Facebook Confirms It Sold Ads To Russians Targeting Voters During Election
More details on how Russians attacked the 2016 election.
Facebook has confirmed to congressional investigators that it sold ads to Russians attempting to target voters during the 2016 election, according to a new Washington Post report.
Investigators are looking into how Russia intervened in the 2016 election on behalf of Donald Trump.
Facebook informed Congress that the Russians bought thousands of ads during the 2016 election using “inauthentic” accounts and Pages. The ads focused on drawing attention to divisive social issues, according to the report.
“Facebook officials reported that they traced the ad sales, totaling $100,000, to a Russian “troll farm” with a history of pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda, these people said,” The Washington Post reported.
Investigators are probing how Facebook’s ad targeting tools were used to spread “fake news” with the intention of influencing the election.
Additionally, investigators are looking into whether and how the Trump campaign worked with Russian hackers to target fake news to swing state voters.
Experts have noted that the sophistication of voter targeting by the Russians is unlikely to have been possible without American support.
The Washington Post goes on to note, “the report from Facebook that a Russian firm was able to target political messages is likely to fuel pointed questions from investigators about whether the Russians received guidance from people in the United States — a question some Democrats have been asking for months.”
Senator Mark Warner, who is the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, has said “I get the fact that the Russian intel services could figure out how to manipulate and use the bots. Whether they could know how to target states and levels of voters that the Democrats weren’t even aware really raises some questions. I think that’s a worthwhile area of inquiry. How did they know to go to that level of detail in those kinds of jurisdictions?”
Read the full Washington Post report here.
[image via Twitter]
