Apparently Russian Accounts Buying American Political Ads With ROUBLES Was Not a Tip-Off For Facebook (FB)

And using the cleverly named Internet Research Agency [what, Amtorg was taken?] as the front was enough to trick the Facebook bots, despite the Russian IP addresses.

The Senators didn't get around to asking the Facebook general counsel if it was at all suspicious the ad-buyers kept referring to the American candidates as "Moose and Squirrel ."

From Fortune:

[Senator] Al Franken to Facebook: How Could You Not Connect the Dots on Russian Election Interference?

...Looking to explain how the technology companies didn’t uncover the misuse of their systems sooner, Franken used his allotted time to question Facebook’s general counsel, Colin Stretch.

“Mr. Stretch, how did Facebook, which prides itself on being able to process billions of data points and instantly transform them into personal connections for its users, somehow not make the connection that election ads, paid for in rubles, were coming from Russia?” asked Franken. “Those are two data points: American political ads and Russian money, rubles. How could you not connect those two dots?”...

Earlier, Gizmodo had reported:

...In opening remarks, Facebook’s representative, Colin Stretch, expressed shock and disgust over how the company’s platform had been used to spread malicious propaganda throughout the election. Facebook’s internal investigation, he said, revealed that over a two year period, Russian-bought accounts had created ads and posts he described as both “inflammatory” and “downright offensive.”... 

Which is too close to our parody headline for Monday's Fast Company story on the platforms to even be funny:

Alphabet's Eric Schmidt is "Shocked—Shocked—to Find That".... (throws Twitter under the bus) GOOG

no-goodnik Fearless Leader was not available for comment, dahlink.