Speculation about Russian interference in the US election that saw Donald Trump propelled to presidency has been rife for months. Now Facebook has conceded that it’s likely that a group operating out of Russia was responsible for taking out $100,000 worth of advertising that
Speculation about Russian interference in the US election that saw Donald Trump propelled to presidency has been rife for months. Now Facebook has conceded that it’s likely that a group operating out of Russia was responsible for taking out $100,000 worth of advertising that “focus [ed] on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum.”
The ads appeared between 2015 and 2017, and touched on polarizing topics such as gun rights, LGBT issues, race and immigration. Facebook is quick to point out that the advertising related to “inauthentic” accounts and Pages and that these have now been closed down, and the social network continues to help with federal inquiries into attempts to control the outcome of the 2016 election.
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In addition to these particular ads — amounting to around 3,000 in total — Facebook says that it also identified “approximately $50,000 in potentially politically related ad spending on roughly 2,200 ads.” What is interesting about these ads is that although they were bought using accounts with US IP addresses, their language was set to Russian.
In a post entitled An Update On Information Operations On Facebook, Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos explains that Facebook has been reviewing ad activity to determine whether there was an Russian misuse of the social network.
He makes the following points:
Stamos ties the latest investigation into Facebook’s on-going fight against fake news:
