META Meta Platforms Inc

By Deepa Seetharaman, Georgia Wells and Byron Tau 

Newly released documents show how Russian propagandists on Facebook grew increasingly sophisticated and inflammatory in their tactics over two years as they worked to sow discord in the U.S. before and after the 2016 presidential election.

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday made public for the first time the full cache of more than 3,000 ads that Facebook Inc. said were purchased by a pro-Kremlin group, the Internet Research Agency. The ads, fewer than 50 of which had previously been revealed, offer the clearest window yet into the evolving tactics used by the group as it sought to amplify social and political tensions in the U.S.

The Russian-backed pages initially deployed relatively simple techniques, buying ads targeted to reach large segments, such as all Facebook users living in the U.S. Many of those ads gained little traction with users. By 2017, the tactics were sharper, the cache shows. They bought ads focused on a specified radius around specific cities and targeted people with certain job titles, such as "coal miner," or certain employers--including Facebook itself.

The ads show how aggressive and broad-based the Russian-backed Facebook pages were in pushing hot-button social and racial issues, including illegal immigration and police brutality. Some pages used Facebook to publicize real-world rallies in cities across the U.S. Others used Facebook to sell apparel or gain personal information about users by urging them to fill out surveys or share their profile photos.

Only a subset of the ads explicitly mentioned the election, and those that did largely attacked Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton or raised doubts about the federal government. On Election Day, for example, an ad posted by a Russian-backed page named "Williams&Kalvin" urged black voters to boycott the election. "This time we choose between two racists. No one represents Black people. Don't go to vote," the ad said, which was seen nearly 8,500 times. Other ads after the election sought to stir up anti-Trump sentiment among African-Americans.

The release of the ads comes weeks after Republicans on the Intelligence Committee ended their yearlong probe into Russia's activity during the 2016 election. Their report concluded that there were no signs of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, angering Democrats who said the investigation was far from over.

"Russian malign influence activities on Facebook were significant but they were not well-funded or large-scale operations relative to the overall scope of election-related activity on these platforms," the GOP-authored report concluded.

"Russia sought to divide us by our race, by our country of origin, by our religion, and by our political party," Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement about the newly released documents. "They sought to harness Americans' very real frustrations and anger over sensitive political matters in order to influence American thinking, voting and behavior."

Republicans on the committee didn't respond late Wednesday to a request for comment on Democrats' plans to release the ads, which The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.

Facebook first disclosed the Russian activity in September, saying it found 470 accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency that bought the ads on Facebook as well as its photo-sharing app Instagram between mid-2015 and mid-2017. The disclosure triggered public outrage that culminated in testimony by representatives from Facebook, Twitter Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google in front of Congress on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 for hearings on Russian manipulation of social media.

Facebook didn't make the ads public at the time, instead handing them over to Congress, which disclosed only several dozen, citing privacy concerns. The documents released Thursday had many individual and photos names redacted.

In February, an indictment secured by special counsel Robert Mueller alleged that a group of Russians coordinated by the Internet Research Agency used social media with the " strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system."

Facebook says it has adopted measures to prevent similar foreign manipulation on its platform from recurring. The company said a review of criteria advertisers can use led it to remove "nearly one-third of the targeting segments used by the IRA."

The Internet Research Agency accounts focused on racial and social issues early on, pumping out ads around prominent national events. One page, "Black Matters," bought ads within a week of the Charleston church shooting in June 2015 discussing persistent racism against black Americans. After the San Bernardino shooting in December 2015, some of the accounts bought anti-Muslim ads.

As the election drew closer, the Russian pages increasingly took on politics. In July 2016, a promoted event, targeting Facebook users interested in Republican rival Donald Trump, encouraged people to rally "to show Clinton that we will never let her become our next President."

In 2015, few of the Internet Research Agency ads gained significant traction, often drawing zero or a couple dozen views. As the propaganda operation progressed, operators experimented with more sophisticated techniques and some of the ads started to go viral.

By 2016, the agency was using "lookalike custom audiences," an advanced Facebook advertising tool that lets marketers offer Facebook the profiles of the types of people that they want to serve their ads to. The Russian operators also experimented with different messages and location criteria.

Over two days in September 2016, the agency ran four ads to promote a "Miners for Trump" rally in Pennsylvania, targeting increasingly specific demographics: from people within 50 miles of New York, to people in Allentown, Erie, and Scranton, whose job title was "Coal miner."

A handful of ads was targeted at users who lived outside the U.S. including the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

Many of the Internet Research Agency ads include grammatical and spelling errors, and some have no discernible political purpose. In June 2015, the page "L for life" bought an ad targeting people interested in "landscape painting or landscape." The ad featured a photo of a city with a mountain in the backdrop and read: "Such a beautiful day! Such a beatiful (sic) view!"

Other ads specifically targeted people who worked for Facebook. In early 2017, the agency spent $10 to show an ad to male employees of Facebook who lived within 10 miles of Palo Alto. "Do you want to see top 5 girls who applied for a job at Facebook?" the ad said. The ad received 19 clicks.

Shelby Holliday and Joshua Jamerson contributed to this article.

Write to Deepa Seetharaman at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com, Georgia Wells at Georgia.Wells@wsj.com and Byron Tau at byron.tau@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 10, 2018 10:14 ET (14:14 GMT)

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