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Facebook Shares Details Of Russia-Bought Ads With US Investigators (cnn.com) 232

An anonymous reader quotes CNN: Special counsel Robert Mueller and his team are now in possession of Russian-linked ads run on Facebook during the presidential election, after they obtained a search warrant for the information. Facebook gave Mueller and his team copies of ads and related information it discovered on its site linked to a Russian troll farm, as well as detailed information about the accounts that bought the ads and the way the ads were targeted at American Facebook users, a source with knowledge of the matter told CNN. The disclosure, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, may give Mueller's office a fuller picture of who was behind the ad buys and how the ads may have influenced voter sentiment during the 2016 election...

As CNN reported Thursday, Facebook is still not sure whether pro-Kremlin groups may have made other ad buys intended to influence American politics that it simply hasn't discovered yet. It is even possible that unidentified ad buys may still exist on the social media network today.

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Facebook Shares Details Of Russia-Bought Ads With US Investigators

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  • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Re: (Score:1, Redundant)

      by Tough Love ( 215404 )

      Lock him up!

      • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Tough Love ( 215404 )

        Lock him up!

        Donald Trump will go down in history as the first POTUS to leave office in handcuffs.

        • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

          Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • Completely unprecedented. But it will be awesome.

            Something tells me there will be a two word response as people run out of their houses. I think we all know what that is.

        • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

          by Tough Love ( 215404 )

          Lock him up!

          Donald Trump will go down in history as the first POTUS to leave office in handcuffs.

          Goodness me, the Ivans are out in force with mod points today.

        • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

          Donald Trump will go down in history as the first POTUS to leave office in handcuffs.

          That's what wingnuts said about the Clinton's, for the same brain dead partisan reasons. Before you start up with that "Ivan" shit again, you must have been one of those assholes running around in 2003, saying anyone who questioned the Iraq war of loving Saddam.

          You were full of shit then, and you're full of shit now.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It's hilarious that Trump, who spread that racist lie about Obama's birth place is a stone cold traitor.
      This piece of shit is going down in history as one of the world's worst traitors, after his Russian funded empire presidency crumbles.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Mashiki ( 184564 )

        It's hilarious that Trump, who spread that racist lie about Obama's birth place is a stone cold traitor.

        FYI: That was hillary clinton. [telegraph.co.uk] It was her idea in order to stop him from being a candidate in the DNC primary. Enjoy your craziness for the day. You can also find WAPO articles on it if you want, including articles from the guy that the Clinton campaign passed the info to and was sent to Africa and tried to find out if it was true or not.

        • Your link directly contradicts your claim. The linked article refers to a 2004 conspiracy theory about Obama's religion, not place of birth, which was due to Andy Martin, not Hillary Clinton.

          You should not have been modded up, quite the contrary.

        • by iive ( 721743 )

          Unfortunately the article does not support your claim.
          What it says is:

          It was not until April 2008, at the height of the intensely bitter Democratic presidential primary process, that the touch paper was properly lit.

          An anonymous email circulated by supporters of Mrs Clinton, Mr Obamaâ(TM)s main rival for the partyâ(TM)s nomination, thrust a new allegation into the national spotlight â" that he had not been born in Hawaii.

          Do you have evidence that Mrs Clinton or her staff have supported or spr

      • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

        It's hilarious that Trump, who spread that racist lie about Obama's birth place is a stone cold traitor.

        No, what's "hilarious" is that after putting up with asinine right wing bullshit from Republicans (birth certificates, Vince Foster, running heroin through Arkansas) Democrats have decided its their turn to engage in fact-free partisan buuuuuuuuuuullshit.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Some Russians bought ads on the world's largest social network!? HOLY FUCK TRUMP MUST BE INVOLVED! PUTIN! NAZIS! #IMPEACH

        If the ads were partisan (which the general public does not know) and the foreign purchaser did not register as a foreign agent, that would be a criminal offense under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. [wikipedia.org] Whether or not Trump is involved is a question that is most certainly already under investigation.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Re:Good news (Score:5, Informative)

      by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Saturday September 16, 2017 @03:51PM (#55211219)
      While I agree good fkn luck. This is the crime too big to jail. If we didn't do squat about banks laundering tens of billions of dollars, lying about ratings, illegally forclosing on people, etc - except bail them out and handsomely pay thier executives- nothing is going to be done about this. Best we can hope for is maybe get Trump out of office (no criminal conviction) and only because republicans can't get basic crap done and even the densest Trump supporters are starting to realize it's all just been lies. The main sources of corruption will still be there and the Russians will have learned how cheap and effective it is to buy thier way into politics.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • It is very unfair of Russians to interfere with other countries' elections but what part of it is Trump campaign acting illegally?

        Trump aside, do we really belive click bait ads made non-Trump supporters change their mind and vote Trump?

        Have we abandoned reasoning? In my view the fair thing is to say Russians rooted for Trump because Trump was open he would treat them better than Clinton, and Trump campaign was happy that the Dem campaign was hacked, even if Dems said there was nothing worthwhile in those e

        • Well Russians primarily launder oligarchs and political leaders illicit money through real estate deals. Trump has been getting shady loans from banks with ties to Russia since the 90s since no American bank would touch him with a 10 foot pole. Further there have been many purchases of trump properties at suspicious prices through shell companies. FFS trump tried to negotiate a deal for the tallest building in the world to be built in Russia with his name on the front during his campaign. In short the
          • Since all if that was more or less known before the wlection, how come the DNC, Clinton and slmost all the media were so confident she was going to win? The only answer that make sense to me was *they* didn't think it was relevant, and more importantly, they didn't know their voters.

            That last part is the most justified way of politicians losing an election.

            • I think you are half right, the missing part being Hillary was polling well yes - but Bernie was killing it and doubly so against trump. He went from an unfunded unknown Vermont nobody to nearly close a 60 point lead and won 23 states despite best efforts to deny him the win. The reason the DNC conspired against Bernie was they would rather risk losing to trump than rocking the money boat lining all of thier pockets and take the sure win. Few things ostracises one more in the eyes of the DNC more than s
    • Wishful thinking. Get over it, Trump won, for better or worse. And keep in mind this gigantic investigation you're fawning over is only being discussed here and now over someone buying internet adverts. Internet advertising. If you can't see how nonsensical this is than I weep for the future of the republic.
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Tough Love ( 215404 )

        Get over it, Trump won, for better or worse.

        Worse. 1) Cheated 2) Devalued the office of the president of the USA 3) Grab them by the pussy.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Now if only Mueller can get Slashdot to hand over it's logs and we can see which and how many accounts were controlled by Putin's troll army. Wishful thinking, but I also hope someone at Facebook faces jail time over this, and I really hope it's Zuckerberg.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 )

      Now that Mueller is running the biggest criminal investigation in world history (Russia and Trump's coup), and that Russia's criminal aggression and deceit is coming out, I expect arrests.

      I'll laugh so hard when all the Putin-lovers are in jail, tossing Bubba's salad.

      As the steadfast Republicans are finding out, there is not a limit on where these investigations go. I recall ehy giggled like schoolgirls as their moral touchstone, a man of highes saintly caliber refused to respond to rapists at Baylor, and now has reaped much Karma.

      But I digress, The good Mr Starr, when the Republicans decided it was time to take Little Willy Clinton down, started with the Whitewater S&L scandal. Oops, nothing there. So now it is Paula Jones. Hmm, about as trustworthy and attent

    • Now that Mueller is running the biggest criminal investigation in world history (Russia and Trump's coup), and that Russia's criminal aggression and deceit is coming out, I expect arrests.

      Swiftboating. Pure, undiluted Swiftboating. Criminal interference in other countries is what you fuckers do. Bullshit invasions, [theguardian.com] regime change, overthrowing democracies, kidnapping & torturing people to death [wikipedia.org].....it's. all. you.

      Besides all the other plotholes in the Russiagate McCarthyism [hackernoon.com], we're supposed to belie

  • The real question, is why is good for Russian to have Trump as POTUS? Division !

    • by blellow_party ( 4848005 ) on Saturday September 16, 2017 @03:14PM (#55211051)
      With the rest of the world, Trump has been repugnantly pugnacious and pugilistic, but with Putin, he's been a pussy-cat. Apparently, he's somebody they can work with, unlike his opponent.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      To answer you: because a pro-American guy in charge of America is actually good for Russia (and yes, America). Russia and America are natural allies, with zero conflicts. The globalists, on the other hand...

      Look at what the globalist asshat Obama did: support for Muslim Bro-hood/ISIS, support for warmongering NATO (trying for bases at Russia's belly in Ukraine), support for China's militarism.

      Who is this globalist shit good for?

    • The real question, is why is good for Russian to have Trump as POTUS? Division !

      With Trump in power, no US media outlet has time for reporting human rights abuses abroad. That could be the whole agenda.

      Like Putin is saying: "Donald, CNN wants to run story about Russia torturing gays. We need morning poop tweet, comrade."

  • by Anonymous Coward

    This nonsense about the Russians is still going on? Liberals really are retarded.

  • Selective outrage (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NaCh0 ( 6124 ) on Saturday September 16, 2017 @03:45PM (#55211193) Homepage

    The Ukraine and Saudis were rooting for Hillary to win. Mexico was certainly anti Trump and may have tried to sway the election away from him too.

    Is Facebook going to share that information or conveniently not mention it.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16, 2017 @04:35PM (#55211395)
      There's a difference between "rooting for" a candidate and "illegally hiring hundreds of people to campaign for them online [nytimes.com]."
        • Here a choice quote from that article:

          Russia’s effort was personally directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, involved the country’s military and foreign intelligence services, according to U.S. intelligence officials. They reportedly briefed Trump last week on the possibility that Russian operatives might have compromising information on the president-elect. And at a Senate hearing last week on the hacking, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said “I don't think we've ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process than we've seen in this case.” There’s little evidence of such a top-down effort by Ukraine. Longtime observers suggest that the rampant corruption, factionalism and economic struggles plaguing the country — not to mention its ongoing strife with Russia — would render it unable to pull off an ambitious covert interference campaign in another country’s election.

          What that article you quoted is basically saying is that the Trump campaign actively benefitted from a well oiled, well funded and professional campaign aimed at swaying the US presidential election in an operation that not only was run by the president of the Russian federation in person and was implemented by that countries intelligence services, but this operation was sophisticated enough and big enough that it has impressed US intelligence veterans. Those same US in

      • There's a difference between "rooting for" a candidate and "illegally hiring hundreds of people to campaign for them online."

        You mean when David Brock spent a million dollars hiring internet trolls on Hillary's behalf? [latimes.com]

        As with all Hillbot smears - racism, misogyny, collusion, election cheating - this one is pure projection.

    • C'mon... we all learn as kids, "two wrongs don't make a right".

      A second similar crime wouldn't cancel out the first. If you have any evidence election laws were violated by Hillary Clinton, she can be investigated TOO.

      However, as she's not the POTUS, I expect that it would be a lower priority investigation.

    • Guarantee one thing: Australia (and other places with similar dialect) were not 'rooting' for Hillary. Perhaps a few, but they're super pervs.

  • by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Saturday September 16, 2017 @04:32PM (#55211375)
    make it illegal for foreign countries to buy time and/or space for political advertizing, and only US Citizens are allowed to vote or even post comments about politics in the USA

The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is the most likely to be correct. -- William of Occam

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