Tech Giants Disclose Russian Activity on Eve of Congressional Appearance

Facebook, Google and Twitter are set to divulge new details showing that the scope of Russian-backed manipulation on their platforms before and after the US presidential election was far greater than previously disclosed, reaching an estimated 126 million people on Facebook alone, according to people familiar with the matter, prepared copies of their testimonies and a company statement. Facebook estimates that 470 Russian-backed accounts connected to a single pro-Kremlin firm, the Internet Research Agency, churned out 80,000 posts on Facebook between January 2015 and August 2017, the social-media company plans to tell congressional investigators. Twitter, meanwhile, has identified and removed 2,752 accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency. Google has discovered 1,108 videos uploaded to its YouTube video site, which were viewed a total of 309,000 times in the U.S. from June 2015 to November 2016, by accounts linked to Russian operatives. The videos encompass 43 hours of content from 18 different English-language accounts. In addition, Google said two accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency spent $4,700 on search and display ads during the 2016 elections.