WASHINGTON: House Democrats released more than 3,500 Russian-bought Facebook ads Thursday. You can view the ads in a file published by the House Intelligence Committee.
“There’s no question that Russia sought to weaponize social media platforms to drive a wedge between Americans, and in an attempt to sway the 2016 election,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said in a statement.
The majority of the ads target politically divisive issues like gun control, race relations and immigration. Much of the wording is awkward, as though translated into English, and inflammatory.
“They attempted to hijack legitimate events meant to do good – teaching self-defense, providing legal aid – in support of their malign object,” Schiff said. “They sought to harness Americans’ very real frustrations and anger over sensitive political matters in order to influence American thinking, voting and behavior.”
Facebook said in a blog post after the release, “we were too slow to spot this type of information operations interference.” The company outlined several changes it has already made to its ad policies.
The ads were released by Democrats on the highly polarized House Intelligence Committee. The committee’s Republican majority, led by Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., wrapped up its investigation and released a final report in April that found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
The House and Senate intelligence committees had each been investigating foreign meddling on the social media platform before and during the 2016 presidential election. Select ads purchased by the Russian agency have previously been released, but the House Intelligence Committee said Thursday that “all but 30 of the 3,519 are new.”
