Democrats aren’t giving up their fear that Russia is heavily influencing the American political process, claiming the former Soviet nation is still meddling through advertisements on Facebook.
Despite an ongoing federal investigation into the country’s influence in the 2016 presidential election, a number of Democrats in the House and Senate intelligence committees are still concerned that Russia will be, if it isn’t now, back to disrupting U.S. elections very soon.
Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois, who holds a seat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told the Financial Times Wednesday that he “absolutely” thinks Russia will continue interfering in American elections.
“I think they (Russia) are going to redouble their efforts because it worked for them, right? . . . Hack and dump, propaganda, fake news. I think they’re here,” Quigley told FT. The representative truly believes that Russia is interested in “sowing discord and division” within the American voting populous.
Vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, told FT that the national security threat that Russia had in the 2016 election cycle is “one of the reasons it’s so vital that we get to the bottom of what happened on Facebook in the 2016 election, and that Facebook devote the necessary resources to address these vulnerabilities. Because if we don’t, you can bet that the Russians will be back, if not now, then in 2018 and beyond.”
Pressure has mounted on social media website Facebook to stop advertising and fake news since The New York Times reported that roughly 3,000 ads worth over a $100,000 appeared on Facebook linked to a Russian company with ties to the nation’s government.
Facebook’s Chief Operating Office Sheryl Sandberg said Wednesday in a post that the company will be “adding more human review and oversight to our automated processes” and is planning on “working to create a program to encourage people on Facebook to report potential abuses of our ads system to us directly.”
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