Instagram was more relevant than Facebook in the Russian interference in the US elections, according to the Senate
The Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election was so profound that its effects and origin are still being investigated. In the problem is often talk of networks of bots controlled that shared false news and attacking Hillary in one way or another, with the eye on Facebook and something on Twitter, but with Instagram going unnoticed and seen by the public as " the good network of Facebook ".
The reality, according to The Guardian and Bloomberg, following two reports prepared for the US Senate by New Knowledge and researchers from the Oxford and Columbia universities and Candield Research LLC, is that the impact of Instagram on the Russian plot has been underestimated, until the point that in their appearances before the elected representatives, neither Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg mentioned it as the focus of the problem.
But Instagram was important for the entity that according to the investigation was behind the manipulation, the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA), sharing relevance with Facebook or even surpassing it, according to the figures offered. The reports mention that on Instagram there were 187 million interactions with content related to Russian interference, while on Facebook and Twitter it amounted to less than half, with 77 and 73 million, respectively. In addition, Instagram managed to have more comments than the blue social network.
After the elections, according to the second report, prepared by the University of Oxford, the activation of the IRA on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube grew between 45 and 84%, but shot without control on Instagram up to 238%, thanks to the creation of accounts with different false identities such as @ american.veterans or @rainbownationus, which exceeded 100,000 followers. These are accounts that sell material of different types, with the possible objective of gathering information from users.
Although Instagram is more difficult to achieve content viralization, because it is not allowed to share with other users or retweet, the social network is key in the world of influence to other people, and the reach that it has is gigantic. In that sense, the effect has reached Spain, where with advice from Steve Bannon (campaign manager of Donald Trump), Vox has become the most followed political party in the country on Instagram.
Instagram can be more dangerous than the image it has
Something curious and interesting is that whenever a scandal of Facebook, such as today, involving companies like Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Yahoo or Spotify, fiercely criticizes the management and operations of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg with that service, but it does not mention what may be happening in other areas of the company, such as WhatsApp or Instagram.
The people who run Facebook are the ones who run Instagram, and there's nothing that prevents them from sharing problems
The end of Facebook is forecast as a social network, and Instagram is talked about as the salvation of the company's future. But if the possibility of reproducing the same problems, and not improving privacy, which is an issue that is little about the network but that may be equally relevant in the future, is not checked, the situation could be similar in a while.
There are relevant people who have already seen that there are things that are not working well at all, and they are nothing more and nothing less than their co-founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. Because of the lack of independence, they abandoned Facebook and its creation. And if independence meant taking a different direction from Facebook in key aspects, maybe that means that both social networks are going to be more similar than previously thought.
The reality, according to The Guardian and Bloomberg, following two reports prepared for the US Senate by New Knowledge and researchers from the Oxford and Columbia universities and Candield Research LLC, is that the impact of Instagram on the Russian plot has been underestimated, until the point that in their appearances before the elected representatives, neither Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg mentioned it as the focus of the problem.
But Instagram was important for the entity that according to the investigation was behind the manipulation, the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA), sharing relevance with Facebook or even surpassing it, according to the figures offered. The reports mention that on Instagram there were 187 million interactions with content related to Russian interference, while on Facebook and Twitter it amounted to less than half, with 77 and 73 million, respectively. In addition, Instagram managed to have more comments than the blue social network.
After the elections, according to the second report, prepared by the University of Oxford, the activation of the IRA on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube grew between 45 and 84%, but shot without control on Instagram up to 238%, thanks to the creation of accounts with different false identities such as @ american.veterans or @rainbownationus, which exceeded 100,000 followers. These are accounts that sell material of different types, with the possible objective of gathering information from users.
Although Instagram is more difficult to achieve content viralization, because it is not allowed to share with other users or retweet, the social network is key in the world of influence to other people, and the reach that it has is gigantic. In that sense, the effect has reached Spain, where with advice from Steve Bannon (campaign manager of Donald Trump), Vox has become the most followed political party in the country on Instagram.
Instagram can be more dangerous than the image it has
Something curious and interesting is that whenever a scandal of Facebook, such as today, involving companies like Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Yahoo or Spotify, fiercely criticizes the management and operations of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg with that service, but it does not mention what may be happening in other areas of the company, such as WhatsApp or Instagram.
The people who run Facebook are the ones who run Instagram, and there's nothing that prevents them from sharing problems
The end of Facebook is forecast as a social network, and Instagram is talked about as the salvation of the company's future. But if the possibility of reproducing the same problems, and not improving privacy, which is an issue that is little about the network but that may be equally relevant in the future, is not checked, the situation could be similar in a while.
There are relevant people who have already seen that there are things that are not working well at all, and they are nothing more and nothing less than their co-founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. Because of the lack of independence, they abandoned Facebook and its creation. And if independence meant taking a different direction from Facebook in key aspects, maybe that means that both social networks are going to be more similar than previously thought.
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