“Russia Only Bought Facebook Ads After Trump Won The Election,” a headline from Milo Yiannopoulos’ site Dangerous.com claimed on Monday.
The article received over a thousand shares on Facebook, along with several thousand reactions, and was marked as possibly containing inaccurate information.
Indeed it did.
While the body of the post (which contains a bit of opinion) is largely accurate—mostly quoting a tweet-storm from Facebook’s VP of ads Rob Goldman—the headline is incorrect.
In fact, the article actually refutes its own headline by citing Goldman’s tweet that “the majority of the Russian ad spend [sic] happened AFTER the election.”
Assuming Goldman is correct, “majority” does not align with the claim from Dangerous that “Russia only bought Facebook ads after Trump won the election.”
Special Counsel Mueller’s indictment of the 13 Russians reports that the defendants paid for Facebook ads to promote several pro-Trump rallies held before the election.
According to the indictment, they used “false U.S. personas to organize and coordinate U.S. political rallies supporting then-candidate Trump in New York and Pennsylvania” and among other tactics of promotion, bought “Facebook advertising.”
The indictment also reports that “by early to mid-2016, Defendants’ operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump (‘Trump Campaign’) and disparaging Hillary Clinton.” During that time, these Russians “made various expenditures to carry out those activities, including buying political advertisements on social media.”
It is unclear how many Facebook ads the defendants purchased before the 2016 election, and Goldman’s claim that the “majority” were purchased after the election could be correct. Either way, the headline from Dangerous.com claiming that said ads were all bought after the 2016 election is incorrect.
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