Report: Facebook removed references to Russia from fake-news report

Enlarge / Russian President Vladimir Putin. (credit: Wikimedia Commons/Maria Joner)

Back in April, Facebook published a report called "Information Operations and Facebook" that detailed the company's efforts to combat fake news and other misinformation campaigns on the site. The report was released in the midst of an uproar over potential Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. But the report doesn't mention Russia by name, saying only that Facebook's data "does not contradict" a January report by the Obama administration detailing Russian meddling in the election.

On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the decision not to mention Russia was hotly debated inside Facebook. An earlier draft of the report discussed what Facebook knew at that time about Russian meddling, but that material was ultimately removed from the report before publication.

"Some at Facebook pushed to not include a mention of Russia in the report because the company's understanding of Russian activity was too speculative, according to one of the people," according to the Journal.

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