as long as an event page is set up.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Twin Falls has long welcomed refugees, and a Chobani plant there had said it would employ refugees. Several pro-Trump media outlets, including InfoWars and Breitbart, had started publishing defamatory stories about refugees in Twin Falls earlier in 2016, with InfoWars publishing at one point a video titled "Idaho Yogurt Maker Caught Importing Migrant Rapists." Chobani sued, and InfoWars' Alex Jones settled and issued a retraction of the false story. Read more about the elaborate Facebook scheme and how many people may have been caught up in it at The Daily Beast.
-
Gripping political thrillers to stream nowThe Week Recommends From power struggles to deadly conspiracies, these addictive shows are nail-bitingly tense
-
What to know before turning to AI for financial advicethe explainer It can help you crunch the numbers — but it might also pocket your data
-
Book reviews: 'The Headache: The Science of a Most Confounding Affliction—and a Search for Relief' and 'Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run'Feature The search for a headache cure and revisiting Springsteen's 'Born to Run' album on its 50th anniversary
-
Supreme Court allows social media age check lawSpeed Read The court refused to intervene in a decision that affirmed a Mississippi law requiring social media users to verify their ages
-
Nvidia hits $4 trillion milestoneSpeed Read The success of the chipmaker has been buoyed by demand for artificial intelligence
-
X CEO Yaccarino quits after two yearsSpeed Read Elon Musk hired Linda Yaccarino to run X in 2023
-
Musk chatbot Grok praises Hitler on XSpeed Read Grok made antisemitic comments and referred to itself as 'MechaHitler'
-
Disney, Universal sue AI firm over 'plagiarism'Speed Read The studios say that Midjourney copied characters from their most famous franchises
-
Amazon launches 1st Kuiper internet satellitesSpeed Read The battle of billionaires continues in space
-
Test flight of orbital rocket from Europe explodesSpeed Read Isar Aerospace conducted the first test flight of the Spectrum orbital rocket, which crashed after takeoff
-
Apple pledges $500B in US spending over 4 yearsSpeed Read This is a win for Trump, who has pushed to move manufacturing back to the US
