The Hill: Study Details 'Suspicious' Facebook Ads in 2016 Cycle
A new study detailing foreign influence on Facebook ahead of the 2016 election found that one-sixth of 122 “suspicious” advertisers who purchased issue and political ads on the platform were Russian trolls.
The 122 were culled from a group of 228 advertisers analyzed in the study by University of Wisconsin Professor Young Mie Kim, who works with the Campaign Legal Center (CLC).
Suspicious pages included Facebook pages with little to no information about who is behind them, pages that have been taken down and ones that have had little activity since Election Day 2016.
The 20 pages confirmed to be created by the Russian troll group, the Internet Research Association, were verified by Kim with information about the group's pages publicly released by the House Intelligence Committee.