How Russia Makes thousand of Facebook Ads to Affect US Elections

To direct voters in elections in the United States, Russia allegedly funded Facebook ads targeting specific groups. Ads are deliberately designed to create social tension by using sensitive issues.

The advertisement content that Russia deploys usually praises Trump and attacks Democratic opponents, Hillary Clinton. Another post praised Clinton's Democrat opponent, Bernie Sanders.

These advertisements are often provocative on issues such as immigration and gun control. They often create content discussed from two different sides for the same problem.

They also use the targeting feature provided by Facebook. Thus, they can direct these ads to be viewed by Facebook users with certain characteristics.

Content Creator group

There are various groups that push content for these ads. For example, there are groups calling themselves the Jesus Army, The Heart of Texas, Black Matters.

They create content according to the group of users they want to target. Let's say they want to promote African-related content in the US. So they threw these ads to people who are interested in Martin Luther King Jr., Civil Rights Movement African-American, African-American history, Malcolm X, and even targeted those who like the color black.

Another example is on a page sponsored by the "Jesus Army" group. They equate Clinton with Satan. This ad is directed to the people whose interests include "stopping illegal immigration".

In addition, there is also a popular group called The Heart of Texas that is controlled by the IRA. The campaign of this group is to ask the state of Texas to separate from the US. This ad specifically targeted the citizens of Texas, viewed by 36,702 users, 3,800 people clicked on it, and Russia had to pay $ 502 for the ad.

Russia mentioned spending $100 K for advertising on Facebook. The groups paid to create the content have at least reached more than 100M of Americans.

Meanwhile, Facebook promised to start releasing more information about political advertising. They have also launched a feature that lets users see if they interact with Russian content