LONDON (Reuters) – A Russian-influenced operation poses as an independent media outlet to target the left-wing electorate in the US and UK, adding that recruiting freelance journalists to write about domestic politics, Facebook said Tuesday.
Facebook Inc said the agreement, which targeted U.S. politics and racial tensions in the run-up to the November 3 presidential election, aimed at a pseudo-media organization called Peace Data.
The online page operated thirteen Facebook accounts and two pages, which were created in May and suspended Monday by false identities and another bureaucracy of “unre authentic coordinated behavior,” the company said.
Facebook said its investigation “found links with Americans related to activities beyond the Russian Internet Research Agency,” a St. Petersburg-based company that U.S. intelligence officials said at the center of Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election.
Twitter said it had also suspended five accounts as a component of the deal that could be “a reliable feature of Russian state actors.”
Peace Data did not respond to an emailed request for comment and Russian officials were not promptly received after general business hours in Moscow. Russia has in the past denied US allegations of trying to influence elections and says it does not interfere in the internal politics of other countries.
Researchers from social media analytics company Graphika studied the operation and said Peace Data basically targeted progressive and leftist teams in the United States and Britain, but also published data on occasions in other countries, adding Algeria and Egypt.
He said in a report https://public-assets.graphika.com/reports/graphika_report_ira_again_unlucky_thirteen.pdf that the online page that conveys critical messages from the voices of the right and the center-left, and in the United States, “focuses on politics tensions,” adding civil rights protests and complaints from President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival, Joe Biden.
Graphika stated that only about 5% of Peace Data’s similar English articles were similar to the US election, but that “this side of the operation suggests an attempt to build a left-wing audience and move it away from Biden’s campaign.”
The effects are an assessment last month by the most sensible U.S. counterintelligence official, who said Moscow was using incorrect online information to check to undermine Biden’s crusade and can fuel fears about Russia’s additional efforts to interfere in the November vote.
A spokesman for Trump’s crusade said the president would win his re-election “fairly and fairly and we do not want or want foreign interference.”Biden’s crusade did not respond to requests for comment.
The U.S. Director of National Intelligence’s Office referred the questions to the FBI, which did not return the messages for comment.
INFORMATION PROVIDED BY THE FBI
Facebook’s cybersecurity policy chief Nathaniel Gleicher said his team acted on data provided through the FBI and suspended accounts before collecting a giant online audience.Only another 14,000 people followed one or more of the suspended accounts, he said.
“I think it’s very vital that we know about this,” Gleicher told Reuters.”I need other people to know that the Russian actors are still looking and that their tactics are evolving, but I don’t need other people to think this crusade is over.”has been wonderful and successful.”
Peace Data publishes in English and Arabic and declares that it is a non-profit news organization that seeks “the fact about key global events”.
But the 3 permanent online indexed workers are not real, according to Graphika’s analysis, which revealed that profiles used computer-generated photographs of non-existent people and were connected to fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter and the professional LinkedIn network.
Fake personalities advertised for writers in freelance journalism and on Twitter, who provided up to $75 per article, displayed screenshots of advertisements noticed through Reuters.
Peace Data’s online page lists 22 “taxpayers,” most of whom are freelance journalists in the United States and Britain.Facebook and Graphika said there was no indication that publishers knew who the online page was.
Peace Data’s “staff” then shared the articles, covering a wide variety of political issues, in left-wing social media groups, Graphika said.He published more than 700 articles in English and Arabic between February and August of this year.
Ben Nimmo, Graphika’s head of research, said co-opting of other genuine people made it less difficult to detect political influence operations.
“What we have noticed recently has been much smaller and much less visible,” he said. “It seems they are looking more and more to hide.”
(Report through Jack Stubbs; edited through Timothy Heritage)
Subscribe
Sign up for our news explosion.