Facebook Will Turn Over 3,000+ Russia-Linked Ads From the Last Election to Congress

As two congressional committees investigate the extent to which Russia interfered in the 2016 election, Facebook has agreed to send them more than 3,000 ads linked to Russia that ran during the campaign. It required a bit of arm-twisting, per the NYTimes:

The announcement that Facebook would share the ads with the Senate and House intelligence committees came after the social network spent two weeks on the defensive. The company faced calls for greater transparency about 470 Russia-linked accounts — in which fictional people posed as American activists — which were taken down after they had promoted inflammatory messages on divisive issues. Facebook had previously angered congressional staff by showing only a sample of the ads, some of which attacked Hillary Clinton or praised Donald J. Trump.

On Sept. 6, Facebook admitted that Russian-affiliated entities bought ads on the site, and they, along with Twitter, turned over data to Robert Mueller.

Mark Zuckerberg has already pledged to take steps to curtail this kind of covert advertising, most likely in an attempt to prevent government intervention—as the Times notes, Democrats in Congress have asked the FEC to advise them on how to curtail foreign influence on elections in the social media realm. You can watch Zuckerberg’s full announcement, originally posted on Facebook live, here: