Stefan Mileschin

Putin on a brave face just in time for the US elections

Facebook is expected to announce that it has identified a coordinated political influence campaign, with dozens of inauthentic accounts and pages that are believed to be engaging in political activity ahead of November's midterm elections.

Facebook warned lawmakers that it detected the influence campaign as part of its investigations into election interference.

In an announcement it said that it removed 32 Pages and accounts from Facebook and Instagram because they were involved in coordinated inauthentic behaviour.

“This kind of behaviour is not allowed on Facebook because we don't want people or organizations creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are, or what they're doing. We're still in the very early stages of our investigation and don't have all the facts -- including who may be behind this”, the statement said.

Facebook said that whoever set up these accounts went to much greater lengths to obscure their true identities than the Russian-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) has in the past.

“We believe this could be partly due to changes we've made over the last year to make this kind of abuse much harder”, the statement said.

So far it had been unable to tie the accounts to Russia, whose Internet Research Agency was at the centre of an indictment earlier this year for interfering in the 2016 election, but company officials told Capitol Hill that Russia was possibly involved.

Russia has rather liked the current administration as it has destabilised the NATO alliance and weakened the US’s image internationally. There is currently an investigation into the depth of Russian ties to the current government.

https://fudzilla.com/news/46861-face...uence-campaign