Facebook said on Wednesday it had found that an influence operation likely based in Russia spent $100,000 US on ads promoting divisive social and political messages in a two-year-period through May. Facebook, the dominant social media network, said that many of the ads promoted 470 "inauthentic" accounts and pages that it has now suspended. Facebook did not print the names of any of the suspended pages, but some of them included such words as "refugee" and "patriot." White paperMore than $1 billion was spent on digital political ads during the 2016 presidential campaign, 10,000 times the amount identified by Facebook's security team. Beyond the issue ads, Facebook said it uncovered $50,000 more in overtly political advertising that might have a link to Russia.

Source: CBC News September 06, 2017 20:48 UTC