Facebook refuses to disclose political ads bought by Russian trolls to Congress

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Facebook, which acknowledged this week that it sold $100,000 worth of political ads in the last two years to accounts linked to a Russian troll factory, came under stinging criticism Thursday over its refusal to release copies of the ads to the public — or to congressional investigators.

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After denying for months that any Russian entities purchased ads on Facebook during last year’s election, the social media giant has admitted that it belatedly discovered that some 470 phony accounts linked to a shadowy St. Petersburg media firm with ties to the Kremlin. The firm allegedly placed ads on highly charged issues in American politics, such as LGBT and gun rights — ads that in some cases explicitly mentioned Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and the 2016 election.

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Facebook officials acknowledged the existence of the ads in a closed-door briefing for investigators for the House and Senate intelligence committees. The company showed what it described as some samples of the ads, but didn’t turn them over to investigators or release them to the media. Facebook said making the ads public would violate its strict privacy rules — even thought it acknowledges that most, if not all, of the accounts in question were registered under fake names and nonexistent entities and have since been removed from Facebook’s platform.

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“I think this is shocking,” said Ron Fein, legal director for Free Speech for People, one of two campaign finance groups that have already filed complaints with the FEC seeking an investigation into Russian government spending on last year’s election. “Facebook has another thing coming if it thinks it can use its self-created privacy rules to prevent an honest accounting of what happened in the 2016 election,” Fein said.

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Potter said in an interview, “These advertisements were directed to the public, so they’ve already been put up publicly. And if they showed samples of the ads to investigators, they’ve already violated their confidentiality rules.”

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