A Facebook representative has been questioned during a US hearing about whether the company took enough steps to limit Russian influence on political content during the 2016 election.
Senator Al Franken angrily questioned Facebook's general counsel Colin Stretch on why the company missed signals that Russia-linked firms were purchasing political ads, given reports that some of the payments came in the form of roubles.
"American political ads and Russian money. Roubles. How could you not connect those two dots?" Franken asked.
Stretch said that "in hindsight, we should have had a broader lens. There were signals we missed."
The company, along with representatives of Twitter and Google, faced Senate Judiciary Committee members on Tuesday in the first of a series of public hearings on the use of their platforms by Russian sources to try to influence the 2016 election.
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On Monday, Facebook announced that Russia-linked political content reached an estimated 126 million users during the 2016 campaign season and into 2017.
Facebook has previously said that Russia-linked firms purchased about 3,000 ads on its platform during that time period, in spots that primarily focused on divisive political issues as opposed to individual candidates. The ads drove people to follow certain pages, which in turn featured unpaid content.
