FBI Tracked 'Fake News' Believed To Be From Russia On Election Day (cnn.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: The FBI monitored social media on Election Day last year in an effort to track a suspected Russian disinformation campaign utilizing "fake news," CNN has learned. In the months leading up to Election Day, Twitter and Facebook were the feeding grounds for viral "news" stories floating conspiracies and hoaxes, many aimed at spreading negative false claims about Hillary Clinton. On Election Day, dozens of agents and analysts huddled at a command center arrayed with large monitoring screens at the FBI headquarters in Washington watching for security threats, according to multiple sources. That included analysts monitoring cyber threats, after months of mounting Russian intrusions targeting every part of the US political system, from political parties to policy think-tanks to state election systems. On this day, there was also a group of FBI cyber and counterintelligence analysts and investigators watching social media. FBI analysts had identified social media user accounts behind stories, some based overseas, and the suspicion was that at least some were part of a Russian disinformation campaign, according to two sources familiar with the investigation.

Comments

Re:They looked for it

[Mr D from 63]

So there was a lot of fake news coming out, and some was from Russia. Thanks for this information, I would never have guessed.

Re: They looked for it

[Anonymous Coward]

So this is how Russia "influenced" our election? By spreading fake news and being Internet trolls?! For fuck's sake, that's it???