TBT: Hillary Clinton Told Us All About Russian Targeted Facebook Ad Buy Three Months Ago [View all]

[DonViejo]

by Colby Hall | 8:50 am, September 7th, 2017

This may end up being one of the most criminally overlooked stories of the year…

Yesterday Facebook confirmed a Washington Post report that they sold roughly $100,000 of targeted ads on its platform, that was connected to hundreds of troll accounts and pages operated out of Russia. It’s a big news story that’s launched thousands of breathless blog posts, but for anyone who watched Hillary Clinton speak at the Code conference in May, it’s old news.

On May 31st, Secretary Clinton covered a number of topics in a casual and candid Q&A: the e-mail scandal being “the biggest nothing-burger ever,” and how, in terms of voter registration and marketing data, she “inherited nothing” from an outdated DNC data operation. But more relevant to this story, she also gave a logical and dispassionate account of how Russian interference might have partnered with US Data operations — namely the RNC and Cambridge Analytica — to effectively undermine her bid for the White House.

In the clip above (courtesy of MSNBC), Clinton opened by extensively raving about the RNC’s state-of-the-art data operation, before then mentioning links to data mining outfit Cambridge Analytica, which is owned by Billionaire Trump supporter Robert Mercer (which has also been linked to current White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon.) Working together, Secretary Clinton said, created a powerful force “that married content with delivery and data. And it was a potent combination.”

When asked by co-Host Walt Mossberg about the “lies” surrounding “fake news,” Clinton replied:

Lies? You’re really … that’s a good word too [laughter and applause]. The other side was using content that was just flat-out false, and delivering it in a very personalized way, both sort of above the radar screen and below. And you know, look, I’m not a tech expert by any stretch of the imagination. That really influenced the information that people were relying on. And there have been some studies done since the election that if you look — let’s pick Facebook. If you look at Facebook, the vast majority of the news items posted were fake. They were connected to, as we now know, the 1,000 Russian agents who were involved in delivering those messages.

They were connected to the bots that are just out of control. We see now this new information about Trump’s Twitter account being populated by millions of bots. And it was such a new experience. I understand why people on their Facebook pages would think, “Oh, Hillary Clinton did that, I did not know that. Well that’s going to affect my opinion about her.” And we did not engage in false content. We may have tried to put every piece of information in the best possible light, and explanations, but we weren’t in the same category as the other side.

more
https://www.mediaite.com/fake-news/tbt-hillary-clinton-has-already-told-us-all-about-russian-targeted-facebook-ad-buy/