Originally posted by Robtard
FACT CHECK: Russian Interference Went Far Beyond 'Facebook Ads' Kushner Described
Fact check of the fact checker:
The Russian involvement in the 2016 election was almost non-existent and was blown out of proportion by Democrats and Republicans.
From WaPo, notoriously anti-Trump and pro-Democrat:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/why-russias-facebook-ad-campaign-wasnt-such-a-success/2017/11/03/b8efacca-bffa-11e7-8444-a0d4f04b89eb_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.d4f0e1a386b9
I've run digital advertising campaigns on behalf of candidates in contested battleground states. And if the ads revealed this past week were an attempt to influence the election, they were a laughably botched and failed attempt. The total amount spent was less than what I've seen spent online in competitive congressional races. The ads were not well targeted to the battleground states that were most decisive. And the subject matter was designed to engage extremist voices on the political fringe, not persuadable voters undecided between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.Vladimir Putin's propaganda victory is not the advertising itself, but the notion that just over $100,000 worth of poorly targeted Facebook advertising could swing a presidential election. It can't.
News of Russia's meddling has produced some scary-sounding numbers: as many as 126 million Americans reached on Facebook alone, a further 20 million on Instagram, and 1.4 million tweets sent by Russian-affiliated accounts in the two months leading up to the election.
Yet, the Russian content was just a tiny share of the 33 trillion posts Americans saw in their Facebook news feeds between 2015 and 2017. Any success the ads had in terms of reach seems attributable largely to the sheer doggedness of the effort, with 80,000 Facebook posts in total. Facebook reported that a quarter of the ads were never seen by anyone. And — with the average Facebook user sifting through 220 news-feed posts a day — many of the rest were simply glanced at, scrolled past and forgotten.
With $81 million spent on Facebook by the Trump and Clinton campaigns, mostly to mobilize core supporters to donate and volunteer, a low-six-figure buy is unlikely to have tipped the election. The Russian effort looks even less influential when one considers the tiny amount of Russian Facebook spending directed at key battleground states — $1,979 in Wisconsin, $823 in Michigan and $300 in Pennsylvania. From an electoral perspective, the campaign was remarkably unsophisticated.
Of course, some people did click and like and share. Where Russia appears to have made more headway — before and after the election — is in further animating partisans, capitalizing on their need to have their existing beliefs confirmed. It didn't matter that those confirming their beliefs were foreign adversaries.
In at least some cases, that translated into action. The most successful case appears to be an anti-Trump rally in New York City on Nov. 12, just five days after the election. More than 33,000 people expressed interest in an announcement of the event posted by Russian agents, and thousands ended up attending. The ad spending that we know of to promote the rally was piddling — $1.93 to serve the post to 188 people. Yet, touching a raw nerve, news of this event spread organically. And no one bothered to dig into the sockpuppet Facebook page behind the announcement.
I analyzed and read through the actual advertisements, myself. I didn't trust the 15 member security committee document that they published on the topic.
As stated, before, you can look at the actual adverts, yourself. Then determine for yourself that almost NONE of those adverts were anti-Hillary or Pro-Trump.
Here's the report:
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Report_Volume2.pdf
Here are the actual adverts which do NOT match up with the findings in the report:
https://intelligence.house.gov/hpsci-11-1/hpsci-minority-open-hearing-exhibits.htm