Facebook Will Share Copies of Political Ads Purchased by Russian Sources With the US Congress (recode.net)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Facebook will turn over copies of political ads purchased by Russian sources to congressional lawmakers, who are investigating the country's potential interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Initially, Facebook had only released those ads -- 3,000 of them, valued at about $100,000 -- to Robert Mueller, the former FBI director who is spearheading the government's probe into Russia's actions. Facebook had withheld those details from House and Senate leaders, citing privacy concerns. But the move drew sharp rebukes from the likes of Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who has charged in recent days that Facebook may not have done enough to scan its systems for potential Russian influence and to ensure that such foreign purchases -- otherwise illegal under U.S. law -- don't happen again. "After an extensive legal and policy review, today we are announcing that we will also share these ads with congressional investigators," wrote Colin Stretch, the company's general counsel. "We believe it is vitally important that government authorities have the information they need to deliver to the public a full assessment of what happened in the 2016 election."

Comments

Mark Zuckerberg

[Templer421]

Is the most trustworthy person. I am sure he would never do anything underhanded.

Re:Mark Zuckerberg

[sittingnut]

But, if there are no Russian ads, what will the Democrats blame their next election loss on?

i think hillary trotted out a whole host of entities and people who can be blamed in her new book.
-
its ironic that these politicians think they get elected by amercans voters, who can be easily manipulated by alleged fake news from few macedonians, and $ 100,000 in facebook ads.
they have zero respect for voters who they claim to represent, and who, according to them, are unable to think for themselves, even when they have huge number of sources for information, from one sided legacy media to alternate media(like wikileaks), quite apart from ads and fakes.

voters, if they have any sense, should vote them out just for that attitude. and that seems to be happening , though more fundamentally for other elitist attitudes that are in conflict with voters' interests as well.

-
in reality, this russia probe is just the visible death pangs and hysteria of a mono cultural elite(am elite more exclusive than white males they rage against ) that has been in control of the levers of power for about 50 years, and are now starting to lose them, starting with narrative control.
hopefully they will restrict themselves to sanctimonious screams like the probe, and refrain from resorting to stuff other elites who ended up in the dust bin of history used when desperate . they will regret such tactics.

Re:Mark Zuckerberg

[sittingnut]

so you think, without any legally admissible evidence, but with lots of speculations based on other speculations, with no known and discernible direct technique for changing the minds of hundreds of thousands of voters(at least), russians, and pro immigrant globalist zuckerberg, stole the election, for benefit of anti immigrant militaristic nationalist trump, through fake news and online ads worth $100000("lot of money")?
all the while, several fold more well funded (not counting the money from saudi arabia, qatar, israel, ukraine, etc), hillray, had the support of legacy media, big tech and social media corps(including almost every top leader at facebook, google, etc), big banks, hollywood, state apparatus(from president obama down), overt moral support(at least) of european and asian leaders(do i have to mention mexico and canada? ), and tacit support of republican establishment (and open support of never trumper neocons).

lol.
who did you say "can't think for (himself)"?
feel free. lol.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg

[Crazy Taco]

That they're already withholding the ads from the public is suspect.

Exactly. These were PUBLIC ads ostensibly purchased by Russians, that were shown to voters. Why is it we can't release them to anyone but Robert Mueller and maybe a select few congressman, when they were already public? What's the big secret here?

If NBC claimed they found out some of the ads they showed on TV during the election were paid for by Russians, but then wouldn't show them to us due to "privacy" concerns (when they'd already been plastered on TV), would you buy it? Why does anyone buy it when facebook says ads that were plastered on their site are too private to see?

Re:Mark Zuckerberg

[Kiuas]

in reality, this russia probe is just the visible death pangs and hysteria of a mono cultural elite(am elite more exclusive than white males they rage against ) that has been in control of the levers of power for about 50 years, and are now starting to lose them, starting with narrative control.

Death pangs of an elite? Are you seriously saying that Trump is not himself part of that very elite himself?

This idea that a millionaire who appointed numerous wall street people to his cabinet, and is doing his best to help the rich get tax cuts and further the benefit of large corporations is baffling to me. And before you start bashing me as a Hillary supporter, I'm not even American, and I think Hillary was an awful candidates that the democrats should have never ran. But honestly, the fact that this idea that Trump is somehow separate from, or against 'the elites' is without any basis in reality. He's a different breed of elite than Washington has typically seen in power, but he is still most certainly a member of the elite himself.

Look at how oligarchies are born. It doesn't matter if they're right-wing oligarchies like in Russia, or left-wing oligarchies like in Venezuela, the basic formula is always pretty much the same: a political movement is born, lead by a strongman who most often is a part of the wealthy elite himself. This man then declares to everyone that corruption and greed have ruined everything and that he and only he can save the people from these corrupt elites. This is then used as a reason to purge the major institutions of ideological opponents who're then replaced with a more loyal group of people, often from the close circle of the man himself. This is usually followed by the stripping of the parliament of any de-facto power, and the manning of all relevant courts with judges loyal to the party.

The end result of such movements is pretty much always worse off for the people because of course they never wanted to get rid of the elites, or the corruption, they just wanted to overthrow the elites and take their place. Venezuela has more oil than saudi-arabia but its economy is now below Zimbabwe because what Chavez created and what Maduro has continued is a system so thoroughly corrupt that billions and billions have been shoveled into the back pockets of the elites while the people are now starving. Yet they still claim that they're 'continuing the revolution for the Venezuelan people', and who do they blame on this issue that's entirely of their own creation? 'The elites' of the US and EU, without whom, according to Maduro Venezuela would be prosperous.

As I said this is not a left-right -thing. This is a liberal vs. authoritarian thing. Russia has exactly the same deal going on, where Putin has consolidated all the power to himself and his close group of allies and divided the massive fortunes of his country's raw materials to the select few and shut down any and all opposition by painting it as just malicious 'western propaganda' that seeks to destroy Russia.

What's scary to me is that traditionally Americans have been good at spotting this development when it happens in other countries, even at times supporting it covertly or openly when the new oligarchy is more pro-US than the old. But now that it looks like the exact same deal is staring in your own country, out in broad daylight, somehow myopia sets in and people fall right for it just because they dislike the status quo so much. Traditionally the thing that has kept the US resilient against such movements is the strength of American institutions and the separation of powers that has been able to keep the president in check but Trump is already hard at work at discrediting and attacking all of those institutions: the courts, the media, the FBI and so on. I still personally want to believe that the institutions will withstand these blows and america will not turn the way of Russia or Turkey because I believe there's a large enough segment of intelligent Americans who will

Re:Why the hypocrisy?

[greythax]

Investigators also said OneVoice didn’t turn explicitly political until days after the grant period ended.

Evidently there was an investigation, hence investigators, at least according to the source you linked. Maybe you should stop rushing to post first and, you know, read.

Re:Hypocrites

[ScentCone]

Mostly because the accusations against Hillary turned out to be bullshit as the investigation showed.

Which ones? The ones where the FBI plainly spelled out the illegal things she did and directly told you that anyone else would have faced legal jeopardy for the same acts? The ones where all of her staff had to be offered immunity deals before they would even talk about it? The ones where the simply broke federal law at numerous levels and looked you in the eye and lied about (and still does to this day), but assures us that her husband's private meeting with the chief law enforcement officer who would be tasked with indicting her, and who then had to recuse herself, didn't have any impact at all? Gotcha.

You're confusing "got away with it" with "didn't do it."

Russians: $100K Hillary: $1.2B

[tomhath]

Hillary and her supporters spent an estimated $1.2 Billion, roughly twice what Trump spent. And she lost. And she blames the Ruskies for her loss. Seriously?

Re:Russians: $100K Hillary: $1.2B

[Archangel Michael]

She has blamed a lot of people, probably most of America at this point.

http://insider.foxnews.com/201...

Re: Hypocrites

[bobbied]

Not true...

Putting classified onto an unauthorized system or taking it to an unauthorized location and storing it in an unauthorized way IS a crime. Unauthorized disclosure is just the result of unauthorized handling of classified. It's NOT treason, but mishandling classified information is indeed a crime.

Don't fall for Hillary's narrative. It's not true... Don't fall for those who claim she committed treason either, because that's not true. But there *could* be a crime here.

Go back and listen to Comey's statement when he was letting Clinton off the hook before the election. Where I don't agree with is conclusion (that no prosecutor would charge and try this case) it is CLEAR that she was extremely careless with classified information, which by the statute is criminal. Comey just let here skate...

Re: Hypocrites

[Obfuscant]

The FBI said, "We don't think we can prosecute her because we don't think we can show that she broke the law as the law is written."

What Comey actually said:

"Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case."

That's something VERY different.

Re:As a European...

[Crazy Taco]

As a European all I can say from someone sitting on the outside is that in your rigged two party system one of the candidates (the "blue" puppet) was so fucking awful that the slightly less awful candidate (the "red" puppet) romped home.

There's some truth to that. They both had the highest negatives in history... it was definitely all about who was "less bad".

American politics is worse than anything I've seen from any so called banana republic. An utterly fixed system where you get to choose between two tightly controlled establishment puppets. No choice. No democracy. It's like being given the choice between being punched in the face or kicked i the balls.

And you just lost whatever sense you were making before. Trump an establishment puppet? Are you kidding me? The establishment in both parties absolutely hates him. On the Republican side we had 17 candidates to pick from in the primary, and ALL of the Republican establishment candidates lost big. In the end, it came down to Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, who were by far the most establishment-hated candidates that I've ever seen run in a primary.

If you want to rephrase your charge of "tightly controlled establishment puppets" to refer only to the Democrats, then I'll give you that, because after the DNC email hacks we found out that they did, in fact, rig the primary contest to make sure Hilary won and Bernie lost (though the fact that he got as far as he did, even in the face of their treachery, shows they don't have as much control as they thought). But yeah, end result on the Democrat side was that their establishment got the candidate they wanted, and when taken to court about it, they argued that as a party they have no legal requirement to select their candidates in any particular way, and that it would be perfectly legal for them to go back to using old boys clubs in the back room with cigars to pick the candidate. A tacit admission that they can rig the process as much as they want. But only one party rigged it, not both.

Just face facts. Your "blue" puppet "candidate" was just fucking god awful ! Stop crying and get one with life. Stop trying to make excuses. Russia didn't win the election. The election was "lost" because of your fucking awful puppet !

And now you are back to making sense again. We all know that's why she lost, and the funny thing is, I'm pretty sure that's the only reason you won't find in her new book, "What Happened."