Trump's digital ad campaign helped him win in 2016: Facebook executive

A senior Facebook executive on Tuesday said that his company played a decisive role in the 2016 US Presidential election and that the platform's advertising tools were crucial to the election of Donald Trump. Andrew Bosworth, vice president for augmented and virtual reality shared a lengthy post on the company's internal profile, where he talked about Facebook's role in the 2016 election of Donald Trump. Andrew said that the real-estate tycoon won the election because he ran the "best digital ad campaign".

Read: Donald Trump Claims Zuckerberg Told Him He Was 'No 1' On Facebook

The internal post

Andrew in his internal post wrote, "So was Facebook responsible for Donald Trump getting elected? I think the answer is yes, but not for the reasons anyone thinks. He didn’t get elected because of Russia or misinformation or Cambridge Analytica. He got elected because he ran the single best digital ad campaign I’ve ever seen from any advertiser. Period." Andrew further added that since Facebook has the same ad policies in place now, the outcome for the 2020 election could also be the same. 

Read: No Proof That Donald Trump Campaign Conspired With Russia To Influence 2016 Election: US Attorney General

He also said that he donated heavily to 2016 Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. But he praised Brad Parscale, who was a leading digital-advertising adviser to Trump during the 2016 election and is managing his re-election campaign in 2020. Andrew said that Parscale and Trump did an amazing job and that they weren't running misinformation or hoaxes, they won because that ran the best digital-advertising campaign. 

Read: Donald Trump Justifies Qassem Soleimani’s Killing, Calls Him A 'monster'

Andrew Bosworth also talked about the role of Cambridge Analytica and allegations of Russian meddling in the US election. Andrew admitted there was Russian interference but he also argued that $100,000 in ads on Facebook cannot have much effect on the American election. Andrew said that local candidates themselves were putting more money on the platform than Russia did. According to Andrew, Russia's influence was limited to exploiting the already existing divisions in the American public, such as hoisting "Black Lives Matter" and "Blue Lives Matter" protest events.

Read: Donald Trump Brags About Contribution To Iraq, Says US Paid 'billions Of Dollars'