Facebook Sold Ads To Russian-Linked Accounts During Election (cnet.com)

Facebook announced on Wednesday that it sold $100,000 worth of ads to inauthentic accounts likely linked to Russia during the election. The ad spending spree took place between June of 2015 and May of 2017, and was associated with roughly 3,000 ads. CNET reports: "Our analysis suggests these accounts and Pages were affiliated with one another and likely operated out of Russia," Alex Stamos, Facebook's chief security officer, wrote in a blog post. Facebook said it's continuing to investigate the issue and reported its findings to U.S. authorities.

Most of the ads and accounts didn't have to explicitly do with the election or either of the then-candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Instead, they were focused on divisive political topics, including LGBT issues, immigration and gun rights.

Comments

Re:The alleged "spending spree" was two years long

[phantomfive]

I'd bet that it's overall related to the fake news plague originating in places like Macedonia. At least, that seems like a more likely scenario than stealth-takeover-of-a-country-by-buying-Facebook-ads.