Facebook to hand over information about Russian bougth 2016 campaign ads

[Cthulhu 2020]

Mark Zuckerberg has announced that he has already turned over much of this information to special counsel Mueller. Facebook generally did not stop or try to hinder any kind of advertisement of any sort that came through their site unless it was grossly obscene.

It turns out that over 3,000 ads on Facebook, either attacking Hillary or singing the praises of Trump, were found to have been funded by Russian sources. Now the question is, why did Russian agencies sink so much money into absolutely ensuring Trump won? What was their motivation, what did they stand to gain from it? Nobody spends that kind of money without some ulterior motive...

So we either have,

1) Wild speculation that Trump would be favorable towards Russia or, the more likely scenario...

2) Trump and/or members of his campaign team (Manafort *cough*) made certain promises in exchange for "help" with the 2016 election.

Every action has a motive, and that kind of money isn't spent on a whim. We're also discovering that naturally, facebook wasn't the only one that accepted money to run pro-Trump or Anti-Hillary ads.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017...amid-pressure/

https://www.axios.com/facebook-will-...488039306.html

http://www.newsweek.com/russias-pro-...-hiding-668374



Alone, this piece of information means very little. You sit down to the table and look at this individual piece of information and it's indeed a nothingburger. Of course, those who like to declare incidents like this as nothingburgers are very narrow visioned. They don't see the other 1328912 burgers at the table that add up to something far more than a single incident that means very little taken out of context. It will be interesting to see Mueller's final report on all of this. Even if there wasn't collusion, we know that Russia had an active hand in influencing our election.

And before someone jumps on the high horse of "WELL THE US HAS INTERFERED IN OTHER ELECTIONS SO YOU CAN'T BE MAD ABOUT IT!" - Judging by previous threads, those who are mad about Russia meddling in our election don't look favorably on the US meddling in other country's elections either, so that little tidbit of "hypocrisy" that some of you may have hoped to point out just shows your desperation to draw attention away from anything.

@Skroe, This ain't a huge deal, but it's another piece of the puzzle, another thread in the tapestry.

[Ripster42]

@Skroe, This ain't a huge deal, but it's another piece of the puzzle, another thread in the tapestry.

Well, it's a huge deal in that our president is denying russia interfered in our election. It's not evidence of collusion though, because we know so many election databases were hacked that gave them targeting information.

[Felya]

It's a very smart move. While we bitch about millennials and their being glued to screens 24/7, Russia actually tapped into the potential.

This hit on random on the drive home. Even before smart phones or internet being main stream:

https://youtu.be/ZN6kCgMUjFw

23 years later... touché...

[Mormolyce]

Remember how the whole "fake news" thing, before being appropriated by Trump as an excuse for any facts he didn't like, was originally about literal fake news articles being circulated online through places like Facebook?

[Cthulhu 2020]

This news probably comes as a surprise to absolutely no one.

Well, except the Trump cultists who absolutely insisted Russia wasn't doing a single thing to influence the election, which is about 1/3 of the voting population at this point.

Seems Facebook is now going to start "screening" ads rather than just being a neutral middle man. They're concerned about it as a "free speech" issue but honestly, if people are running literal fake news ads to smear one candidate and praise another, no upstanding company should air those ads. Leave it to the shit holes like Breitbart and Infowars.

[Deleted]

Inbe4 "Zuckerberg meddled in our election and is a Putin-spy"

- - - Updated - - -

Well, it's a huge deal in that our president is denying russia interfered in our election. It's not evidence of collusion though, because we know so many election databases were hacked that gave them targeting information.

By that logic, Germany and many other european countries also interfered in the Us election since most of their media was vehemently pro Clinton and anti-Trump.

[Shadowmelded]

By that logic, Germany and many other european countries also interfered in the Us election since most of their media was vehemently pro Clinton and anti-Trump.

Their media is tailored to their domestic audience. That's an entirely different thing. For starters you'd need to seek it out, which isn't the case with targeted ads.

[Cthulhu 2020]

By that logic, Germany and many other european countries also interfered in the Us election since most of their media was vehemently pro Clinton and anti-Trump.

Note: THEIR media, they weren't buying ads on American TV to smear Trump. But maybe they should have, just to have made it more even. Trump won by less than 100k votes across 5 states, other nations buying pro-Clinton anti-Trump ads might have tipped that balance, and Trumpkin cultists wouldn't have been able to whine because Russia was aggressively spreading propaganda - on WAY more than just Facebook.

[Deleted]

Note: THEIR media, they weren't buying ads on American TV to smear Trump. But maybe they should have, just to have made it more even. Trump won by less than 100k votes across 5 states, other nations buying pro-Clinton anti-Trump ads might have tipped that balance, and Trumpkin cultists wouldn't have been able to whine because Russia was aggressively spreading propaganda - on WAY more than just Facebook.

Devils advocate : russia conspiracy cultists wish it did tip the balance because then they have something to blame rather than real problems, divisions, wealth inequality, alienation of rust belt, poverty, party zealotism, education etc, so that they never have to address reality.

[fengosa]

Devils advocate : russia conspiracy cultists wish it did tip the balance because then they have something to blame rather than real problems, divisions, wealth inequality, alienation of rust belt, poverty, party zealotism, education etc, so that they never have to address reality.

Trump and his administration wouldn't be lying at every conceivable opportunity about Russia if they were completely innocent. You have to pretty naïve to dismiss this as a conspiracy.

[Grapemask]

Devils advocate : russia conspiracy cultists wish it did tip the balance because then they have something to blame rather than real problems, divisions, wealth inequality, alienation of rust belt, poverty, party zealotism, education etc, so that they never have to address reality.

I think they all note those problems, particularly that the candidate that won exacerbates most of them, and that the candidate that lost was of the party that addresses them. "Fake news" was just one of the larger of many hands in the pot that distorted this reality.