Fake Russian Facebook Accounts Spend Thousands to Influence the 2016 U.S. Election
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/technology/facebook-russian-political-ads.html
Following the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, many people were left wondering how Donald Trump was able to come out victorious over Hillary Clinton, who was thought to be the favorite up until the end of the election. Some blamed Clinton’s email scandal and her being unable to connect to the same groups Barack Obama was able to win over before her while others lauded Trump’s ability to channel the anger and anxiety of the average American by claiming that he would bring the change Americans needed and cast out the corruption in Washington. Others looked a bit further under the surface and argued that Trump’s alleged connections to the Russian government were able to sway the outcome of the election in Trump’s favor. In May 2017, a special counsel was even set up under former FBI director Robert Mueller to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia in order to determine if there was any collusion between Trump and the Russian government. Since then, the counsel has been releasing their findings as they have gone deeper and deeper into the Russia investigation, but many people were still left wondering whether the Russians had any direct influence on the election like they had believed to be so right after Trump had been announced the new president. However, that changed just this past week.
On September 6th, new information came out from Facebook stating that fake Russian Facebook accounts bought thousands of dollars in political advertisements in order to sway the outcome of the 2016 election. The New York Times article I have attached details the contents of these ads and how they were used to shape people’s thoughts leading up to the election. The way Facebook was able to discover these fake accounts and pages relates to what we have learned with regards to social networks. The article states that the shady ads that were bought “did not refer to particular candidates but instead focused on divisive social issues such as race, gay rights, gun control and immigration” and that the fake accounts were created by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian company “known for using ‘troll’ accounts to post on social media and comment on news websites.” From our knowledge of social networks, it is clear that by analyzing the content of these advertisements, their target audiences, and their origins; Facebook was able to use many of the techniques we have learned in class to discover these fake accounts and ads. For example, the article states that these ads often targeted specific geographic areas, and by analyzing ads with divisive content that targeted these areas, Facebook was able to discover these fake, Russian-linked accounts.
The fact that foreign governments were able to spend large sums of money in order to buy political advertisements that influenced the U.S. election is appalling, and social media websites that host and spread these ads should be required to have better fake account detection and should take down questionable ads. Paid advertisement is a very important part of political campaigns, but that should be left to the candidates running and their teams, not outside governments with hostile agendas.