By Elliot Schrage, Vice President of Policy and Communications 
 
 1) Why did Facebook finally decide to share the ads with Congress? 
 
 As our General Counsel has explained, this is an extraordinary investigation — one that raises questions that go to the integrity of the US elections. After an extensive legal and policy review, we’ve concluded that sharing the ads we’ve discovered with Congress, in a manner that is consistent with our obligations to protect user information, will help government authorities complete the vitally important work of assessing what happened in the 2016 election. That is an assessment that can be made only by investigators with access to classified intelligence and information from all relevant companies and industries — and we want to do our part. Congress is best placed to use the information we and others provide to inform the public comprehensively and completely. 
 
 2) Why are you sharing these with Special Counsel and Congress — and not releasing them to the public? 
 
 Federal law places strict limitations on the disclosure of account information. Given the sensitive national security and privacy issues involved in this extraordinary investigation, we think Congress is best placed to use the information we and others provide to inform the public comprehensively and completely. For further understanding on this decision, see our General Counsel’s post. 
 
 3) Let’s go back to the beginning. Did Facebook know when the ads were purchased that they might be part of a Russian operation? Why not? 
 
 No, we didn’t. 
 
 The vast majority of our over 5 million advertisers use our self-service tools. This allows individuals or businesses to create a Facebook Page, attach a credit card or some other payment method and run ads promoting their posts. 
 
 In some situations, Facebook employees work directly with our larger advertisers. In the case of the Russian ads, none of those we found involved in-person relationships. 
 
 At the same time, a significant number of advertisers run ads internationally, and a high number of advertisers run content that addresses social issues — an ad from a non-governmental organization, for example, that addresses women’s rights. So there was nothing necessarily noteworthy at the time about a foreign actor running an ad involving a social issue. Of course, knowing what we’ve learned since the election, some of these ads were indeed both noteworthy and problematic, which is why our CEO today announced a number of important steps we are taking to help prevent this kind of deceptive interference in the future. 
 
 4) Do you expect to find more ads from Russian or other foreign actors using fake accounts? 
 
 It’s possible. 
 
 When we’re looking for this type of abuse, we cast a wide net in trying to identify any activity that looks suspicious. But it’s a game of cat and mouse. Bad actors are always working to use more sophisticated methods to obfuscate their origins and cover their tracks. That in turn leads us to devise new methods and smarter tactics to catch them — things like machine learning, data science and highly trained human investigators. And, of course, our internal inquiry continues. 
 
 It’s possible that government investigators have information that could help us, and we welcome any information the authorities are willing to share to help with our own investigations. 
 
 Using ads and other messaging to affect political discourse has become a common part of the cybersecurity arsenal for organized, advanced actors. This means all online platforms will need to address this issue, and get smarter about how to address it, now and in the future. 
 
 5) I’ve heard that Facebook disabled tens of thousands of accounts in France and only hundreds in the United States. Is this accurate? 
 
 No, these numbers represent different things and can’t be directly compared. 
 
 To explain it, it’s important to understand how large platforms try to stop abusive behavior at scale. Staying ahead of those who try to misuse our service is an ongoing effort led by our security and integrity teams, and we recognize this work will never be done. We build and update technical systems every day to make it easier to respond to reports of abuse, detect and remove spam, identify and eliminate fake accounts, and prevent accounts from being compromised. This work also reduces the distribution of content that violates our policies, since fake accounts often distribute deceptive material, such as false news, hoaxes, and misinformation. 
 
 This past April, we announced improvements to these systems aimed at helping us detect fake accounts on our service more effectively. As we began to roll out these changes globally, we took action against tens of thousands of fake accounts in France. This number represents fake accounts of all varieties, the most common being those that are used for financially-motivated spam. While we believe that the removal of these accounts also reduced the spread of disinformation, it’s incorrect to state that these tens of thousands of accounts represent organized campaigns from any particular country or set of countries. 
 
 In contrast, the approximately 470 accounts and Pages we shut down recently were identified by our dedicated security team that manually investigates specific, organized threats. They found that this set of accounts and Pages were affiliated with one another — and were likely operated out of Russia. 
 
 Read more about our new blog series Hard Questions. We want your input on what other topics we should address — and what we could be doing better. Please send suggestions to hardquestions@fb.com. ||||| poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201709/1093/1155968404_5583547760001_5583509239001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Facebook's cooperation on Russian ads doesn't stop Democrats' demands Two senators move to require digital platforms to disclose more about political spots and the buyers behind them. 
 
 Facebook has agreed to provide details to congressional investigators about ads purchased by Russians to influence the 2016 presidential campaign, and on Thursday vowed greater transparency in political advertising. But some Democratic senators want to make those pledges mandatory. 
 
 The moves come amid mounting pressure from Congress to release the Russian-related ads, particularly criticism from Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Two people familiar with the matter disclosed the deal to POLITICO on Thursday shortly before Facebook announced it publicly. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 Hours later, POLITICO obtained a letter from Warner and Sen. Amy Klobuchar seeking co-sponsors on proposed legislation that would require Facebook, Google and other digital platforms to disclose more information about political advertisements and the buyers behind them. 
 
 The two Democrats are writing legislation that would require web platforms with more than one million users to publicly disclose the names of individuals and organizations that spend more than $10,000 on election-related advertisements. 
 
 The sites would also have to provide a copy of the advertisement, and disclose details about the targeted audience, the number of people who view the ad, the time and date it was published, the amount of money charged and the buyer's contract information. 
 
 Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Warner (D-Va.) say digital platforms merit further scrutiny because they reach much larger audiences than broadcasters, and yet are not subject to the same disclosure requirements. 
 
 The most reliable politics newsletter. Sign up for POLITICO Playbook and get the latest news, every morning — in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. 
 
 In Facebook’s announcement of its deal with Capitol Hill investigators, CEO Mark Zuckerberg vowed to take further steps to protect “the integrity of free and fair elections.” 
 
 Warner called the decision “important & absolutely necessary first step,” writing on Twitter that “the American people deserve to know the truth about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.” 
 
 In addition to disclosing details about the ads, which had been placed by a so-called Russian troll farm, Zuckerberg said his giant social media company would pursue a deeper internal investigation into how outside parties may have used its platform during 2016. Those parties include other Russian groups, former Soviet states and “the campaigns” — a seeming reference to the Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton operations. 
 
 “We may find more, and if we do, we will continue to work with the government on it,” Zuckerberg said during remarks streamed on Facebook Live. 
 
 Moreover, said Zuckerberg, the company will newly require advertisers to both disclose their sponsorship of advertisements and post every version of their paid ads on their individual Facebook pages. Facebook will also double its team working on election integrity, and will inform election commissions around the world about the “online risks that we’ve identified in their specific elections.” 
 
 “We are in a new world,” he added. “It is a new challenge for internet communities to have to deal with nation states attempting to subvert elections. But if that’s what we must do, we are committed to rising to the occasion.” 
 
 The company separately released a statement from Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch describing the deal with Hill investigators. “We believe it is vitally important that government authorities have the information they need to deliver to the public a full assessment of what happened in the 2016 election,” he said. 
 
 Thursday’s news represented the latest stage of acknowledgment by Facebook that Russians may have used ads and so-called “fake news” to influence the 2016 election, in a year when U.S. intelligence agencies have charged that Vladimir Putin’s government developed a preference for Trump to prevail over Clinton. 
 
 Former Clinton campaign aides hurled criticism at Facebook after her defeat, saying the company had allowed misinformation disparaging their candidate to flourish on the social network. “This is something we were very aware of [but] saw zero percent chance Facebook was going to be compliant or work with us during the election,” the Clinton campaign’s chief digital strategist, Teddy Goff, told POLITICO in the days after Trump’s victory. 
 
 Anger at Facebook among Clinton backers hasn’t let up. Clinton herself recently said in a television interview that the company has “a long way to go before they get where they need to be” when it comes to examining its role in the election. 
 
 Zuckerberg rejected the criticism at first, saying shortly after the election that it’s a “pretty crazy idea” to think that “fake news on Facebook influenced the election in any way.” He added that “voters make their decisions based on lived experience.” 
 
 But Facebook had to change its tone early this month, when it disclosed that Russian elements had bought more than 3,000 politically charged ads estimated at $150,000 on its platform during key periods of the presidential campaign, often dealing with issues such as race, immigration and gun rights. 
 
 On Thursday, Facebook linked the ads to a controversial Russian entity known as the Internet Research Agency. It was the first time Facebook had specifically pointed the finger at the agency, which The New York Times described last year as a sprawling operation that had “industrialized the art of trolling” and become a prolific source of internet hoaxes. 
 
 In his live chat, Zuckerberg offered some explanation for the change in his assessment of the foreign-meddling threat. 
 
 “We have been investigating this for many months, and for a while we had found no evidence of fake accounts linked to Russia running ads,” he said. “When we recently uncovered this activity, we provided that information to the special counsel,” he said, referring to Robert Mueller. 
 
 But despite its cooperation with Mueller, the company had shown only some of the ads to members on the Hill in a private session — and had not released extensive information about the ads. 
 
 The ads have become of increasing interest to Mueller and his team, according to people familiar with the investigation, because they could show Russian efforts to interfere — and who was behind them. 
 
 Steven Overly contributed to this report. 
 

– Facebook is reversing course and will turn turn over to Congress copies of ads bought by Russians in the 2016 election. The company had previously balked on doing so over privacy concerns but has changed course after what Mark Zuckerberg called “an extensive legal and policy review," per the Washington Post. The newspaper says the company will send copies of more than 3,000 online ads purchased under Russian accounts. The company had been under increasing pressure from lawmakers to do so, notes Politico, especially after the revelation that Facebook traced $100,000 in campaign ads to a Russian "troll farm." Now those ads will be closely scrutinized by members of Congress, who had accused Facebook of not fully cooperating with their investigation into Russian interference. “We believe the public deserves a full accounting of what happened in the 2016 election, and we’ve concluded that sharing the ads we’ve discovered, in a manner that is consistent with our obligations to protect user information, can help,” Colin Stretch, Facebook’s general counsel, wrote in a blog post. In another post, the company provided a Q&A, including this: "Do you expect to find more ads from Russian or other foreign actors using fake accounts?" Answer: "It's possible."