influence last year s presidential poll. some of facebook s huge profits came from entities that wanted to influence the u.s. election the internet giant has now admitted that fake accounts created in so-called troll factories and russia had an impact with posts that were widely shared the question is how big of an impact. the messages were incendiary that were heavily partisan the content is really really striking and that s the kind of stuff that gets shared for free and you don t have to pay to get that to too many people one of facebook s legal advisers has admitted that the platform should have done more tech clamp down on fake accounts the most recent numbers indicate that in the space of the two years ahead of the last election one brush based group generated some eighty thousand posts that reached around one hundred twenty six million users that s roughly half of the people eligible to vote in the u.s. election facebook says it s now taking steps to address the problem c.e.o.