How much did Russians spend on influencing Brexit? Actually, it was 73p

(AP Photo/Olivier Matthys)

During the Brexit referendum, sinister Russian adverts were aimed at British voters, Facebook has revealed – although it turns out the budget is a little lower than people thought.

In total, there was 73p spend on adverts in Britain during the referendum, Facebook has claimed.

The adverts were bought by the Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-linked group known to have bought large volumes of adverts during the American election.

But Damian Collins, the chair of the digital, culture, media and sport (DCMS) committee said that Facebook had failed to investigate properly.

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Collins said, ‘It would appear that no work has been done by Facebook to look for Russian activity around the EU referendum, other than from funded advertisements from those accounts that had already been identified as part of the US Senate’s investigation

‘No work has been done by Facebook to look for other fake accounts and pages that could be linked to Russian backed agencies and which were active during the EU referendum, as I requested,

Facebook said, ‘We strongly support the Commission’s efforts to regulate and enforce political campaign finance rules in the United Kingdom, and we take the Commission’s request very seriously.

‘Further to your request, we have examined whether any of the identified Internet Research Agency (IRA) pages or account profiles funded advertisements to audiences in the United Kingdom during the regulated period for the EU Referendum.

‘We have determined that these accounts associated with the IRA spent a small amount of money ($0.97) on advertisements that delivered to UK audiences during that time.’