The House Intelligence Committee will soon be releasing nearly 3,000 ads that ran on Facebook by a Russian company that is believed to have purchased them during and for the 2016 election. But a new report shows most of them were not shown until after the November election.
Among the pages and Russian-operated pages focused on veteran issues, LGBT issues, Islamophia as well as anti-American and anti-Israel issues. If this is true it seems that this Russian company was solely in it for profit as they seem to have no real focus or point, rather just to stir up American emotion from any side they could find.
As reported by The Daily Beast:
Sources confirmed that the imposter account bought Facebook advertisements to reach its target audience. It promoted political rallies aimed at Muslim audiences. And it used the Twitter account “muslims_in_usa” and the Instagram account “muslim_voice” to pass along inflammatory memes under cover of the UMA. The Twitter account has been suspended, and the account on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, was shuttered at around the same time as the Facebook page.
The Kremlin-backed trolls did all this while simultaneously using other accounts to hawk virulently Islamophobic messages to right-wing audiences on Facebook, such as an August 2016 Twin Falls, Idaho rally demanding, “We must stop taking in Muslim refugees!” Taken together, the newest revelation of Russian propaganda on Facebook shows the sophistication of the Russian “active measures” campaign to influence the U.S. voting public.
“The group who I spoke to and continue to engage with, they seek harmony between the U.S. and the Muslim world,” added Swalwell, who was not a source for this story. “Many of these individuals I have heard first-hand denounce terrorist attacks across the world, including those carried out by Muslim. To see their name hijacked by the Russians, if true, and carrying out Russian goals of undermining the U.S. is disturbing and not who they are.”
As reported by CNBC:
They likely will not make the ads public before a Nov. 1 hearing featuring officials from Facebook, Twitter and Google.
The House committee is investigating Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election and possible collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. Reps. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, and Adam Schiff, D-Calif., are leading the probe.