Facebook removes fake Russian accounts for inauthentic behaviour ahead of US polls

Facebook on September 24 removed three separate networks for violating the platform's policy against foreign or government interference which is coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) on behalf of a foreign or government entity. Facebook in total removed 214 Facebook users, 35 Pages, 18 Groups, and 34 Instagram accounts. The social media giant said that the networks originated in Russia and their investigation connected these clusters to the Russian intelligence services. 

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"We identified several clusters of connected activity that relied on fake accounts — many of which had been detected and removed by our automated systems. This network appears to have centered around a number of regions including the Far East, Russia’s neighboring countries, and Syria," Facebook said in a statement.

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Fake accounts, US poll threat & more

These networks used fake accounts to create "elaborate fictitious personas" across many internet services, posing as journalists to contact news organizations, purporting to be locals in countries they targeted, and managing Groups and Pages, some of which proclaimed to be hacktivist groups. 

People behind these networks coordinated with one another and used fake accounts as a central part of their operations to drive people to their off-platform sites and other social media platforms, where they promoted content related to past alleged leaks of compromising information meant to influence the US election. "While we have not seen the networks we removed today engage in these efforts, or directly target the US 2020 election, they are linked to actors associated with the election interference in the US in the past, including those involved in “DC leaks” in 2016," the company said. 

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Facebook said that these networks frequently posted news and current events about the Syrian civil war, Turkish domestic politics, geopolitical issues in the Asia-Pacific region, NATO, the war in Ukraine, and politics in the Baltics, Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and the United States. These networks reportedly used many languages including English, Ukrainian, Russian, and Arabic to tailor their activity to each audience. 

The pages that Facebook removed had about 8,500 followers on one or more of these pages, about 9,500 accounts joined one or more of these groups, and around 7,500 users followed these Instagram accounts. These networks spent about $60 in advertising on Facebook and paid for in US dollars or rubles. 

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