A quarter of the Russian-linked ads were also geographically targeted at specific Facebook audiences in the U.S. | Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images Facebook: Russian-linked accounts bought $150,000 in ads during 2016 race

Facebook accounts with apparent Russian ties purchased about $150,000 in political ads aimed at American voters during key periods of the 2016 presidential campaign, according to a new analysis released Wednesday by the social networking company.

The internal Facebook findings – which it said in a blog post it had already turned over to U.S. authorities – comes as the Silicon Valley giant faces intense scrutiny from special counsel Robert Mueller and congressional committees concerned about how both real internet trolls and fake news bots preyed on U.S. voters during last year’s election.


Facebook found some $100,000 in ad spending from June 2015 through May 2017 connected to about 470 accounts that were deemed as inauthentic and in violation of its internal guidelines. These accounts – associated with about 3,000 ads – were connected to each other “and likely operated out of Russia,” Alex Stamos, Facebook’s chief security officer, wrote in a Wednesday blog post.

While the “vast majority” of those ads didn’t reference any specific presidential candidate, or even the election itself, Stamos explained that the Russian ads that Facebook uncovered were designed to amplify hot-button social and political issues, such as LGBT rights, race, immigration and gun rights.

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A quarter of the Russian-linked ads were also geographically targeted at specific Facebook audiences in the U.S., and most of them ran in 2015 before the first primaries and caucuses when the GOP and Democratic presidential fields were still packed with multiple candidates. While the amount of spending on the ads was nominal at best, the fact that it even occurred is likely to reinforce concerns expressed by some Democrats that Russia may have used Facebook to promote narratives that flattered Trump and bashed Clinton in key Rust Belt swing states that helped the real estate mogul take the White House.

“This is no longer supposition,” said Andrew Bleeker, the president of Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Democratic digital advertising firm that worked for Clinton in 2016.

On Capitol Hill, California Rep. Adam Schiff – the top Democrat in the House’s Russia probe – reacted to the Facebook analysis to note he’s trying to get an Intelligence Committee hearing on “the use of social media by Russia during the campaign.” He said there’s been no agreement yet about which witnesses would be called.

Separately, Facebook also found another $50,000 in political ad spending – for about 2,200 ads – that were bought from accounts “that might have originated in Russia,” Stamos wrote.

Stamos explained that Facebook cast a wide net looking for accounts “with very weak signals of a connection and not associated with any known organized effort.” It also was looking for ads bought from accounts with U.S. internet protocol addresses but with the language setting dialed in to Russian.

The overall spending figure for the Russian-linked ads – at about $150,000 – is a relatively small amount compared to the overall digital ad buy made during the course of the 2016 campaign. While firm spending totals are difficult to assess because of loose federal election reporting requirements, media reports in the aftermath of last year’s presidential race have cited $55 million in spending from one of Hillary Clinton’s primary digital firms, and $90 million spent on Donald Trump’s side through his main digital adviser, Brad Parscale.

Facebook has been under the microscope for months to explain how its platform was exploited during the last presidential campaign. That race remains under investigation for potential collusion between Trump’s team and a Russian government that U.S. intelligence agencies stated earlier this year had a “clear preference” for the Republican.

In May, Oxford Internet Institute professor Philip Howard and colleague Robert Gorwa co-authored an op-ed in the Washington Post urging lawmakers to force Facebook’s hand and produce any underlying metadata about questionable social media accounts that may have played a role in the election outcome.

“If there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian influence operations, Facebook may be able to spot that too,” the researchers wrote. “In many ways, massive coordinated propaganda campaigns are just another form of election interference. If Facebook has data on this, it needs to share it.”

Facebook has undertaken its own internal review of how it tracked and handled activity on its site during the presidential election, including the spread of fake news. New policies include limits on news feeds that share stories with consistent clickbait headlines and blocks on pages that repeatedly share fake news stories to advertise. The company also removed 30,000 fake accounts before the French elections in April and tens of thousands of accounts before the United Kingdom’s snap election in June.

