MANILA, Philippines – A senior Facebook executive revealed that even the company’s messaging app Messenger may have been used by Russian agents to influence the 2016 US presidential elections. 

At the Wall Street Journal‘s WSJD conference, Facebook’s vice president of messaging products, David Marcus, said that a “very small” number of the 470 Russia-linked Facebook accounts may have sent messages directly to users. The messages are specifically designed to create divisiveness among people regarding the pressing issues concerning them, with the end goal of influencing people’s votes. 

Recode quotes Marcus: “My understanding is that it’s a very small number. The way that the platform was used is still being investigated right now on the Messenger side of things, but traditionally if you’re a page, for instance, you cannot message people. So people have to message you.”

Marcus also said that along with federal investigators, they are still trying to determine the full extent to which Russian agents used online platforms and their various tools to influence the US elections. At this point, while Facebook says they are aware that Messenger – home to 1.3 billion users – may have been utlized as well, they believe it wasn’t widespread. 

“We’ll get to the bottom of it, we’ll learn from it and then we’ll make sure we build systems to prevent what happened from happening again,” Marcus said in a Forbes article.

On November 1, executives of Facebook, Google, and Twitter will appear in a US Senate hearing on Russia’s alleged interference in US politics. – Rappler.com