Facebook Will Deliver 3,000 Election Ads Bought By Russians To Congress

NEW YORK, NY — Facebook will provide Congress copies of the 3,000 ads it put up during the 2016 election that it now believes were purchased by Russian entities with the goal of influencing the American democratic process, the company announced Thursday.

"We believe it is vitally important that government authorities have the information they need to deliver to the public a full assessment of what happened in the 2016 election," Colin Stretch, general counsel for Facebook, said in a statement. (For more information on this and other political stories, subscribe to the White House Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

Two weeks ago, the company said it sold about $100,000 in political ads to "inauthentic" accounts and pages connected to Russian entities before and after the 2016 election. It reported the findings of its review to U.S. authorities.

Though the ads were political in nature, the company said, most did not specifically mention the 2016 presidential election. Instead, they "appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum — touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights," Facebook said in a press release.

"Disclosing is not something we do lightly under any circumstances," Stretch said. "We are deeply committed to safeguarding our user content, regardless of the user's nationality, and ads are user content."

The statement goes on to note that the Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election — which the intelligence community believes were directed by President Vladimir Putin himself — were "varied and sophisticated."

"We believe the public deserves a full accounting of what happened in the 2016 election," the statement said. The company will continue to investigate the matter.

Facebook's decision is an "important & absolutely necessary first step," tweeted Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat and the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "The American people deserve to know the truth about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election."

"Facebook is all about giving people a voice and bringing them together," Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a live stream Thursday. "Those are democratic values, and we're proud of them. I don't want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy. That's not what we stand for. The integrity of our elections is fundamental to democracy around the world."

After the 2016 election, Zuckerberg originally dismissed the idea that manipulative ads and "fake news" could have impacted the election.

"I think the idea that fake news on Facebook, which is a very small amount of the content, influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea," he said in November 2016.

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