(Sept 7): Facebook Inc. says it found about US$100,000 ($134,800) in ad spending connected to fake accounts likely run from Russia that aimed to stir political controversy in the US ahead of last year’s presidential election.

While the majority of the ads, run between June 2015 and May 2017, didn’t directly reference the election, they amplified “divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum,” Facebook said in a statement. They were connected to about 470 fake accounts and pages on the social network. The company is sharing its findings with US investigators.

“Our analysis suggests these accounts and Pages were affiliated with one another and likely operated out of Russia,” Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos wrote. The group financing the ads is called the Internet Research Agency, a secretive company based out of St. Petersburg known for pushing Kremlin propaganda, according to a person familiar with the matter. The ads align with a broader strategy to misinform the public through a new category of attack Facebook calls “information operations,” outlined in a white paper earlier this year.

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