Article cites research led by Damon McCoy, assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering.
Facebook said it is investigating whether an organization backed by Internet billionaire and Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman violated the social media giant’s policies when it set up several misleading news pages in a bid to target U.S. voters with left-leaning political messages. … The probe focuses on News for Democracy, whose Facebook ads and affiliated pages … were viewed millions of times during the 2018 midterm elections, according to an analysis of the company ad archive conducted by New York University [Tandon School of Engineering]. “These groups find a community, they try to build it with nonpolitical content, and once they have that community established, they start inserting political messages,” said Laura Edelson, one of the NYU researchers..