A researcher with lots of foresight scraped 5 million political ads on Facebook during 6 weeks before the 2016 election. She found that half of the advertisers had absolutely no federal records or online footprint. Of that half, 1 in 6 were Russian trolls. wired.com/story/russian-…
These "suspicious" advertisers predominantly targeted voters in swing states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. She also found that white voters received 87 percent of all immigration ads. wired.com/story/russian-…
She found that the advertisers that were not required to file any disclaimers or disclosures with the FEC ran 4 times as many of these divisive ads as advertisers that did have to file with the FEC: wired.com/story/russian-…
This research makes a strong case for regulation of digital political ads. Yes, the Russian trolls were running divisive, misleading ads without being detected, but...so lots of other groups we know nothing about wired.com/story/russian-…
typo. that last tweet should read "so *were* lots of other groups we know nothing about."
