The Russians who posed as Americans on Facebook last year tried on quite an array of disguises.
There was “Defend the 2nd”, a Facebook page for gun-rights supporters, festooned with firearms and tough rhetoric. There was a rainbow-hued page for gay rights activists, “LGBT United”. There was even a Facebook group for animal lovers with memes of adorable puppies that spread across the site with the help of paid ads.
Federal investigators and officials at Facebook now believe these groups and their pages were part of a highly coordinated disinformation campaign linked to the Internet Research Agency, a secretive company in St Petersburg, Russia, known for spreading Kremlin-linked propaganda and fake news across the web. They were described to The New York Times by two people familiar with the social network and its ads, who were not authorised to discuss them publicly.
Under intensifying pressure from Congress and growing public outcry, Facebook on Monday turned over more than 3,000 of the Russia-linked advertisements from its site over to the Senate and House intelligence committees as well as the Senate Judiciary Committee. The material is part of an attempt to learn the depth of what investigators now believe was a sprawling foreign effort spanning years to interfere with the 2016 United States presidential election.
“We’re obviously deeply disturbed by this,” Joel Kaplan, Facebook vice-president for United States public policy, said in an interview. “The ads and accounts we found appeared to amplify divisive political issues across the political spectrum,” including gun rights, gay rights issues and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Facebook declined to name or confirm any specific groups or advertisements, citing legal restrictions and ongoing participation with federal investigators. Several of the pages with Russian links were leaked or have been identified by reporters. The Times was told of at least seven Russia-linked Facebook groups by the people familiar with the investigation, some of which were previously unreported.
Late on Monday, Facebook said in a post that about 10 million people had seen the ads in question. About 44 per cent of the ads were seen before the 2016 election and the rest after, the company said.
The scope and types of the Facebook content being handed over underline the complicated nature of the investigation and the degree to which the social network — home to more than two billion regular visitors — has been used to manipulate Americans and foment public unrest.
Facebook revealed on September 6 that it had found 470 pages and profiles linked to the Internet Research Agency. It said the pages had bought the 3,000 ads, a sampling of which has been shown to the Senate and House intelligence committees investigating the Russian influence campaign.
In a live video address on his Facebook page last month, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, acknowledged the gravity and novelty of the tactics used across his network.
© 2017 New York Times News Service