Internal Facebook report: Eastern European troll farms reached 140M US users/month before the 2020 election; 75% of these users didn't follow any of their Pages
In the run-up to the 2020 election, the most highly contested in US history, Facebook's most popular pages for Christian … Tweets: @_karenhao , @profcarroll , @melissaryan , @adam_k_levin , @katestarbird , @brosandprose , @profcarroll , @timherrera , @vickerysec , @vickerysec , @moonalice , @fboversight , @scottmstedman , @johnbattelle , @mollyjongfast , @matthewkeyslive , @mat , @profcarroll , @scalzi , @urocklive1 , @carolecadwalla , and @jason_kint Tweets: Karen Hao / @_karenhao : On the eve of the 2020 election, troll farms were running vast page networks on FB targeting Christian, Black, & Native Americans. An internal report tracking the situation described it as “genuinely horrifying.” Some of the pages remain two year later. https://www.technologyreview.com/ ... David Carroll / @profcarroll : Troll farms are still thriving on Facebook. 140M monthly users 100M weekly users (US) 360M weekly users (global) Successfully targeting the same groups as RU IRA in 2016. Facebook is too big to not fail. https://twitter.com/... Melissa Ryan / @melissaryan : As pretty much everyone who works on this predicted would happen, political operatives and bad actors optimized IRA best practices from 2016 to target largely the same audiences. Facebook's negligence enabled them. https://www.technologyreview.com/ ... Adam Levin / @adam_k_levin : Facebook troll farms reached nearly half of all Americans ahead of the 2020 elections, according to a new study. https://www.technologyreview.com/ ... Kate Starbird / @katestarbird : These systems are irrevocably broken. In Fall of 2020, the top FB pages targeting Christian, Black, and Native Americans were run by troll farms — foreign organizations that strategically target these groups for financial and possibly political gain. https://twitter.com/... Ella Dawson / @brosandprose : “In October 2019, all 15 of the top pages targeting Christian Americans, 10 of the top 15 Facebook pages targeting Black Americans, and four of the top 12 Facebook pages targeting Native Americans were being run by troll farms.” https://www.technologyreview.com/ ... David Carroll / @profcarroll : Coda: For some temporal context, last year this time, @Channel4 released #DeterringDemocracy, leaked Trump 2016 campaign voter database derived from Cambridge Analytica, exposing a deliberate deterrence campaign against Black voters in battlegrounds. https://www.channel4.com/... https://twitter.com/... @timherrera : Wait the Facebook report is so much worse than you think https://www.technologyreview.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Chris Vickery / @vickerysec : During the 2020 US presidential election, “Facebook's most popular pages for Christian and Black American content were being run by Eastern European troll farms.” Facebook has actively chosen to become a clear and present danger to both democracy and the rule of law. https://twitter.com/... Chris Vickery / @vickerysec : Facebook, the company itself, is a hostile adversary to the United States of America and it is essential that we act as a nation to end the threat Facebook poses to our lives, laws, and economy. Shut Facebook down. Shut down every aspect of Facebook's operation. It must end. Roger McNamee / @moonalice : .@_KarenHao is doing extraordinary work covering the malfeasance of FB. Here is another mind blowing story about the impact of troll farms on FB during the 2020 elections. Spoiler: troll farms ran rampant on FB in 2020. Are you surprised? https://twitter.com/... @fboversight : Facebook can't and won't fix itself. https://twitter.com/... Scott Stedman / @scottmstedman : My god. “in October 2019, all 15 of the top pages targeting Christian Americans, 10 of the top 15 Facebook pages targeting Black Americans, and four of the top 12 Facebook pages targeting Native Americans were being run by troll farms.” https://www.technologyreview.com/ ... John Battelle / @johnbattelle : Oh hai daily FB horrors. https://twitter.com/... Molly Jong-Fast / @mollyjongfast : Hard to imagine Facebook is actually worse than we thought it was but surprise.... https://twitter.com/... Matthew Keys / @matthewkeyslive : OK that's...a bit extreme, though I get it. A better alternative: Start breaking up Facebook. It's too big. It's the new AT&T. It should not run one of the world's most-influential content platforms in tandem with one of the world's biggest advertisement businesses. https://twitter.com/... Mat Honan / @mat : Big scoop from @_KarenHao: On the eve of the 2020 election Facebook's most popular pages for Christian and Black American content were run by Eastern European troll farms, part of a network that reached nearly half of all Americans: https://www.technologyreview.com/ ... David Carroll / @profcarroll : Fraudsters are simply using Facebook as it was designed. Allowing anyone to target anyone else for almost any is reason is the core value proposition of Facebook. Advertisers get all the privacy and we get none. https://twitter.com/... John Scalzi / @scalzi : Wow, what a surprise, Facebook is a goddamn cesspool of disinformation created by professional trolls to influence American politics and foment social division. https://www.technologyreview.com/ ... @urocklive1 : In the run up to the 2020 election, the most highly contested in US history, Facebook's most popular pages for Christian & Black American content were being run by Eastern European troll farms ... part of a larger network that collectively reached nearly half of all Americans. https://twitter.com/... Carole Cadwalladr / @carolecadwalla : Even if you think you understand the cesspool that is Facebook, this thread about a new report is an eye popping & alarming read https://twitter.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : This is an absolutely horrifying scoop by @_KarenHao @technolgyreview of a leaked Facebook report sandwiched in the middle a week full of an absolutely horrifying series by WSJ based on leaked Facebook Files. /1 https://www.technologyreview.com/ ...
Context & Ripple Effects
This leaked report closes a loop that opened years ago: back in 2018, the Mueller indictment showed how Facebook's own Groups tools were exploited by Russian operators, and Cambridge Analytica demonstrated that voter targeting could run off models built from scraped data. The new finding shifts the story from data theft to distribution — Eastern European troll farms reached roughly 140M US users per month before the 2020 election, and three-quarters of them never followed the Pages in question.
That 'didn't follow' detail is the analytically explosive part: it undercuts the platform's long-standing framing that users choose what they see, and it lands alongside earlier reporting that Zuckerberg and others had shelved internal research into Facebook's polarizing effect. The top Pages targeting Christian, Black, and Native American audiences being run by troll farms makes this an integrity failure at the heart of the recommendation system, not the edges.
First-order effects
- Facebook's takedown-report practice is directly implicated: the company already faced criticism that its technocratic takedown language obscures real-world harm, and this internal document shows the harm was measured internally at massive scale before publication.
- Communities whose identity Pages were impersonated or co-opted — Christian, Black American, and Native American audiences — were exposed to foreign-operated content without ever opting in, changing what 'reached' means for the users involved.
Second-order effects
- Lawmakers and researchers gain a concrete exhibit for demanding independent access to platform data, since Facebook's own measurement caught what its public reporting did not surface — pressuring rivals like YouTube and Twitter to disclose comparable reach metrics or explain why they can't.
- Advertisers and civic institutions face renewed brand-safety questions: paid placement sitting adjacent to troll-farm Page networks forces buyers to weigh whether the reach Facebook sells is reach they want.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — platforms measuring harms internally while public disclosures stay sanitized — regulation is likely to move toward mandated researcher access and audited transparency reporting rather than voluntary takedown blogs, making 'the algorithm amplified it' legally meaningful in a way 'users chose it' no longer deflects.
- The episode accelerates the shift from treating disinformation as a content-moderation problem to treating it as a distribution-design problem, where the structural fix lies in ranking systems rather than page removals.
The trend: Platform accountability is moving from policing what bad actors post to auditing what recommendation systems amplify — and internal metrics are increasingly forcing that reckoning into public view.