Facebook removes hundreds of accounts linked to Russian troll factory

[midian182]

Facebook may be mired in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but that doesn’t mean it’s stopped fighting Russian trolls. Yesterday, the social network revealed it had removed 70 Facebook and 65 Instagram accounts, along with 138 Facebook Pages, all run by the notorious, Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency (IRA).

The Russian troll farm accounts removed today spent around $167,000 on Facebook and Instagram ads since 2015. This is on top of the $100,000 it paid Facebook to place political ads aimed at influencing the US election. The IRA was one of five Russian entities and 19 individuals to have sanctions imposed on them by the Treasury Department over allegations of election interference.

The social network’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, said the IRA’s repeated use of unauthentic accounts designed to deceive and manipulate people is why they were being removed.

“We removed this latest set of Pages and accounts solely because they were controlled by the IRA — not based on the content,” he explained.

Stamos says 95 percent of the accounts and Pages were in Russian and targeted Russia or Russian-speakers in nearby countries including Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine. 1.08 million users followed at least one of the Facebook Pages, and 493,000 users followed at least one of the Instagram accounts.

In a Facebook post discussing the move, CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote that since discovering the Russian interference, the company had “improved our techniques to prevent nation states from interfering in foreign elections, and we’ve built more advanced AI tools to remove fake accounts more generally.” He added that 15,000 people now work on security and content review—up from 10,000—and Facebook intends to hire 5000 more by the end of the year.

Senator Mark Warner tweeted a response to Facebook’s announcement. He said that while he was glad the company is addressing this activity, he expected it to work with Congress on “updating our laws to better protect our democracy in the future.”

Statement on Facebook's announcement regarding accounts controlled by the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency: pic.twitter.com/pBzd8JVmOW

— Mark Warner (@MarkWarner) April 3, 2018

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https://www.techspot.com/news/74009-facebook-removes-hundreds-accounts-linked-russian-troll-factory.html

 

[Reachable]

Ninety-five per cent of the accounts and pages were in Russian. This is not an organization whose primary purpose is to 'target' the West.

Be cautious about describing it as "Kremlin-backed". It's clearly Kremlin sympathetic, but if you just look at what wealthy, powerful interests sympathetic to the current government in the U.S. do to propagandize and spread disinformation -- not with government backing but on their own initiative -- then it won't come as any surprise that it happens elsewhere.

Again, such parties act on their own initiative, and their power is magnified tremendously by the Internet. It would be a grave mistake to automatically assume that government-sympathetic means government-run or financed, even if it involves a foreign audience. A Trump presidency and a confused, chaotic U.S. public may have looked better to the oligarchs than a Hillary presidency, because, in their view, it would open up (or keep open) more business interests, but one really has to wonder whether Putin would prefer the chaotic, belligerent and ignorant unpredictably of Trump over the at least stable and consistent hostility of Hillary.

 

[Evernessince]

Ninety-five per cent of the accounts and pages were in Russian. This is not an organization whose primary purpose is to 'target' the West.

Be cautious about describing it as "Kremlin-backed". It's clearly Kremlin sympathetic, but if you just look at what wealthy, powerful interests sympathetic to the current government in the U.S. do to propagandize and spread disinformation -- not with government backing but on their own initiative -- then it won't come as any surprise that it happens elsewhere.

Again, such parties act on their own initiative, and their power is magnified tremendously by the Internet. It would be a grave mistake to automatically assume that government-sympathetic means government-run or financed, even if it involves a foreign audience. A Trump presidency and a confused, chaotic U.S. public may have looked better to the oligarchs than a Hillary presidency, because, in their view, it would open up (or keep open) more business interests, but one really has to wonder whether Putin would prefer the chaotic, belligerent and ignorant unpredictably of Trump over the at least stable and consistent hostility of Hillary.

Putin hates Hillary, regardless of her policies. Trump could have run on the same platform as Hillary and he would have still have gone for Trump.

FYI Russia is one of the few countries Trump hasn't insulted yet. If anything, the Trump presidency is exactly what Putin wanted. Loss of US global leadership, loss of major trade pacts, loss of allies respect, ect.

 

[Reachable]

Putin hates Hillary, regardless of her policies. Trump could have run on the same platform as Hillary and he would have still have gone for Trump.

FYI Russia is one of the few countries Trump hasn't insulted yet. If anything, the Trump presidency is exactly what Putin wanted. Loss of US global leadership, loss of major trade pacts, loss of allies respect, ect.

The U.S. and Russia in more recent times weren't competing against each other for global dominance, not the way they were during the Cold War. After the Soviet Union broke up, Russia faded, and the U.S. was the world's only superpower. Russia was dealing with the U.S. on those terms, just like all the other countries. Now Trump seems to be accelerating the U.S.' loss of global leadership. China has mostly been taking up the slack, and Russia has to some extent as well. But Russia is still basically playing defense. It's not trying to pound the U.S. into the dirt (as the manipulative politicians are screaming.) It's in no position to do that.

 

[LenovoX]

Don't be fooled about this... they just censored the Russian pages because those pages are Russian... how a Russian page in Russian language can influence an American, they didn't say...

 

[Impudicus]

So Facebook doesn't allow ads favoring one Presidential candidate over the other? Don't all campaign ads attempt to influence the election? Don't all presidential candidates lie and spread misinformation in attempt to sway the election their way? The more I hear about this Russian attempt to sway the election the more frivolous it becomes. How many of these ads actually changed anyone's opinion? They sure didn't change mine.