Facebook to testify that 29 million users were delivered content from Russian troll farm

A source familiar with Facebook’s prepared testimony for the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow says the company will disclose that over the course of three years, approximately 29 million people were “delivered” or “served” content from pages related to the Internet Research Agency (IRA) – the Russian troll farm associated with the fake campaign ads.

Thanks to sharing and engagement, however, up to 126 million people could have seen this content over the course of three years.

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Some key context – because people’s news feeds are filled with all kinds of information all day long — an IRA-related ad may have been one of 28 thousand pieces of content that flowed through people’s news feeds during that three-year time period. Facebook will likely say the Russian ads were essentially a drop in the bucket in terms of all the content people viewed on a daily, weekly or yearly basis.

Tech giants Facebook, Twitter and Google will testify before Congress about Russian disinformation Tuesday and Wednesday.