Reports are surfacing that Russian interests paid for numerous adds on Facebook before the 2016 U.S. election. These adds reportedly focused on divisive issues in an attempt to polarize the elections to Russia’s advantage.

Facebook says it has identified hundreds of fake accounts connected to Russian groups known for trolling on social media. Facebook says it is cooperating with U.S. investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

Social media sites have an obligation to weed out hidden political advertising masquerading as news. However, as the comic strip character Pogo once said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

We are the ones who stopped reading newspapers and began depending on social media for our news. Too many of us ignored actual news gathered by professionals.

As long as we prefer to find our “news” from tweets and Facebook, we risk electing officials just as unprofessional and ill prepared to govern.