Facebook: Russian ads reached 10 million people

[applegrove]

Facebook: Russian ads reached 10 million people

By Dylan Byers October 3, 2017 at CNN

http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/02/media/facebook-russian-ads-10-million/index.html?sr=twCNN100317facebook-russian-ads-10-million0940AMStory

"SNIP.....

Facebook says an estimated 10 million people in the U.S. saw at least one of the 3,000 political ads it says were bought by accounts linked to the Russian government.

The figure, disclosed by Facebook for the first time on Monday, underscores how effective Russian meddling on social media could be with even a minimal investment.

The ad buyers spent just $100,000 over two years to target 10 million people, according to figures Facebook has provided about the ad buys. That's an audience roughly equivalent to the population of Michigan.

More than half of the ads were seen after the 2016 presidential election, indicating that Russian efforts went well beyond meddling during the campaign and may continue to this day.

.....SNIP"

[Not Ruth]

1. Facebook should be able to provide a list of those 10 million names and all other related data

Location, what other pages and ads they have seen, get the warrant out.

[Orrex]

2. What would that accomplish?

Why should those 10 million people be named?

[Not Ruth]

3. So that they and their Facebook friends can see how the ads changed their votes

[Orrex]

4. It's none of their friends' business

And if they were targeted, so what? If a person chooses the incompetent idiot racist fuckhead over one of the most qualified candidates in the history of the presidential race, then the fault lies not with the add but with the idiot who voted for the idiot.

[Not Ruth]

5. Then ads would have no purpose, we need to see the weak minds that were targeted, the world needs to

[Orrex]

6. Might as well outlaw all ads, then

Their whole purpose is to cast their product in a favorable light while making the alternative seem inferior.

I'm not comfortable with the "weak minds" label. How many "weak minds" do you think were affected? Did these "weak minds" defect to Trump in sufficient numbers to throw the election? How would these "weak minds" have voted in the absence of these ads?

[applegrove]

7. Give it privatly to the investigators.

[Orrex]

8. To what end?

Either the recipients of the ads were swayed by the ads, or they were not. Who the recipients voted for is none of the investigators' business, nor can it be claimed with any certainty that a given person voted a particular way because of their exposure to these ads.

It would be a pointless witch hunt that would mostly likely serve no purpose except to reduce voter turnout next time around.