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US senators warn of 'fake news' threat from Russia and urge tech giants to act

The Guardian: Senators from both parties warned of the role of Russian misinformation on Wednesday in a hearing on the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 election.

Questioning executives from Twitter, Google and Facebook, members of the Senate intelligence committee warned of the influence of “fake news” and bots on the campaign and how Russia “conducted an information operation intended to divide our society along issues like race, immigration and second amendment rights” in the words of the committee’s chair, Richard Burr of North Carolina.

However, there were partisan divides in how the concern was phrased. Burr attempted to minimize the influence of Russian-linked Facebook ads in determining the result of the 2016 election, while Mark Warner, the committee’s vice-chair, explicitly criticized the Trump administration’s approach to this issue.

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