Shedding more light on
foreign efforts to divide Americans before and after the 2016 presidential election, Democrats on the House intelligence committee just published more than 3,000 Facebook ads designed
to sow discord.
Created by the Russia-based Internet Research Agency, the ads ran on Facebook and Instagram between 2015 and 2017.
With few exceptions, the ads focus on issues that
divide Americans, from gun rights to immigration to racial justice.
As has been widely reported, many of the ads sought to directly influence American votes in the run-up to the 2016
presidential election.
Led by House Intelligence Committee ranking member Adam Schiff, the Democrats released a selection of these Russian-made ads last year. Those just released
represent every ad that Facebook has shared with the committee.
In response to the data dump, Facebook stated on Thursday: “We gave these ads to Congress so they could better
understand the extent of Russian interference in the last US presidential election.”
Echoing earlier remarks by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives, Facebook once again took
responsibility for its failure to block these ads.
“In the run-up to the 2016 elections, we were focused on the kinds of cybersecurity attacks typically used by nation states, for
example phishing and malware attacks,” the company explained. “We were too slow to spot this type of information operations interference.”
Since then, Facebook insists it has
taken steps to prevent Russian operatives and other bad actors from exploiting its platform to undermine the democratic process.
“This will never be a solved problem because we’re
up against determined, creative and well-funded adversaries,” Facebook conceded. “But we are making steady progress.”
Among other efforts to curb bad actors, Facebook is
focusing on greater ad transparency, verification and labeling, intelligence sharing with governments, and specific actions against Russian operatives.
In April, for instance, Facebook
removed 70 Facebook and 65 Instagram accounts — as well as 138 Facebook Pages — controlled by the Russian-based IRA, targeted tp people living in Russia or Russian-speakers in
Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine.