The ads Russia managed to sneak onto Facebook during the 2016 election include a “Buff Bernie” coloring book, a Satan vs. Jesus arm wrestling match, and an account from a man claiming to be the child of Bill Clinton and an Arkansas prostitute.
The ads were released by a Congressional committee investigating Russian efforts to sow discord during the race. Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday that 146 Americans viewed the ads during the election, a number which includes 20 million people on Instagram, according to Buzzfeed News.
That figure is an upward revision from the 126 million people the company said earlier this week and from the “estimated 10 million people in the U.S.” the company counted in a blog post last month. Altogether, the Russian firm Internet Research Agency spit out 80,000 pieces of content — a stark jump from the 3,000 ads Facebook had previously turned over to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.
It’s unclear how the ads affected the election, besides making everyone who saw them feel a little dumber. But TheWrap did write about Bill Clinton’s supposed son, and the tired election trope of suggesting a white politician secretly fathered a mixed-race child.
See a select few of the Russia-backed ads below, and find more here.
6 Tech Giants Shaking Up News, From Jeff Bezos to Laurene Powell Jobs (Photos)
Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.
Jeff Bezos – Washington Post
The Amazon founder purchased the Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million in cash. President Trump has called the paper the “Amazon Washington Post.”
The Facebook co-founder purchased The New Republic in 2012, becoming executive chairman and publisher. However, he sold the venerable political magazine to Win McCormack in 2016, saying he "underestimated the difficulty of transitioning an old and traditional institution into a digital media company in today’s quickly evolving climate."
The eBay founder is a well-known philanthropist who created First Look Media, a journalism venture behind The Intercept. Inspired by Edward Snowden's leaks. Omidyar teamed up with journalists Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras to launch the website “dedicated to the kind of reporting those disclosures required: fearless, adversarial journalism.”
The PayPal co-founder doesn’t own a news organization, but he makes this list because he essentially ended one -- Gawker -- proving once again the power of an angry billionaire. Thiel secretly bankrolled Hulk Hogan’s sex-tape lawsuit against Gawker Media because he was upset that the website once outed him as gay. Hogan won the defamation lawsuit against the site that sent its parent company into bankruptcy, and Gawker.com is no longer operating.
OK, so Facebook isn’t technically a news organization… yet. However, the company is preparing to launch its much-anticipated lineup of original content later this summer, and there are also signs that it's on the verge of becoming an even bigger media platform.
Campbell Brown, Head of News Partnerships at Facebook, confirmed last week it’s developing a subscription service for publishers willing to post articles directly to Facebook Instant Articles, rather than their native websites.
Tech is increasingly intertwined with news, for better or worse
Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.
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