Apart from Web marketers and media-company employees, few seem to be fully aware of how influential Facebook can be. Sixty-six percent of U.S. Facebook users admit that they get news from the site, a number that in the end amounts to 44 percent of the general U.S. population. Here’s where a seemingly minor ad buy becomes alarming. One hundred dollars in Facebook ads could deliver a buyer’s message to thousands of viewers, whose further sharing would allow it to ripple out exponentially. Russia spent at least $100,000 on Facebook ads because of Americans’ known susceptibility to partisan division, our willingness to outsource the work of analysis to social-media algorithms and our tendency to not think too hard about what we see.

Source: Washington Post September 11, 2017 12:33 UTC