By Mark Sumner
Monday Oct 09, 2017 · 10:51 AM EST
If Russia had been purchasing ads on national, or even local, television stations across the country, it likely would have been spotted quickly—even post-Citizens United, where organizations can outspend official campaigns via anonymous donations. But by using social media instead, Russian propaganda specialists could deliver ads tailored to the interest of individuals and focus those ads on the states and districts where they would have the most impact. And they could do it cheaply.
For the kind of investment that wouldn’t support a run for state representative these days,
Russia was able to place more then 3,000 highly targeted ads to over 10 million people, with a concentration in states like Michigan where the interval between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was as little as 10,700 votes.
Now The Washington Post is reporting Google has revealed part of the range of Russian ads that ran through different aspects of their platform.
The Silicon Valley giant has found that tens of thousands of dollars were spent on ads by Russian agents who aimed to spread disinformation across Google’s many products, which include YouTube, as well as advertising associated with Google search, Gmail, and the company’s DoubleClick ad network, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss matters that have not been made public. Google runs the world’s largest online advertising business, and YouTube is the world’s largest online video site.
People in critical states were getting ads on Facebook, search ads on Google, ads on YouTube, ads in their email, ads delivered through DoubleClick onto almost any web page—ads that were created by Russian propaganda specialists with the purpose of disrupting the U.S. election. Many of the ads seemed intent on increasing racial and religious tensions, as they provided exaggerated imagery designed to drive home the idea that America was divided along racial lines. They also sought to play on political wounds that the Russians had helped open during the primary period.
Some of the ads, which cost a total of about $100,000, touted Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders and the Green party candidate Jill Stein during the campaign, people familiar with those ads said.
As with Facebook, the overall cost of ads delivered through Google appears to have been relatively low: less than $100,000. Previous to this, Google had insisted that it had procedures in place that would have stopped Russian agents from using its platform.
Google previously downplayed the problem of Russian meddling on its platforms. Last month, Google spokeswoman Andrea Faville told The Washington Post that the company is "always monitoring for abuse or violations of our policies and we've seen no evidence this type of ad campaign was run on our platforms."
But an internal investigation didn’t come up clean. It came up with evidence that Google’s whole network of tools for distributing information had been utilized in the effort to disrupt the election.
In addition to Facebook and Google, Twitter was also host to accounts that were used to create, retweet, and spread Russian-sourced material. And, like the other sites, it also played host to Russian-authored ads.
Twitter said that it shut down 201 accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency. It also disclosed that the account for the news site RT, which the company linked to the Kremlin, spent $274,100 on its platform in 2016. Twitter has not said how many times the Russian disinformation was shared. The company is investigating that matter and trying to map the relationship between Russian accounts and well-known media personalities as well as influencers associated with the campaigns of Donald Trump and other candidates, said a person familiar with Twitter's internal investigation.
The way in which these tools allow individual users to be targeted based on search history and demographics means it may be impossible to recreate the experience of any particular voter in the run-up to the election. But it seems clear that many, particularly in the areas most likely to sway the results, were getting hit with multiple, repetitive ads from every direction—and those ads were designed to produce exactly the results that the election delivered.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/20...ound-on-Gmail-Youtube-Facebook-Twitter-others