Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told Axios' Mike Allen Thursday that Facebook is doing everything it can to help the government in their Russia probe, and acknowledged that the Russian-financed ads and fake news on their site is a completely new threat that they need to address, and accept responsibility for. "We'll do everything we can to defeat them," she said.

Yes, but: Sandberg also said that if the Russian-linked ads were posted by "real people" and not fake accounts, Facebook would have let their content remain on the site. "When you allow free expression, you allow free expression," she said.