Russia Reportedly Bought Thousands of Facebook Ads Sought To Stress Racial Divisions (thehill.com)

According to The Washington Post, Russia government actors bought Facebook advertisements during the 2016 election cycle that sought to exploit and divide based on hot-button racial issues. Some of the ads promoted civil rights groups such as Black Lives Matter, while others criticized them in an effort to sow division. The Hill reports: Facebook is handing over some 3,000 ads to congressional investigators as part of probes into the Kremlin's alleged effort to influence the outcome of last year's presidential election. Other ads allegedly highlighted Hillary Clinton's support among Muslim women and promoted anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant messages. Facebook didn't comment on the story, but did refer to a statement earlier this month from its chief privacy officer, Alex Stamos: "Rather, the ads and accounts appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the idealogical spectrum -- touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights."

Comments

This is not what was intially reported

[ebonum]

The ads were initially reported to be pro Trump. It seems Facebook itself reported false information to seed decent.

Timeline of Treason

[Anonymous Coward]

Before the election

Dec. 10, 2015
Lt. Gen Michael Flynn is part of a panel discussion in Moscow for the 10th anniversary of government-backed Russia Today, for which he receives payment (The Washington Post, Aug. 15, 2016). Officials notice an increase in communication between Flynn and the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, following the Russia Today event (CNN, May 19, 2017).

Late 2015
British intelligence agencies detect suspicious interactions between Russia and Trump aides that they pass on to American intelligence agencies (The Guardian, April 13, 2017).

March 19, 2016
Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta is sent an email that encourages him to change his email password, likely precipitating the hack of his account (CBS News, Oct. 28, 2016).

March 21
During an interview with The Post, Trump lists Carter Page as part of his foreign policy team. Page had been recommended by a son-in-law of President Richard Nixon, New York Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox (WP, March 21, 2016).

March 28
Political veteran Paul Manafort is hired to help the Trump campaign manage the delegate process for the Republican National Convention. He is recommended by Trump confidante Roger Stone (New York Times, March 28, 2016). Before joining the campaign, Manafort lobbied on behalf of Oleg Deripaska, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. That deal followed a memo from Manafort in which he offered a plan that could "greatly benefit the Putin Government." His relationship with Deripaska ended in 2009 (Associated Press, March 22, 2017). Manafort also worked on behalf of the Russia-friendly Party of Regions in Ukraine, helping guide the party's leader, Viktor Yanukovych, to the country's presidency. Yanukovych would later be ousted. (WP, Aug. 19, 2016)

April 27
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) may have met with Kislyak at a reception at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington before a foreign-policy speech given by Trump (CNN, May 31, 2017).

June
At a closed-door meeting of foreign policy experts and the prime minister of India, Page praises Putin effusively (WP, Aug. 5, 2016).

June 9
Donald Trump, Jr., Manafort and son-in-law Jared Kushner meet at Trump Tower with a Kremlin-connected attorney named Natalia Veselnitskaya. Veselnitskaya's efforts to reverse a law passed in 2012 sanctioning Russians suspected of human rights violations at some point drew the attention of the FBI. The meeting was not initially reported to the government by Kushner as required when he took a position with the administration (Times, July 8, 2017). After the meeting was originally reported, Trump, Jr. admitted that the pretext for the conversation was that he believed Veselnitskaya to have information incriminating Hillary Clinton (Times, July 9, 2017).

June 15
A hacker calling himself "Guccifer 2.0" releases the Democratic National Committee's research file on Donald Trump (Gawker, June 15, 2016). News reports already link the stolen data to Russian hackers (WP, June 14, 2016).

July
At some point this month, the FBI begins investigating possible links between the Russian government and Trump's campaign (Wired, March 20, 2017).

July 7
Page travels to Moscow to give a lecture (NYT, April 19, 2017). The Trump campaign approved the trip (USA Today, March 7, 2017). This trip was likely the catalyst for the FBI's request for a secret surveillance warrant to track Pageâs communications (WP, May 25, 2017).

July 11 or 12
Trump campaign staffers intervene with the committee developing the Republican Party's national security platform to remove language call arming Ukraine against Russian aggression. (July 18, 2016).

July 18
At an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation as part of the Republican National Convention, Sessions and Kislyak have a brief conversation (WP, March 2, 2017).

Flynn delivers a speech at the Republican convention, joining in the crowd's "Lock her up!" chant. "If I, a guy who knows this business, if I

Re:Timeline of Treason

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that the point of the actual linked article is that the Russians objective is to sow disconnect and divide Americans. Then you go on to post a bunch of loosely connected and out of context examples to help feed a very partisan and divisive narrative. Currently those on the Left are actually doing exactly what the Russians want them to do. They're creating disconnect and trying to destroy American unity and faith in our democratic process. The left, unknowingly, are the ones colluding and doing the work the Russians want done. Try some introspection and realize you've been played and are part of the problem dividing us and weakening us as a nation.

Huh?

[rsilvergun]

where you and me watching different campaigns. Racial divides were a big part of it. The tough hombres & rapists comments come to mind right off the bat. One of his chief advisors, Steve Bannon, made his mark first and foremost playing to that shtick. And let's face it, there was a lot of resentment over having a black president for 8 years that brought a lot of folks to the polls.

I'm not saying it was the only that got Trump elected, I'm just saying he wouldn't have been without it. Hell, he wouldn't have made it through the primaries.

Re:Huh?

[swb]

This only works as propaganda to the extent that people already believe it enough to have it reinforce their own perceptions.

If this is a Russian "campaign", it's only a campaign to exploit the gap between the false narrative official discourse and the everyday reality of most Americans. The false narrative of official discourse is that Americans are racist -- uniformly biased against non-whites -- and the problems of African Americans are almost exclusively the result of this racism and not of any widespread social problems they contribute to.

The every day reality is that most Americans aren't uniformly racist against all races. If they were, millions of marginally literate, marginally English capable Mexicans wouldn't have had fantastic success in getting hired for jobs, millions of South Asians couldn't have been imported into Corporate American to staff IT departments, and people like Satya Nadella couldn't wind up in charge of one of the largest corporations in America and the world. The level of active "globalism" in the US just wouldn't work if the people making decisions were racist and the employees they had to work with were racist.

Americans do hold racial biases towards African Americans specifically, but this is largely not the cause it's given credit for, but an effect of their everyday interactions in most cities with the large plurality of poor and criminally inclined African Americans. And you can't talk about that reality without blaming white racism for it and freeing African Americans from most all responsibility for it.

As long as we continue to push the phony narrative of "racism" rather than "Americans don't like many African Americans", the propaganda will work. Once we acknowledge that white Americans are generally racially tolerant EXCEPT for African Americans, we will start to acknowledge the specific problems African Americans have (many of which are structural but not racist) and possibly get around to helping them. Once that happens, then the propaganda of racism won't really work.

Did you RTFA?

[rsilvergun]

they targeted BLM ads to people likely to oppose the movement in order to rile them up. They did the same thing with ads showing Hilary was popular among Muslim women. They were shitposting on an epic scale. What's more they weren't just trying to divide the American people, they were trying to rile up a very specific group of voters (angry white men) in order to get them to oppose a very specific, left wing agenda. That in turn helped Trump win, which is almost certainly the intended purpose.

They were basically trying to get a whole bunch of folks who normally stay home to show up at the polls and without thinking about individual issues, vote their feelings. Worked too.

Re:Did you RTFA?

[DNS-and-BIND]

TIME magazine in 1996 bragging about how we interfered in the Russian election.

The outcome was by no means inevitable. Last winter Yeltsin's approval ratings were in the single digits. There are many reasons for his change in fortune, but a crucial one has remained a secret. For four months, a group of American political consultants clandestinely participated in guiding Yeltsin's campaign.

For two days the supersecretive Yeltsin high command avoided Dresner, and none of the team ever actually met the President. "There are too many factions and too many leaks to risk your dealing with him directly," Braynin explained to Dresner. "You are our biggest secret."

Impressive ultra efficient Russian propaganda

[poity]

Looks like a couple thousand dollars worth of foreign ads tipped the balance against a billion dollar campaign run by a powerful well-connected establishment.

... and I can't even get a 2% clickthrough rate on my adwords

Re:Treason

[ilguido]

I don't think that Russia needs to buy Facebook ads to sow hate and dissent in the USA: reading these comments, I think that you are terribly capable of sowing hate by yourself. I think that Trump is quite foolish, but the hate and belittling campaign against him is not a sign of rightful social activism, but another mean through which American institutions are weakened. This kind of social turmoil is nowadays quite common in all the Western world (anti-establishment movements are strong everywhere), no matter if you are conservative, liberal, socialist or whatever: the pretension of being some kind of sole paladin of justice is what is killing the democratic process in the USA and in Europe.

Re:Haven't they been doing this stuff forever?

[drinkypoo]

Too bad you have that 100% backwards. Conservatives believe in a utopia in which charity covers all the needs of the needy, while Liberals believe that you have to legislate helping them, because history has shown that the conservatives (who are holding all the money) will not actually spend enough of their money on charity to make a noticeable difference unless forced. That's why the natural order is to keep cycling back to torches and pitchforks. Liberals know that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, while conservatives think it's a buck-oh-five.

Re:We need some guts and a law about political ads

[Kiuas]

Yeah, that and Facebook didn't cause Hillary to lose Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. You know what did? Ignoring the plight of real Americans who are really hurting. Telling them off and letting them know you absolutely refuse to represent their interests in the government.

The most successful trick Trump pulled during his campaign was convincing these people that he, a millionaire cosmopolitan and a 'globalist' in every sense of the word, would represent their interests, or that he cares about them in any sense. He doesn't. He's now been in office for 8 months and done very little, and his attempts are focused on giving out tax-breaks to the wealthiest segment of the US - his co-millionaires - at the cost of the very poorest.

This is the main problem currently faced by all western democracies: there's a segment of poorly educated poorly employed people who do not understand why their jobs are gone and won't be coming back except as automated factories, and these people will vote for anyone who tells them that he'll get their jobs back and make everything better. Put another way: the people most negatively affected by the current economic development are also the ones with the least understanding of it, making them easy targets to manipulate into voting against their own interests.

Hillary's main problem has always been that she's not really a charismatic figure in any way, nor is she a great speaker, put simply: she's way too boring and unenthusiastic. Trump isn't an orator either and seems to be running on a vocabulary of a 9 year-old, but what he has over Hillary is emotion: like any good salesman, he's able to deliver an enthusiastic pitch that gets people interested, it gets them listening. He's a superior showman and knows his crowd, but it doesn't make him a competent politician, that he's clearly not.

Re:Haven't they been doing this stuff forever?

[Xyrus]

Yeah, that's bullshit. The left doesn't believe in "Utopia". Why the fuck do you think they're supposedly the party of "evil" laws and regulations the right likes to demonize? It's the CONSERVATIVES who think we need less regulation. They're the ones who want to remove environmental protections. They're the ones that want to remove business regulations. They're the ones who want to remove the FDA. They're the ones that want to remove consumer protections. So on and so forth.

The CONSERVATIVES are the ones who believe in this ridiculous notion of Utopia. We'd all be happy if we just got rid of all these pesky rules and regulations! That's utter bullshit.