It’s no secret that Russia tried to influence the outcome of the US election last year using a variety of techniques including the use of advertising on Facebook. The social network recently said that it would share details of these ads with Congress, but would not be…
It’s no secret that Russia tried to influence the outcome of the US election last year using a variety of techniques including the use of advertising on Facebook. The social network recently said that it would share details of these ads with Congress, but would not be making them public.
But while the company is not making the ads themselves available for all to see, it has revealed some more details about them — including the fact that they were seen by an estimated 10 million people in the US. Facebook also says that 44 percent of more than 3,000 Russian-placed ads were seen prior to the election.
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Facebook’s vice president of policy and communications, Elliot Scharge, said: «Most of the ads appear to focus on divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum, touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights. A number of them appear to encourage people to follow Pages on these issues.»
He points out that a decent chunk of the ads — 25 percent — were never seen by anybody because of the way they had been targeted. He also fended off criticism that Facebook should have been able to identify the suspicious nature of the ads simply because of where they originated:
Facebook has announced that it will be recruiting an additional 1,000 members of staff to help with the ad review process in a bid to prevent future attempts to interfere with elections.
Over on its Hard Questions blog, Facebook poses and answers a series of queries, including:
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