Facebook sold $100000 in political ads that ‘likely’ came from Russian Federation

Facebook also found another $50,000 in additional political ads that might have had ties to Russian Federation, but those ads didn’t necessarily violate Facebook’s policies like the fake accounts did.

Numerous ads, Facebook said, did not specifically mention presidential candidates or the election, but rather divisive social issues like immigration, LGBT-rights, and race issues.

In his news post, Facebook’s Stamos said the social media giant was able to trace the ads to 470 inauthentic Facebook accounts and pages created “in violation of our policies”.

“The ads and accounts appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum”, Stamos said.

The social media company said numerous ads promoted “inauthentic” accounts and pages and it had now suspended 470 such accounts.

Facebook has shared these findings with USA authorities investigating potential Russian interference with the country’s most recent general election, with the social network claiming it has since invested in technology to detect fake accounts and prevent the spread of misinformation.

He said congressional investigators were working with Facebook and would look at other online platforms, like Twitter, to identify potential operations by Russians in 2016.

Even if no laws were violated, the pages ran foul of Facebook requirements for authenticity, the social media company said. One of the ways the U.S. inteligence community found that Russian Federation had interfered was specifically through trolling social media with fake news meant to influence American voters.

Around a quarter of the adverts were targeted by geography.

Sky News noted Russian interference in the election was the subject of several investigations in the first months of Donald Trump’s presidency. The automated ad placement systems that Facebook uses may have allowed the content that the company would not have otherwise permitted.

Facebook has shared its findings with the USA authorities investigating these issues. Facebook said that some of the ads linked to Russian accounts had targeted particular geographic areas, which may raise questions about whether anyone had helped direct such targeting.

The your-life-rendered-as-ads company says it found the ad spend as it continued to probe whether it had been used as part of alleged Russian interference in the United States electoral process. “What we want to explore, not only with Facebook, with other social media platforms as well, [is] what evidence, to what degree”.