Report: Social media manipulation affects even US senators

Photo: FILE – In this Monday, Oct. 12, 2020 file photo, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, uses his smartphone […]. Erin Schaff / The New York Times via AP, Pool. Article by Erika Kinetz. AP writer David Klepper contributed to this report.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The conversation taking place around two U.S. senators’ verified social media accounts remained vulnerable to manipulation through artificially inflated shares and likes from fake users, even amid heightened scrutiny in the run up to the U.S. presidential election, an investigation by the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence found.

Researchers from the center, a NATO-accredited research group based in Riga, Latvia, paid three Russian companies 300 euros ($368) to buy 337,768 fake likes, views and shares of posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok, including content from verified accounts of Sens. Chuck Grassley and Chris Murphy. […]

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