
All images of the Facebook ads Russians purchased during the election - JeremyMorgan
https://www.documentingreality.com/forum/russian-ads/
======
eric_h
This is really a pretty fascinating example of psyops in the wild. Propaganda
for both "tribes" assembled in opposition over various issues in order to sow
more division between them. Imagery clearly designed to influence with
emotion, twisting the dials of fear, anger and pride in the audience.

The power to disseminate information (or disinformation) is not one that
should be taken lightly. It seems that most of the human race was deployed to
production with a pretty critical RCE vulnerability, and the patches available
(education in its various forms) do not appear to be sufficient to protect the
whole system from corruption.

~~~
dilap
how are these any different than the standard appeal to emotion arguments that
groups make in good faith? e.g., why is an ad trying to raise awareness about
black lives matter from russia any different than an ad trying to raise
awareness about black lives matter from black lives matter?

> The power to disseminate information (or disinformation) is not one that
> should be taken lightly.

curious to know if you believe the power to disseminate info should be
regulated by the govt.

~~~
jryan49
Some of the ads I was reading were would take extreme stances that make the
other side get a distorted view of a group. I saw an LGBT ad from Russia that
suggested we make it illegal for heterosexuals to adopt. This would do damage
to said movements in that people will ignore their legitimate messages as well
when them deem them extremists.

~~~
alexandercrohde
Could you link that one? I can't seem to find it

~~~
jryan49
This was the image I was talking about:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/buDyxBhuwEgTWpgvuiE_w...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/buDyxBhuwEgTWpgvuiE_wMVI6D4=/1484x0/arc-
anglerfish-washpost-prod-
washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/JGYIJPRTN47INP4WM3QAM7EY64.png)

in this washington post article
([https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/10/t...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/10/these-
are-the-most-popular-russian-facebook-ads-from-each-
month/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.70c7820d2adf))

------
RIMR
Does anybody have a source that isn't a gore site?

With that said: Do not visit the root domain if you don't like seeing lots of
mutilated dead people.

~~~
slipperymate
[https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/facebook-
ads/social...](https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/facebook-ads/social-
media-advertisements.htm)

~~~
Natsu
I found this imgur album easier to read than individual PDFs:

[https://imgur.com/a/ZjQ3PLS](https://imgur.com/a/ZjQ3PLS)

The WaPo also has them sorted by popularity:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/10/t...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/10/these-
are-the-most-popular-russian-facebook-ads-from-each-month/)

------
mieseratte
Having seen my fair share of vitriolic content during the past election cycle,
most of these images honestly seem quiet tame.

~~~
minitel
I think the point is that they pander to both sides of any argument to
increase the divide and lessen the chances of society making a sane
compromise. Much more effective than just spewing insanity and hyperbole.

Extreme progressives would destabilize the country by setting up structural
racism and sexism in order to achieve "equity", dissolving borders, gutting
the police, and over taxing companies.

Extreme rightists would destabilize the country by repealing too much of the
social safety net, closing down the country to immigrants, militarizing the
police, and letting companies behave anti-socially with no repercussions.

Our enemies are smart to try to push us into embracing extreme policies.
Either way they win. Because when our institutions start to fail we won't be
able to project power anymore. It will draw us off of the world stage to some
extent.

~~~
stefan_
Nothing could ever make compromise more unlikely than a winner take all voting
system that has then predictably created exactly two parties whose followers
again following the incentives rarely have an original though beyond "the
enemy of my enemy is my friend".

~~~
15155
> winner take all voting system

It was pretty entertaining watching people complain about the electoral
college system in the 2016 election.

"Why should someone in Wyoming have more of a vote than someone in
California!?!"

No mention of winner takes all, though: that would enable a certain basket of
deplorables in CA to vote (and have it mean something.)

~~~
kolpa
You're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.

The State of California has __passed a law __declaring its opposition to
"winner take all".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact)

~~~
smackmybishop
I'm fascinated to know how you think that's in opposition to "winner take
all."

------
ballenf
Any ideas how prohibiting these types of ads next election cycle will pass
constitutional muster? Most were several steps removed from references to any
election. And non-citizens residents are generally held to have rights under
the 1st Amendment
([https://www.google.com/search?q=non+citizens+1st+amendment](https://www.google.com/search?q=non+citizens+1st+amendment))

Or will it just be Facebook blocking them by way of policy?

~~~
eric_h
> Or will it just be Facebook blocking them by way of policy?

How do you even formulate the policy? Sure, you can ban/annotate the ads that
are specifically about Clinton or Trump, but where do you draw the line?

The fascinating thing about these ads is that most of them plucked on the
political strings of the audience indirectly.

~~~
alexandercrohde
You require people to identify themselves when purchasing ads / displaying
ads.

The ads pretending to be radical American extreme views are less effective
when you learn it's Sergei in St. Petersburg posting...

~~~
eric_h
I'm sure a foreign intelligence service will be stopped by identification
requirements...

~~~
alexandercrohde
Your sarcasm isn't convincing or appreciated.

------
jonpon
I see a bunch of the pictures they advertised organized events. How did that
work if these ads and supposedly pages were run by Russians? Were those events
real? Who showed up? Who organized the protest on the ground?

~~~
johnpowell
Yes.. People showed up and got fighty.

And this is a tiny blip compared to hacking into the DNC's email servers. I
see a lot of these ads are stupid and people totally think that was all there
was. The ads were the part of the iceberg you can see.

~~~
RIMR
Yeah, the ads were just the content they paid for. This doesn't take into
account all the sockpuppet accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Reddit that were
designed to swing conversations in the direction they wanted them to go.

Also, link aggregator sites (like our very own HN) are susceptible to vote
manipulation, which can promote the content the attackers want, and demote the
content they don't want.

These ads were just to rope people in. You can see that "Black Matters" has
200k+ members. Those are people who are now getting information directly from
the Kremlin on their feeds now.

~~~
the_cat_kittles
i cannot believe we still havent seen a major news story on reddit. the night
and day takeover of the_donald was very obvious to me. i wish someone would
write an in depth piece on the nature, scale and timeline of the operation
there.

~~~
stevenwoo
Not a major news source but online sources already broke it and reddit
responded to those reports a year after the election.

[https://www.thedailybeast.com/reddit-check-out-our-
russian-t...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/reddit-check-out-our-russian-
trolls-accounts-2)

[https://www.inquisitr.com/4790689/reddits-the_donald-was-
one...](https://www.inquisitr.com/4790689/reddits-the_donald-was-one-of-the-
biggest-havens-for-russian-propaganda-during-2016-election-analysis-finds/)

------
nodesocket
All Americans on both sides should be outraged at Russia. Their goal is to
further divide us via social media and thus news which they have been
extremely successful at.

This idea of misinformation, mallace, trolling, psychological warfare is the
single most issue about technology that makes me uneasy and nervous.

~~~
paulcole
Can we be outraged at ourselves for falling for this bullshit?

~~~
nodesocket
No, even some of the "quote" smartest people I know fall for it. It's a
seperate part of the brain. That's why I always try facts > emotion
politically.

------
jbuzbee
The wording on many of these ads is odd. In hindsight they are clearly written
by a non-native english writer, but perhaps the Facebook audience is used to
awkward writing by their peers?

~~~
Nydhal
This is an indicator of a large scale operation. Scaling an operation entails
a degree of tolerance to the degradation in the quality of the product,
especially when the marginal benefit from quantity significantly exceeds that
of quality.

Cyber space is a high leverage domain which rules out the possibility of a
shortage in resources from the opponent. It is also a recent evolving space
which makes it more difficult to assess the opponents capabilities, reach and
sophistication.

By its nature this operation seems to be part of a bigger destabilisation
strategy, maybe a stress test to validate different tactics.

I would be really worried once the ads become well written which would
increase the complexity of the situation since quality measures can be
manipulated.

In other words once they can fake "fake news", things might get really weird.

------
newsat13
That was anti-climatic. How exactly did these ads sway the election? In fact,
many of them are pro-gay and have liberal idea.

~~~
ufmace
I don't think their goal was actually to sway the election. They know well
enough that their work is pocket change compared to what both parties'
campaigns and ordinary American activists on both sides already do. What they
want to do is increase the divisions in our society. The more we fight each
other, the less political "bandwidth" we have to project power
internationally.

If both parties are unified in pursuit of one goal, then we may act vigorously
on it over the long term through the course of multiple changes in which party
controls what. If both parties can't stand each other enough to cooperate on
anything, then foreign policy and behavior will be half-hearted pushes in
constantly changing directions.

Russia can't and doesn't want to control us entirely. They do want us to not
interfere effectively in their attempts to control the neighboring Eastern
European states.

------
rubycowgames
Would be great if FB released the audience targeting data associated with
these images. Context and audience matters when it comes to advertising.

~~~
ripdog
See the WaPo post:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/10/t...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/10/these-
are-the-most-popular-russian-facebook-ads-from-each-
month/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f3193924c613)

Each image includes some targeting info.

------
mythrwy
Is it just me or does Q3 2017 have the same ad 5 out of 8 times?

Also is it just me or does the domain "documentingreality.com" sound like it's
probably going to document something else.

~~~
seba_dos1
It sounds like that, however, if you check the root of that domain you will
see that it's a forum for gore photos and videos from real accidents, deaths
or medical conditions, so the domain name is somewhat proper :P

------
vivekd
What's interesting is who they targeted - they targeted right wing patriotic
movements as well as left wing gay rights groups and minorities who may feel
disenfranchised like Muslims and blacks. It's as if they looked at America's
very polarized and heated political environment and saw it as an opportunity
to create division.

------
alexandercrohde
So there are few distinct elements to this, that we should think about
independently.

A - Is this type of advertising scary? [Really all this post is about]

B - Did Russia try to change the election?

C - Did they succeed?

My thoughts:

A - It is to me.

B - As far as I understand, this is conclusively yes, based on the fact that
multiple politicians have plead guilty to collaborating. [1]

C - I don't know. For me it's not about that.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Counsel_investigation_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Counsel_investigation_\(2017%E2%80%93present\)#Criminal_charges)

~~~
creaghpatr
No politician/Russian has pled guilt to collaborating (which is not a real
crime) the closest thing they have charged is conspiracy to defraud and I
expect they will have to drop those in the long run, you should read the
charges more carefully.

~~~
alexandercrohde
Rick Gates plead guilty of conspiracy to defraud the United States, however it
appears that's not Trump related.

I think it may be correct to pick on some of the details, but as far as I can
tell there's overwhelming evidence that Russian agents tried to influence the
election, and anybody who denies that I assume does so for partisan reasons.

------
codedokode
Russia was allegedly buying pro-LGBT ads? Surprising.

Also there are several posts with russian text on the picture like this one
[1].

But this doesn't look like a state-level operation. A single person could
easily make all those pictures.

[1] [https://www.documentingreality.com/forum/russian-
ads/2015-Q2...](https://www.documentingreality.com/forum/russian-
ads/2015-Q2/P\(1\)0001844-00000002.jpg)

------
Grue3
Fun fact: this site is currently blocked in Russia by Roskomnadzor.

------
telltruth
Why were Russians doing ads to support democratic cause? I thought it was
strongly believed that they wanted Trump to win. Doing some divisive thing to
get some sort of twisted outcome feels like far out conspiracy. That bring me
to question: how much confidence do we have these are Russian state sponsored
ad?

~~~
peoplewindow
I was wondering how far down I'd have to scroll to find the first sensible
comment. Congrats.

The internal logic of these claims is non-existent. During the actual campaign
Hillary and her supporters were convinced Russia (the generic bogeyman of the
western establishment everywhere) was shilling for Trump. After all Trump was
a lot more friendly and Hillary was stating that she'd shoot Russian planes
out of the sky over Syria, so such a motive would have at least made sense.

Now that whole narrative fell apart entirely. We have the head of famously
anti-gay and conservative Russia posting LGBT memes and supporting Hillary,
despite the risk of war between Russia and America should she have won.

Yet, the desire to _believe_ is so strong, that like all conspiracy theories
it's simply morphed into whatever the smallest step to fitting with new
information is, that preserves the core. Now it's all a genius plan to "sow
division" by posting pictures of fox statues made of shotgun cartridges. Quite
why Russia specifically benefits from generalised "division" or why US culture
needed help being divided is left unexplained.

This is exactly the behaviour you'd expect to see if people with strong
motivations were looking at noise. Leading us to your last question:

 _how much confidence do we have these are Russian state sponsored ad?_

We only appear to have Facebook's word for it. But you have to watch out. One
of the subtle ways this conspiracy theory tends to morph and warp is the
distinction between the Russian government and Russians. Even in the headline
of this thread, note that it's "Russians" and not "the Russian government".

There are liberal Russians. There are conservative Russians. There are 144
million Russians, a little under half the population of the USA itself. If
even 0.1% of them decided they cared about the globally-famous US election,
and if Facebook had simply selected "ads paid for by Russians", then this is
exactly what you would see - a mishmash of stuff with no unifying theme or
agenda.

Or Facebook could have just made a mistake. The government asked them to find
evidence of Russian interference, and let's face it, going back with "there's
nothing there you are all delusional" is not a good political strategy. I'm
sure they felt they had to find _something_.

------
ithilglin909
I’m sincerely at a loss for how most/many of these could have influenced the
election. Part of me think that Congress is making mistakes and Putin is
scrolling through these, laughing hysterically that we actually think he’d pay
for this nonsense.

~~~
RIMR
The ads were mostly for Facebook groups. Once those groups had a substantial
subscribership, the Russians were able to push out far more vitriolic
propaganda without having to pay for the audience.

The ads are just the tip of the iceberg.

~~~
c-smile
Repeating "just the tip of the iceberg" three times in this discussion already
looks like programming of public opinion kind of thing. Without proof of any
sort.

That trick is as old as the Church that invented it for the obvious purpose.

That's like "election meddling" repeated on CNN 10 times per day just to
convince people "it was something but we will not tell you what".

UPDATE: here is the story of the same trick used while ago:
[https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/meet-guy-sims-fitch-a-
fake-w...](https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/meet-guy-sims-fitch-a-fake-writer-
invented-by-the-us-g-1787060769)

------
ghba66
Why are they in this format? They look like my grandma took a screenshot,
pasted the image in a Word document and then printed it

~~~
cddotdotslash
Because the Democrats on the congressional committee that released them
released them as 300+ MB PDFs. This site just printed them all as images and
posted as-is.

------
HoppedUpMenace
All of these ads shared one thing in common... They appealed to ignorance and
the uneducated across every demographic, and it worked.

------
zerostar07
i wonder if this release is going to be the turning point for the current
facebook anti-hype cycle? the ads don't paint such a horrible picture as it
was supposed to be.

~~~
Cowicide
Yep, a picture of SpongeBob made me vote for Bernie instead of Hillary. Had
nothing to do with her record or anything.

~~~
RIMR
You're trying to make a psychological argument against a sociological effect.

No, a single Spongebob meme didn't sway your vote. This is obvious.

But hundreds of thousands little manipulations of social media did have ripple
effects throughout existing communities, and created a more divisive political
atmosphere that absolutely could sway peoples votes.

For example: Hillary doesn't really have all that bad a political history. She
wasn't a great candidate, but she also wasn't the "Killary" character right-
wing media portrays her as. You, however, think that "her record" is self-
explanatory, because you keep hearing people talk about her as if she were the
antichrist.

I would be curious to hear about "her record" from you, but I suspect you're
just going to bring up Benghazi, Uranium One, her e-mails, or maybe even
Pizzagate to explain why she was unelectable. This, in the end, just
illustrates the point that repeating misinformation constantly will convince
people that it is the truth.

At the end of the day, propaganda divided the DNC into two camps and turn
those camps against each other, destroying any sense of unity during the
election. You chose a side, it ended up being the losing side, and the whole
debacle likely cost the Democrats the White House, yet you're still unable to
see that you were played.

~~~
mistermann
How do you know so much about this person, are you aquaintances in real life?

~~~
mistermann
-2? What is happening to this website?

"This, in the end, just illustrates the point that repeating misinformation
constantly will convince people that it is the truth."

"You chose a side, it ended up being the losing side, and the whole debacle
likely cost the Democrats the White House, yet you're still unable to see that
you were played."

These "observations" are in fact 100% imagined.

~~~
jessaustin
_What is happening to this website?_

Lots of brigading, of both comments and votes, on this thread. Just look at
all the phrases that are constantly repeated. I thought this set of images
would somehow inspire a different set of responses, especially since it came
from "documentingreality.com", but in future I will just flag and move on.

~~~
mistermann
I wonder how many people are now living in some sort of a self-made imaginary
world.

~~~
jessaustin
I'd be happy if these were "self-made" imaginary worlds. That would at least
be interesting, and the average of a bunch of random steps from reality is
probably something pretty close to reality. Most of these individuals seem to
be living in the same obviously-false war-media-created imaginary world, so in
aggregate they're very far from reality.

------
John_KZ
Is there any indication of any sort that this content isn't just random ads?
Do I have to just take your word for it?

~~~
icebraining
slipperymate posted the direct link to the official release:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17051425](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17051425)

------
heartbreak
The complete and utter _intentional_ lack of understanding of the current
Russian influence campaign, the ongoing congressional investigations, and the
special council investigation in this thread is appalling.

Once upon a time I thought HN was:

A) Well-informed, and

B) Not a place for political discussion.

Honestly if you can’t find fact from fiction in news articles, just read the
damn source documents. You’d probably find it fascinating, instead of just
something to dismiss as a bunch of politically-motivated time-wasting.

I know this comment is against the guidelines, but so is nearly every single
comment on this story.

~~~
gfodor
Your comment may have been cathartic but it basically leaves me wondering what
you are talking about? Which source documents? What "understanding?" So far
the press's reporting on this has been appalling, and in general the public
has been kept in the dark.

~~~
severine
[https://www.2016activemeasures.org/](https://www.2016activemeasures.org/)

------
lucb1e
> These are images of the Facebook ads the Russians purchased to try and alter
> the 2016 U.S. Election. These were released from Congress

And what does congress base this on? Looking through a bunch, they don't seem
to favor either Hillary or Donald... is it supposed to prove that the
elections weren't tampered with? Or am I missing something?

Edit: managed to find one! Against Donald:
[https://www.documentingreality.com/forum/russian-
ads/2016-Q4...](https://www.documentingreality.com/forum/russian-
ads/2016-Q4/P\(1\)0004791-00000002.jpg)

Edit 2: Oh and 2017-Q3 has a lot in favor of Donald's wall and poses Hillary
as satan (for no apparent reason). Perhaps that's the proof? By far the
smallest album of them all? I am not saying I don't believe the Russians
influenced the elections, but I do not see anything obvious for or against in
this dataset, either.

~~~
astrodust
The goal was to sow division, disrupt the entire process, and in the chaos
their preferred candidate could thrive.

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
I think more division, disruption, and chaos was caused by the people freaking
out over Russian influence than by the actual Russian influence.

~~~
lamarpye
Good thing that the media and their multiple layers of fact-checkers and
editors didn't fall for the Russian's evil plan. They have learned a lot since
the 30's and the Cold War.

~~~
the-pigeon
> multiple layers of fact-checkers

Not sure if you are being sarcastic or not. One of the worst things to come
from modern media is that editors do not fact check because they want to break
the story before anyone else and fact checking takes time.

This has lead to tons of quiet retractions.

~~~
lamarpye
I was being sarcastic. The media, IMO, has learned little. They are useful
idiots.

