A look at some of the ads designed by Russia to exploit divisions in American society and to tip the 2016 election in favor of Donald J. Trump.
They made for a wildly varied slide show, designed by Russia to exploit divisions in American society and to tip the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald J. Trump and against Hillary Clinton. The House Intelligence Committee provided on Wednesday the biggest public platform to date for a sample of the Facebook ads and pages that were linked by a trail of ruble payments to a Russian company with Kremlin ties.
“America, we have a problem,” said Representative Jackie Speier, a California Democrat who sits on the House committee. “We basically have the brightest minds of our tech community here and Russia was able to weaponize your platforms to divide us, to dupe us and to discredit democracy.”
Among the ads the committee made public at Wednesday’s hearing were a Bernie Sanders superhero promoting gay rights…
… and a shot of Mr. Trump giving a thumbs up and promoting rallies in Florida.
An image of Jesus arm-wrestling Satan (who, the ad said, was backing Mrs. Clinton)…
… and an endorsement of the Black Panthers as fighters against the Ku Klux Klan.
There was a Confederate flag and a call for the South to rise again …
… and a yellow “No Invaders Allowed” sign posted at the United States border. Attacking Candidates
While many descriptions of Russia’s stealth influence campaign have stressed the focus on issues rather than candidates, many of the Facebook posts did both, often attacking Mrs. Clinton (sometimes via Mr. Sanders):
But at least one ad attacked Mr. Trump: On the Left and Right
And although some of the Facebook pages fell on the liberal or multicultural side of the political divide, with names like Woke Blacks…
… most leaned strongly to the right, including Back the Badge…
… and Stop All Invaders. From Both Sides
In some cases, the Russian groups took opposite stands on painful issues, such as police shootings of black people. A page called Don’t Shoot took aim at police brutality…
… while Being Patriotic suggested that Black Lives Matter activists were killing police officers. Only a Sampling
While the ads being made public by Congress were just a sampling of the large Russian influence operation, independent researchers in recent weeks have identified and made public a far greater volume of such pages. Facebook, Twitter and other platforms have shut down the suspect accounts, but it is still possible to retrieve many of the posts and images because they were widely shared across the internet.
Perhaps the biggest collection, put together by two American researchers who asked not to be identified to avoid online harassment, is posted at a page on Medium. The researchers based their searches largely on the pages and accounts named in a Russian media account based on interviews with former employees of the Russian company with Kremlin ties, the Internet Research Agency, accused of much of the fakery.
