After Democratic lawmakers exploded with outrage following Facebook's revelation that it sold some $100,000 worth of political advertising to a Russia-linked organization during the presidential campaign, the social media behemoth has agreed to release some of the 3,000 suspect advertisements that appeared on its platform with Congressional investigators, Politico reports.
"After an extensive legal and policy review, today we are announcing that we will also share these ads with congressional investigators," Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch said in a statement. "We believe it is vitally important that government authorities have the information they need to deliver to the public a full assessment of what happened in the 2016 election."
According to the Financial Times, the decision to release the ads marks a shift after the company earlier was "not forthcoming about Moscow's use of social media to influence the US election." Facebook initially denied reports of the ad-buys, which the FT says were conducted by a "Russian operative", earlier in the spring.
The decision to release the ads was made in response to mounting pressure from members of Congress, particularly Virginia Senator Mark Warner, who has demanded that Congress pass legislation requiring companies like Facebook to take steps to stop foreign governments from meddling in US elections by…purchasing banner ads.
Democrats and political commentators have treated the ads like "the smoking gun" that proves Russia intended to do everything in its power to sway the election in Trump's favor.
The company will also send copies of the ads to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team. According to Politico, it had previously only shown some of the ads to members on the Hill in a private session, but has until now refrained from releasing "extensive information" about them. The ads didn't advocate on behalf of a particular candidate, but instead focused on political issues, as previously reported.
Given that these ads supposedly were responsible for swaying the election in Trump's favor – not, say, the many miscalculations undertaken by the Clinton campaign, the undersampled polls which gave the Hillary nearly 100% confidence she would win, or the inherent failings of the Democrats' scandal-tarnished candidate – we imagine they'll eventually make their way into the public domain, considering Mueller's investigation has proven to be a sieve for sensitive materials.
via http://ift.tt/2jMRCXY Tyler Durden