[rad-green] (Russiagate) The Russians Are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce

https://monthlyreview.org/product/the-russians-are-coming-again-the-first-cold-war-as-tragedy-the-second-as-farce/

The Russians Are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second
as Farce
*by* Jeremy Kuzmarov
<https://monthlyreview.org/author/jeremykuzmarov/> and John
Marciano <https://monthlyreview.org/author/johnmarciano/>

$16.00 – $95.00

Karl Marx famously wrote in *The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon* that
history repeats itself, “first as tragedy, then as farce.” The Cold War,
waged between the United States and Soviet Union from 1945 until the
latter’s dissolution in 1991, was a great tragedy, resulting in millions of
civilian deaths in proxy wars, and a destructive arms race that diverted
money from social spending and nearly led to nuclear annihilation. The New
Cold War between the United States and Russia is playing out as farce—a
dangerous one at that. *The Russians Are Coming, Again* is a red flag to
restore our historical consciousness about U.S.-Russian relations, and how
denying this consciousness is leading to a repetition of past follies.

Kuzmarov and Marciano’s book is timely and trenchant. The authors argue
that the Democrats’ strategy, backed by the corporate media, of demonizing
Russia and Putin in order to challenge Trump is not only dangerous, but
also unjustified, misguided, and a major distraction. Grounding their
argument in all-but-forgotten U.S.-Russian history, such as the 1918-20
Allied invasion of Soviet Russia, the book delivers a panoramic narrative
of the First Cold War, showing it as an all-too-avoidable catastrophe run
by the imperatives of class rule and political witch-hunts. The distortion
of public memory surrounding the First Cold War has set the groundwork for
the New Cold War, which the book explains is a key feature, skewing the
nation’s politics yet again. This is an important, necessary book, one
that, by including accounts of the wisdom and courage of the First Cold
War’s victims and dissidents, will inspire a fresh generation of radicals
in today’s new, alarmingly farcical times.

In *The Russians are Coming, Again*, Jeremy Kuzmarov and John Marciano
present an excellent and well-researched effort to remind liberal America
of how awful the Cold War was and how it was based on a cynical
exaggeration of a largely fictional ‘Russian threat.’ Their warning against
creating a new Cold War with post-communist Russia is well worth
considering.

—David N. Gibbs, University of Arizona; author, *First Do No Harm:
Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia*

*The Russians Are Coming, Again* describes horrific genocides, mass
assassinations, and merciless wars, both hot and cold, mostly carried out
by U.S. operatives, hidden from us for many decades. A rich read about a
brutal history.

—Michael Parenti, author, *The Face of Imperialism* and *Profit Pathology
and Other Indecencies*

In the wake of President Trump’s ties to Russia, and alleged Russian
attempts to tamper in U.S. elections through computer hacking and the
public release of confidential material, the Democratic Party has taken an
increasingly hostile stance toward Russia. A second Cold War could
potentially be in the making, and authors Jeremy Kuzmarov and John Marciano
argue persuasively that nothing good can come of a such a conflict—not for
American democracy, the American people, the world at large, or even the
Democratic Party itself. Thought-provoking and disconcerting, *The Russians
Are Coming, Again* is highly recommended reading for public and college
library political science collections.

—Midwest Book Review

Jeremy Kuzmarov, formerly Jay P. Walker Assistant Professor of American
History, University of Tulsa, will begin teaching at Tulsa Community
College in the fall of 2018. He is the author of *Modernizing Repression:
Police Training and Nation-Building in the American Century* and *The Myth
of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs*, as well as
numerous articles and reviews in professional journals, popular magazines,
and newspapers.

John Marciano, Professor Emeritus at SUNY Cortland, is an antiwar and
social justice activist, scholar, and trade unionist. He is author of *The
American War in Vietnam: Crime or Commemoration?* and *Civic Illiteracy and
Education: The Battle for the Hearts and Minds of American Youth*, as well
as, with William L. Griffen,* Teaching the Vietnam War*.

On Sat, Dec 21, 2019 at 6:20 PM Sid Shniad <[email protected]> wrote:

> I'm with Forbes: “So just what are those Trump loving, Hillary hating
> Russians promoting a*d nauseam* on Facebook to fool Americans into voting
> the way Vladimir Putin wants?”
>
> On Sat, Dec 21, 2019 at 12:04 PM michael a. lebowitz <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> https://www.lawfareblog.com/biggest-social-media-operation-youve-never-heard-run-out-cyprus-russians
>> lawfareblog.com
>> <https://www.lawfareblog.com/biggest-social-media-operation-youve-never-heard-run-out-cyprus-russians> The
>> Biggest Social Media Operation You’ve Never Heard of Is Run Out of Cyprus
>> by Russians
>> Lisa Kaplan
>> 19-25 minutes
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> What the heck is TheSoul Publishing? I’m still honestly not sure.
>>
>> Here’s what I do know: Measured in terms of views and subscribers, it had
>> the third-largest reach of any group of entertainment channels on YouTube
>> in November—outranked only by Disney and WarnerMedia. It is run by Russian
>> nationals and based in and managed from Cyprus, with U.S. operations housed
>> in a shared work space in New York. It funds itself with ad revenues from
>> YouTube and Google worth tens of millions of dollars. And in 2018, it
>> purchased a small suite of Facebook advertisements targeting U.S. citizens
>> on political issues—and it made those purchases in rubles.
>>
>> *Support Lawfare* <https://donorbox.org/support-lawfare>
>>
>> Asked detailed written questions about the company, a spokesman for
>> TheSoul Publishing responded with a statement and provided background
>> information, which is reflected throughout. The spokesman stated: “Simply
>> because a company has roots, international offices, and/or diverse global
>> employees outside of the U.S., one should not jump to conclusions or
>> automatically make assumptions that there is a hidden agenda. To be clear,
>> TheSoul Publishing creates fun, non-political oriented content that is
>> enjoyed by an incredible amount of fans globally.”
>>
>> Indeed, TheSoul Publishing does create nonpolitical (and apparently
>> lucrative) craft videos, reaching worldwide audiences. But it also creates
>> political content, including pro-Russian versions of histories that contain
>> inaccurate information. The social media platforms, which I made aware of
>> TheSoul’s activities, have not taken action against the company—apparently
>> having concluded that its activities do not violate their policies.
>>
>> I researched the company without special access to data and using only
>> publicly available information from sources such as the front-end data on
>> the social media platforms, public records and interviews. Here is what I
>> learned.
>>
>> TheSoul is a web publishing company that distributes its content across a
>> range of YouTube channels. The more popular channels—like *5-Minute
>> Crafts* <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC295-Dw_tDNtZXFeAPAW6Aw>*, **Bright
>> Side* <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4rlAVgAK0SGk-yTfe48Qpw>*, **5-Minute
>> Crafts Kids* <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC57XAjJ04TY8gNxOWf-Sy0Q>
>> *, **5-Minute Crafts Girly*
>> <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2etEuPIfohP4P53wM0KImA>*, **7-Second
>> Riddles* <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCttFk8-Nysnyw59aNlWOWzw> and *5-Minute
>> Magic* <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnobTPLeBxWHurWHq8jzsnA>—post
>> multiple times a day and, according to publicly available information found
>> on YouTube, have uploaded more than 1,000 videos each since their creation.
>> The company’s website <https://thesoul-publishing.com/> boasts 140
>> YouTube channels and 70 Facebook pages. I have been able to identify 35
>> YouTube channels and 25 Facebook pages that identify connections with
>> TheSoul Publishing. Asked about the discrepancy, a representative of the
>> company confirms that these are all of the English-language sites but says
>> the company also runs channels in several other languages, including
>> Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, Korean and Japanese. The oldest of
>> the YouTube channels I have seen was created in 2016; the oldest Facebook
>> page dates from 2015.
>>
>> TheSoul’s numbers are undeniably impressive. Its largest channels have
>> millions of subscribers and billions of views, according to information
>> publicly available on the YouTube channels themselves. As of Dec. 16, 2019, *5-Minute
>> Crafts* had more than 62.8 million subscribers, and a total of
>> 16,648,886,677
>> <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC295-Dw_tDNtZXFeAPAW6Aw/about> views; *Bright
>> Side *had more than 32.3 million subscribers and 6,286,157,368
>> <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4rlAVgAK0SGk-yTfe48Qpw/about> views.
>>
>> According to Tubular Labs, a company that provides insights into metrics
>> for each brand creator, in November 2019, TheSoul Publishing had the
>> third most views of any media
>> <https://tubularlabs.com/app/leaderboards/property/media> and
>> entertainment creator on YouTube and Facebook, behind only the Walt Disney
>> Company and WarnerMedia. In October, it was
>> <https://tubularlabs.com/app/leaderboards/property/media?q=%7B%22date%22:%222019-08%22%7D>
>> *fourth*. And in November
>> <https://tubularlabs.com/app/leaderboards/creator/overall>*,* *5-Minute
>> Crafts* was the second most viewed of any media and entertainment
>> channel.
>>
>> This is all especially impressive because I have been unable to identify
>> any YouTube channels associated with TheSoul Publishing that were created
>> before 2016. According to the information found on its various YouTube
>> channels, *5-Minute Crafts *
>> <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC295-Dw_tDNtZXFeAPAW6Aw/about>began
>> Nov. 15, 2016
>> <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC295-Dw_tDNtZXFeAPAW6Aw/about>, while *Bright
>> Side * <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4rlAVgAK0SGk-yTfe48Qpw/about>began
>> March 15, 2017
>> <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4rlAVgAK0SGk-yTfe48Qpw/about>. The
>> majority of TheSoul Publishing’s channels were created in 2018 and 2019,
>> according to an examination of 35 of its sites.
>>
>> TheSoul isn’t only on YouTube. It has also built an enormous Facebook
>> presence—which is impressive given that the pages I have examined were all
>> developed after 2015 and thus have had only a few years to attract an
>> audience. For example, Bright Side <https://www.facebook.com/brightside/>,
>> whose Facebook presence claims to have begun in June 2004
>> <https://www.facebook.com/pg/brightside/about/?ref=page_internal>—Facebook’s
>> transparency measures put the start date on July 2, 2015
>> <https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_type=all&country=US&view_all_page_id=727974550664624>—has
>> more than 44 million followers. By contrast, the New York Times’s
>> Facebook page <https://www.facebook.com/nytimes/> has a comparatively
>> paltry 16 million followers. Lawfare’s meager Facebook page
>> <https://www.facebook.com/Lawfareblog/> has just over 24,000 followers.
>>
>> In my interactions with the social media platforms, I developed no
>> information to suggest that TheSoul’s traffic was inauthentic.
>>
>> As a spokesperson from the company put it, “Our impressive organic growth
>> and positive viewer reception is very exciting. As we continue to produce
>> entertaining videos, our fans can look forward to even more likable content
>> that they’ve come to highly enjoy.”
>>
>> If you’ve never heard of TheSoul, you’re not alone. The company has built
>> its online empire in relative obscurity. Public coverage of the company in
>> English has been sporadic. In September 2019, Time magazine raved over the
>> company’s traffic and described
>> <https://time.com/5636360/five-minute-crafts-youtube-channel-explained/> the
>> “bizarre” content posted by* 5-Minute Crafts*. Vox likewise posted an
>> article
>> <https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/12/18065662/troom-troom-5-minute-crafts-youtube-diy-prank> in
>> November 2018 characterizing the channel’s content as “cringey” and
>> “peculiar.” Forbes has noted
>> <https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2017/09/22/these-two-russian-fake-news-outfits-get-billions-of-hits-on-facebook/#1c771824268c> the
>> lightning-fast rise of TheSoul Publishing and its remarkable traffic,
>> contrasting the apparently anodyne videos with dire-sounding concerns over
>> Russian election interference: “So just what are those Trump loving,
>> Hillary hating Russians promoting a*d nauseam* on Facebook to fool
>> Americans into voting the way Vladimir Putin wants?” the Forbes article
>> asks, before showing a lengthy video compilation of TheSoul’s crafting
>> suggestions.
>>
>> TheSoul Publishing grew out of a company called AdMe, the company
>> confirms, which began in 2004 in Kazan, Russia. AdMe was focused on
>> digital advertising and content distribution
>> <https://www.forbes.ru/biznes/384229-stanok-pechatayushchiy-dengi-v-youtube-kak-dva-priyatelya-iz-kazani-sozdali>.
>> In 2016, its founders moved operations to Cyprus
>> <https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&u=https://vc.ru/flood/16711-adme-cyprus&prev=search>.
>> In the summer of 2018, TheSoul opened a U.S.-based entity and a U.K.
>> entity, which is currently managed from Cyprus. Earlier this year, the
>> company incorporated another U.K. entity, the company confirms. The Cyprus
>> headquarters owns and manages all of TheSoul Publishing’s operations
>> worldwide, the company says, and any legal entity that has been set up
>> elsewhere is simply created to support the overall business.
>>
>> TheSoul Publishing primarily makes videos, many of which use the same
>> actors and clips. A lot of the content provides “tips” that seem strange or
>> even useless, like rubbing a candle on shoes before hiking to make the
>> shoes fully waterproof <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sZp8tq6xtY>.
>> One video
>> <https://www.facebook.com/foodgasmic.bar/videos/395113581115493/> shows
>> a variety of “water tricks to live up your day,” including how to make a
>> density column by mixing together a range of different liquids and
>> beverages with detergent:
>>
>> Most of TheSoul’s videos are clickbait with instructions for
>> do-it-yourself projects, and TheSoul’s channels range in success. Some are
>> less active than others. Of the 35 channels I examined, nine have stopped
>> posting in the past year, and a handful (*5-Minute Workouts*, *Health Is
>> Wealth*,* Health Digest*,* Dark Side* and* Zodiac Maniac*) have not
>> posted new content in the past 11 months. *You’re Gorgeous, The Story
>> Behind *and *Stickman* have all stopped posting new content within the
>> past six months. However, the most popular channels—*Bright Side and
>> 5-Minute Crafts*—appear to be active and growing. From August 2019 to
>> December 2019, according to examinations of the data in both periods, *Bright
>> Side *gained nearly 3.5 million subscribers and 1 billion views, and *5-Minute
>> Crafts* gained more than 3 million subscribers and 1.5 billion views.
>>
>> The vast majority of the company’s content is apolitical—and that is
>> certainly the way the company portrays itself. A spokesperson for TheSoul
>> Publishing commented that “[w]e are very proud of our highly popular videos
>> enjoyed by millions around the world. From do-it-yourself craft to charming
>> animation to riddle and puzzle videos, TheSoul Publishing showcases a
>> portfolio of lighthearted content watched across major social platforms.”
>>
>> But here’s the thing: TheSoul Publishing also posts history videos with a
>> strong political tinge. Many of these videos are overtly pro-Russian. One
>> video posted <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq2_V2bOfwU> on Feb. 17,
>> 2019, on the channel Smart Banana
>> <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBGTFRlxG_irLDDZA3ZMdSw>, which
>> typically posts listicles and history videos, claims that Ukraine is part
>> of Russia. The video opens:
>>
>> Mr. Banana wants to know what you think about when you hear the word
>> Russia. Do you think of a bear with a bottle of vodka and a balalaika in
>> his paw, or maybe you think about President Putin and the Red Square in
>> Moscow. Let’s have a look at the history of the biggest country in the
>> world.
>>
>> At one point, the video gives a heavily sanitized version of Josef
>> Stalin’s time in power and, bizarrely, suggests that Alaska was given to
>> the United States by Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev:
>>
>> The second leader after Lenin’s death was Josef Stalin. He started to
>> recover the country after the revolution. Josef reformed the country. He
>> took the wealth from rich people and the property from the middle class and
>> united all of these people with poor ones in the collective farm and the
>> collective property. Russian Robin Hood—bang! Hitler attacked the Soviet
>> Union in June of 1941. It was the beginning of the second World War. Russia
>> was not ready for any wars at the moment, so Hitler hoped to conquer Russia
>> in four months. As naive as Napoleon. The USSR joined the allies. The
>> Soviet Union militaries came to Berlin and beat it. The facism of Hitler
>> was defeated on the second of May 1945 during four years of war, the Soviet
>> Union officially lost twenty-seven million people. Many cities were
>> destroyed. Recovery from the war was very difficult for both people and the
>> country. By 1960, the Soviet Union succeeded, in 1957 the rent of Alaska
>> was over and the country’s leader at the time, Nikita Khrushchev, gifted
>> Alaska to the USA. That’s when Alaska became the 49th state of the US.
>>
>> (The United States in fact purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. The
>> territory was admitted to the U.S. as a state in 1959.) *Smart Banana *has
>> 1.75 million subscribers, and the video in question has been viewed more
>> than 283,000 times, according to YouTube data.
>>
>> The video ends by displaying a future vision of Russian expansion that
>> includes most of Europe (notably not Turkey), the Middle East and Asia:
>>
>> In another video on *Smart Banana*, which has more than 1 million views,
>> the titular banana speculates on “12 Countries That May Not Survive the
>> Next 20 Years” <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56Veugw6xF8>—including
>> the United States, which the video argues may collapse because of political
>> infighting and diverse political viewpoints.
>>
>> Another TheSoul Publishing channel, Easy Peasy
>> <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJyDt_VGSzeFozhNyWtG56w>, posts
>> political histories alongside animated listicle videos and informative takes
>> on why girls like “bad boys.”
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y2LpmclG-8> One video promises to tell
>> the story <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZutoxycHvE> of how the USA
>> came to be the country of Hollywood, McDonald’s and Donald Trump. The rest
>> of the video tells the history of the U.S. as the stories of Christopher
>> Columbus, slavery, the Trail of Tears, World Wars I and II, 9/11 and the
>> war on terror:
>>
>> The discussion of 9/11 includes the assertion that President Obama
>> “officially ended the combat mission” in the war on terror and “promised to
>> withdraw all American troops by 2016”—showing a man with his fingers
>> crossed behind his back.
>>
>> So where is all this content coming from? According to publicly available
>> information from the YouTube channels themselves—information provided to
>> YouTube by the people who set up and operate the channels at TheSoul
>> Publishing—as of August 2019, 21 of the 35 channels connected to TheSoul
>> Publishing claim to be based in the U.S. Ten of the channels had no country
>> listed. *Zodiac Maniac*
>> <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWE57IYxXnuYZ2-rFK89dVQ/about> was registered
>> in the U.K
>> <https://www.noxinfluencer.com/youtube/channel/UCWE57IYxXnuYZ2-rFK89dVQ>
>> *,* though TheSoul Publishing emphasizes that all of its operations are
>> run out of Cyprus.
>>
>> Most of the views for this channel come from Europe. *Now I’ve Seen
>> Everything* <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPeW45oXPao55eyAYOOj7lw> was
>> the only channel registered in the Russian Federation. That channel has
>> more than 400 million views, which, according to the analytics tool Nox
>> Influencer
>> <https://www.noxinfluencer.com/youtube/channel/UCPeW45oXPao55eyAYOOj7lw>,
>> come from a range of countries, including Russia and Eastern European and
>> Central Asian countries—despite being an English-language channel.
>>
>> Asked about TheSoul’s operations on its platform, a spokesperson for
>> YouTube said, “All content on YouTube is subject to our Community
>> Guidelines
>> <https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/policies/#community-guidelines>, which
>> we enforce consistently regardless of the channel. We have additional
>> policies for any videos that are showing ads, including against content
>> <https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/9335564?hl=en&ref_topic=1271507&visit_id=637097770684158788-3405570017&rd=1#Misrepresentative_content> that
>> misstates information about the creator, such as where they’re located. We
>> have found no evidence of abuse on any of the channels mentioned here. If
>> we find violations of our policies, we take appropriate action, including
>> striking videos, removing ads or terminating accounts*.”*
>>
>> TheSoul Publishing’s Facebook pages follow patterns similar to those of
>> the YouTube channels. Certain channels, such as *5-Minute Crafts* and *5-Minute
>> Crafts Kids*, post similar or the same videos at different intervals.
>> They act in a coordinated manner, either posting original videos within
>> Facebook or driving content to brightside.me, a webpage registered in
>> Germany on GoDaddy
>> <https://urlscan.io/result/3f841221-08f8-46ec-91f5-ed256605973d>, which
>> itself is made up of clickbait articles.
>>
>> Data acquired using Facebook’s transparency measures identifies none of
>> the account administrators for these pages as based in the United States.
>> Instead, by and large, across all pages, most administrators are listed as
>> residing in Cyprus or Russia, with some located in a smattering of other
>> countries—including former Soviet bloc countries such as Kyrgyzstan,
>> Georgia, Romania and Ukraine, as well as incongruous locales such as El
>> Salvador.
>>
>> [image: Chart]
>>
>> There’s a mystery here, though. What, exactly, is TheSoul doing on
>> Facebook?
>>
>> As relates to its YouTube presence, the answer is simple: making money.
>> YouTube pays content creators to make videos. Every time an advertiser
>> creates a campaign and sets a budget against its advertisement, YouTube’s
>> algorithms will place advertisements on content to help advertisers reach
>> their audience. Some of the funds are kept by YouTube, and some are sent to
>> the content creator. Open-source estimates on TheSoul Publishing’s revenue
>> from Nox Influencer suggest that the business is lucrative: According to
>> Nox Influencer, *Bright Side* alone is earning between $
>> <https://www.noxinfluencer.com/youtube/channel/UC4rlAVgAK0SGk-yTfe48Qpw>314,010
>> and
>> <https://www.noxinfluencer.com/youtube/channel/UC4rlAVgAK0SGk-yTfe48Qpw>971,950
>> monthly,
>> <https://www.noxinfluencer.com/youtube/channel/UC4rlAVgAK0SGk-yTfe48Qpw>
>> and *5-Minute Crafts *is earning between $576,640 and $1,780,000 monthly
>> <https://www.noxinfluencer.com/youtube/channel/UC295-Dw_tDNtZXFeAPAW6Aw> through
>> YouTube partner earning estimates. As a privately held company, TheSoul
>> Publishing doesn’t have to disclose its earnings. But all the
>> Cypriot-managed company has to do to earn money from YouTube is meet
>> viewing thresholds and have an AdSense account. AdSense, a Google product,
>> just requires that a company have a bank account, an email address and a
>> phone number. To monetize to this magnitude of revenue, YouTube may have
>> also collected tax information, if TheSoul Publishing organization is
>> conducting what it defines as “U.S. activities.”
>> <https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/18372?hl=en&ref_topic=1727182> It’s
>> also possible that YouTube verified a physical address by sending a pin
>> mailer.
>>
>> By contrast, Facebook pages are not a direct way to increase profit
>> unless a company is actively marketing merchandise or sales, which TheSoul
>> Publishing does not appear to do. The pages coordinate posting, so one post
>> will often appear on a number of different pages. To a digital advertiser,
>> this makes perfect sense as a way to increase relevance and visibility, but
>> it’s far from obvious what TheSoul Publishing might be advertising.
>> Likewise, there’s no obvious financial benefit to posting original videos
>> within Facebook. The company did not meaningfully clarify its Facebook
>> strategy in response to questions on the subject.
>>
>> Below are examples of coordinated behavior on Facebook. Without
>> disclosing their affiliation with one another, the pages appear to be
>> posting in a coordinated manner: the same articles, which drive traffic to
>> brightside.me, with the same copy.
>>
>> Facebook forbids what it describes as “coordinated inauthentic behavior,”
>> as its head of cybersecurity describes in this video
>> <https://about.fb.com/news/2018/12/inside-feed-coordinated-inauthentic-behavior/>.
>> While TheSoul’s Publishing’s behavior is clearly coordinated, it is unclear
>> that any of its behavior is inauthentic based on information I have
>> reviewed.
>>
>> One thing that TheSoul is definitely doing on Facebook, however, is
>> buying ads—and, at least sometimes, it’s doing so in rubles on issues of
>> national importance, targeting audiences in the United States. The page *Bright
>> Side* <https://www.facebook.com/brightside/> has 44 million followers
>> and currently lists no account administrators located in the United States,
>> but as of Aug. 8, 2019, it had them in Cyprus, Russia, the United Kingdom,
>> El Salvador, India, Ukraine and in locations “Not Available.” It used
>> Facebook to post six political advertisements
>> <https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_type=all&country=US&view_all_page_id=727974550664624> paid
>> for in the Russian currency.
>>
>> TheSoul may have purchased nonpolitical ads as well, but Facebook’s
>> transparency measures make information public only on political ad buys,
>> and Facebook does not provide information outside of what’s available in
>> the political content ad library.
>>
>> All six of the publicly available political content ads were purchased
>> during the summer of 2018, when Facebook rolled out additional security
>> measures requiring that advertisers promoting political content undergo
>> identity verification by the company—a process that involves the purchaser
>> submitting photo ID, a home mailing address at which to receive a code to
>> be entered by the user, and a Social Security number. Enforcement of
>> this measure began on May 24, 2018
>> <https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/05/ads-with-political-content/>.
>> Facebook has since implemented additional transparency measures that
>> require advertisers to be able to provide an employer identification
>> number, a website, an email address that matches the company’s domain and
>> some other form of authentication.
>>
>> TheSoul Publishing’s political advertisements, which Facebook defines as
>> being related to a candidate or an issue of national importance, have
>> targeted those in the United States. The data show that the company
>> specifically targeted individuals over the age of 18.
>>
>> The ad buy was very small. TheSoul Publishing spent around $5.00 across
>> six political ads. Each advertisement had a small reach—fewer than 1,000
>> “impressions,” Facebook’s metric for evaluating content distribution,
>> attributed to the paid advertising. (This figure does not include
>> impressions from Facebook users who would be shown the post organically
>> based on Facebook’s newsfeed algorithms or individual sharing.)
>>
>> By comparison, BuzzFeed
>> <https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_type=political_and_issue_ads&country=US&impression_search_field=has_impressions_lifetime&view_all_page_id=21898300328>,
>> which also posts light, fun articles (in addition to having highly
>> reputable journalists who are regularly reporting the news and undergo
>> editorial review) has an international team and spent $40,361 on more than
>> 20 times the amount of political advertising TheSoul Publishing has posted.
>>
>> So the point here is not that the ad buy is significant in and of itself.
>> The point, rather, is that the company has developed a massive social media
>> following and has a history of at least experimenting with distributing
>> both pro-Russian and paid political content to that following.
>>
>> TheSoul’s political ads included the one below. The advertisement pushes
>> viewers to an article about how “wonderful [it is] that Donald Trump earns
>> less in a year than you do in a month.” The advertisement reached men,
>> women, and people of unknown genders over the ages of 18, and began running
>> on May 15, 2018. TheSoul Publishing spent less than a dollar on this
>> advertisement, raising the question: why bother advertising at all?
>>
>> There is also an accompanying YouTube video
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq7Mq2KYBFo> that describes the article
>> in the advertisement above, which as of Dec. 16, 2019, had 2,935,194 views:
>>
>> The next two ads contain an image of President Trump yelling on the cover
>> of *Der Tasspiegel*, a German newspaper, juxtaposed with a second
>> incongruous image that varies between ads. A common advertising test is
>> called A/B testing
>> <https://www.optimizely.com/optimization-glossary/ab-testing/>, where an
>> advertiser tests two advertisements for conversion by running them against
>> each other to see which one performs better.
>>
>> The below three advertisements apparently focused on raising awareness
>> about environmental issues and human trafficking. Facebook has a feature
>> for testing messaging on different audiences
>> <https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/facebook-split-testing-audiences/>,
>> as a way to understand which audiences your advertisement resonates with
>> the most.
>>
>> Facebook gives rough statistics about who viewed each advertisement, as
>> shown above. But while Facebook advertisers are able to target individuals
>> with some level of granularity based on their preferences, jobs, family
>> situations and other information, the data provided by the platform doesn’t
>> show specifically who each advertisement targeted and why.
>>
>> TheSoul Publishing also has an app available for download
>> <https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bright-side-of-life/id1088344852>—if you
>> dare.
>>
>> *Sophie Lawton contributed to this report.*
>>
>> --
>> ---------------------
>> Michael A. Lebowitz
>> Professor Emeritus
>> Economics Department
>> Simon Fraser University
>> 8888 University Drive
>> Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
>> Home:   Phone 604-689-9510
>> Cell: 604-789-4803
>>
>>
>>
>>

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