Russia-Linked Facebook Ads Reached 10M People

An estimated 10 one thousand thousand people in the U.s. saw the Facebook political ads purchased by Russia-linked accounts during terminal year's presidential campaign, the social network has revealed.

Virtually of those ads, which Facebook has provided to Congress to aid its investigations into Russian interference in the ballot, "appear to focus on divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum," Facebook's Vice President of Policy and Communications Elliot Schrage wrote in a Monday blog post. They touched on topics ranging from "LGBT matters to race problems to clearing to gun rights," he added.

The postal service also suggests that nigh people who saw the more than than 3,000 Russian-placed ads didn't encounter them until later the election on Nov. viii. Forty-four percent of the ads' full impressions (a term that refers to the number of times an advertisement was displayed) were from earlier the election while 56 percent were from after the election, Schrage wrote. About 25 per centum of the ads were never shown to anyone.

"We understand that Facebook has become an important platform for social and political expression in the U.s.a. and around the world," Schrage wrote. "We are focused on developing greater safeguards against malicious interference in elections and strengthening our advertizing policies and enforcement to prevent abuse."

Facebook yesterday appear a series of steps it plans to take to prevent this type of corruption on its platform in the hereafter. The visitor promised to brand ads more transparent, beef up its enforcement confronting improper ads, tighten its restrictions on advertiser content, increase its authenticity requirements, and establish industry standards and best practices to fight these types of threats.

The changes come after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg last week expressed regret for saying in November that fake news on Facebook influencing the election was a "pretty crazy idea."

"Calling that crazy was dismissive and I regret information technology," Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook mail. "This is too important an consequence to be dismissive. But the data we have has always shown that our broader impact—from giving people a voice to enabling candidates to communicate directly to helping millions of people vote—played a far bigger role in this ballot."

Meanwhile, Twitter has also recently shared with Congress a "circular-upwards of ads" that Russia's state-run Tv network Russia Today targeted to Usa users in 2022. It also appear the shutdown of accounts associated with Russia-linked ad campaigns that ran on Facebook during last year's election.

Twitter, Facebook, and Google take been invited to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Nov. 1.

About Angela Moscaritolo

Angela Moscaritolo

Angela Moscaritolo is PCMag's expert on fitness and smart home products. Didactics yoga for nearly 10 years has helped her in evaluating a range of continued wellness products including fettle trackers, center rate monitors, rowers, smart scales, stationary bikes, force training machines, treadmills, and more. Angela also tests smart home devices from her ranch in Florida, including air purifiers, kitchen appliances, and robot vacuums, just to name a few.