Facebook algorithm amplified troll farm content to 140 million US users before 2020 election
An internal Facebook report from October 2019 revealed that troll farms based in Kosovo and Macedonia were reaching 140 million US users per month through Facebook's content recommendation system. The algorithm pushed content from these pages to users who had not followed them, primarily targeting Christians, Black Americans, and Native Americans. Facebook acknowledged the issue but the underlying algorithm remained unchanged, and some troll farm pages were still active as of September 2021.
- Date it happened
- 2019-10-01
- Organisation involved
- Product, system or model
- Facebook News Feed algorithm
This incident was imported from technologyreview.com. Our additions to it — the structured fields, the translation, the checks against other reports — are published under the same licence.
This is a record of what was reported, not a finding that anyone broke the law. If it names your organisation and you believe it is wrong, the corrections process is free and open to everyone.