House Intelligence Committee Democrats have released thousands of Facebook and Instagram ads created by the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency troll factory and circulated before, during, and after the 2016 campaign.
The ads, from mid-2015 to mid-2017, illustrate the extent to which Kremlin-aligned forces sought to stoke social, cultural and political unrest on one of the Web’s most powerful platforms. With the help of Facebook's targeting tools, Russia’s online army reached at least 146 million people on Facebook and Instagram, its photo-sharing service, with ads and other posts, including events promoting protests around the country.
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But the ads are only part of the story: They sought to hook American voters into clicking “Like” or following Russia-created Facebook profiles and pages, which published organic content, like status updates, videos and other posts, which would later appear in users’ News Feeds.
Facebook previously estimated that Russia-tied profiles and pages generated 80,000 pieces of organic content around the 2016 election – either directly in their news feeds or because their friends had shared it. Another 20 million saw IRA-generated content on Instagram. House lawmakers did not make organic posts on Facebook or Instagram available Thursday.
“There’s no question that Russia sought to weaponize social media platforms to drive a wedge between Americans, and in an attempt to sway the 2016 election,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.
The ads include content directed at African Americans, touching on the Black Lives Matter movement, police brutality, and slavery. They targeted users in places including Baltimore, Cleveland and St. Louis – communities that had experienced high-profile police shootings and counter-protests – according to targeting information released by the committee.
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Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook, said in an ABC News interview last year that Internet Research Agency aimed to boost extreme voices in the United States.
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“So, it began with secessionist movements in the State of Texas and the State of California – ‘Secede from the union,’ you know, a very marginal strategy. It began with anti-immigrant groups. It began with white supremacists. Then, as we moved towards the election cycle, it got more specific."
Facebook has made some changes intended to combat future foreign efforts to foment discord and undermine democratic institutions but, at the same time, warns it does not expect to eradicate the threat entirely.
[They] have instituted new policies requiring advertisers to disclose more information before posting political ads - and recently extended that policy to issue ads. The company says its also improved its ability to find and disable fake accounts on Facebook and is planning to add 10,000 new staffers to work on security and safety issues.
Facebook has also endorsed a legislative proposal to require additional disclosures with online political ads.
For its part, Facebook stressed in a statement: "This will never be a solved problem because we're up against determined, creative and well-funded adversaries. But we are making steady progress."
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Russian agents also had created thousands of accounts on Twitter, and in January, the company revealed that it discovered more than 50,000 automated accounts, or bots, with links to Russia. It notified about 1.7 million users that they had fallen victim to Russian propaganda during the 2016 election. And Google discovered a small number of ads purchased by the IRA on YouTube, its video platform.
View the ad text: Social Media Advertisements (These are large downloads of the text used in the ads.)
Facebook Ads: Exposing Russia’s Effort to Sow Discord Online: The Internet Research Agency and Advertisements (House Intelligence Committee Democrats)
These are the 3,400 Facebook ads purchased by Russia’s online trolls around the 2016 election (WaPo)
House Democrats release thousands of Russian-linked Facebook ads (ABC News)