Facebook has removed a network of Russian accounts from its platform after experts determined that the account operators were attempting to interfere in political matters involving eight other countries: Madagascar, the Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, Cameroon, Sudan and Libya.
Such accounts were also found on Instagram. Three networks of accounts were found, targeting users in Africa. “Each of these fraudulent operations used networks of accounts to mislead users about who they are and what they do,” Facebook said.
Facebook linked these campaigns to entities funded by Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin , who the US Department of Justice previously accused of co -founding and funding the Internet Research Agency , a company that runs disinformation campaigns and interferes in the electoral processes of many countries around the world.
The social networking platform removed 35 accounts and 53 Facebook pages, 7 groups and 5 Instagram, originating from Russia and targeting users from Madagascar, the Central African Republic, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast and Cameroon.
Experts found that about 475,000 Facebook users were following one or more of these fake accounts.
The accounts posted content related to the elections in Madagascar and Mozambique, as well as various global and local political news. The account operators also spent $77,000 to advertise and promote content .
Facebook also discovered another campaignthat targeted Sudanese. The campaign involved the use of 17 accounts, 18 pages, 3 groups, and 6 Instagram accounts, which were also removed from the platform.
The campaigners used a combination of fake and hacked accounts to comment, post content, and manage their pages.
Approximately 457,000 users followed these accounts.
Finally, Facebook removed 14 Russian Facebook accounts, 12 pages, 1 group and 1 Instagram account that targeted Libyan. Approximately 212,000 users followed one of these accounts and pages.
“We are constantly trying to detect and stop this kind of activity because we don’t want services to be used to manipulate people,” said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy.
“We remove these pages, groups and accounts based on their behavior, not the content they post,” he said. “We do what we can but it’s an ongoing challenge.”.
