Two Democratic senators recently created a fictitious Facebook group to prove just how easy it is to target specific people with fake news.

Sens. Mark Warner of Virginia and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota built a group on Facebook and named it “Americans for Disclosure Solutions” which has the acronym ADS. The senators then paid Facebook to show ads to journalists and staffers on the Hill, Axios reported Thursday.

The news site said that, with $20 per campaign, the senators were able to target more than 1,300 Hill staffers in a single day and more than 1,400 journalists.

The senators were making a point: They could easily create a group and spread any narrative without having to prove who they were or what they stood for. This is what Russian-linked operatives were allegedly doing ahead of and during the U.S. presidential campaign, and why Facebook, Google and Twitter representatives testified on Capitol Hill this week. The House Intelligence Committee recently published several of the ads that Russian-controlled groups were posting.

Calls to Warner’s and Klobuchar’s offices were not immediately returned. Facebook was not immediately available for comment.

Source: Tech CNBC
Senators create bogus Facebook group to show how easy it is to spread fake news