facebook

It's easy to just blindly like and follow things on Facebook. You might not be fooled by accounts that appear spammy and/or fake, but there are plenty of people who have a more cavalier attitude about engaging with different entities on Facebook. And if you have a few friends or loved ones like that, it might be worth sending them a link to Facebook's just-launched tool for checking whether a user has liked or followed a page linked to Russian propaganda.

Yes, Russian propaganda.

During a recent talk at Stanford, Chamath Palihapitiya, the early Facebook executive who now runs venture capital firm Social Capital, spoke of the dangers of social networks—such as their ability to efficiently spread false information—and said that he felt “tremendous guilt” for his role in the medium’s rise. Facebook took his comments personally enough that it issued a statement pointing out that he left the company more than six years ago.