Facebook says likely Russian influence operation spent $100K on ads promoting polarizing posts

Facebooksaidon Wednesday it had found that an influence operation likelybased in Russia spent $100,000 US on ads promoting divisive socialand political messages in a two-year-period through May.

Facebook, the dominant social media network, said that manyof the ads promoted 470 "inauthentic" accounts and pages that ithas now suspended. The ads spread polarizing views on topicsincluding immigration, race and gay rights, instead of backing aparticular political candidate, it said.

The findings were announced in a blog post by its chiefsecurity officer, Alex Stamos, and said that Facebook was co-operatingwith federal inquiries into influence operations during the 2016U.S. presidential election.

The company said it found no link to any presidentialcampaign. Three-fourths of the ads were national in scope, andthe rest did not appear to reflect targeting of politicalswing-states as voting neared.

Facebook did not print the names of any of the suspendedpages, but some of them included such words as "refugee" and"patriot."

Even if no laws were violated, the pages ran afoul ofFacebook requirements for authenticity, setting up thesuspensions.

White paper

More than $1 billion was spent on digital political adsduring the 2016 presidential campaign, 10,000 times the amountidentified by Facebook's security team. But the findings buttress U.S. intelligence agencyconclusions that Russia was actively involved in shaping theelection.

Facebook previously published a white paper on influenceoperations, including what it said were fake "amplifier"accounts for propaganda, and said it was cracking down.

As recently as June, it told journalists that it had notfound any evidence to date of Russian operatives buyingelection-related ads on its platform.

A Facebook employee said Wednesday that there wereunspecified connections between the divisive ads and awell-known Russian "troll factory" in St. Petersburg thatpublishes comments on social media.

Beyond the issue ads, Facebook said it uncovered $50,000more in overtly political advertising that might have a link toRussia. Some of those ads were bought using the Russian language, even though they were displayed to users in English.