Once again, details have emerged linking Russia to several social media accounts and plots aimed at interfering with the hotly contested upcoming US presidential election between incumbent President Donald Trump of the Republican Party, and third-time contestant, Joe Biden of the Democratic Party.
In a statement made on Tuesday the 1st of September, Facebook announced that it removed a small network of accounts and pages linked to Russia’s Internet Research Agency, the “troll factory” that has used social media accounts to sow political discord in the US since the 2016 presidential election.
Similarly, Twitter also suspended five related accounts. The company said the tweets from these Russia-linked accounts “were low quality and spammy” and that most received few if any, likes or retweets.
The people behind the accounts recruited “unwitting” freelance journalists to post in English and Arabic, mainly targeting left-leaning audiences. Facebook said the network’s activity focused on the US, UK, Algeria and Egypt, and other English-speaking countries, as well as countries in the Middle East and North Africa.
The company also revealed that it began investigations into the network based on information from the FBI about its off-Facebook activities. The social media giant reported that the network was in the early stages of development, adding that it saw “nearly no engagement” on Facebook before it was removed. The network consisted of 13 Facebook accounts and two pages. About 14,000 accounts followed one or more of the pages, though the English-language page had a little over 200 followers, Facebook said.
The company also noted the people behind the network posted about global events ranging from racial justice in the US and the UK, NATO, the QAnon conspiracy, President Donald Trump, and Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. The network spent about $480 on advertising on Facebook, primarily in US Dollars. However, Facebook said less than $2 worth of those ads targeted the US It also directed people to a website called PeaceData which contained data discrediting Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris.
Separately, Twitter said it will start adding context to its trending section, which shows some of the most popular topics on the service at any given moment. Experts and even Twitter’s own employees have expressed concerns that the trending section can be gamed to spread misinformation and abuse.
