{"id":9804,"date":"2017-11-01T17:30:34","date_gmt":"2017-11-01T17:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/trump-and-clinton-spent-81m-on-us-election-facebook-ads-russian-agency-46k.html"},"modified":"2017-11-01T17:30:34","modified_gmt":"2017-11-01T17:30:34","slug":"trump-and-clinton-spent-81m-on-us-election-facebook-ads-russian-agency-46k","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/trump-and-clinton-spent-81m-on-us-election-facebook-ads-russian-agency-46k.html","title":{"rendered":"Trump and Clinton spent $81M on US election Facebook ads, Russian agency $46K"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

Russian information troll farm the Internert Research Agency spent just 0.05% as much on Facebook ads as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump\u2019s campaigns combined in the run up to the 2016 US presidential election. While there might have been other Russian disinformation groups, the IRA spent $46,000 on pre-election day Facebook ads compared to $81 million spent by Clinton and Trump together, discluding political action committees who could have spent even more than that on the campaigns\u2019 behalf.<\/p>\n

Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch revealed these figures today during the Senate Intelligence Committee\u2019s hearing<\/a> with Facebook, Twitter, and Google about Russian election interference.<\/p>\n

The fact that without even counting the PACs, the top campaigns spent 1760X more on election ads than one group of Russian meddlers puts the whole situation into context. The IRA ad buy was tiny by comparison. This aligns with Stretch\u2019s main talking point that Russian propaganda content was a tiny fraction of the content and ads seen on Facebook. However, the ability to sow discord goes far beyond ads. This revelation could put more focus on organically posted propaganda.<\/p>\n

Facebook today said that the Russians still reached 126 million Facebook users as well as 20 million Instagram users<\/a>. But Facebook, Twitter, and Google all confirmed that their investigations have found no evidence that the Russians uploaded voter registration contact info in order to individually target voters with ads.<\/p>\n

Facebook had previously announced<\/a> that $100,000 was spent on Facebook ads from June 2015 to May 2017 by Russian-linked disinformation sources, while an additional $50,000 was spent by Russians that signals indicate weren\u2019t or were only weakly connected to an organized disinformation campaign.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch, Twitter general counsel Sean Edgett, and Google general counsel Kent Walker testify before the Senate Intelligence Commitee<\/p>\n

Stretch says that the IRA was attacking the election as early as 2015. But one major issue is that there could still be other unidentified Russian groups that also tried to interfere with the 2016 election.<\/p>\n

Stretch, Twitter general counsel Sean Edgett, and Google\u2019s General Counsel Kent Walker all agreed that their investigations are ongoing so they can\u2019t be sure they\u2019ve identified all active measures of disinformation implemented by the Russians. That\u2019s in part why Congress asked the companies to retain all data relevant to their investigation beyond the 11 month requirement of media organizations that run election ads.<\/p>\n

Facebook, Twitter, and Google looked ill-prepared when asked if they\u2019d calculated how much revenue they\u2019d earned off of legitimate ads that ran beside Russian organic propaganda content. None could say how much they profited off distributing non-ad Russian election interference.<\/p>\n

Throughout the hearing, there was little substantive talk of regulation for social media election ads beyond mentions of the Honest Ads Act that\u2019s in the works. Most of the senators instead spent their time handing out reprimands for past failures, and bleating about how important the issue was rather than putting forward new solutions.<\/p>\n

Senator Richard Burr closed the session asking the companies to prevent disruption of America\u2019s future, abide by Federal Election Commission law, and that they should request anti-trust waivers if they need to further cooperate with each other. It will indeed require a joint effort and strategy sharing to defeat election interference, especially if Facebook, Google, and Twitter want to avoid heavy-handed regulation.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Featured Image: Bryce Durbin\/TechCrunch\/Getty Images<\/small><\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/BBkGrW3QAm4\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russian information troll farm the Internert Research Agency spent just 0.05% as much on Facebook ads as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump\u2019s campaigns combined in the run up to the <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-9804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t