Facebook Says 10 Million US Users Saw Russia-linked Ads (reuters.com)

Some 10 million people in the United States saw politically divisive ads on Facebook that the company said were purchased in Russia in the months before and after last year's U.S. presidential election, Facebook said on Monday. From a report: Facebook, which had not previously given such an estimate, said in a statement that it used modeling to estimate how many people saw at least one of the 3,000 ads. It also said that 44 percent of the ads were seen before the November 2016 election and 56 percent were seen afterward. The ads have sparked anger toward Facebook and, within the United States, toward Russia since the world's largest social network disclosed their existence last month. Moscow has denied involvement with the ads.

Comments

FFS

[Neo-Rio-101]

Anybody can post politically divisive content on Facebook.
That's the whole point!

Re:FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

>Anybody can post politically divisive content on Facebook.
>That's the whole point!

Not really - the whole point of Facebook is ads. Company pages are ads. People's pages are ads for the people. Facebook services are mostly for specifically targeting ads. The games are ads, the fake accounts are ads, even the settings exist to make you more receptive to the ads.

Anyway - in this particular case, Russia's proxies purchased ads during the compaign season, in highly targeted ways, to affect the outcome of the election. 10 million is like 1/35 people in the US, and a much larger portion of the voting public, and an even larger portion of the key battleground voting public.

This is akin to Russia buying 1000-foot-tall billboards above every voting place in battleground states, and using it to tell the most vicious, manipulative lies they cared to tell, to sew chaos and hatred into the public.

It's something more than normal provocateur work.

Re:FFS

[rtb61]

How about, the lead addled ignorant zombie bots of America will immediately obey any advertisement upon view. The only real measure of that would be how many fell trap to click bait and clicked. The world, unfortunately is a breeding ground for annoying click bait and being an English speaker, the most annoying country is the US, a click bait market in every area of media, from small to large, to compete they join in from all over the world.

It was really pathetic and shameful when the US government joined in on the click bait stories but hopefully they will realise how unproductive it really is (pissing people off with unproductive clicks waste their time and annoys them, hence you have paid to do damage to your image and brand).

Think how many ads a day, an internet user is subject to many ads on nearly every single page view. The number boogles the mind, definitely in the thousands and done over a year in the hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions. One ad becomes near invisible, hundreds are required to force awareness and profound annoyance, unless on that rare occasion they are actually interested and that will most likely occur when the ad aligns with content ie food ad with food content.

If they are looking for that political content, they will find it, if they are not, shoving it in their face will just annoy them. The person who decide a large percentage of American citizens deplorables, this to be repeated by the internet, hundreds of millions of times ever since, they were by far the most divisive in US history since the civil war.

Re: FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not akin to bribing politicians directly to control our country. Many countries (Russia as well) directly bribe our politicians directly as do owners of large corporations.

Your second sentence is the main reason why this country has become the political shit stain that it is. NO ONE should be bribing politicians at all. Not even American citizens. They shouldn't be taking salaries, pensions, and Cadillac health plans. They should be getting fair value compensation. They should be doing their day jobs, which isn't being the rock star of the Senate/House floor. They should also do a fair amount of terms and then cease.

If this can't be achieved, then continue to watch this country slide down the drain. History continues to repeat itself. Yet mankind will always find a way to embrace insanity.

Re:FFS

[penandpaper]

$100k in Facebook ads is part of the campaign to destabilize and weaken the west. Yet, the Clinton campaign spent how much money? But the 100k made the election? ... ... How much contempt do you hold for your fellow citizens and Americans?

Here's the thing, if you have free speech, any idea can influence people to vote. Any group promoting an idea is a campaign. How is that any different than Obama telling Brits to vote no on brexit?

Does it have anything to do with actual policy in your mind?

Does antifa Boston stop being fake when they rioted over lies? https://bluelivesmatter.blue/a...

Re:FFS

[ScentCone]

Even though the hacking has been linked to Russia.

No, the hacking has NOT been linked to Russia. The only people who have ever had their hands on the DNC server, after the fact, was a private contractor that was hired to do work for the party. They have never allowed the FBI to to see the server. Regardless, the only evidence on the DNC email dump that we DO have has been exhaustively reviewed by teams of neutral experts, and every last bit of evidence points to the mail dump as having occurred internally, at the DNC, on a local machine writing the files to a USB storage device.

Of course, you know all of this. So the question is, why are still trotting out the debunked DNC talking points and spin? You're also, as per marching orders from the Clinton/DNC machine, going to great lengths to avoid talking about what the insider who leaked that mail was demonstrating: just how corrupt her operation was, and the degree of contempt she has for, among others, the Bernie supporter types who challenged her entitlement to the throne she and her husband demanded to have back. But you carry on: keep asserting things not only not in evidence, but shown to be incorrect. That sort of delusional foot-stamping on the subject is just going to make the problem you dislike even worse.

Hillary spent $1.2 billion...

[Anonymous Coward]

but we're supposed to believe $50k worth of ads on Facebook had an effect on the election?

Re: Hillary spent $1.2 billion...

[Anonymous Coward]

But Putin spend more wisely.

Re: Hillary spent $1.2 billion...

[king neckbeard]

Better yet, you can get the opposition to run a candidate that half the country already has endless legitimate and bullshit reasons to hate, have that candidate insult half the voters for the opposition, spend the primaries bashing popular policies, and not step foot in several states that were within the margin of error.

Trump didn't win. Clinton lost. And considering she was running against the least popular candidate in US electoral history, the vast majority of the focus should be on how much Clinton and the DNC failed. They probably would have done better nominating a ham sandwich.

Re:Hillary spent $1.2 billion...

[king neckbeard]

So, just like every other election, except maybe some updates on the methodology. But objectively far more important is the DOMESTIC influence on our election from corporations and oligarchs, which is more effective at altering policy in a way that harms the general public, and resulted in a candidate of so poor quality, hindering her policy choices so much, that she lost to a game show host with a complete lack of inhibition.

Re: Hillary spent $1.2 billion...

[AmiMoJo]

Democracy needs an abort mechanism. If it somehow comes down to two unpopular candidates, disqualify both and start over.

It would also help if the system wasn't first-past-the-post to start with.

Non issue. Will be blown up out of proportion.

[Guillermito]

The total cost of a presidential campaign is estimated to be around $2.65 billion. So now we are supposed to believe that the $100K spent on Facebook ads by Russia (56% of which were only seen *after* the election) were a key factor that determined the outcome? This is a total non issue but it will be hammered non stop for months by the traditional media simply because they are dying and will seek any opportunity to make the government regulate Facebook, Google and the other digital companies that are killing them.

Re:Non issue. Will be blown up out of proportion.

[Rockoon]

Who is claiming that?

Democrats. More specifically, the corrupt corporate crony wing of the Democrats (which is the wing in control of the party.)

The progressives will never vote for you fucks again.

Double standard for investigations

[Okian Warrior]

Facebook admitted to promoting pro-Hillary and suppressing pro-Trump stories/outlets. Where is the investigation and media attention for that?

Comey admits to leaking classified information, gets a sweet book deal. Reality winner leaks classified information, sits in jail denied bond.

The DNC siphoned $60 million from down-ballot elections into Hillary's campaign to fight Sanders, which would appear to be a violation of FEC rules on its face(*).

Susan Rice unmasked wiretaps of Trump and advisors without a warrant, which was then leaked to the press.

Bill Clinton had an "on the tarmac" meeting with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch while Lynch was investigating the E-mail scandal.

Hillary got $11,000,000 from the King of Morocco in return for a special-access meeting with the (then) Secretary of State.

Consider how much time and effort and taxpayer money has been spent on investigation Trump's Russia connection - and they're now looking at $50,000 of *ads* taken out by people from Russia. Compared to the amount Hillary spent? Or Trump spent?

I live in hope that some day our administration will grow some balls and start prosecuting people for blatant corruption - even though it may look on the surface like political reprisals against the losers.

(*) FEC puts a limit on the amount any individual can donate to a candidate. Many donors gave the maximum to Hillary, and donated more to down-ballot candidates. Moving down-ballot money to Hillary's campaign is likely violating the "maximum donation" rule.

Including Putin to support Trump?

[Anonymous Coward]

Putting it into the bigger picture, you see hacking to support Trump (including hacking attempts on his Republican primary rivals), you see adverts to support Trump, you see money funneled into propaganda (e.g. $100k in Veritas) Russian trolls out to support Trump, Manasfort's Putin links being revealed, secret meetings with Russian agents in Trump tower, meetings abroad with Cohen, every major Trump appointee meeting the Russians prior to being appointed (i.e. pre-interview).

It's how it always works, people putting Party affiliation before Country being used to divide the country.

Defending democracy from Putin attack should be one thing every US person can agree on. Yet people let their party affiliations undermine their freedom.

Re:How Many Saw Biased News?

[sexconker]

I'm guessing he's pointing out that you and your ilk are duplicitous hypocrites.

Dolchstoss-legende

[DNS-and-BIND]

This is just the Left's dolchstoss-legende being solidified. Trump didn't win, it was a stab in the back by TEH ROOSHINS. (Seriously, "blame the foreigner"? It's like the oldest trick in the book) In years to come, this will become a bedrock belief of the Left, that all these bad things happened because dirty foreigners made them happen. I can understand why! Having to come to terms with the fact that ordinary Americans are hurting would be emotionally devastating. It would be having a heel realization, and having to completely rethink things, and humans will do anything to avoid that.

Being forced to realize that Americans, having not benefited at all from the government policies of the last 30 years, voted for the only change they could see would mean that they were wrong all along. So, the stab-in-the-back legend, right alongside blame-the-foreigners, is being embraced by a lot of educated people who tell us they know better than to fall for such fallacies.

She lost

[cascadingstylesheet]

Just accept it. However bad Trump was as a candidate, Clinton was worse.

She had all the MSM, Hollywood, the universities, etc. etc, on her side. Even big business and a fair slice of the Republican poobahs who hated Trump were on her side. She still lost.

Nobody needed any "fake news" (except you, but it didn't work); the real news was bad enough. "First old white woman" just wasn't enough to get her there. She lost. Period.

Going ballistic, acting even more insane, none of this is helping you. This is in fact why he won.