SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc said on Wednesday it had found that an operation likely based in Russia spent $100,000 on thousands of U.S. ads promoting divisive social and political messages in a two-year-period through May. 
 
 Facebook, the dominant social media network, said 3,000 ads and 470 “inauthentic” accounts and pages spread polarizing views on topics including immigration, race and gay rights. 
 
 Another $50,000 was spent on 2,200 “potentially politically related” ads, likely by Russians, Facebook said. 
 
 U.S. election law bars foreign nationals and foreign entities from spending money to expressly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate. Non-U.S. citizens may generally advertise on issues. Other ads, such as those that mention a candidate but do not call for the candidate’s election or defeat, fall into what lawyers have called a legal gray area. 
 
 Facebook announced the findings in a blog post by its chief security officer, Alex Stamos, and said that it was cooperating with federal inquiries into influence operations during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. 
 
 Facebook briefed members of both the Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees on Wednesday about the suspected Russia advertising, according to a congressional source familiar with the matter. Both committees are conducting probes into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, including potential collusion between the campaign of President Donald Trump and Moscow. 
 
 Facebook also gave its findings to Robert Mueller, the special counsel in charge of investigating alleged Russian interference in last year’s presidential election, a source familiar with the matter said. The company produced copies of advertisements as well as data about the buyers, the source said. 
 
 Mueller’s office declined to comment. 
 
 Facebook said it found no link between the Russian-purchased advertising and any specific presidential campaign. The ads were mostly national in their focus and did not appear to reflect targeting of political swing-states, the company said. 
 
 Even if no laws were violated, Facebook said the 470 accounts and pages associated with the ads ran afoul of the social network’s requirements for authenticity and have since been suspended. 
 
 Facebook did not print the names of any of the suspended pages, but some of them included such words as “refugee” and “patriot.” 
 
 More than $1 billion was spent on political ads during the 2016 presidential campaign, thousands of times more than the presumed Russian spending identified by Facebook’s security team. 
 
 FILE PHOTO - A 3D plastic representation of the Facebook logo is seen in this illustration photo May 13, 2015. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo 
 
 But the findings buttress U.S. intelligence agency conclusions that Russia was actively involved in shaping the election. 
 
 Facebook previously published a white paper on influence operations, including what it said were fake “amplifier” accounts for propaganda, and said it was cracking down. 
 
 As recently as June, Facebook told journalists that it had not found any evidence of Russian operatives buying election-related ads on its platform. 
 
 “TROLL FACTORY” CONNECTION 
 
 Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called the Facebook report “deeply disturbing and yet fully consistent with the unclassified assessment of the intelligence community.” 
 
 “We are keenly interested in Russia’s use of social media platforms, both the use of bots and trolls to spread disinformation and propaganda, including through the use of paid online advertising,” he said in a statement. 
 
 A Facebook employee said Wednesday that there were unspecified connections between the divisive issue ads and a well-known Russian “troll factory” in St. Petersburg that publishes comments on social media. 
 
 Ellen Weintraub, a member of the U.S. Federal Election Commission, said U.S. voters deserve to know where the ads are coming from and that the money behind them is legal. 
 
 “It is unlawful for foreign nationals to be spending money in connection with any federal, state or local election, directly or indirectly,” Weintraub said in a phone interview. 
 
 She declined to comment on the Facebook ads, saying she could not discuss subjects that could come before the agency. 
 
 Facebook declined to release the ads themselves, prompting a sharp rebuke on Twitter from Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire founder of First Look Media, a producer of feature and documentary films, television and podcasts. 
 
 “Facebook keeps the targeted political ads it publishes secret, emboldening criminals,” wrote Omidyar, the eBay founder who also provided funding to launch media organization The Intercept. “I don’t see how that can possibly be legal.” 
 
 The Facebook logo is displayed on their website in an illustration photo taken in Bordeaux, France, February 1, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau 
 
 Facebook’s disclosure may be the first time a private entity has pointed to receiving Russian money related to U.S. elections, said Brendan Fischer, a program director at the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington nonprofit that advocates for more transparency. 
 
 “Whoever may have provided assistance to Russia in buying these Facebook ads is very likely in violation of the law,” he said, adding that Facebook has a legal duty to act if it is aware of similar activity in the future. ||||| Facebook says likely Russia-based group paid for political ads during US election 
 
 Facebook said on Wednesday it had found that an influence operation probably based in Russia spent $100,000 on ads promoting divisive social and political messages in a two-year-period through May. 
 
 The social media network said that many of the ads promoted 470 “inauthentic” accounts and pages Facebook has now suspended. The ads spread polarizing views on topics such as immigration, race and gay rights, instead of backing a particular political candidate, it said. 
 
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 Facebook announced the findings in a blogpost by its chief security officer, Alex Stamos, and said that it was cooperating with federal inquiries into influence operations during the 2016 presidential election. 
 
 The company said it found no link to any presidential campaign. Three-quarters of the ads were national in scope, and the rest did not appear to reflect targeting of political swing states as voting neared. 
 
 Facebook did not print the names of any of the suspended pages, but some of them included such words as “refugee” and “patriot”. 
 
 The findings buttress US intelligence agency conclusions that Russia was actively involved in shaping the election. 
 
 Facebook previously published a white paper detailing well-funded and subtle techniques used by countries and organizations to spread misleading information for geopolitical goals. These efforts go well beyond “fake news”, the company said, and include content seeding, targeted data collection and fake accounts used to amplify one particular view, sow distrust in political institutions and spread confusion. 
 
 The company said in April: “We have had to expand our security focus from traditional abusive behavior, such as account hacking, malware, spam and financial scams, to include more subtle and insidious forms of misuse, including attempts to manipulate civic discourse and deceive people.” 
 
 Facebook did not attribute the manipulation to any nation state, although it said that the company’s investigation “does not contradict” the findings of a January report by the US director of national intelligence that outlined Russian involvement in the election. 
 
 Even so, as recently as June, it told journalists that it had not found any evidence to date of Russian operatives buying election-related ads on its platform. 
 
 A Facebook employee said on Wednesday there were unspecified connections between the divisive ads and a well-known Russian “troll factory” in St Petersburg that publishes comments on social media. 
 
 Beyond the issue ads, Facebook said it uncovered $50,000 more in overtly political advertising that might have links to Russia. Some of those ads were bought using the Russian language, even though they were displayed to users in English. 
 
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 Even if no laws were violated, the pages ran afoul of Facebook requirements for authenticity, setting up the suspensions. 
 
 “In the past Facebook has taken the stance that it’s a tech company and not a media company, but they have clearly moved into the media company category,” said advertising veteran Mike Kelly, CEO of Kelly Newman Ventures and former president of AOL Media. “They have to up their game a bit.” 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mark Zuckerberg has said the idea that fake news on Facebook could influence an election is ‘pretty crazy’, but not everyone agrees. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images 
 
 Kelly suggests that the company should use its technology prowess to come up with “new ways to filter and assess accounts and advertisers”. 
 
 
 
 Facebook, which now has 2 billion monthly users, suspends more than 1 million accounts per day in its quest to keep spam, fraud and hate speech of its platform. 
 
 
 
 More than $1bn was spent on digital political ads during the 2016 presidential campaign, 10,000 times the amount identified by Facebook’s security team. 
 
 Facebook has rejected the notion that fake news on Facebook influenced the outcome of the US election, with Mark Zuckerberg describing it as a “pretty crazy idea”. 
 
 “Voters make decisions based on their lived experience,” he said in November. 
 
 But Facebook’s ad sales team tells a different story. It highlights how an “audience-specific” political campaign on Facebook was able to “significantly shift voter intent and increase favorability” for US senate candidate Pat Toomey, contributing to his re-election. 
 
 In other words: it is entirely possible to swing an election using Facebook advertising, but it doesn’t seem like this Russian “influence operation” was effective. 
 
 “Maybe nothing happened this time, but it’s a good warning to them that their [Facebook’s] role in the media landscape has changed, especially given their scale, and with that comes a lot of new responsibility,” said Kelly. ||||| Facebook told congressional investigators on Wednesday that it sold political ads during the 2016 U.S. presidential election to a so-called Russian troll farm that was looking to target American voters. 
 
 "In reviewing the ads buys, we have found approximately $100,000 in ad spending from June of 2015 to May of 2017 — associated with roughly 3,000 ads — that was connected to about 470 inauthentic accounts and Pages in violation of our policies," Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos said in a statement. 
 
 "Our analysis suggests these accounts and Pages were affiliated with one another and likely operated out of Russia," Stamos said. 
 
 The revelation, first reported by the Washington Post, comes amid ongoing investigations into Russia's interference in the U.S. election, including the use of social media to spread fake news and propaganda. 
 
 The ads -- both traditional advertisements and sponsored posts -- were intended to sow discord among the American electorate by amplifying "divisive social and political messages," Stamos said. These ranged from "LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights." 
 
 Roughly one quarter of the ads were geographically targeted, Stamos said, though a Facebook spokesperson declined to specify the locations where those ads were targeted. 
 
 Related: FEC official worried about 'foreign money' spent on Facebook election ads 
 
 In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer Wednesday afternoon, Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat who is the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said the committee would be looking into the nature of the advertisements, and whether "they were at a level of sophistication where [the ad buyers] would have needed help or assistance from the campaign." 
 
 "I think we already knew that the Russians were using paid social media trolls to try to influence the election, try to sow discord, this certainly confirms that finding," Schiff said. "What we want to explore, not only with Facebook, with other social media platforms as well, [is] what evidence, to what degree." 
 
 It is possible that there are more shadowy ad buys that Facebook has yet to identify. 
 
 Related: Facebook funds Harvard program to fight election hacking 
 
 In the review presented to Congressional investigators, Facebook said it had found an additional $50,000 in political ad spending during the election from other accounts connected to Russia. 
 
 Facebook sells its advertising through a self-service ad model, through which buyers can choose demographic, geographic and interest-based targets, the Facebook spokesperson said. Due to the volume of these ad buys, Facebook said it was unable to identify the inauthentic nature of these ad buys at the time. 
 
 In his statement, Stamos said Facebook had shut down accounts involved that were still active. But the company is facing criticism over its decision not to release the ads or explain what role it played in the targeting of these ads. 
 
 "It is completely unacceptable that Facebook says it will not release the actual ads it showed to its users," Pierre Omidyar, the entrepreneur and eBay founder, wrote on Twitter. 
 
 -- CNN's Tom LoBianco contributed reporting.
– Facebook says a Russian "troll farm" appears to have spent $100,000 on 3,300 digital ads targeting American voters in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election, the Washington Post reports. While some of the ads expressly mentioned Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, the majority simply promoted "divisive" views on things like gun and gay rights, discrimination, and immigration. According to Reuters, the ads were linked to 470 "inauthentic" accounts and pages that have since been suspended. While Facebook isn't releasing the ads, the names of the suspended pages featured words like "patriot" and "refugee," the Guardian reports. The Russian company linked to the ads has a history of spreading pro-Kremlin propaganda. Facebook said it also found $50,000 spent on 2,200 "potentially politically related" ads that may be tied to Russia. The company's findings are more evidence to back the conclusion of US intelligence agencies that Russia influenced the election. The findings are also likely to make investigators question whether the Russians were getting input on ad buys from people in the US. The ad buys may have been a violation of US election law by Facebook and others involved. “It is unlawful for foreign nationals to be spending money in connection with any federal, state, or local election, directly or indirectly,” a member of the US Federal Election Commission tells Reuters. Facebook found no evidence tying the ads to any presidential campaign.