Facebook Says 10 Million US Users Saw Russia-linked Ads (reuters.com) 252
Some 10 million people in the United States saw politically divisive ads on Facebook that the company said were purchased in Russia in the months before and after last year's U.S. presidential election, Facebook said on Monday. From a report: Facebook, which had not previously given such an estimate, said in a statement that it used modeling to estimate how many people saw at least one of the 3,000 ads. It also said that 44 percent of the ads were seen before the November 2016 election and 56 percent were seen afterward. The ads have sparked anger toward Facebook and, within the United States, toward Russia since the world's largest social network disclosed their existence last month. Moscow has denied involvement with the ads.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:FFS (Score:5, Insightful)
>Anybody can post politically divisive content on Facebook.
>That's the whole point!
Not really - the whole point of Facebook is ads. Company pages are ads. People's pages are ads for the people. Facebook services are mostly for specifically targeting ads. The games are ads, the fake accounts are ads, even the settings exist to make you more receptive to the ads.
Anyway - in this particular case, Russia's proxies purchased ads during the compaign season, in highly targeted ways, to affect the outcome of the election. 10 million is like 1/35 people in the US, and a much larger portion of the voting public, and an even larger portion of the key battleground voting public.
This is akin to Russia buying 1000-foot-tall billboards above every voting place in battleground states, and using it to tell the most vicious, manipulative lies they cared to tell, to sew chaos and hatred into the public.
It's something more than normal provocateur work.
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Re:FFS (Score:4, Insightful)
How about, the lead addled ignorant zombie bots of America will immediately obey any advertisement upon view. The only real measure of that would be how many fell trap to click bait and clicked. The world, unfortunately is a breeding ground for annoying click bait and being an English speaker, the most annoying country is the US, a click bait market in every area of media, from small to large, to compete they join in from all over the world.
It was really pathetic and shameful when the US government joined in on the click bait stories but hopefully they will realise how unproductive it really is (pissing people off with unproductive clicks waste their time and annoys them, hence you have paid to do damage to your image and brand).
Think how many ads a day, an internet user is subject to many ads on nearly every single page view. The number boogles the mind, definitely in the thousands and done over a year in the hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions. One ad becomes near invisible, hundreds are required to force awareness and profound annoyance, unless on that rare occasion they are actually interested and that will most likely occur when the ad aligns with content ie food ad with food content.
If they are looking for that political content, they will find it, if they are not, shoving it in their face will just annoy them. The person who decide a large percentage of American citizens deplorables, this to be repeated by the internet, hundreds of millions of times ever since, they were by far the most divisive in US history since the civil war.
Re: FFS (Score:4, Interesting)
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Fuck citizen's united.
Do you lose your 1st amendment rights if you make a commercial supporting a political position or politician? Is the money you make/have yours to promote any idea you want and are you protected by the constitution to promote said idea?
If it costs money to make a commercial or ad and the speech in that commercial or ad is protected by the 1st amendment; How can the government justify limiting your access to pay for commercials or ads?
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Not really - the whole point of Facebook is ads
Nope, that's the visible part. The whole point of Facebook is psychological manipulation. The site exists both to collect the data to build psychological profiles that can be used for manipulation and to deliver the messages designed for such manipulation. Advertising is simply the most benign use for this.
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This is akin to Russia buying 1000-foot-tall billboards above every voting place in battleground states
Not quite. The $100,000 Facebook "Russian" ads pales in comparison to the nearly 2 billion spent on the Presidential Election (Nearly 1.5 billion in favor of Clinton).
What the means is that Clinton's marketing was fucked up. And the Democrats keep on this narrative, it makes them look even worse than before.
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The two locations which have thus far been revealed to have been targeted by the ads (Ferguson, MO and Baltimore, MD) are hardly battleground states. Clinton won Maryland by a 2:1 margin (26%). Trump won Missouri by a 3:2 margin (19%).
I could see this as being part of some concerted (but underfunded - a nation state can drop a few $million without blinking) effort to sow chaos and discord in the U.S.
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This is not akin to bribing politicians directly to control our country. Many countries (Russia as well) directly bribe our politicians directly as do owners of large corporations.
Your second sentence is the main reason why this country has become the political shit stain that it is. NO ONE should be bribing politicians at all. Not even American citizens. They shouldn't be taking salaries, pensions, and Cadillac health plans. They should be getting fair value compensation. They should be doing their d
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Your second sentence is the main reason why this country has become the political shit stain that it is. NO ONE should be bribing politicians at all. Not even American citizens.
AC or not, this should be at +5 insightful.
The corruption has become so strong, that the politicians don't even deny that they are working for the groups and corporations who bribe them. They have hit upon a successful formula that allows their supporters to support them while engaging in the large scale pecuniary extraction which surely doesn't help the average American.
Even more disturbing is that they seem to approve of other nations getting involved as long as if fits their agenda.
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These are valid accurate statements/questions. He should not be downvotes.
If the US press lies during the election cycles then isn't that election interference?
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Because we don't have a problem with lying. It's ok to lie.
And even if we did have a problem, letting them do it is easier than the alternative of not-letting them do it. What am I going to do, stop buying their products? Stop voting for them? Stop watching their ads?
Don't be silly. You can lie to me all you want. If you're a liar and if I'm not ok with that, that's my problem, not yours.
Re:FFS (Score:4, Insightful)
$100k in Facebook ads is part of the campaign to destabilize and weaken the west. Yet, the Clinton campaign spent how much money? But the 100k made the election? ... ... How much contempt do you hold for your fellow citizens and Americans?
Here's the thing, if you have free speech, any idea can influence people to vote. Any group promoting an idea is a campaign. How is that any different than Obama telling Brits to vote no on brexit?
Does it have anything to do with actual policy in your mind?
Does antifa Boston stop being fake when they rioted over lies? https://bluelivesmatter.blue/a... [bluelivesmatter.blue]
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He's not an American, but it's ok when he posts BS after BS post about American politics (with the intent to influence US politics or elections, I suppose) because he's not Russian and he's doing it for free.
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Maybe we need an investigation into the British influence on the election! I wonder how much money has been spent from British ip's that have "influenced" American votes.
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Wait, the last minute FBI investigation were Russian efforts to damage Clinton? Did the Russians force the tarmac meeting too? Did the Russians force Clinton to do all the unethical shit in the emails? Did the Russians tell Clinton to ignore rust belt states? Bound by electoral rules, like maximum campaign contributions that were bypassed when the DNC funneled down-ballot election funds to her campaign?
How far are you willing to take the Russian scare?
The tip of the iceberg? I would take that more seriously
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You think that the theft of her private emails and the sudden release of a large batch of them (which were completely innocent by the way, don't forget that) a couple of weeks before the vote, perfectly timed to cause maximum damage, was a coincidence? Even though the hacking has been linked to Russia.
Even though Trump has done his best to scupper it, the results of the official investigation are going to blow your mind.
Re:FFS (Score:4, Insightful)
Even though the hacking has been linked to Russia.
No, the hacking has NOT been linked to Russia. The only people who have ever had their hands on the DNC server, after the fact, was a private contractor that was hired to do work for the party. They have never allowed the FBI to to see the server. Regardless, the only evidence on the DNC email dump that we DO have has been exhaustively reviewed by teams of neutral experts, and every last bit of evidence points to the mail dump as having occurred internally, at the DNC, on a local machine writing the files to a USB storage device.
Of course, you know all of this. So the question is, why are still trotting out the debunked DNC talking points and spin? You're also, as per marching orders from the Clinton/DNC machine, going to great lengths to avoid talking about what the insider who leaked that mail was demonstrating: just how corrupt her operation was, and the degree of contempt she has for, among others, the Bernie supporter types who challenged her entitlement to the throne she and her husband demanded to have back. But you carry on: keep asserting things not only not in evidence, but shown to be incorrect. That sort of delusional foot-stamping on the subject is just going to make the problem you dislike even worse.
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what was more damage: the fact that her private server was hacked or the contents of that private server?
Clearly the hack, or rather the release of the hack. Remember that the FBI looked at those emails and decided that there was no case to answer, but the damage was already done.
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ROFL. Clearly the fact that Snowden released documents is more important than what he released. Do you really believe this? You're smarter than that.
FBI looked at those emails and decided that there was no case to answer
You mean the, "there was probably a crime but don't prosecute because 'intent' even if the law doesn't mention intent" That Comey of the FBI? That is still damning to the common man that would have been arrested if he had done the same and Comey said as much. But sure, not "illegal" but still damaging because laws for thee not me Clinton. That whole fuck up was
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The hacking has been widely attributed to Russian, including by the US government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I don't know why you thought it was Snowden, that's that bizarre.
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It's actually illegal for a foreign entity to buy election ads in America - at least on TV and in print.
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I thought Trump was a slug. This is getting very confusing.
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I thought Trump was a slug. This is getting very confusing.
No, he's the Hypnotoad.
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"Everyone I disagree with is a Russian."
-Narcocide, 2017
Re: SHUT UP! (Score:2)
Putin himself stole my laundry!
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But he couldn't have... he was too busy hiding in my closet, waiting for me to fall asleep so he could whisper the word "Trump" repeatedly in my ear as I slept...
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And the bastard only stole ONE sock!!
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All still supposition and it mischaracterized the actual situation with over simplification.
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All bogus and inflated fact scarce leftist talking points.
Prove any one of those with actual true facts without using news articles.
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All bogus and inflated fact scarce leftist talking points.
Prove any one of those with actual true facts without using news articles.
Chto ty govorish' o Borise?
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Stop with the bullshit responses meant to attack others rather than discuss the facts. You sound hysterical.
Show us one iota of actual evidence that proves anything that you believe about the Russians, just one single thing. The only limit is that you can't use the press/media reports as evidence.
You can't do it. You have no idea what happened. You haven't been given a spec of evidence from the justice system nor has anything been proven through a prosecution.
Everyone should read the book called "The Smea
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I didn't know Millard was running. Damn! I missed out.
Hillary spent $1.2 billion... (Score:2, Insightful)
but we're supposed to believe $50k worth of ads on Facebook had an effect on the election?
Re: Hillary spent $1.2 billion... (Score:2, Insightful)
But Putin spend more wisely.
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If the election were closer, yes it could have made a difference. But the real point is that a foreign government attempted to influence our elections through clandestine methods and plans. The success of their plans is secondary. They also attempted to hack voting machines, I'd note.
Re:Hillary spent $1.2 billion... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Can you show us even just a single piece of actual evidence of this that isn't some news article? Just one piece.
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This. I want to actually see the ads.
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Everything he said is patently false.
Trump won by a notable amount of electoral college votes. Hillary got the popular because of a couple states that she won, most notably CA and NY.
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You left out Hillary not bothering to campaign in any of those 3 precincts, instead calling the occupants "deplorable", which radically lowers the possibility of GOP theft. Hillary also ran the most negative presidential campaign in modern history. You have to account for that factor in your probability calculation, if you're going to be honest.
But, I doubt you really want a scientific analysis. You seem to be more concerned with finding a scapegoat.
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Re: Hillary spent $1.2 billion... (Score:5, Insightful)
Better yet, you can get the opposition to run a candidate that half the country already has endless legitimate and bullshit reasons to hate, have that candidate insult half the voters for the opposition, spend the primaries bashing popular policies, and not step foot in several states that were within the margin of error.
Trump didn't win. Clinton lost. And considering she was running against the least popular candidate in US electoral history, the vast majority of the focus should be on how much Clinton and the DNC failed. They probably would have done better nominating a ham sandwich.
Re: Hillary spent $1.2 billion... (Score:5, Insightful)
Democracy needs an abort mechanism. If it somehow comes down to two unpopular candidates, disqualify both and start over.
It would also help if the system wasn't first-past-the-post to start with.
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Democracy needs an abort mechanism. If it somehow comes down to two unpopular candidates, disqualify both and start over.
It does, it's called "voting third party." Americans, however, believe the constant lie (perpetuated by both parties, who are terrified they will lose their duopoly) that voting 3rd party is "letting the other guy win" and "throwing away your vote", which is only true because people keep believing it to be true.
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Trump didn't win. Clinton lost. And considering she was running against the least popular candidate in US electoral history, the vast majority of the focus should be on how much Clinton and the DNC failed.
You do know that Trump set a record both in vote tallies and more than doubled the number of votes received over his closest rival, Ted Cruz. http://www.thegatewaypundit.co... [thegatewaypundit.com]
Sorry, but rather than the least popular candidate in US history, I claim that numbers like that illustrate that he is not only the most popular ever, but he also shares the values of the Republican party more than any other candidate in US history.
You don't get that sort of support by being unpopular and out of tune with your p
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How Many Saw Biased News? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Even if your claim were true (cough), it's not illegal for a US corporation to give a political opinion (for good or bad).
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Re:How Many Saw Biased News? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm guessing he's pointing out that you and your ilk are duplicitous hypocrites.
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Sorry, I'm NOT aware that China was discovered having a dedicated clandestine program designed to influence our elections using multiple techniques.
But I do invite you to present evidence, if you claim such.
Every politician probably has nations they are more friendly with than others. Trump has Saudi Arabia, for example. If the Clintons were friendlier with China than their opponent at the time, I don't see much difference between the two.
Double standard for investigations (Score:2, Insightful)
Facebook admitted to promoting pro-Hillary and suppressing pro-Trump stories/outlets. Where is the investigation and media attention for that?
Comey admits to leaking classified information, gets a sweet book deal [politico.com]. Reality winner leaks classified information, sits in jail denied bond [wikipedia.org].
The DNC siphoned $60 million from down-ballot elections into Hillary's campaign to fight Sanders, which would appear to be a violation of FEC rules on its face(*).
Susan Rice unmasked wiretaps of Trump and advisors without a warrant, which was then leaked to the press.
Bill Clinton had an "on the tarmac" meeting with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch while Lynch was i
Re: How Many Saw Biased News? (Score:2)
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
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That's not an extraordinary claim. It's pedestrian.
Re: How Many Saw Biased News? (Score:2)
Broad statements without facts is not beneficial to the discussion. Try again.
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Facebook is an American company. There is no Law preventing you from supporting your candidate. It is illegal for Foreign Governments, like Russia, to influence American Elections. Apparently you don't seem to understand nor have you read the Constitution.
Statute making it illegal? You seem so certain - how about posting the statute? You can't, because there isn't one. There are NO restrictions on foreign involvement in elections, as long as the ads are related to issues and general positions - not specific candidates.
How many bots saw these ads as well? (Score:4, Interesting)
Non issue. Will be blown up out of proportion. (Score:5, Insightful)
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If it is not enough to show that Russia stole the elections it is enough to demonstrate their evil intent. Now the official evil intent includes the very general 'sowing discord'. That means that they support activism of all sorts and activism becomes suspect. It means that groups like Black Lives Matters are reduced to russian stooges, the way Wikileaks was reduced to a stooge, the way a lot of alternative sites now are reduced to stooges that have to be slammed down (Google and propaganda sites like http: [securingdemocracy.org]
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It's a fair comment, but I'm not sure it gets us any closer to an answer.
Perhaps the 2.65Bn represent a very expensive way to put more noise on TV, or to get many phone calls out to people who may or may not be really engaged, while on FB millions of very cheap interactions day in and day out will support existing search bubbles and have an important effect.
Just look at how people write about Hillary being a symbol of everything that's bad about Washington. Others repeating that the EU commission are unelec
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Who is claiming that?
Democrats. More specifically, the corrupt corporate crony wing of the Democrats (which is the wing in control of the party.)
The progressives will never vote for you fucks again.
Fake News [Re:Non issue. Will be blown up out of ] (Score:2)
Which ones? How many? Links? You appear to be manufacturing "facts".
I do agree many claim the Russians attempted to influence the election, but I've rarely seen any claims that they almost certainly ACTUALLY changed the final results.
In other words, which Democrats directly and clearly claim the outcome would be different? I don't want pundit interpretations, I want to see actual quotes.
Yeah, right (Score:2)
Given that this is Facebook we're talking about, plus their bungled attempts so far to save face over their part in this debacle, this estimate seems egregiously low, by a factor of 5 to 8 or more.
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Why not 2 or 3, or 10 or 15? How exactly did you arrive at your factor?
Dolchstoss-legende (Score:2, Insightful)
This is just the Left's dolchstoss-legende being solidified. Trump didn't win, it was a stab in the back by TEH ROOSHINS. (Seriously, "blame the foreigner"? It's like the oldest trick in the book) In years to come, this will become a bedrock belief of the Left, that all these bad things happened because dirty foreigners made them happen. I can understand why! Having to come to terms with the fact that ordinary Americans are hurting would be emotionally devastating. It would be having a heel realization [tvtropes.org]
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Yeah (Score:2)
And 9 million, 999 thousand people will yell "FAKE NEWS!". Overcoming set expectation of outcomes is a loosing business.
The number of viewers is made up (Score:3)
Given that Facebook is desperately attempting damage control how likely is it that this number is on the extremely low side? Remember FB claims to be good at spreading information, and apparently disinformation as well, so why not give it a shot as part of their defensive strategy. They have a lot of plausible deniability, so they might as well push their own "alternate facts".
The best part of all of this is that FB is now saying that they don't have much impact on their viewers. "The latest company statement said that about 25 percent of the ads were never shown to anyone". Is that what they tell their advertising clients? That a quarter of their advertising dollars are a complete waste of money? It seems extremely unlikely that is the story they use when they are talking to Wall Street or any organization that is trying to use FB as part of their online strategy.
Is it possible that no one will connect the dots between FB claiming to be a great place to get out your message vs how they didn't have any impact when it came to election tampering?
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I expect Facebook's ad reach models are pretty good. Advertising is their primary business, after all. If it wasn't good the advertisers would quickly call bullshit.
It's not hard to calculate. They put in a bid, you look at other bids for the same demographics and determine how often their ads would win the eyeball auction.
So the USA has never influence an Election? (Score:2)
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The US has also rolled tanks into other countries. Doesn't change the fact that it's indisputable (among Americans) that you don't let other countries invade. It's not a fucking abstract moral argument - it's a war. A psy-ops war, but a war. The gv't defendingthe US in a war is a thing.
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Bullshit.
There's no evidence that the Russian government did a damn thing. We have seen absolutely zero evidence supporting the supposition by the DNC that Russia hacked the election, which is an absurd notion, with all claims so far publicly made debunked. Even the original claim by Obama was found to be inaccurate. Only 3 agencies signed off on the claim that Russia hacked the election, not all, and certainly not 17. Of those 3 only one gave it high confidence contrary to Obama's claims and that agenc
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Wow, that misses the point entirely. Look at the thread context. OP made the presumption that Russia intervened. Everything,including my response, in this thread is based on that.
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Lots of irrelevant inferences (Score:3)
Russians are entitled to place ads even politically derisive ones.
No one has proven these were placed by the Russian government, which also isnt illegal.
Zuckerberg is a Democrat and as someone with political aspirations he has every reason to follow the DNC narrative.
This is a win all round for Facebook as they can say that $100,000 nets you effective influence over 10,000,000 people.
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"No one has proven these were placed by MY Russian government, which also isn't illegal."
Fixed that for you!
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No. What I wrote was accurate.
You simply participated in McCarthyism tactics.
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Fixed that for you!
No, you spent a moment typing some juvenile snark in order to avoid admitting he's actually correct, because addressing the fact that he's correct takes some of the fun out of your preferred narrative.
Bragging (Score:2)
3000 ads got 10,000,000 "impressions" - just think what our marketing department can do for YOU!
So? (Score:2)
Keep it up, and you get Trump again in 2020 (Score:3)
From the numbers, that pretty much has to be 10 million impressions, not 10 million people. I.e., the ads were shown 10 million times, to some (smaller) number of people.
I don't live in the US, but answer me this: During election season, how many ads did eacy person see? Hundreds? Possibly thousands? Multiply by a population of 300,000,000, and we are talking on the order of hundreds of billions of ad impressions. Against which, 10 million is not even a drop in a bucket.
This Russian fetish never was relevant. The more information that emerges, the more obvious this is. Some people just cannot accept that Hillary! was an absolutely crappy candidate, and that half the country voted for "anybody else".
The D's need to get over it already, and maybe put up a decent candidate next time. But they won't, they'll nominate someone like Pelosi. Trump is very likely to win again in 2020.
She lost (Score:4, Insightful)
Just accept it. However bad Trump was as a candidate, Clinton was worse.
She had all the MSM, Hollywood, the universities, etc. etc, on her side. Even big business and a fair slice of the Republican poobahs who hated Trump were on her side. She still lost.
Nobody needed any "fake news" (except you, but it didn't work); the real news was bad enough. "First old white woman" just wasn't enough to get her there. She lost. Period.
Going ballistic, acting even more insane, none of this is helping you. This is in fact why he won.
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Lets see... from the summary, "10 million people saw at least one add." (going to assume that # accounts for ad blocker and other such things)
Quick google search shows about 214 million FB users in the USA
of those, about 8% are under voting age.
so 3.3% of the USA FB population who are eligible to vote saw at least 1 ad.
Kinda puts it all into perspective.
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An ad that was presented isn't necessarily seen. Just because an ad appears during a football game doesn't mean everyone watched it.
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There's a compulsory license BTW. The artists have no legal basis for a complaint even though they may have the right to express moral objections.
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You mean like "Hands up. Don't shoot." ?
Or, "Women only make 75% of what men do for the same work." ?
That sort of thing?
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On Slashdot no one knows if you are being paid off by the Russians.
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You think it is bad here. On reddit the CEO edits the posts of users.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
https://www.theverge.com/2016/... [theverge.com]
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Which is why you saw no ads or stories about this, they're called targeted for a reason. Besides, unless you live in the key swing states there's
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The massive barage of ads and other media propaganda by CNN alone didn't override the influence of 10 million people seeing 1 ad?
More proof of the bogus red scare created by the left.
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The difference is that you know catwoman is a criminal and you only laugh at what the joker may have done.
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Shall we start the conspiracy now?
Similar to the democrat's agenda in invalidating the 2016 presidential election with accusations of Russian interference, the 2018 mid-term elections were hacked in favor of Hillary Clinton's party by the Chinese and Ukrainian governments.
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Facebook does have credibility?
Was that before or after Facebook admitted to promoting pro-Hillary and suppressing pro-Trump stories/outlets?