By April 2017, Zuckerberg’s pronouncements about global community had started to feel more like preemptive strikes in a public relations battle. That month, Facebook put out a cryptic research paper explaining that it had found instances of “information operations” conducted by “malicious actors” on its social network. Basically, some entities (they didn’t say who) were creating fake identities on Facebook, befriending real people and spreading misinformation, trying to skew public opinion. As Obama had warned, the fake-news problem wasn’t just about a few shady entrepreneurs—it was about
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