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Internet giants inconsistent on Russia’s alleged meddling in US elections — diplomat

MOSCOW, November 1. /TASS/. US Internet giants Facebook, Twitter and Google are inconsistent in their testimony that Moscow allegedly meddled in the 2016 US presidential election, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told the Rossiya 24 TV channel.

"I’m shocked as one day these Internet giants say, for example, $5,000 was spent on a political advertisement, and the next day they say that 40 million voters in the US were influenced by Russian and social and political advertisement," Ryabkov said.

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Kremlin urges Facebook to honor Russian laws

"It does not wash, they (Internet companies) are inconsistent in their testimony, they are intimidated by the authorities, who do not understand well where to move in this issue," he said.

In September, Alex Stamos, Facebook's chief security officer, claimed that during the 2016 US presidential election a Russian company spent $100,000 on disseminating political messages over social networks by creating fake accounts and pages. According to its analysis, between June 2015 and May 2017, these accounts were interconnected and were managed from Russia.

Facebook later turned over 3,000 ads to US Congress, which is investigating the alleged attempts by Moscow to supposedly influence the US election.

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow had no role in placing any political ads on social networks and did not know anyone who could have been behind this.

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