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Congress Releases 3,500 Russian-Made Facebook Ads

 & Michael Kan Principal Reporter

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You can now view the 3,500 ads that a notorious Russian internet "troll farm" created on Facebook to try and divide Americans.

On Thursday, the House Intelligence Committee released the ads, which reached over 11.4 million Americans in what federal investigators say was part of a Russian attempt to interfere with US democracy.

PCMag viewed some of the ads, and they show how easy it was for Russian agents to ape social causes to rile up groups including blacks, latinos, Trump voters, and gun rights supporters.

"Russia sought to divide us by our race, our country of origin, our religion, and our politics," tweeted US Rep. Adam Schiff, adding: "They sought to harness Americans' very real frustrations and anger over sensitive political matters to influence our thinking, voting and behavior."

Many of the political ads were published under Facebook pages with names such as "Brown United Front," "Woke Blacks" and "Being Patriotic," which pretended to be activist groups.

In addition, the political ads were often dressed up in provocative memes to draw support from their intended audience. Through Facebook's ad system, the Russian agents could target users by interests, like whether they were a fan of Martin Luther King Jr, Latin Hip-Hop, or Fox News personalities such as Sean Hannity.

However, none of the political ads gave any hint they were actually created in Russia. Facebook and federal investigators claim a Russian company called the Internet Research Agency hired hundreds of employees to run the fake social media accounts.

In November, lawmakers released a small sample of the ads, but on Thursday, Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee decided to publish the full batch with the goal of educating the public on the Russian election-meddling efforts. See a sampling below.

On the same day the ads went public, Facebook published a blog post, listing the different actions the company is taking to prevent bad actors from exploiting its ad system again.

The actions include forcing all advertisers to confirm their ID and location before getting access to buy political and issue-based ads in the US. These ads will also clearly state who paid for them.

Facebook has also removed almost one-third of the "targeting segments" the Internet Research Agency used to find the right audiences for its ads.

Nevertheless, the tech giant warned that bad actors will continue looking for way to spread misinformation over Facebook. "This will never be a solved problem because we're up against determined, creative and well-funded adversaries, " it added.

To create the ads, the Russian troll farm registered 470 Facebook pages for their various fake activist groups. All of these pages have been shut down. But in addition to buying political ads, the Russian troll farm published posts over the platform to reach the followers of their Facebook pages. As many as 126 million Facebook users may have been exposed to these posts.

The House Intelligence Committee said on Tuesday that over 80,000 pieces of "organic content" were created by these Russian-controlled pages. The committee intends to make the posts available in the future as well.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.

Ad Impressions: 36,846

Ad Impressions: 33,328

Ad Impressions: 23,334

Ad Impressions: 22,839

Ad Impressions: 14,039

Ad Impressions: 9,306

Ad Impressions: 9,164

Ad Impressions: 1,059

Ad Impressions: 162

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About Our Expert

Michael Kan

Michael Kan

Principal Reporter

My Experience

I've been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I'm currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country's technology sector.

Since 2020, I've covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I've combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink's cellular service.

I also cover cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. In 2024 and 2025, the FTC forced Avast to pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.

I also cover the PC graphics card market. Pandemic-era shortages led me to camp out in front of a Best Buy to get an RTX 3000. I'm now following how the AI-driven memory shortage is impacting the entire consumer electronics market. I'm always eager to learn more, so please jump in the comments with feedback and send me tips.

The Best Tech I've Had:

  • My first video game console: a Nintendo Famicom
  • I loved my Sega Saturn despite PlayStation's popularity.
  • The iPod Video I received as a gift in college
  • Xbox 360 FTW
  • The Galaxy Nexus was the first smartphone I was proud to own.
  • The PC desktop I built in 2013, which still works to this day.

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