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House Democrats release thousands of Russian-linked Facebook ads

Moon said:
No, wasn't asking you to defend it. I'm just curious how many people changed their vote or intention to vote because of them.
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I'm curious too, but that can't be known but we can still observe the reception to that ad campaign instead, and that's still very educational.
 
MTAtech said:
Can anyone imagine what Barry Goldwater or William F. Buckley would think if they learned that today's Republican Party defends Russia's interference in an American election?
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Who's defending it?
 
Moon said:
No, wasn't asking you to defend it. I'm just curious how many people changed their vote or intention to vote because of them.
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Considering that Trump won an electoral college victory by merely 100,000 votes spread over key states, it’s quite easy to imagine that that number of voters were influenced by Russia’s misinformation campaign.
 
MTAtech said:
Considering that Trump won an electoral college victory by merely 100,000 votes spread over key states, it’s quite easy to imagine that that number of voters were influenced by Russia’s misinformation campaign.
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That holds as much water as Trump's claim that millions if illegals voted.
 
Moon said:
Not all ads are effective or have the desired impact. Marketers do research to find out effective their ads are. Instead of assuming the Russian ads influenced the election, it's something that should be quantified. Just seems odd to me that no one wants to answer that question.
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How is a researcher supposed to answer that question in a way you'd accept? With a product, they have monthly sales, which they can compare to prior months, or that month in a prior year, or run them in one city but not another, etc. An election is a one shot and you're done event, and our votes are secret, so even if you could isolate a population who had seen them, you can't tie those ads to a vote. You might tie it to VOTING, and see if ads in an area depressed turnout, and researchers could do focus groups during the election, but who did the focus groups for the Russian ads? Who'd pay that bill?

Etc. Bottom line is we can't know the impact. So what do we do as a country? Say, well, we can't know the answer so we should assume it's roughly 0.0% and say, "F it. Who cares?" Or say we can't know the answer, and the completely obvious approach as a country is to try like hell to prevent it from happening again, because the risk is it did or WILL in the future change an election or many elections? I vote the latter.
 
JasperL said:
How is a researcher supposed to answer that question in a way you'd accept? With a product, they have monthly sales, which they can compare to prior months, or that month in a prior year, or run them in one city but not another, etc. An election is a one shot and you're done event, and our votes are secret, so even if you could isolate a population who had seen them, you can't tie those ads to a vote. You might tie it to VOTING, and see if ads in an area depressed turnout, and researchers could do focus groups during the election, but who did the focus groups for the Russian ads? Who'd pay that bill?

Etc. Bottom line is we can't know the impact. So what do we do as a country? Say, well, we can't know the answer so we should assume it's roughly 0.0% and say, "F it. Who cares?" Or say we can't know the answer, and the completely obvious approach as a country is to try like hell to prevent it from happening again, because the risk is it did or WILL in the future change an election or many elections? I vote the latter.
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I'm for preventing it from happening again, at least as much as we can. I would still like to know the impact the ads had. I agree it would be difficult to figure out, if anyone changed their mind about who to vote for, or their intent to vote based on Facebook ads.
 
Moon said:
I'm for preventing it from happening again, at least as much as we can. I would still like to know the impact the ads had. I agree it would be difficult to figure out, if anyone changed their mind about who to vote for, or their intent to vote based on Facebook ads.
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I'd like to know too, but I know unless the study was done in real time, seems to me it's impossible after the fact - just too many variables, too many unknowns, no good way to determine someone's vote. Heck, even figuring out who saw what ads how many times would be virtually impossible. I don't use Facebook and I saw three of the four in the OP, two of them many times. It was likely either on Twitter or on DP - don't know. That's what the bots did such a good job of doing. Any twitter thread of any length, the bots showed up posting those memes and many others. How does a researcher figure out which ones I saw? Etc.....
 
MTAtech said:
Considering that Trump won an electoral college victory by merely 100,000 votes spread over key states, it’s quite easy to imagine that that number of voters were influenced by Russia’s misinformation campaign.
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only if you can't do simple math. They know the number of people that saw these ads, and I don't think any of the ads got more than 10,000 looks. So if you are very generous and say that 10% of the people who saw the add were influenced by it, that's only like a 1,000 people. So your premise that 100,000 votes could have been effected is crazy.
 
Harshaw said:
Whom exactly do you think these ads influenced, and to do what? I really do want to know.
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Well, considering the ads explicitly state their target is people who watch Fox News....imbeciles.
 
JoeTrumps said:
only if you can't do simple math. They know the number of people that saw these ads, and I don't think any of the ads got more than 10,000 looks. So if you are very generous and say that 10% of the people who saw the add were influenced by it, that's only like a 1,000 people. So your premise that 100,000 votes could have been effected is crazy.
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The operative words above a "I don't think." You have no idea how many people saw these FB posts. You are merely speculating. The reality is that the misinformation campaign was widespread and likely hundreds of thousands of people if not millions say these ads firsthand, and then others saw them when they were 'shared' and forwarded.
 
Cardinal said:
At least one of those ads was shared here. They may have gotten their start on Facebook, but they were definitely passed around by trump supporters throughout the rest of the internet.
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Which one?
 
Cardinal said:
I think a pointed question would be why so many trump supporters energetically disseminated those memes to every corner of the internet.
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You've made the claim and didn't bother supporting it.
 
NonoBadDog said:
So tell me how a 2.5 million dollar budget changed an election that cost almost 2 billion in campaign costs. Both parties would love to know how to do that.
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Right? Do they realize they are arguing against their constant drumbeat of "bought elections"? :roll:
 
Cardinal said:
Where's the evidence that people are influenced by messaging?
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https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/10/hard-questions-russian-ads-delivered-to-congress/

- 44% of total ad impressions (number of times ads were displayed) were before the US election on November 8, 2016; 56% were after the election.

- Roughly 25% of the ads were never shown to anyone. That’s because advertising auctions are designed so that ads reach people based on relevance, and certain ads may not reach anyone as a result.

- For 50% of the ads, less than $3 was spent; for 99% of the ads, less than $1,000 was spent.

- About 1% of the ads used a specific type of Custom Audiences targeting to reach people on Facebook who had visited that advertiser’s website or liked the advertiser’s Page — as well as to reach people who are similar to those audiences. None of the ads used another type of Custom Audiences targeting based on personal information such as email addresses. (This bullet added October 3, 2017.)

- Of the more than 3,000 ads that we have shared with Congress, 5% appeared on Instagram. About $6,700 was spent on these ads (This bullet added October 6, 2017.)



And then you throw in that the ads produced also contain pro-Hillary ads, and your narrative falls apart.
 
A) How is President Trump related to this? B) Lefties, especially those in the media, applauded barry's campaign's use of fb.
 
Napoleon said:
Well, considering the ads explicitly state their target is people who watch Fox News....imbeciles.
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Do you those ads would have changed their votes? As in, do think they were going to vote for Hillary and then decided not to?
 
MTAtech said:
The operative words above a "I don't think." You have no idea how many people saw these FB posts. You are merely speculating. The reality is that the misinformation campaign was widespread and likely hundreds of thousands of people if not millions say these ads firsthand, and then others saw them when they were 'shared' and forwarded.
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So you think those ads would have changed the minds of anyone planning to vote for Hillary? Do tell.
 
hanger4 said:
Considering HRC garnered 389,944 more votes than Obama did in 2012 I'd say very few to none.
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Enough stayed home, compared to 2012, in PA, MI, and WI to turn those states. If she had gotten the same numbers of votes as Obama there, she would have won.
 
jmotivator said:
Right? Do they realize they are arguing against their constant drumbeat of "bought elections"? :roll:
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:shrug: They argue whatever they feel will help them at the moment.
 
OrphanSlug said:
Rally the base? (I really do not know but I still question how many people flipped from Hillary to Trump because of these ads, pictures, memes, what have you.)
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Given the nature of those ads, even if seen frequently by millions before the election (which is far, far, far from the case), it's hard to imagine even one Hillary voter switching because of them.
 
Cardinal said:
I think a pointed question would be why so many trump supporters energetically disseminated those memes to every corner of the internet.
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How many did, and where?

Oh, you "definitely" saw "at least one" of them here on DP? Proof positive for your claim that "so many" "Trump supporters" spread them to the far corners of the Internet.
 
Harshaw said:
So you think those ads would have changed the minds of anyone planning to vote for Hillary? Do tell.
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I think they had an effect on swing voters and those that were on the fence.
 
Harshaw said:
Enough stayed home, compared to 2012, in PA, MI, and WI to turn those states. If she had gotten the same numbers of votes as Obama there, she would have won.
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I'd bet the contentious media drumbeat of HRC's impending win had more to do with that than any FB or Twitter ad.
 
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