Inspired By Russia, He Bought Influence On Facebook

On June 5, California holds its congressional primaries and in one largely rural district, there is a new kind of money entering politics: payments to Facebook, where messages can be sharply targeted and it's cheaper to advertise than on radio, TV or newspapers. In CA's 4th Congressional District, one political novice bought his way into relevance using the social network, and has helped shape a hotly contested Democratic race, stirring up animosity in the process.

Paul Smith was a marketer at Apple. He was anti-Trump. He wanted to help get a Democrat elected in his district. And he says he wanted to "take a page from the Russian playbook.  "I saw what was happening with Russian interference from the early reports," he says. "The part that they were really good at is finding an audience that they needed to influence — finding out what those people's greatest fears were." He left his job and volunteered to build the local Facebook page of a popular progressive movement called Indivisible. In less than one year, he made it a go-to news source in a region with little local news coverage. He used the page to get voters to show up at events, and take other actions in the real world.