Russian ads on Facebook tried to infuriate Hispanics
SAN FRANCISCO – In the months after Donald Trump rode to victory while calling for mass deportations, Russian operatives bought dozens of Facebook ads targeting the Hispanic community in an effort to further inflame tensions roiled by the campaign’s rhetoric, according to a USA TODAY analysis.
Thousands of ads released by House Democrats this month showed Russian operatives focused on race during the presidential election to try to amplify divisions.
They didn’t stop there. In the first half of 2017, as Trump moved to restrict immigration, fake Facebook pages set up by a Russian propaganda
operation pushed ads on both sides of the immigration debate.
One set of ads targeted users who had showed an interest in Hispanic and Latino culture with pro-immigration messages. Another set zeroed in on Trump supporters with an interest in deportation or illegal immigration with exhortations to “stop the invaders.”
The aim? To stir outrage, propaganda expert James Ludes says.
“Because at the end of the day, the Russians don’t really care what the policy is, they care about the divisiveness that the issue itself engenders,” says Ludes, vice president for public research and initiatives at Salve Regina University. “They want to amp up the divisiveness and give it as loud a voice as they possibly can.”
Destabilize democracy
A USA TODAY review of all 3,500 ads found that hundreds of them related to immigration or targeted Hispanics. Those ads were seen by hundreds of thousands of Americans.
Like the Facebook campaigns that targeted African Americans to heighten tensions over racism and police brutality during the presidential election, stoking resentment among Latinos was part of the Russians’ strategy to destabilize American democracy, says Nicholas Cull, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and author of The Cold War and the United States Information Agency.
“(The Russians) were in it for the long game. Their objective was not to see Trump elected president but to see the United States undermined by its own political inconsistencies and divisions,” Cull says. “The Russians don’t want a happy Trump presidency. They are not Trump’s friends. They want the American system to fail.”
Hispanics turned out in record numbers to vote against Trump, who had accused Mexicans of being “rapists,” vowed to build a wall on the border with Mexico and swiftly deport “bad hombres” and disparaged a Hispanic judge.
Latino leaders in the USA organized against Trump and his policies, recruiting candidates to run for local and na- tional office and urging support for “sanctuary cities” that limit cooperation with federal authorities seeking to detain immigrants. In February 2017, Latinos walked off the job in a national “Day Without Immigrants.”
Trump’s threat to scrap Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, an Obama-era program that shields nearly 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the USA as children from deportation, provided more ammunition for the Russians’ Facebook campaign.
In May, operatives recirculated authentic social media posts by Hispanics in graduation caps bearing defiant messages. One of those was an Instagram post from a young woman graduating from UCLA, her cap emblazoned with the words “Job-stealing immigrant.” The post went viral and was spotted by the Russians, who made an ad out of it.
Ad transparency
Facebook’s new rules requiring disclosures for political ads took effect Thursday in the USA, a step company executives say is critical to prevent Russian operatives and other bad actors from meddling in midterm elections.
A “paid for by” label will be slapped on Facebook and Instagram ads. Clicking on the ad will take Facebook users to a page that provides information on how much the ad cost and whom it reached.
Advertisers will have to verify their identity and location before buying political messages, whether they’re ads for candidates or on matters such as immigration.
“Our intent is trying to help people understand who is trying to influence them on political and social issues and why,” said Katie Harbath, Facebook’s global politics and government outreach director.
The targeting of Hispanics on Facebook began in December 2016, when Russian operatives spent nearly 60,000 rubles, about $1,000, on an ad promoting a “Brown Power” page as “a platform designed to educate, entertain and connect Chicanos in the US,” according to information released by Facebook to Congress.
The ad was viewed almost 1 million times.
“Brown Power” displayed a clenched fist surrounded by Mexican flags and mimicked the tone and content of Facebook accounts belonging to legitimate Hispanic activists.
The ads on the page promoted interests identified by Facebook as “Mexican pride,” “lowrider,” “Hispanidad” and “La Raza” and embraced Internet memes about deportation and other hot-button issues. Many ads were viewed tens of thousands of times, some hundreds of thousands of times.
One ad showed a man hiking through the desert in a straw hat, carrying a backpack and a jug of water: “Mi papa cruzaria 100 fronteras para darme una vida mejor,” or “My dad would cross 100 borders to give me a better life.”
Another condemned the deportation of an Afghanistan War veteran: “Miguel Perez is a real hero, who was betrayed by America. When will we have real justice in this country?”
An ad aimed at users on the other side of the immigration argument showed a mug shot of a Mexican accused of raping a 13-year-old on a Greyhound bus, alleging he had been deported from the USA 19 times. “19 times!!! That’s why we need a wall,” the ad read.
A new twist, an old tactic
The Russian use of social media is a new twist on Cold War-era tactics, says Eduardo Gamarra, a professor of politics and international relations at Florida International University who tracks Russian propaganda activity in Latin America.
Moscow’s efforts to deepen racial and ethnic unease in the USA go back decades, when intelligence operatives posed as American political activists and took out ads in newspapers, posted fliers or arranged meetings.
Nearly three-quarters of U.S. Latino adults who are online use Facebook, by far their favorite social network, according to the Pew Research Center.
Three-quarters of them get their news from the Internet, nearly equal to the share who get their news from television.
“It’s a community already predisposed to use Internet technology for communication,” says Matt Barreto, cofounder of the polling and research firm Latino Decisions. “Perhaps that makes us more vulnerable to these Russian infiltration attempts.”
“The Russians have been looking at how they could not only disturb how the U.S. elections are run but how they could exacerbate tensions within different groups in the U.S.,” Gamarra says. “The Russians essentially have one goal: They would like to see an ungovernable United States. Their view is that the more racial and ethnic tension we have in the U.S., the less governable it is going to be.”