“Most of the ads focused on pumping politically divisive issues such as gun rights and immigration fears, as well as gay rights and racial discrimination.”
Facebook has just admitted to Congress the Russian bought presidential election campaign ads naming both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, targeting divisive social issues including LGBT civil rights, gun control, immigration, and civil rights for the Black community. The Washington Post first reported the news late Wednesday afternoon.
The amount spent on ads, Facebook disclosed to congressional investigators, was small, just $100,000. They came from a “Russian ‘troll farm’ with a history of pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda,” Facebook officials said, according to the Post’s report.
The existence of the ads is a huge development, but there are even larger questions at stake.
“Even though the ad spending from Russia is tiny relative to overall campaign costs, the report from Facebook that a Russian firm was able to target political messages is likely to fuel pointed questions from investigators about whether the Russians received guidance from people in the United States — a question some Democrats have been asking for months,” the Post notes.
“I get the fact that the Russian intel services could figure out how to manipulate and use the bots. Whether they could know how to target states and levels of voters that the Democrats weren’t even aware really raises some questions. I think that’s a worthwhile area of inquiry,†Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee said during a May airing of the podcast Pod Save America. “How did they know to go to that level of detail in those kinds of jurisdictions?â€
And while the amount revealed to investigators was small, it is absolutely possible, and even possibly likely, that this is just the beginning of these revelations.
In a blog post Facebook’s Chief Security Officer, Alex Stamos,reveals that in addition to the $100,000 reported by the Washington Post, they “found approximately $50,000 in potentially politically related ad spending on roughly 2,200 ads” which “might have originated in Russia.”
It can be illegal for foreign agents to contribute to political campaigns, and the Post’s report does not mention any legal issues.
In May NCRM reported that Ellen Weintraub, one of two Democrats on the Federal Election Commission, wanted the agency to investigate if Russia illegally paid for pro-Trump or anti-Clinton Facebook ads. Doing so would be a criminal violation of law.
This is a breaking news and developing story. Details may change. This story will be updated, and NCRM will likely publish follow-up stories on this news. Stay tuned and refresh for updates.
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