Facebook Users Will Be Told If They Liked Russian Propaganda

The Russian ads and election meddling scandal have been hitting Facebook hard and now, the social media site is going to be shifting some of the weight of this burden onto users. Those with Facebook accounts will be notified if they hit Like on ad campaigns or posts that were classified as part of the Russian meddling effort. Users will basically be told if they were part of the problem during the recent attack on U.S. Democracy.

According to the announcement that Facebook made on Wednesday, users who interacted with posts or ads that are tied to Russian trolls will be informed of this fact, Bloomberg reports. Apparently, this was in accordance with a request that Congress made of the social network to address the 2016 election meddling.

The new feature will be made available by the end of the year, at which point, users will be able to tell if they Liked anything that was posted by Russian agents. Users will simply need to go to the social network’s support page and get the answers from there.

According to Facebook itself, over 150 million U.S. users were exposed to the ads and posts that were produced by the Internet Research Agency (IRA). The IRA is basically the front that Russian trolls used to spread chaos throughout the country during the 2016 elections, which involved pitting groups against each other and sowing hatred throughout the whole political spectrum.

In the blog post announcing these changes, Facebook explained what the new feature will entail. The social network also explained why it decided to implement this new service.

"This is part of our ongoing effort to protect our platforms and the people who use them from bad actors who try to undermine our democracy," the post reads. "It is important that people understand how foreign actors tried to sow division and mistrust using Facebook before and after the 2016 US election."