Facebook: About 10 Million People Saw Ads Purchased By Russian Firm

3028966 02/14/2017 Facebook login page on the screens of a computer and a smart phone. Natalia Seliverstova/Sputnik via AP
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Facebook on Monday said an “estimated 10 million people” saw advertisements a Kremlin-linked Russian troll firm bought on the website over the course of the 2016 campaign.

“An estimated 10 million people saw the ads. We were able to approximate the number of unique people (“reach”) who saw at least one of these ads, with our best modeling,” Elliot Schrage, vice president of policy and communications, said in a blog post.

Schrage said that 44 percent of the ads “were seen before the US election” in November, while 56 percent were seen afterward.

“Roughly 25% of the ads were never shown to anyone,” Schrage said. “That’s because advertising auctions are designed so that ads reach people based on relevance, and certain ads may not reach anyone as a result.”

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, on Monday confirmed that Facebook had given the panel 3,000 ads it traced back to the Russian troll farm and said he hoped to make “a representative sampling” of the ads public by the end of the month.

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Notable Replies

  1. May I add a heartfelt “Fuck Zuckerberg?”

  2. Putin really got his money’s worth, which is good because he’s overseen Russia’s transformation into an impoverished, gangrenous limb spreading corruption and cynicism throughout the world.

  3. Well after the election of Donald Trump and seeing the damage he’s doing, I can now believe the US has lost the first great battle in the cyberwar with the Russians.

  4. Avatar for pshah pshah says:

    So Facebook estimates 10 million people saw the ads. That’s a start, but surely they can tell us a lot more.

    What states/districts did these people live in? Were they registered voters? Age range? Context of the ads viewed? Number of likes or whatever it is that Facebook allows. And, of course, why were these particular people targeted?

    Zuckerberg would do well to remember without a functioning democracy, his business model could well be in trouble. I’m sure he doesn’t care for Big Brother in China and Russia constantly looking over his shoulder.

  5. Yes, but how many of them were dead people voting illegally?

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