Facebook suspends Russian Instagram accounts targeting U.S. voters
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[October 22, 2019]
By Jack Stubbs and Christopher Bing
LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Facebook Inc
said on Monday it has suspended a network of Instagram accounts operated
from Russia that targeted Americans with divisive political messages
ahead of next year's U.S. presidential election, with operators posing
as people within the United States.
Facebook said it also had suspended three separate networks operated
from Iran. The Russian network "showed some links" to Russia's Internet
Research Agency (IRA), Facebook said, an organization Washington has
said was used by Moscow to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election.
"We see this operation targeting largely U.S. public debate and engaging
in the sort of political issues that are challenging and sometimes
divisive in the U.S. right now," said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's
head of cybersecurity policy.
"Whenever you do that, a piece of what you engage on are topics that are
going to matter for the election. But I can’t say exactly what their
goal was."
Facebook also announced new steps to fight foreign interference and
misinformation ahead of the November 2020 election, including labeling
state-controlled media outlets and adding greater protections for
elected officials and candidates who may be vulnerable targets for
hacking.
U.S. security officials have warned that Russia, Iran and other
countries could attempt to sway the result of next year's presidential
vote. Officials say they are on high alert for signs of foreign
influence campaigns on social media.
Moscow and Tehran have repeatedly denied the allegations.
Gleicher said the IRA-linked network used 50 Instagram accounts and one
Facebook account to gather 246,000 followers, about 60% of which were in
the United States.
The earliest accounts dated to January this year and the operation
appeared to be "fairly immature in its development," he said.
"They were pretty focused on audience-building, which is the thing you
do first as you're sort of trying to set up an operation."
Ben Nimmo, a researcher with social media analysis company Graphika who
Facebook commissioned, said the flagged accounts shared material that
could appeal to Republican and Democratic voters alike.
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Silhouettes of mobile users are seen next to a screen projection of
Instagram logo in this picture illustration taken March 28, 2018.
REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Most of the messages plagiarized material authored by leading
conservative and progressive pundits. This included recycling
comments initially shared on Twitter that criticized U.S.
congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democratic presidential
candidate Joe Biden and current President Donald Trump.
“What’s interesting in this set is so much of what they were doing
is copying and pasting genuine material from actual Americans,”
Nimmo told Reuters. “This may be indicative of an effort to hide
linguistic deficiencies, which have made them easier to detect in
the past.”
Attorneys for Concord Management and Consulting LLC have denied any
wrongdoing. U.S. prosecutors say the firm is controlled by Russian
catering tycoon Evgeny Prigozhin and helped orchestrate the IRA's
operations.
Gleicher said the separate Iranian network his team identified used
more than 100 fake and hacked accounts on Facebook and Instagram to
target U.S. users and some French-speaking parts of North Africa.
Some accounts also repurposed Iranian state media stories to target
users in Latin American countries including Venezuela, Brazil,
Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Mexico.
The activity was connected to an Iranian campaign first identified
in August last year, which Reuters showed aimed to direct internet
users to a sprawling web of pseudo-news websites which repackaged
propaganda from Iranian state media. (Link:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-iran-specialreport/special-report-how-iran-spreads-disinformation-around-the-world-idUSKCN1NZ1FT
)
The accounts "typically posted about local political news and
geopolitics including topics like public figures in the U.S.,
politics in the U.S. and Israel, support of Palestine and conflict
in Yemen," Facebook said.
(Reporting by Jack Stubbs; Additional reporting by Elizabeth
Culliford in San Francisco; Editing by Chris Reese, Tom Brown and
David Gregorio)
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