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

Re: Hillary spent $1.2 billion...

[PopeRatzo]

Size of virus != amount of $ spent on adds.

Now that you mention it, the amount spent on ads doesn't have anything to do with effect on an electorate if you can get millions of yahoos to believe and share fake ones for free.

You're right about #strawman, and I've got one for you:

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

Re:FFS

[AmiMoJo]

The facebook ads are the tip of the iceberg. Plus the Clinton campaign was bound by electoral rules and was already under heavy attack by the leaked emails and subsequent last minute FBI investigation, which were Russian efforts to damage her.

Re:FFS

[Lord Kano]

Anyway - in this particular case, Russia's proxies purchased ads during the compaign season

This may well be true but I have yet to hear anyone make the case that the ads were lies. I am hearing the complaint that Russian proxies influenced the election with the silent concession that the manipulation consisted of telling the truth about Hillary.

LK