SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook Inc said on Wednesday it had found that an operation likely based in Russia spent $100,000 on thousands of US ads promoting divisive social and political messages in a two-yearperiod through May.Facebook said 3,000 ads and 470 “inauthentic” accounts and pages spread polarising views on topics, including immigration, race and gay rights. Another $50,000 was spent on 2,200 “potentially politically related” ads, likely by Russians, Facebook said.US election law bars foreign nationals and foreign entities from spending money to expressly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate. Non-US citizens may generally advertise on issues.Other ads, such as those that mention a candidate but do not call for the candidate’s election or defeat, fall into what lawyers have called a legal gray area.Facebook announced the findings in a blog post by its chief security officer, Alex Stamos, and said that it was cooperating with federal inquiries into inf luence operations during the 2016 US presidential election.Facebook briefed members of both the Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees on Wednesday about the suspected Russia advertising, according to a congressional source familiar with the matter. Both committees are conducting probes into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US election, including potential collusion between the campaign of President Donald Trump and Moscow. </s> Facebook Inc said on Wednesday it had found that an operation likely based in Russia spent $100,000 on thousands of US ads promoting divisive social and political messages in a two-year-period through May. Facebook, the dominant social media network, said 3,000 ads and 470 “inauthentic” accounts and pages spread polarizing views on topics including immigration, race and gay rights.

Another $50,000 was spent on 2,200 “potentially politically related” ads, likely by Russians, Facebook said.

 US election law bars foreign nationals and foreign entities from spending money to expressly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate. Non-US citizens may generally advertise on issues. Other ads, such as those that mention a candidate but do not call for the candidate’s election or defeat, fall into what lawyers have called a legal gray area.

Facebook announced the findings in a blog post by its chief security officer, Alex Stamos, and said that it was cooperating with federal inquiries into influence operations during the 2016 US presidential election. http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/09/information-operations-update/

Facebook briefed members of both the Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees on Wednesday about the suspected Russia advertising, according to a congressional source familiar with the matter. Both committees are conducting probes into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US election, including potential collusion between the campaign of President Donald Trump and Moscow.

Facebook also gave its findings to Robert Mueller, the special counsel in charge of investigating alleged Russian interference in last year’s presidential election, a source familiar with the matter said. The company produced copies of advertisements as well as data about the buyers, the source said.

 Mueller’s office declined to comment.

Facebook said it found no link between the Russian-purchased advertising and any specific presidential campaign. The ads were mostly national in their focus and did not appear to reflect targeting of political swing-states, the company said. Even if no laws were violated, Facebook said the 470 accounts and pages associated with the ads ran afoul of the social network’s requirements for authenticity and have since been suspended.

Facebook did not print the names of any of the suspended pages, but some of them included such words as “refugee” and “patriot.” More than $1 billion was spent on political ads during the 2016 presidential campaign, thousands of times more than the presumed Russian spending identified by Facebook’s security team.

But the findings buttress US intelligence agency conclusions that Russia was actively involved in shaping the election. Facebook previously published a white paper on influence operations, including what it said were fake “amplifier” accounts for propaganda, and said it was cracking down.

As recently as June, Facebook told journalists that it had not found any evidence of Russian operatives buying election-related ads on its platform.

Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called the Facebook report “deeply disturbing and yet fully consistent with the unclassified assessment of the intelligence community.”

“We are keenly interested in Russia’s use of social media platforms, both the use of bots and trolls to spread disinformation and propaganda, including through the use of paid online advertising,” he said in a statement. A Facebook employee said Wednesday that there were unspecified connections between the divisive issue ads and a well-known Russian “troll factory” in St. Petersburg that publishes comments on social media.

Ellen Weintraub, a member of the US Federal Election Commission, said US voters deserve to know where the ads are coming from and that the money behind them is legal. “It is unlawful for foreign nationals to be spending money in connection with any federal, state or local election, directly or indirectly,” Weintraub said in a phone interview.

She declined to comment on the Facebook ads, saying she could not discuss subjects that could come before the agency. Facebook declined to release the ads themselves, prompting a sharp rebuke on Twitter from Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire founder of First Look Media, a producer of feature and documentary films, television and podcasts.

“Facebook keeps the targeted political ads it publishes secret, emboldening criminals,” wrote Omidyar, the eBay founder who also provided funding to launch media organization The Intercept. “I don’t see how that can possibly be legal.”

Facebook’s disclosure may be the first time a private entity has pointed to receiving Russian money related to US elections, said Brendan Fischer, a program director at the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington nonprofit that advocates for more transparency. “Whoever may have provided assistance to Russia in buying these Facebook ads is very likely in violation of the law,” he said, adding that Facebook has a legal duty to act if it is aware of similar activity in the future.

For all the latest World News, download Indian Express App </s> WASHINGTON. D.C. — has discovered that it sold about $100,000 in political ads to Russian-linked sources over the past two years, and has shared that information with authorities investigating Russian influence on the 2016 presidential election.

The Washington Post first reported on Wednesday that Facebook had informed congressional investigators that the ad sales were linked to a Russian “troll” farm known for spreading propaganda. The entity was called the Internet Research Agency.

Alex Stamos, Facebook’s chief security officer, wrote in a blog post that “in reviewing the ads buys, we have found approximately $100,000 in ad spending from June of 2015 to May of 2017 — associated with roughly 3,000 ads — that was connected to about 470 inauthentic accounts and Pages in violation of our policies. Our analysis suggests these accounts and Pages were affiliated with one another and likely operated out of Russia.”

He said that a majority of the ads did not specify any candidate, but “the ads and accounts appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum — touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights.”

“One question that has emerged is whether there’s a connection between the Russian efforts and ads purchased on Facebook,” he wrote. “These are serious claims and we’ve been reviewing a range of activity on our platform to help understand what happened.”

He outlined a series of steps the company has been taking to detect fake accounts and to detect inauthentic pages. That includes “reducing stories from sources that consistently post clickbait headlines that withhold and exaggerate information.”

Special counsel Robert Mueller and congressional committees are examining Russia’s attempts to influence the 2016 election, and whether any Trump campaign officials coordinated with Russian sources.

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg tried to address the spread of so-called “fake news” on the platform during the election. In a May white paper, the company outlined steps that they’re taking to try to limit the promotion of such false information.

Facebook’s revelation could also trigger calls for greater public disclosure of the sources of political spending. Broadcasters are required to disclose records of their political ad sales. </s> Facebook on Wednesday said an operation, likely based in Russia, spent $100,000 (around Rs 64 lakh) on advertisements promoting divisive messages during the 2016 United States Presidential elections on the social media platform. The company said 3,000 ads and 470 “inauthentic” accounts and pages spread polarising views on topics including immigration, race and gay rights from June 2015 to May 2017.

Another $50,000 (around Rs 32 lakh) was spent on 2,200 “potentially politically related” ads, likely by Russians, Facebook said. The findings buttress the US intelligence community’s conclusions in January that Russia was actively involved in shaping the election that led to President Donald Trump’s victory.

Facebook announced the findings in a blog post by its Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos, and said it was cooperating with federal inquiries. The social media giant briefed members of the Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees on Wednesday about the suspected Russian-linked advertising. The two committees are conducting investigations into alleged interference in the 2016 US election, including potential collusion between Trump’s election campaign and Moscow.

Facebook also gave its findings to Robert Mueller, the special counsel in charge of investigating the alleged interference. Mueller’s office declined to comment.

Facebook said the 470 accounts associated with the ads ran afoul of the social network’s requirements for authenticity and have since been suspended. </s> Facebook Inc said Wednesday it had found that an influence operation likely based in Russia spent US$100,000 on ads promoting divisive social and political messages in a two-year-period through May.

SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook Inc said on Wednesday it had found that an influence operation likely based in Russia spent US$100,000 on ads promoting divisive social and political messages in a two-year-period through May.

Facebook, the dominant social media network, said that many of the ads promoted 470 "inauthentic" accounts and pages that it has now suspended. The ads spread polarizing views on topics including immigration, race and gay rights, instead of backing a particular political candidate, it said.

Facebook announced the findings in a blog post by its chief security officer, Alex Stamos, and said that it was cooperating with federal inquiries into influence operations during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The company said it found no link to any presidential campaign. Three-fourths of the ads were national in scope, and the rest did not appear to reflect targeting of political swing-states as voting neared.

Facebook did not print the names of any of the suspended pages, but some of them included such words as "refugee" and "patriot."

Even if no laws were violated, the pages ran afoul of Facebook requirements for authenticity, setting up the suspensions.

More than US$1 billion was spent on digital political ads during the 2016 presidential campaign, 10,000 times the amount identified by Facebook's security team.

But the findings buttress U.S. intelligence agency conclusions that Russia was actively involved in shaping the election.

Facebook previously published a white paper on influence operations, including what it said were fake "amplifier" accounts for propaganda, and said it was cracking down.

As recently as June, it told journalists that it had not found any evidence to date of Russian operatives buying election-related ads on its platform.

A Facebook employee said Wednesday that there were unspecified connections between the divisive ads and a well-known Russian "troll factory" in St. Petersburg that publishes comments on social media.

Beyond the issue ads, Facebook said it uncovered US$50,000 more in overtly political advertising that might have a link to Russia. Some of those ads were bought using the Russian language, even though they were displayed to users in English. </s> WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the Senate intelligence committee says Facebook should testify as part of its probe into Russian meddling in the U.S. 2016 presidential election, and that the social media giant "seems to have been less than forthcoming" with Congress.

Sen. Richard Burr, R-North Carolina, said Tuesday that committee members agreed the panel should hold a public hearing after it was revealed earlier this month that hundreds of phony Facebook accounts, likely run from Russia, spent about $100,000 on ads aimed at stirring up divisive issues such as gun control and race relations during the 2016 campaign. The panel is one of several in Congress probing Russian interference and any connections to President Trump's campaign.
• None How Russia-linked groups used Facebook to meddle in 2016 election 



"Facebook seems to have been less than forthcoming on potentially how they were used," Burr said, adding that it's "just a question of when, and potentially the scope of what that hearing would be."

Facebook has briefed members of Congress and also provided the ads and other information to Robert Mueller, the special counsel in charge of the Russia investigation, the company said. In all, the accounts purchased some 3,000 ads between June 2015 and May 2017. While the ads didn't specifically reference the election, a candidate or voting, they nevertheless allowed "divisive messages" to be amplified via the social media platform, the company's chief security officer, Alex Stamos, said in a statement Sept. 7.

In addition to the 470 accounts that appeared to be run from Russia, Stamos said its investigators also discovered an additional $50,000 in spending via 2,200 ads that "might have originated in Russia," even including ads purchased by accounts with IP addresses in the U.S. but set to Russian in the language settings.

Lawmakers have said they want to know more about the content of the ads pushed out by the Russian-based Internet Research Agency and whether they targeted specific voters or locations in the United States.

The company has come under intense pressure since the election to curb the flow of false information. After the election, it updated its advertising policy to say it wouldn't run spots that are "illegal, misleading or deceptive, which includes fake news."
• None How Facebook and Google served up ads for racists and anti-Semites 



Burr said a hearing could likely involve Twitter and other social media companies as well. He said the panel hasn't yet issued any invitations, but a hearing would be this fall.

Asked if he expected Facebook to be open to a public hearing, Burr said the company has "expressed they don't have anything to hide, so a public hearing would be very appropriate."

Facebook spokesman Andy Stone wouldn't comment on a hearing but said the company "continues to cooperate with the relevant investigative authorities."

CNN reported earlier this week that Facebook turned over the materials after receiving a search warrant.

Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti told CBSN on Sunday that if a warrant was issued for Facebook materials could be the "the biggest news" in the investigation since the raid on Manafort's home in May.

"For the first time here, what we've learned -- assuming that The Wall Street Journal's report about a search warrant is correct -- is that Bob Mueller went to a federal judge and presented evidence and convinced the judge that a crime was committed involving foreign individuals contributing to a political election here in the United States through their actions on Facebook," Mariotti told CBS News' Elaine Quijano.

Mariotti said Mueller would have needed to do two things to secure the search warrant: Prove there's good reason to believe a crime occurred and lay out evidence that the crime existed on Facebook. </s> Representatives of Facebook told congressional investigators Wednesday that it has discovered it sold ads during the U.S. presidential election to a shadowy Russian company seeking to target voters, according to several people familiar with the company's findings.

Facebook officials reported that they traced the ad sales, totaling $100,000, to a Russian "troll farm" with a history of pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda, these people said.

A small portion of the ads, which began in the summer of 2015, directly named Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, the people said. Most of the ads focused on pumping politically divisive issues such as gun rights and immigration fears, as well as gay rights and racial discrimination.

The acknowledgment by Facebook comes as congressional investigators and special counsel Robert Mueller are probing Russian interference in the U.S. election, including allegations that the Kremlin may have coordinated with the Trump campaign.

The U.S. intelligence community concluded in January that Russia had interfered in the U.S. election to help elect Trump, including by using paid social media trolls to spread fake news intended to influence public opinion.

Even though the ad spending from Russia is tiny relative to overall campaign costs, the report from Facebook that a Russian firm was able to target political messages is likely to fuel pointed questions from investigators about whether the Russians received guidance from people in the United States - a question some Democrats have been asking for months.

"I get the fact that the Russian intel services could figure out how to manipulate and use the bots. Whether they could know how to target states and levels of voters that the Democrats weren't even aware really raises some questions. I think that's a worthwhile area of inquiry," Sen. Mark Warner, Va., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said during a May airing of the podcast Pod Save America. "How did they know to go to that level of detail in those kinds of jurisdictions?"

An official familiar with Facebook's internal investigation said the company does not have the ability to determine whether the ads it sold represented any sort of coordination.

The acknowledgment by Facebook follows months of criticism that the social media company served as a platform for the spread of false information before the November election. In a statement posted days after the election, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg promised to explore the issue but said that 99 percent of information found on Facebook is authentic and only "a very small amount" is fake or hoaxes. In December, however, the company announced that it would begin flagging articles that had been deemed false or fake, with the assistance of fact-checking organizations.

Facebook discovered the Russian connection as part of an investigation that began this spring looking at purchasers of politically-motivated ads, according to people familiar with the inquiry. It found that 3,300 ads had digital footprints that led to the Russian company.

Facebook teams then discovered 470 suspicious and likely fraudulent Facebook accounts and pages that it believes operated out of Russia, had links to the company and were involved in promoting the ads.

A Facebook official said "there is evidence that some of the accounts are linked to a troll farm in St. Petersburg, referred to as the Internet Research Agency, though we have no way to independently confirm." The official declined to release any of the ads it traced to Russian companies or entities.

"Our data policy and federal law limit our ability to share user data and content, so we won't be releasing any ads," the official said. The official added that the ads "were directed at people on Facebook who had expressed interest in subjects explored on those pages, such as LGBT community, black social issues, the Second Amendment, and immigration."

Alex Stamos, Facebook's chief security officer, said in a statement that the company is committed to continuing to protect the integrity of its site and improve its ability to track fraudulent accounts. He said Facebook has shut down the accounts that remained active.

"We know we have to stay vigilant to keep ahead of people who try to misuse our platform," he said.

Earlier this year, Facebook announced technology improvements to detect fake accounts and more recently announced it would no longer allow Facebook pages to advertise if they have a pattern of sharing false news stories. Over the past few months, Stamos said, the company has also taken action to block fake accounts tied to election meddling in France and Germany.

The Internet Research Agency has received attention in the past for its activity.

In 2013, hackers released internal company documents showing it employed 600 people across Russia. Ex-employees who have gone public with their experiences at the company in Internet postings and in media interviews have said their work entailed creating fake Twitter and Facebook accounts and using them to circulate pro-Kremlin propaganda. They said Internet Research Agency employees, for instance, spread derogatory information about Putin critic Boris Nemtsov in the days after his 2015 murder.

In 2015, The New York Times Magazine reported that social media accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency had launched social media campaigns in the United States, including a sophisticated hoax that spread false news of a chemical leak in Louisiana in 2014, apparently to sow chaos and fear.

In its unclassified report in January, the U.S. intelligence community concluded that the Internet Research Agency's "likely financier" is a "close Putin ally with ties to Russian intelligence."

In May, Time Magazine reported that U.S. intelligence officials had discovered evidence that Russian agents had purchased ads on Facebook to target specific populations with propaganda. A Facebook spokesman told the magazine that the company had no evidence of such buys.

Under federal law and Federal Election Commission regulations, both foreign nationals and foreign governments are prohibited from making contributions or spending money to influence a federal, state or local election in the United States. The ban includes independent expenditures made in connection with an election.

Those banned from such spending include foreign citizens, foreign governments, foreign political parties, foreign corporations, foreign associations and foreign partnerships, according to the FEC. (Permanent residents who hold green cards, however, are not considered foreign nationals.) Violators face civil penalties, as well as criminal prosecution if they are found to have knowingly broken the law.

Andrew Roth and Alice Crites contributed to this report. </s> WASHINGTON: Facebook announced on Tuesday that it has identified a coordinated political influence campaign, with dozens of inauthentic accounts and pages that are believed to be engaging in political activity around divisive social issues ahead of November’s midterm elections.

In a series of briefings on Capitol Hill this week and a public post on Tuesday, the company told lawmakers that it had detected and removed 32 pages and accounts connected to the influence campaign on Facebook and Instagram as part of its investigations into election interference. It publicly said it had been unable to tie the accounts to Russia, whose Internet Research Agency was at the center of an indictment earlier this year for interfering in the 2016 election, but company officials told Capitol Hill that Russia was possibly involved, according to two officials briefed on the matter.

Facebook said that the accounts — eight Facebook pages, 17 Facebook profiles, and seven Instagram accounts — were created between March 2017 and May 2018 and first discovered two weeks ago. Those numbers may sound small, but their influence is spreading: More than 290,000 accounts followed at least one of the suspect pages, the company said.

Between April 2017 and June 2018, the accounts ran 150 ads costing $11,000 on the two platforms. They were paid for in American and Canadian dollars. And the pages created roughly 30 events over a similar time period, the largest of which attracted interest from 4,700 accounts.

Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, said that the activity bore some similarities to that of the Internet Research Agency, but that the actors had better disguised their efforts, using VPNs, internet phone services and third parties to purchase ads for them. He said the company had yet to see any evidence connecting the accounts to Russian IP addresses, like the ones sometimes used in the past by Internet Research Agency accounts. But there were also connections between some of the accounts and others tied to the notorious Russian troll farm that were taken down by Facebook already.

“These bad actors have been more careful to cover their tracks, in part due to the actions we’ve taken to prevent abuse over the past year,” Mr. Gleicher said.

The company has been working with the F.B.I. to investigate the activity.

Like the Russian interference campaign in 2016, the recently detected campaign dealt with divisive social issues.

Facebook discovered coordinated activity around issues like a sequel to last year’s deadly “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. Specifically, a page called “Resisters,” which interacted with one Internet Research Agency account in 2017, created an event called “No Unite the Right 2 — DC” to serve as a counterprotest to the white nationalist gathering, scheduled to take place in Washington in August. Mr. Gleicher said “inauthentic” administrators for the “Resisters” page went as far as to coordinate with administrators for five other apparently real pages to co-host the event, publicizing details about transportation and other logistics.

Mr. Gleicher said it disabled the event on Tuesday and notified 2,600 users of the site who had indicated interest in attending the event.

Coordinated activity was also detected around #AbolishICE, a left-wing campaign on social media that seeks to end the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, according to two people briefed on the findings. That echoed efforts in 2016 to fan division around the Black Lives Matter movement.

Democratic lawmakers said the disclosure only clarified what they have feared since the extent of Russian involvement in 2016 became clear more than a year ago.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee who has exerted intense pressure on the social media companies, praised Facebook on Tuesday for bringing the activity into the public but asked for its cooperation in updating laws to prevent influence campaigns.

“Today’s disclosure is further evidence that the Kremlin continues to exploit platforms like Facebook to sow division and spread disinformation,” he said. “And I am glad that Facebook is taking some steps to pinpoint and address this activity.”

After being caught flat-footed by the Internet Research Agency’s efforts to use social media to sow division ahead of the 2016 presidential election, Facebook is trying to avoid a repeat disaster in 2018. The company has expanded its security team, hiring counterterrorism experts and recruiting workers with government security clearances.

The company is using artificial intelligence and teams of human reviewers to detect automated accounts and suspicious election-related activity. It has also tried to make it harder for Russian-style influence campaigns to use covert Facebook ads to sway public opinion, by requiring political advertisers in the United States to register with a domestic mailing address and by making all political ads visible in a public database.

On a conference call with reporters earlier this month, Mr. Gleicher declined to directly answer multiple questions about whether the company had detected additional Russian information campaigns.

“We know that Russians and other bad actors are going to continue to try to abuse our platform — before the midterms, probably during the midterms, after the midterms, and around other events and elections,” Mr. Gleicher said. “We are continually looking for that type of activity, and as and when we find things, which we think is inevitable, we’ll notify law enforcement, and where we can, the public.”

American intelligence and law enforcement officials have been warning for months that Russia’s efforts to undermine American democracy remain active and pose a threat to this year’s elections. If in fact Russian, the activity would provide vivid evidence that the kind of cyber operations used around the 2016 campaign were still in use. </s> Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday Facebook will turn over the contents of 3,000 ads purchased by a Russian agency to Congress.

The ads are being investigated as part of the probe into Russian meddling into the U.S. election.

Facebook has briefed members of Congress and also provided the ads and other information to Robert Mueller, the special counsel in charge of the Russia investigation, the company said.

In all, the accounts purchased some 3,000 ads between June 2015 and May 2017. While the ads didn't specifically reference the election, a candidate or voting, they nevertheless allowed "divisive messages" to be amplified via the social media platform, the company's chief security officer, Alex Stamos, said in a statement Sept. 7.

In addition to the 470 accounts that appeared to be run from Russia, Stamos said its investigators also discovered an additional $50,000 in spending via 2,200 ads that "might have originated in Russia," even including ads purchased by accounts with IP addresses in the U.S. but set to Russian in the language settings.

Lawmakers have said they want to know more about the content of the ads pushed out by the Russian-based Internet Research Agency and whether they targeted specific voters or locations in the United States.

Facebook has come under intense pressure since the election to curb the flow of false information. After the election, it updated its advertising policy to say it wouldn't run spots that are "illegal, misleading or deceptive, which includes fake news."
Facebook tells congressional investigators an operation, traced to a Russian company seeking to target voters, spent $100,000 on thousands of U.S. ads promoting divisive social and political messages during the 2016 U.S. election.