Fake news evolved into fake events, and the consequences are scary

Activists rally against the Trump administration's immigration policies outside the New York City offices of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month. An influence campaign possibly organized by Russia has been promoting similar events on Facebook

Some days, it seems like any number of topics might lead The Interface. Other days, nearly every major outlet in our orbit writes a version of the same story. Thursday was one of the latter: Facebook's removal of probably-Russian disinformation has tripped up scores of real-life American activists, causing legitimate protests to be removed from the service, and we're only beginning to consider the implications.

The activists were caught up in Facebook's announcement earlier this week that it had removed 32 pages, with more than 290,000 followers, after discovering that they were part of a secret campaign to influence American politics. Facebook reported at the time that these accounts were harder to find than the Russian agents of the...

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