Data shows that Facebook ads linked to Russia were shared vastly across Facebook through certain pages

A propaganda and misinformation expert, Jonathan Albright, from the Columbia University, analysed social media engagement of six Facebook ads which were shut down amongst the other 450 **disclosed** ads, which had Russian links. These ads were politically divisive in nature and are believed to have aided Donald Trump’s win in the 2016 US presidential elections. [caption id=“attachment_4078181” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Facebook. Reuters.[/caption] These six pages according to the Business Insider were Blacktivists, Being Patriotic, Secured Borders, Heart of Texas, LGBT United, and Muslim America. In the report, it was revealed that the maximum number of post shares (103.8 million) were from the Blacktivists page, which is focused on the Black community. Meanwhile, from the Heart of Texas there were 103 million post shares. Muslims in America (71.4 million) and Being Patriotic (51.1 million) stood apart by around 20 million shares. The report was created with the help of Facebook’s analytics tool, CrowdTangle. The breakdown was done on the basis of post engagement, time-frequency, interaction and full text from posts. According to the data, maximum page interaction took place around the Independence Day, 4 September and later on 20 November in 2016. Most of these interactions came from the Being Patriotic page. Meanwhile, from 2 October to 6 November which is few days close to the election day on 8 November, the maximum number of interactions came from the Blacktivists page. It again saw a rise from 6 November to 27 November. The posts related to Muslim America seem to have been had its moments too. However, Being Patriotic saw maximum interaction and seemed to be a recurrent trend. As of now, the social media giants, Facebook, Twitter, and Google have to testify before the US court. Facebook has **detected** 3000 Facebook ads which have been linked to Russia. According to reports, 44 percent of them were seen by people before elections and 56 percent were seen after the elections. The social networking giant would also be hiring 1,000 workers to detect politically divisive content on Facebook.