Facebook and Google Helped Anti-Refugee Campaign in Swing States
Source: Bloomberg
The big tech companies worked closely with Secure America Now to target an audience the group felt could be swayed by the message.
By Benjamin Elgin and Vernon Silver
October 18, 2017, 4:00 AM EDT
In the final weeks of the 2016 election campaign, voters in swing states including Nevada and North Carolina saw ads appear in their Facebook feeds and on Google websites touting a pair of controversial faux-tourism videos, showing France and Germany overrun by Sharia law. French schoolchildren were being trained to fight for the caliphate, jihadi fighters were celebrated at the Arc de Triomphe, and the “Mona Lisa” was covered in a burka.
“Under Sharia law, you can enjoy everything the Islamic State of France has to offer, as long as you follow the rules,” intoned the narrator of one ad.
Unlike Russian efforts to secretly influence the 2016 election via social media, this American-led campaign was aided by direct collaboration with employees of Facebook and Google. They helped target the ads to more efficiently reach the intended audiences, according to internal reports from the ad agency that ran the campaign, as well as five people involved with the efforts.
Facebook advertising salespeople, creative advisers and technical experts competed with sales staff from Alphabet Inc.’s Google for millions in ad dollars from Secure America Now, the conservative, nonprofit advocacy group whose campaign included a mix of anti-Hillary Clinton and anti-Islam messages, the people said.
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