Led by a former Obama official, Democratic operatives bought ads on misleading Facebook pages to suppress Republican voter turnout in the recent midterm elections, reported the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Funded by left-wing tech billionaire Reid Hoffman, a group founded by former Obama administration official Mikey Dickerson called American Engagement Technologies bought ads for two Facebook pages, “The Daily Real” and “Today’s Nation.”
The Daily Caller said the pages apparently were designed to give the impression that they were operated by disgruntled conservatives rather than Democratic operatives.
The ads, adorned with American flags, urged conservative voters to either stay home or vote for Democrats to punish Republicans for abandoning conservative principles.
The Daily Caller said the ads drew millions of impressions on Facebook.
Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn and an early investor in Facebook, also ran a “false flag’ campaign during the 2017 Alabama special election. The aim was to falsely link Republican senatorial candidate Roy Moore to Russian influence operations.
One series of ads run during the midterms asserted the Democratic “blue wave” predicted by many was a “myth,” insisting polls showing a Democratic advantage in the midterms were “unreliable.”
Another contended congressional Republicans were betraying “real conservatives.”
One ad said there were “No good choices” in the midterm elections, and voting for Democrats to send a message “feels like the best option.”
The Washington Post reported another Hoffman-funded group, News for Democracy, deployed a page during the midterms called “Our Flag Our Country” to push anti-Trump messaging.
The paper said Facebook is investigating whether News for Democracy violated its rules against misleading political advertising.
See an ad placed on “The Daily Real” page:
