Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday released more than 3,300 ads purchased on Facebook by Russian propagandists, illustrating the country’s attempts to sow discord during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The ads were purchased by the Internet Research Agency, a pro-Russian group that was recently indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller for actions before the election.
The Russians pushed divisive messages to a wide array of Facebook users, including fans of Black Lives Matter and conservative personalities Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and Tucker Carlson.
“The only way we can begin to inoculate ourselves against a future attack is to see first-hand the types of messages, themes and imagery the Russians used to divide us,” said Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the committee.
According to the House Intelligence Committee, more than 11.4 million American users saw the 3,393 advertisements across the 470 IRA-created Facebook pages.
An additional 80,000 pieces of organic content, which refers to posts by users as opposed to paid content, were created by the pages. That content was exposed to more than 126 million Americans.
The Russian trolls spent nearly $100,000 on the ads.
In April, Facebook said it deleted 70 Facebook accounts and 65 Instagram accounts, including 138 pages on Facebook run by IRA.
“This will never be a solved problem because we’re up against determined, creative and well-funded adversaries. But we are making steady progress,” Facebook said in a statement Thursday.
One of the most successful IRA accounts was “Black Matters,” which bought ads about racism against blacks in the week following the June 2015 Charleston church shooting. Then, following the December 2015 San Bernardino shooting, some of the IRA accounts bought anti-Muslim ads.
The “Black Matters” page had more than 224,000 followers subscribed to the account, often targeting people who read BlackNews.com or HuffPost Black Voices, as well as users in places such as Baltimore and St. Louis.
A sponsored ad also ran in April 2016 urging people to vote for Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton.
One ad warned that “Liberals actually want to destroy American history and culture.”
“Some are even demanding that Washington, D.C. be renamed in the name of political correctness because George Washington owned slaves,” read the ad.
In the aftermath, Facebook has endorsed legislation called “The Honest Ads Act,” which requires more regulation and transparency of political ads on social media.
“As our CEO and Founder, Mark Zuckerberg told Congress last month we need to take a broader view of our responsibilities as a company. That means not just building products that help people connect — but also ensuring that they are used for good and not abused. We still have a long way to go. And will keep you updated on our progress,” Facebook said Thursday.
View and download all of the ads HERE.
