Google has discovered Russian operatives spent tens of thousands of US dollars on ads on its YouTube, Gmail and Google Search products in an effort to meddle in last year’s US presidential election, a person briefed on the company’s probe told reporters on Monday.
The ads do not appear to be from the same Kremlin-affiliated entity that bought ads on Facebook, but might indicate a broader Russian online disinformation effort, said the source, who was not authorized to discuss details of the confidential investigation by Google.
Separately on Monday, Microsoft said that it was looking at whether Russians bought US election ads on its Bing search engine or other Microsoft-owned products and platforms.
A spokeswoman for the company declined to comment further.
The revelation about Google is likely to fuel further scrutiny of the role that Silicon Valley technology giants might have unwittingly played during last year’s election. US intelligence agencies have concluded that Moscow’s goal was to help elect US President Donald Trump.
Google has uncovered less than US$100,000 in ad spending potentially linked to Russian actors, the source said.
Twitter and Facebook recently detected and disclosed that suspected Russian operatives, working for a content farm known as the Internet Research Agency in Saint Petersburg, Russia, used their platforms to purchase ads and post content that was politically divisive in a bid to influence Americans before and after the presidential election.
The group employs hundreds of so-called “trolls” who post pro-Kremlin content, much of it fake or discredited, under the guise of phony social media accounts, lawmakers and researchers have said.
Facebook last month announced it had unearthed US$100,000 in spending by the Internet Research Agency and, under pressure from lawmakers, has pledged to be more transparent about how its ads are purchased and targeted.
Russia’s ad purchases on Google were first reported by the Washington Post.
Google did not deny the story, and in a statement pointed to its existing ad policies that limit political ad targeting and prohibit targeting based on race or religion.
“We are taking a deeper look to investigate attempts to abuse our systems, working with researchers and other companies, and will provide assistance to ongoing inquiries,” a Google spokeswoman said on Monday.
Google, which runs the world’s largest online advertising business, had largely evaded public or congressional scrutiny until now.
On Sunday, the Daily Beast news Web site reported that the Kremlin recruited at least two black video bloggers to post clips on YouTube during the campaign. They posed as Black Lives Matter sympathizers who were sharply critical of US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Although the videos were only viewed hundreds of times, they demonstrated for the first time that Russia allegedly deployed real people, not just fake online accounts or bots, to further spread propaganda.
US congressional committees have launched multiple investigations into Russian interference, but concern about Silicon Valley’s role has surged over the past month against the backdrop of a cascade of revelations about how Russia appears to have leveraged their platforms to spread propaganda.
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