Facebook said Thursday it had banned a company that had fake accounts for the conservative group Turning Point USA.
Facebook said that marketing firm Rally Forge, working on behalf of Turning Point USA, ran a campaign based on fake accounts that posted criticism of former Vice President Joe Biden and praise for President Donald Trump.
According to the social media outlet, this campaign included tactics such as commenting on the Facebook pages of major national American media outlets.
The alleged activity was first identified through an investigation by the Washington Post, which prompted the company to look into the group.
“Many of these accounts used existing photos and posed as right-leaning individuals. In 2018, some of these accounts had self-identified as left-leaning individuals to comment on content. This activity was primarily focused on commenting on news articles published by news organizations and public figures, rather than posting their own content,” Facebook said in a report released Thursday.
"The most recent activity involved the creation of what we call 'thinly veiled individuals', whose names were slight variations of the names of the people behind them, and whose only activity on our platform was linked to this deceptive campaign."
Rally Forge has been permanently banned from the social media platform. As a result of the investigation, Facebook says it has removed 200 accounts, 55 pages and 76 Instagram. About 373,000 accounts followed one or more of the Facebook pages and about 22,000 people followed one or more of the Instagram accounts.
Turning Point USA said Rally Forge was actually working with Turning Point Action. Turning Point Action is a separate legal entity from Turning Point USA, established as a non-profit organization that is permitted to engage in certain political activities, unlike Turning Point USA.
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The company did not exclude Turning Point USA or president , Charlie Kirk, saying it was unclear whether the organization was aware of the tactics used by the marketing firm.
On a call with reporters, Facebook's head of cybersecurity , Nathaniel Gleicher, said the organizations the company recently removed are "newer" and have fewer features than previous features that have been removed.
"So, in that sense, we're actually seeing reduced yields and reduced operations," he said.
"We know that these actors will continue to try and we know that they will continue to try to find a way to get around the penalty. But what we've seen is that the combination of automated enforcement and expert investigation means that these organizations are smaller, last less time and reach fewer people before they're exposed," Gleicher added.
