Facebook links ads to Russian goading

Facebook Inc. says it found about $100,000 in ad spending connected to fake accounts likely run from Russia that aimed to stir political controversy in the U.S. ahead of last year’s presidential election.

While the majority of the ads, run between June 2015 and May 2017, didn’t directly refer to the election, they amplified “divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum,” Face-book said in a statement. They were connected to about 470 fake accounts and pages on the social network. The company is sharing its findings with U.S. investigators.

“Our analysis suggests these accounts and Pages were affiliated with one another and likely operated out of Russia,” Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos wrote. The group financing the ads is called the Internet Research Agency, a secretive company based out of St. Petersburg known for pushing Kremlin propaganda, according to a person familiar with the matter. The ads align with a broader strategy to misinform the public through a new category of attack Face-book calls “information operations.”

In January, the nation’s top intelligence agencies published a report saying that Russia interfered in the election to discredit Hillary Clinton and boost Donald Trump, who has often appeared reluctant to embrace the findings.

“It certainly adds additional insights in terms of one of the Russian modalities of influence in our election,” said California’s Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, which was briefed on Face-book’s findings.

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