So the latest hysteria is about Russia supposedly placing ads during the US presidential campaign on Facebook.
Let’s stipulate that this is correct, and try not to marvel at the claimed amazing efficiency of the Russian propaganda, managing to sway a US Presidential election with a measly $100K ad buy -
what exactly is the illegality in Russia’s buying ads on Facebook? What US law does it break?
Foreign nationals are prohibited from a variety of election-related activities, including independent expenditures. Cite.
But the issue is not solely about any allegations of criminality. It is also about the foreign policy of another country. To put in a different way, if Canada wanted to mass its troops on our border, such that we become concerned about this aggressive behavior, asking what law Canada is violating is not the pertinent question.
Your cite defines it as “an expenditure for a communication that expressly advocates the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate”.
From the description of the ads, they did not mention the candidates at all. They were “about divisive social and political issues” as The Guardian puts it. So do they fall under that law?
This was a $100K ad buy in a $6B political season. To follow your analogy, this would be like a squad of 10 Canadian soldiers “massing” on our borders.
Look, I am reasonably sure you’re “just asking questions” because you’ve clearly already formed your opinion regardless of what anyone might say. If you want to read the text of the law, it’s in the link I provided, and it provides more detail about independent expenditures.
So if you want the facts, there they are. But since you want to argue why your bias is right and anyone else is wrong, go have fun with yourself.
No, I want to find out if there was anything illegal about the ad buy. None of the articles I have seen mention whether the ad buy was illegal or not. Congress and media are hyping this to no end. Will they have to make new laws against something like this?
I mean, here’s a Facebook office receiving an ad request. Do they have to run it past some kind of “compliance” lawyers to approve it? Should Facebook reject any ads about a “divisive social or political issue” just to be safe?
If any of the ads specifically advocated for or against a candidate they were illegal. If they more generally attempted to influence the election with non-specific ads about, say immigration or gay marriage, they may or may not have been illegal. It depends if there is a link between those types of ads and a specific campaign.
If a candidate’s team coordinated in any way with foreign governments or nationals, for example providing them information that helped to target particular segments of the population with such ads, that would be illegal even if they didn’t specifically advocate for or against a candidate.
Since Facebook has only just recently agreed to share this kind of information with congress it remains to be seen which, if any, laws were broken.
We know that Russian government and policies are pretty homophobic. So - let’s say they placed ads against gay marriage. You don’t know whether they did that because they wanted to influence US audiences against gay marriage or if it was because they wanted people to vote for Trump (even though I can’t find any negative comment from Trump about gay marriage during the campaign). Who decides whether it meets the illegality requirement of that law? How do these ads come to the attention of such a decider?
Another question: let’s take a hypothetical that clearly violates that law - Russian government, through a fake account, places a “Vote for Trump” ad on Facebook. Obviously Russian government cannot be charged or indicted for the illegality. Can Facebook?
If you see an ad that says: “The video Hillary Clinton does not want you to see.” it influences you even if you don’t click on it because now you “know” that there’s a video that HC doesn’t want you to see.
If it turns out to be illegal, that’s important, but “it’s illegal” isn’t the only reason why is can be important. Multiple branches of the government are trying to determine how/why/if foreign powers influenced the election and to what degree. Even if the ads are 100% legal, it’s still very relevant to the investigation to learn who placed them, why and what (if any) difference it made.
Trying to make it all about strict legality misses the point.
Moved to IMHO from General Questions.
If you want a straight up General Question, don’t poison it with political crap.
samclem, moderator.