On Oct. 30, various well-known companies took part in congressional hearings in an investigation involving how Russia used social networks and online websites to affect the decisions of Americans in the 2016 presidential election. One of these companies was Facebook. It disclosed that Russian-linked ads were put up and possibly exposed to 126 million Americans through Facebook before the election. The company’s statement revealed that the ads were apparently linked to an influencer group working on behalf of the Russian government called the Internet Research Agency (IRA). This revelation is far beyond what other companies have previously disclosed about the Russian government’s goal of creating division in the U.S. through technology.

The IRA posted about 80,000 ads and content related to controversial topics, such as gun rights, race, religion, and LGBT issues. According to Facebook’s general counsel Colin Stretch, the posts were “deeply disturbing” and “an insidious attempt to drive people apart.” An estimated 29 million Americans could have seen these posts from January 2015 to August 2017, if not more due to the ability to share the posts to millions more. Facebook also discovered Russian influence on Instagram, a photo-sharing social media app also owned by Facebook. As many as 170 Instagram accounts published about 120,000 posts in hopes of advancing the Russian government’s agenda.

Previously, during the 2016 presidential election, Facebook’s security team found threats from a Russian military intelligence-associated group called APT28 toward workers in various political parties. Therefore, the recent knowledge of Russian-linked ads is not all that surprising, and Facebook even warns that more than 11 trillion posts could have possibly been seen from 2015 to 2017 through Facebook’s Pages.

The usage of these various social media platforms directly contrasts their initial purpose—to connect people for positive, beneficial purposes. Instead, Russian interference in exploiting controversial issues to divide people has shown the malevolent effects of widespread connection across the U.S.. Facebook hopes to take down these Russian pages due to the fact that the agencies did not identify themselves when creating their pages. It is also improving its security and counterintelligence to prevent future threats and will work with law enforcement if needed. Since last year, Facebook has been removing fake accounts that have tried to interfere with other countries’ elections, such as France. Furthermore, Facebook plans to implement a policy to publicly display the purchasers of ads.

With these protective measures, Facebook will become a more secure networking service and be able to prevent foreigners from affecting domestic issues.