Don’t Blame Facebook Alone for Russian Trolls: Ex-Security Chief

San Francisco: Without absolving Facebook’s “mistakes” in the way it handled Russian trolls ahead of the 2016 US presidential election, a former security chief of the social network has said that others — US spy agencies, lawmakers and the media — also made mistakes. FB has been under the scanner of US lawmakers ever since the activities of Russia-linked accounts that tried to spread misinformation and sow seeds of discord came to be known.

Alex Stamos, who served as Chief Security Officer at FB until August, admitted that Facebook “should have responded to these threats much earlier and handled disclosure in a more transparent manner”. His views appeared three days after a New York Times report said that Facebook knew about the Russian activities as early as spring of 2016, a claim denied by the social networking giant.

The Times report also blamed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg of ignoring warning signs and then trying to conceal them from public view. Stamos agreed that Facebook “stuck to a public-communications strategy of minimization and denial”. But he also blamed the US spy agencies for their failure “to provide actionable intelligence” on Russian trolls. (IANS)

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