The Russian Government Used SpongeBob Memes To Influence The 2016 Election
It's been over a year since we learned that Russia attempted to interfere with the 2016 presidential election through targeted social media ads. Through media reports and government releases, a limited number of ads have been revealed to the public (Facebook has declined to reveal a full list of associated ads), but now, Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee have published over 3,300 of them for the people to see. Crucially, they've also revealed who they were targeted at. We dug through them. Here are the weirdest and most interesting.
Spongebob And Pokémon Go
Yes, you read that right. The Russian government paid to spread Spongebob and Pokémon Go memes across America:
Why on this unholy earth would Russia do such a thing? They were in it for the long game. It appears that the Memopolis account, allegedly tied to the Russian troll farm the Internet Research Agency, used non-political memes to create a following, while periodically posting political memes targeting Hillary Clinton.
Amplifying US Conservatives
Besides spreading memes, Russian troll accounts also amplified conservative voices in the US. In one post, the account Stop A.I. shared a podcast from conservative RT contributor Eric Draitser, targeting Facebook users who are interested in "The Tea Party" and "Conservatism." RT is funded by the Russian government:
Williams&Kalvin
Similar to the tactics of the Memopolis, Williams&Kalvin used non-partisan posts to build a following before turning overtly political. Targeting black Facebook users, Williams&Kalvin made frequent posts about police brutality.
They were interspersed, however, with intense anti-Clinton posts.
The Daily Beast has previously reported that on their YouTube channel, they called the Clintons "serial killers who are going to rape the whole nation."
Did You Go To These Events?
As has been previously reported, Russia attempted to organize multiple events, that included pro-Trump rallies, and post-election protests. In this series of ads, more events have come to light, including a specifically Muslim rally for Hillary Clinton, and anti-police-violence rallies. One could presume if the goal of Russia was to elect Donald Trump, that the rallies were designed to stoke right-wing fear.
Other events were explicitly anti-Clinton, or targeted adjacent conservative rallying points.
Bernie Bros?
During the primaries, a series of ads seemed designed to mobilize liberals around Bernie Sanders.
One long post from United Muslims of America asked Hillary Clinton, "We know that you defend American Muslims now in your presidential campaign, but did you support us before campaign?"
The above ads only cover a few of the topics and trends found in the massive trove that was released, which totals 7.9 gigabytes of data and reached more than 126 million people. You can view them all for yourself here.
