tumblr is taking action after reports by the BBC and other media websites on Monday reported Facebook’s shares had fallen from $176.80 down to around $159.30 on Friday evening, while clients and users take flight, including Elon Musk of SpaceX and Tesla.
David Kershaw of the advertising company M&C Saatchi said the Facebook quiz had harvested personal data from users and their friends and followers, without their consent.
He said clients are now at a point where, quite rightly, “enough is enough,” as they flee the social media platform.
Blogging website Tumblr makes an announcement
On Saturday morning, an email was sent to users of the popular blogging site Tumblr. Mentioning their dedicated commitment to transparency, they let users know they had discovered and deleted 84 Tumblr accounts which were linked to IRA, or the Internet Research Agency. According to the company’s executives, that group has close ties to the Russian government and all the deleted users were posting as members of the blogging community. They also made a full disclosure statement on their own blog.
Propaganda campaigns spread electronic disinformation
Tumblr wrote that the IRA is involved in propaganda campaigns and spreading electronic disinformation with these phony accounts. The company immediately contacted law enforcement on uncovering the IRA-related accounts before terminating them and deleting their posts.
The email appears to have only been sent to Tumblr users that have either followed one of the phony accounts or had reblogged or liked one of their posts. They went on to list a series of phony accounts that the user had interacted with, including bellygangstaboo, Americanstatistics, gogomrbrown, girlsagainst, rochelbarr and illegalmom among the 84 offenders.
Other users received different account names:
Users of the website reassured they are not in trouble
The Tumblr email went on to explain to users that they, themselves, were not in any trouble and there is no need for them to take any action unless they want to. The blogging service noted that while they deleted all the offending accounts, they did leave the reblogging chains in order to allow users to curate their own experience on Tumblr, which reflects personal perspectives and views.
The email went on to state that for democracy to work, it requires full transparency and an electorate that is informed and knows exactly what is going on. Tumblr said they take their full disclosure and transparency very seriously.
The blogging site will continue to “aggressively” seek and monitor disinformation campaigns posted on their blogging site in future and will always take appropriate and ensure that users know all about it.