Facebook Says Russia Spent Less Than $1 Trying To Interfere In Brexit
Daniel Leal-olivas / AFP / Getty Images
Facebook has said it's found Russian accounts spent less than $1 on just three ads which reached about 200 people, as part of the Kremlin's efforts to interfere with the 2016 EU referendum.
In a letter to the UK electoral commission on Wednesday, Facebook said the same Russian accounts which had reached tens of millions of Americans during the 2016 presidential election had spent just a "small amount of money" trying to interfere with Brexit.
“Further to your request, we have examined whether any of the identified Internet Research Agency (IRA) pages or account profiles funded advertisements to audiences in the United Kingdom during the regulated period for the EU Referendum," read the letter.
"We have determined that these accounts associated with the IRA spent a small amount of money ($0.97) on advertisements that delivered to UK audiences during that time.
"This amount resulted in three advertisements (each of which were also targeted to US audiences and concerned immigration, not the EU referendum) delivering approximately 200 impressions to UK viewers over four days in May 2016.”
Facebook looked at only the 470 accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency, which had been identified by US intelligence services as working as part of Russia's efforts to interfere in last year's US presidential election.
During the US election, the accounts reportedly produced more than 80,000 posts which reached more than 126 million people.
BuzzFeed News understands Facebook will not widen the scope of its investigation, unless new information appears which identifies other Russian-linked accounts – for example from security agencies.
Facebook also didn't provide images, or detailed information about the three ads to the electoral commission.
The information about the three advertisements was also given to the parliament's department for media, culture and sport select committee, which is currently undertaking its own probe into Russian interference in the 2016 referendum and 2017 election.
Other US-based companies have also been asked to find out what Russian-linked interference around the time of the EU referendum by the twin investigations, with Twitter handing over evidence to the Electoral Commission last Friday.