Most of Divisive Facebook Ads Were Paid for by ‘Suspicious’ Groups
- Study finds little public information on 2016 ad buyers
- One-sixth of ad buyers with little paper trail tied to Russia
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More than half of the sponsors of ads on Facebook that featured divisive political messages ahead of the 2016 presidential election have little or no public paper trails, according to a study from researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
One-sixth of those ad buyers with little background information were linked to Russia, according to the study released Monday. Researchers examined 5 million ads encountered from Sept. 28 to Nov. 8, 2016, by about 9,500 volunteers, who were chosen to represent the demographics and partisan affiliations of U.S. voters. The ads were captured by special software in the participant’s web browsers.