Congress released the Facebook advertisements used by the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency so that Americans can begin to understand how Russia used social media to influence the 2016 election and to divide us.
US Representative Adam Schiff, The Ranking Member of Congress' House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence intelligence. house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=379 The House Democrats broke down the 3,000+ ads into nine categories: https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?Docum…
Events: Russian trolls would set up events like anti-Trump protests or pro-Muslim rallies, and promote them on Facebook. In some scenarios, they would set up both the protest and the counterprotest, hoping the confrontation would lead to conflict in real life.
They created 129 events between 2015 and 2017, which were viewed by more than 300,000 people. About 62,000 Facebook users said they would attend.
African-American Focused: These ads pretended to be a part of the Black Lives Matter movement, with images the committee called "pernicious and disturbing." The goal was to intensify racial tensions during the US election in 2016.
One account, called "Blacktivist," had more than 360,000 likes before it was shut down. One ad, posted on Instagram by @afrokingdom_, called for people to "Be ready to fight."
Immigration: These capitalized on border security and anti-immigration echoing throughout the Trump campaign.
One of the IRA's most popular groups, "Stop A.I.," which stood for All Invaders, had 193,813 followers. Another called "Secured Borders" had 135,301 followers.
Second Amendment ads were pro-gun, calling out to "2nd Amendment supporters, guns lovers & patriots," according to a post.
Heart of Texas: was so popular that the House Democrats gave its ads their own category. The page had 253,862 followers and promoted posts on several issues, including gun control, anti-Hillary ads, and immigration. It also promoted posts calling for Texas to secede from the US.
LGBT: The IRA posted ads as pages like LGBT United, with "Buff Bernie" coloring book, a page that organized counter-protests.
Muslims: Their fake Muslim ad campaign to issues involving Trump and Clinton. They controlled the group United Muslims of America, which had more than 328,000 followers. This group would often come into fabricated conflict with the "Heart of Texas"
Veterans: The majority of the posts from Russian trolls posing as pro-military groups were anti-Clinton. These posts also mixed in legitimate content promoting veterans to build an audience, US officials said.
Candidates: The most common ads throughout 2016 heavily promoted Trump and sought to hurt Clinton's campaign. The sponsored posts called for people to go to rallies, while articles posted by groups like "Born Liberal" would support Sanders.
3,000 ads do not include 80,000 organic posts on Facebook, which may be made public in the future.
https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/facebook-ads/social-media-adve…
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