Facebook identifies Russian and Iranian campaigns to meddle in 2020 US election
- The company confirmed it had dismantled the four accounts and announced initiatives to prevent foreign interference in US campaigns
Facebook on Monday disclosed it had taken down four new foreign interference operations originating from Iran and Russia, including one targeting the US 2020 presidential elections that appears to be linked to the Russian troll agency, the internet Research Agency (IRA).
The suspected IRA campaign “had the hallmarks of a well-resourced operation that took consistent operational security steps to conceal their identity and location”, Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, said in a blog post.
The campaign used 50 Instagram accounts and one Facebook account with about 246,000 followers to publish nearly 75,000 posts, according to Graphika, a social network analysis company that reviewed the campaign for Facebook.
The accounts adopted various political identities, such as pro-Donald Trump, anti-police violence, pro-Bernie Sanders, LGBTQ, feminist, pro-police and pro-Confederate, according to Graphika’s analysis.
Most posts were not explicitly related to electoral politics, Graphika said, but were focused on general political commentary for “persona development and branding”.
The deployment of false personas advocating for both sides of a political debate – such as nine accounts designed to look like they were run by black activists protesting against police violence and “thin blue line” accounts defending police officers – echoes the tactics used by the IRA during its 2016 election interference campaign.
