This week’s news that a Russian firm linked to the Kremlin bought ads during the US presidential election came as a surprise. Facebook found thousands of ads, placed at a cost estimated at $100,000, generated by accounts tied to a St. Petersburg company called the Internet Research Agency. The impact of Russian political ad spending, which may have violated US law, is devilishly hard to sort out. While $100,000 can buy thousands of ads, the Trump campaign alone spent an estimated $90 million on digital advertising. At the same time, the disclosure appears to represent tangible evidence of Russian interference in the election.
So, how much did Russia’s political ad buys matter? The people in the best position to answer this question work at Facebook, which alone has access to the relevant data. But Facebook’s inconsistent statements, its history of errors in reporting on its own ad platform, and its reluctance to share relevant data about Russian hacking have added to its credibility gap.
Some have called Facebook “brave” for disclosing the ad buys. “They probably could have buried this, and they did the right thing by coming forward,” Clint Watts, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told The Washington Post. But beyond a blog post yesterday and some tersely worded statements to reporters, Facebook has done little to put Russia’s purchase of political advertising in perspective. A foreign country’s use of Facebook’s vaunted targeting capabilities in an effort to sway a close election is deeply disturbing. And yet Facebook, in its public statements so far, has been coy about sharing details. – READ MORE
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