Nearly two years before Russian dissemination of fake news played a role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the Ukrainian government warned Facebook and U.S. government officials that Russia used "aggressive behavior" to spread disinformation on social media platforms.
Dmytro Shymkiv, the head of Ukraine's presidential administration, told the Financial Times: "We shared with them some of our concerns that the problem of fake news spreading and the influence of behavior is very worrying ... I think Facebook was warned about what might happen with respect to the situation that unfolded in the U.S. ... Their response was: 'We are an open platform, we allow everybody the possibility to communicate.'"
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