Facebook said it had been torn apart from a small network of fake accounts and Russian pages pointing to political debate in the UK and other countries.
Using elaborate online profiles covering various sites, network members posed as a Romanian-based news organization called Peacedata, which recruited independent journalists to write articles for a left-wing audience.
Facebook said its investigation had uncovered links to the Russian Internet Search Agency (IRA), which in the past was related to election interference on Facebook in the 2016 US presidential election.
Thirteen Facebook accounts and two pages were deleted for violating the site’s foreign interference policy: “un authentic coordinated habit on behalf of a foreign entity”.
Facebook said the network had achieved small success on the platform when it was removed.
“This network in the early stages of building its audience, basically to the left of the political spectrum, saw almost no compromise on Facebook before we got rid of it,” the social media giant said in its August report on untrue coordinated behavior.
“The other people in this network have published data on world news and existing occasions about the countries and left-wing communities they are targeting, adding social and racial justice in the United States and the United Kingdom, NATO and European politics; accusations Western war crimes and corruption; Environmental disorders The founder of Wikileaks; Tensions between Israel and Palestine; The coronavirus pandemic; Critic of hydraulic fracturing; French influence in Africa; Biden-Harris campaign; QAnon; President Trump and his policies ; US Army Policies in Africa. “
According to the Facebook report, the network had about 14,000 accounts on one or more of its pages, and the English page had “just over two hundred followers.”
He claimed that some $480 (360 euros) has been spent on advertising on Facebook, paid basically in US dollars.
The network also had to download the political advertising authorization to transmit such advertisements in the United States.
Along with Facebook, Twitter said it had suspended five accounts for “platform manipulation,” which he said could be “a reliable feature of Russian state actors.”
“Regardless of how low-level an effect will have in this case, governments around the world will have to put an end to these practices,” Twitter said.
“They are undemocratic. Attempts to manipulate our service to undermine democracy, through national and foreign actors, will face the strict implementation of our policies.
Facebook’s most recent report on coordinated non-authentic habits also includes several accounts, pages, and Instagram profiles connected to a US-based strategic communications company.But it’s not the first time That he had un authentic habits in Venezuela, Mexico and Bolivia.
Another network of more than 450 Facebook accounts, as well as Pakistan-controlled pages, computers, and Instagram accounts, targeting Pakistan-India relations, was also removed.