Kevin Roose

As President Donald Trump and his allies have waged a fear-based campaign to drive Republican voters to the polls for the midterm elections, far-right internet communities have been buoyed as their once-fringe views have been given oxygen by prominent Republicans. Since the 2016 election, these far-right communities have entered into a sort of imagined dialogue with the president. They create and disseminate slogans and graphics, and celebrate when they show up in Trump’s Twitter feed days or weeks later. They carefully dissect his statements, looking for hints of their influence.

Just hours after the news broke that explosive devices had been sent to Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and other prominent Democrats, a conspiracy theory began to take shape in certain corners of conservative media. The bombs, this theory went, were not actually part of a plot to harm Democrats, but were a “false flag” operation concocted by leftists in order to paint conservatives as violent radicals ahead of the elections.

A competitive race in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District has an alarming new element: anonymous attack ads on Facebook. The ads, which appeared on a Facebook page called “Wacky Wexton Not,” were purchased by a critic of Jennifer Wexton, a Democratic candidate trying to unseat Rep Barbara Comstock (R-VA). The person or group behind the ads is known to Facebook, but a mystery to the public.

Facebook has identified a coordinated political influence campaign, with dozens of inauthentic accounts and pages that are believed to be engaging in political activity around divisive social issues ahead of November’s midterm elections. The company detected and removed more than 32 pages and accounts connected to the influence campaign on Facebook and Instagram as part of its investigations into election interference.

A broadcasting organization backed by the federal government has used Facebook to target ads at United States citizens, in potential violation of longstanding laws meant to protect Americans from domestic propaganda. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which typically broadcasts to audiences in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, bought several ads on Facebook in recent days that were targeted at users in the United States. The ads included several human-interest stories about Russia and a graphic about NATO’s popularity.

After two days and more than 10 hours of questioning of Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook chief executive, there was widespread consensus among lawmakers that social media technology — and its potential for abuse — had far outpaced Washington and that Congress should step in to close the gap. But the agreement largely ended there.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's appearance before Congress turned into something of a pointed gripe session, with both Democratic and Republican senators attacking Facebook for failing to protect users’ data and stop Russian election interference, and raising questions about whether Facebook should be more heavily regulated. Of specific interest were the revelations that sensitive data of as many as 87 million Facebook users were harvested without explicit permission by a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, which was connected to the Trump campaign.

For Facebook, April 10, 2018 is being seen as a kind of dreaded final exam. That’s when Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, will swap out his trademark gray T-shirts for a suit and tie, and embark on a two-day marathon of testimony on Capitol Hill. His goal? To apologize for Facebook’s missteps, reassure Congress that Facebook intends to stop foreign powers from using its service to meddle in American elections and detail the company’s plans to better protect its users’ privacy.

For years, the self-appointed leaders of Silicon Valley were young people — mostly men — with age-appropriate behavior. Their successes were cheered, and their sins were shrugged off as the cost of innovation. There’s a lot of growing up happening in today’s tech industry, where former whiz kids made their fortunes and are now settling down, starting families and starting to think about their legacies. 

Rob Goldman, Facebook’s vice president of advertising, posted a series of messages on Twitter that were meant to clear up misconceptions about Facebook’s role in the election. Instead, he plunged the company deeper into controversy. “Most of the coverage of Russian meddling involves their attempt to effect the outcome of the 2016 US election,” Goldman tweeted.