Ads show Russia’s US election tricks

Views spanning political spectrum were meant to sow dissension

SAN FRANCISCO – Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee released thousands of Russian Facebook ads on Thursday, offering the public its first indepth look at the troubling messages used to heighten tensions among Americans during and after the 2016 presidential election.

The release of the ads, which Facebook says were purchased by the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency, comes as the giant social network races to tighten restrictions on political ads to head off manipulation of upcoming elections, including this fall’s midterms.

Pressure has intensified since the Justice Department charged 13 Russians and three companies in February, exposing a wide-ranging effort to subvert the election and to support the Trump campaign.

Facebook pages with points of view that span the political spectrum from “Blacktivist” to “Heart of Texas” bought ads. Some of the more than 3,000 ads denounced Donald Trump, others his Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton.

Many of the ads, placed by Russians posing as Americans, didn’t endorse a specific candidate but spread inflammatory messages on sensitive subjects such as immigration and race to amplify divides in American life, targeting users from specific backgrounds and tight races in key states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Virginia.

These negative appeals included a group called Fit Black, which urged people to attend “Black Fist Free Self-Defense Classes.” One from the Army of Jesus encouraged voters to pick a president with “godly morals” and had a picture of Jesus arm-wrestling Satan.

The Facebook ads varied in their reach, with some shared a few hundred times, others more than 1 million times. They ran for just over two years starting in June 2015, increasing in volume in October and November 2016, just before and after the presidential election.

Patterns quickly emerge in sampling the ads. Many of the hundreds of ads placed in April 2016 targeted racial divisions, imitating the language and messaging of the Black Lives Matter movement with posts highlighting racist incidents.

Facebook says it has taken a much more aggressive stance on political and issue ads, forcing people who buy them to verify their identity and location and to reveal publicly who they are.