Now, read Hard Questions: Russian Ads Delivered to Congress
By Elliot Schrage, Facebook Vice President of Policy and Communications
Make sure to read the comment by David Caufield. I'm going to reproduce the opening, but DO read the entire thing.
According to Facebook:
So, there's nothing of significance, here. But Facebook is using the opportunity to talk about its advertising platform features and numbers, and is pacing its release of information apart to tread water and keep the company and its ads program in the news. It's presenting what are trivial non-issues but playing the presentation of them as though there's a big deal happening with ambiguous phrases like "hard questions" - which aren't even identified as to what those "hard questions" are. It's vapid.
- the ads were non-political in nature, and didn't feature or favour a political candidate
- 56% of the ads were run AFTER the 2016 US federal election
- 25% of the ads were never displayed to anyone due to Facebook's algorithms not finding them relevant to trending interests
- only 25% of the ads were geographically-targeted
- Facebook is not sure that the ads were part of an organized campaign
- Facebook is not sure that the accounts the ads were purchased with are associated with each other
- Facebook is not certain that the ads were purchased by Russians
- many of the ads were not purchased using Russia's currency
- huge numbers of actual political ads are bought and run on Facebook from all countries around the world, and that is normal and OK
- the "overwhelming majority" of ad-space purchases from Russia by Russians are normal and not suspicious in any way
This is a publicity stunt, people.
Rise of the Russian Election Meddling narrative. I call BS on all of the claims of Russian Meddling beyond any “normal” meddling. If I were Russia, my paranoia would be justified since everyone IS actually out to get me. I think conservatives see through this ruse and actually hope that Trump works with Putin against the wishes of Deep State.
great facts - thanks