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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.
Anybody can post politically divisive content on Facebook.
That's the whole point!
READY.
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but we're supposed to believe $50k worth of ads on Facebook had an effect on the election?
Facebook admitted to promoting pro-Hillary and suppressing pro-Trump stories/outlets. Where is the investigation and media attention for that?
The only ameliorating factor in this is how millions of those ads were probably never seen by a human but instead rendered onto an offscreen bitmap in video memory by a fraudulent ad bot designed to extract the most funds out of unsuspecting advertisers, in this case Russia but usually clueless Madison Ave. companies.
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.
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.
"Everyone I disagree with is a Russian."
-Narcocide, 2017
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.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Given that Facebook is desperately attempting damage control how likely is it that this number is on the extremely low side? Remember FB claims to be good at spreading information, and apparently disinformation as well, so why not give it a shot as part of their defensive strategy. They have a lot of plausible deniability, so they might as well push their own "alternate facts".
The best part of all of this is that FB is now saying that they don't have much impact on their viewers. "The latest company statement said that about 25 percent of the ads were never shown to anyone". Is that what they tell their advertising clients? That a quarter of their advertising dollars are a complete waste of money? It seems extremely unlikely that is the story they use when they are talking to Wall Street or any organization that is trying to use FB as part of their online strategy.
Is it possible that no one will connect the dots between FB claiming to be a great place to get out your message vs how they didn't have any impact when it came to election tampering?
Why is Snark Required?
Russians are entitled to place ads even politically derisive ones.
No one has proven these were placed by the Russian government, which also isnt illegal.
Zuckerberg is a Democrat and as someone with political aspirations he has every reason to follow the DNC narrative.
This is a win all round for Facebook as they can say that $100,000 nets you effective influence over 10,000,000 people.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Lets see... from the summary, "10 million people saw at least one add." (going to assume that # accounts for ad blocker and other such things)
Quick google search shows about 214 million FB users in the USA
of those, about 8% are under voting age.
so 3.3% of the USA FB population who are eligible to vote saw at least 1 ad.
Kinda puts it all into perspective.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
From the numbers, that pretty much has to be 10 million impressions, not 10 million people. I.e., the ads were shown 10 million times, to some (smaller) number of people.
I don't live in the US, but answer me this: During election season, how many ads did eacy person see? Hundreds? Possibly thousands? Multiply by a population of 300,000,000, and we are talking on the order of hundreds of billions of ad impressions. Against which, 10 million is not even a drop in a bucket.
This Russian fetish never was relevant. The more information that emerges, the more obvious this is. Some people just cannot accept that Hillary! was an absolutely crappy candidate, and that half the country voted for "anybody else".
The D's need to get over it already, and maybe put up a decent candidate next time. But they won't, they'll nominate someone like Pelosi. Trump is very likely to win again in 2020.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
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.
But he couldn't have... he was too busy hiding in my closet, waiting for me to fall asleep so he could whisper the word "Trump" repeatedly in my ear as I slept...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?