What We Know—and Don't Know—About Facebook, Trump, and Russia

A comprehensive guide to the speculation about how Russians used Facebook, and other tech platforms, to help elect a president.
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Special investigator Robert Mueller leaves after a closed meeting with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee June 21, 2017, at the US Capitol.Alex Wong/Getty Images

Facebook is enmeshed in several investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Details continue to emerge about the 3,000 political ads linked to Russian actors that it sold and ran during the 2016 election cycle. It's now handed those ads over to congressional investigators, as well as special investigator Robert Mueller, and will join representatives from Twitter and Google parent company Alphabet at a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Nov.1. The constantly evolving story of how the social-networking giant found itself at the center of all of this, and, crucially, what that could mean for President Trump, can easily get confused amid competing headlines around healthcare, hurricanes, and an escalating nuclear standoff with North Korea.

To help, we’re here to walk you through everything we know---and don’t know---about Facebook’s role in the 2016 election and the subsequent investigations. We’ll update this list of questions and answers as we learn more.

What did Facebook give investigators?

In early September, Facebook said it had identified $150,000 of political ads purchased by fake accounts linked to Russia. It attributed about $100,000 of the total, or 3,000 ads, to 470 accounts related to a Russian propaganda group called Internet Research Agency. It found another 2,000 ads worth $50,000 by searching for ads purchased through US internet addresses whose accounts were set to the Russian language. The ads touched on hot-button social issues such as immigration and LGBT rights, as well as content aimed at stoking racial resentment against blacks and Muslims. About 25 percent of the ads geographically targeted certain regions of the United States. The majority of these ads ran in 2015. On Sept. 21, Facebook confirmed it had shared the ads with Mueller's team and would do the same with congressional investigators.

How many people did the ads reach?

In an Oct. 2 blog post, Facebook said roughly 10 million people saw the ads and that 44 percent of those impressions took place before the election. Considering that fewer than 80,000 votes cost Hillary Clinton the election, that number is intriguing. And researchers have since pointed out that the fake accounts that purchased those ads likely reached even more users through old-fashioned viral posts.

According to Jonathan Albright, research director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, organic content posted by just six of the 470 fake accounts Facebook pinpointed may have been shared 340 million times. Albright used the social-media-monitoring app CrowdTangle to analyze traffic to several of the now-deleted accounts that have been made public, including one page called Blacktivists and another called Muslim America. Those same posts received roughly 19.1 million interactions in the form of people clicking the "like" or "share" buttons.

These numbers dwarf the 10 million figure Facebook has provided. That's because Facebook is only accounting for the reach of ads paid for by a Russia-linked troll farm. The reach of the viral content those same trolls posted is far wider---and tougher to catch. Unlike ads, viral content leaves no money trail.

How did Facebook find these ads?

The only detail Facebook has shared publicly is that it looked for US internet addresses set to the Russian language, then “fanned out” from there, as a Facebook spokesperson told WIRED. That makes it impossible to know whether Facebook has identified all suspect ads or just those the Russians were laziest about hiding.

It’s likely, however, that Facebook's search has not covered everything. On Sept. 21, during a Facebook Live address, CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted as much, saying, "We may find more, and if we do, we will continue to work with the government." We know, for instance, that Internet Research Agency, the propaganda group, has officially shut down. But similar firms, including one called Glavset, operate with the same people at the same addresses. The Facebook spokesperson would not discuss whether its investigation would have caught these other shell companies.

What changes has Facebook announced, and will they make a difference?

During a Facebook Live announcement in September, Zuckerberg outlined how the company plans to overhaul its election-integrity processes. For starters, it will require political advertisers to disclose---on the ads---who paid for the ad. It will also require political advertisers to publicly catalog all the variations of ads that they target to different Facebook audiences. The goal here is to make it easier for the public to see when politicians send different messages to different groups of people. President Trump has been criticized for using so-called "dark posts" to send messages about his proposed border wall to core supporters that conflict with his more public statements. That kind of targeted advertising is par for the course in the internet age, but now, Facebook says, it will ensure that when it's used in politics, the public will be able to learn more about those messages. Facebook also said it would add 250 people to its election-integrity team to more thoroughly vet who's buying political ads.

Questions remain: What constitutes a political ad? Are campaigns and super PACs the only ones subject to this disclosure on Facebook? Or will anyone who wants to advertise about a political issue be subject to the same scrutiny? And what about fake news publishers that pay to boost their own articles? Facebook isn't providing much detail about how it will implement its plan, but answers to those questions are critical to understanding how effective this self-regulation will be.

Could Russians have placed other ads that Facebook hasn’t yet identified?

Absolutely. In the case of the $150,000 in ads, one digital breadcrumb led to the next until Facebook uncovered a cohesive effort by the Internet Research Agency to spread misleading information to US voters. It’s easier to spot such a coordinated campaign than it is to find every ally of Vladimir Putin who might have spent a few thousand dollars to give a fake news story some extra exposure. Facebook sold $27 billion in ads in 2016. Combing through that pile of cash for signs of Russian dirty work is a tremendously complex, if not impossible, task.

Is there anything the government can do to close these loopholes?

Possibly. Democratic senators Mark Warner and Amy Klobuchar are working on a bill that would require political advertisers who purchase at least $10,000 in ads to publish disclaimers right on the ad. It would also require tech platforms with more than 1 million users to publicly track all "electioneering communication" purchased by anyone spending at least $10,000 on the platform. The FEC defines electioneering communication as ads "that refer to a federal candidate, are targeted to voters, and appear within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election." For now, the term applies only to broadcast and radio ads.

The Federal Election Commission is also reopening comments on rules related to online political ads. In 2011, Facebook asked the FEC to exempt it from rules requiring political advertisers to disclose in an ad who paid for that ad. Facebook argued its ads should be regulated as "small items," like campaign buttons. The FEC failed to reach a decision on the issue, so Facebook and other platforms have run political ads with no disclosures. Now, the FEC is revisiting the issue.

Facebook, for its part, has warmed to the idea of working with Washington, sending chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg to the nation's capital earlier this month to meet with lawmakers and members of the Beltway press. In an interview with Axios's Mike Allen, Sandberg said, "We want as much help as we can get," from government officials that can inform Facebook and fellow tech companies about potential threats. The company has also met with people working on the Warner-Klobuchar bill in hopes of helping shape whatever legislation they eventually introduce.

Will these ads ever see the light of day?

It seems likely. The House Intelligence Committee has said it plans to release the ads to the public as soon as it can remove personally identifying information from them. In her interview with Axios, Sandberg confirmed Facebook is helping the House scrub that information. The company plans to release information about who those ads were targeting at the same time.

Were the ads targeting the same audiences as Trump's campaign?

So far, that is still an open question. In her interview with Axios, Sandberg wouldn't say, and Facebook has only said that none of the ads targeted specific email addresses. That at least dampens speculation that the Russians were using the Trump campaign's email list.

Did the Russians use other platforms as well?

Yes. After an initial meeting with congressional investigators, Twitter acknowledged it had found more than 200 accounts related to the Russia-linked Facebook accounts. It has since handed over the list of account names to Congress. Google, meanwhile, has also reportedly found tens of millions of dollars worth of ads on its platforms. Even Pinterest has acknowledged that users saved some of that phony Facebook content to their Pinterest boards, though there's no evidence the Russians used Pinterest directly. This demonstrates just how difficult it is to calculate the reach of just one fraudulent Facebook post or ad.

How did the Russians decide which Americans to target with the Facebook ads?

The short answer is, we don’t know. There are suspicions that the Russians might have had help from the Trump campaign or its allies. But the Russians may not have needed more than the targeting tools Facebook offers to every advertiser.

Facebook allows any advertiser to upload lists of names or email addresses that it would like to target. In most states, voter files are publicly available for free or for purchase. Advertisers can then design so-called lookalike audiences that have much in common with the original list. They can target ads based on geography, profession, and interest. Facebook knows where you live, the news you read, the posts you like, and what you shop for, along with a million other things about you. The company stitches this information together to make educated guesses about what kind of person you are.

According to Facebook, only 1 percent of the Russia-linked ads targeted users who had visited the advertiser's website or liked its page.

The Russians also likely used the news as a guide. Reports have said that some of the ads, which discussed Black Lives Matter, were targeted to people in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, two cities that have become synonymous with racial tensions in America.

Armed with so much readily available information, a Russian operative would hardly need to call in help. That doesn’t mean they didn’t. It just means we have no evidence so far that they did.

What kind of evidence would there be?

One way to find out if the Trump campaign helped Internet Research Agency would be to compare the targeting criteria the campaign used on Facebook to the targeting criteria the Russian propagandists used. If both groups targeted the same audience, that's worth looking into. Investigators could do the same with any further suspicious accounts Facebook unearths.

What about Cambridge Analytica? What's their story?

The House investigation has now extended to Cambridge Analytica, President Trump’s data-mining firm during the 2016 election. The Trump team, led by digital director Brad Parscale, worked with Cambridge, as well as the Republican National Committee, to analyze data about the US electorate to guide decisions about where and how to advertise on television and online. That’s not unusual. Hillary Clinton’s campaign tapped similar analyses from a data-analytics firm called BlueLabs, as well as the Democratic National Committee.

What is unusual about Cambridge Analytica is its backstory. The company, which is a US spinoff of UK-based SCL Elections, is financially backed by billionaire financier Robert Mercer, who spends liberally to advance his fiercely conservative views.

Cambridge has also been accused of amassing data from Facebook users---such as what they like on the site and who their friends are---via silly personality quizzes. (Facebook has since closed this privacy gap.) Cambridge combined those results with data from elsewhere to sort people into categories based on their personality types, so advertisers could send them specially tailored messages. Cambridge calls this approach psychographic targeting, as opposed to demographic targeting.

During the election cycle, some Republican operatives outside the Trump campaign accused the company of overselling its technical wizardry. Now, Cambridge’s approach is viewed by some, including Hillary Clinton, as a form of ugly psychological warfare that was unleashed on the American electorate. Parscale and others, however, say the campaign didn't use Cambridge's psychographic methodologies.

Cambridge's parent company, SCL, has been known to use questionable methods in other countries’ elections. In Trinidad, it reportedly staged graffiti to give voters the impression that SCL's client had the support of Trinidadian youth. And Cambridge is currently being investigated in the UK for the role it may have played in swaying voters to support Brexit. It’s worth noting, though, that the UK has stricter laws around how citizens’ data can be used near elections. The US does not have the same protections.

Is Cambridge involved with these Russian ads on Facebook?

Not as far as we know. While Cambridge helped the Trump campaign target its own advertisements, there's no evidence so far that Cambridge did the same for any Russians. Whether any connection exists, of course, is a key question both Mueller's team and Congress will continue to investigate.

Facebook, Google, and Twitter had staff inside the Trump campaign headquarters during the campaign. Is that normal?

Tech companies regularly assign dedicated staffers to political campaigns that advertise on their platforms. Clinton’s campaign also worked closely with Facebook and other tech companies, if not physically side-by-side.

Still, perhaps the least secretive part of the whole affair is the outsized role digital advertising played in the Trump campaign’s strategy. Shortly after the election, Parscale told WIRED, “Facebook and Twitter were the reason we won this thing. Twitter for Mr. Trump, and Facebook for fund-raising." The Trump campaign ran as many as 50,000 variants of its ads each day on Facebook, tweaking the look and messaging to see which got the most traction. Days after the election, Andrew Bleeker, who ran digital advertising for the Clinton campaign, acknowledged that the Trump team used digital platforms “extremely well.” He said the Trump campaign “spent a higher percentage of their spending on digital than we did.”

Could Facebook have prevented this?

That's complicated. While the ads that Internet Research Agency purchased were about election issues, they weren’t explicitly about the 2016 election. It's not clear those would have been considered election ads, even if Facebook, Congress, and the FEC took a stricter approach to election ads online. Plus, the US Supreme Court has given nonprofit groups wide latitude to raise money to influence elections both online and offline without revealing their donors. That's why it's called dark money.

Senator Warner recently said Facebook "took down 50,000 accounts in France. I find it hard to believe they’ve only been able to identify 470 accounts in America.” What did he mean, and does he have a point?

Yes and no. In April, Facebook disclosed that it suspended 30,000 accounts, that were spreading fake news in France ahead of elections there. According to Warner's team, Facebook has since told the senator it suspended at least 50,000 accounts.1 It did not explicitly tie those accounts to Russian actors. Instead, it shut down those accounts after updating its tools for identifying fake accounts, adding flags on accounts that, for instance, repeatedly post the same content or suddenly produce a spike in activity.

That means the French example is not directly comparable to the election ads purchased by accounts that Facebook connected to Russia. Facebook is not asserting that those 470 accounts represent the totality of fake accounts on the platform. They’re merely the accounts Facebook has so far linked to Russia. That said, Warner's point is well taken: Without more information on how Facebook found those accounts, it’s impossible to know what the company may have missed.

ProPublica recently found that it’s possible to target ads on Facebook to categories of people who identify as “Jew haters” and other anti-Semitic terms. How does that relate to this?

These are distinct issues, but there is some overlap. ProPublica recently reported that it had purchased $30 of ads targeted at users Facebook thought might be interested in terms like “Jew hater,” “how to burn Jews,” and “why Jews ruin the world.” Facebook’s advertising tool had scraped these terms from users' profiles and turned them into categories advertisers could target. Those categories were a tiny subset of the 2 billion Facebook users, but ProPublica showed that it could assemble such a cohort and send its members targeted ads in 15 minutes. Facebook temporarily changed its ad tool to prevent these user-generated terms from being turned into advertising categories.

The company views this as a separate issue from Russian ads. And yet both incidents point to a lack of oversight of Facebook’s advertising platform. The reason Russians could easily buy political ads to sway US voters is the same reason anyone can target ads to neo-Nazis: Facebook’s advertising systems are largely automated, and anyone can set up an ad campaign with little human oversight from Facebook.

In September, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg issued a statement saying Facebook had restored the ability of advertisers to target user-generated terms but had taken measures to weed out the bad ones. It's also adding additional human oversight to the process of selling ads and is setting up a system through which anyone can report abuses of the ad tool. Something tells us they're in for an onslaught.

1UPDATED 9/27/2017, 9:57 AM: This story has been updated to include additional information from Senator Warner.

UPDATED 10/17/2017, 6:02 PM: This story has been updated to reflect developments since it was initially published.