Saw This Coming From A Mile Away: Russia Ads on Facebook Not Necessarily For Trump
In general, the whole Russia Facebook ad purchase story has been a huge yawner. In an election where Hillary Clinton and her supporting PACs spent $1.2 billion and Trump spent about half that, are we really concerned about the impact of $100,000 in ad spend on Facebook? Has there been anyone other than Russia and the Koch Brothers who the media could seriously write stories about manipulating an election by spending 0.0055% of the total advertising in the election? If that 0.0055% really turned the election, please send me the name of their ad agency.
The really interesting part of this story is that absolutely no one has said anything about that $100,000 actually having been spent on Trump. People talk about the story as if they obviously were for Trump, but perhaps tellingly no one has actually confirmed this. Certainly if you had asked me to guess in June of 2016 who Russia would have been making ads for, I would not have assumed Trump rather than Hillary was a sure bet. And then there is this today from CNN
At least one of the Facebook ads bought by Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign referenced Black Lives Matter and was specifically targeted to reach audiences in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, sources with knowledge of the ads told CNN.
Ferguson and Baltimore had gained widespread attention for the large and violent protests over police shootings of black men. The decision to target the ad in those two cities offers the first look at how accounts linked to the Russian government-affiliated troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency used geographically targeted advertising to sow political chaos in the United States, the sources said.
Hmmm. I guess the apple does not fall far from the tree. In the Cold War this is exactly the kind of thing the Soviets would have funded. Though given how tribalized politics are I am not sure that spending money to target a political tribe to reinforce them in their already strongly-held beliefs is a super-productive way to spend money. More to follow I am sure.
