Facebook announced on Tuesday that the company has deleted several fake accounts that were “trying to interfere” with the midterm elections.
Facebook added that they were not able to confirm if Russia was involved with the accounts.
Facebook identifies political influence campaign, not conclusively tied to Russia: NYT from CNBC.
The Facebook pages in question mostly revolved around hot button issues like opposition to the upcoming “Unite the Right” neo-Nazi rally near the White House, black civil rights advocacy and the desire to shut down Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
So they were clearly not pro-Trump pages.
CNBC reported:
Facebook confirmed it has identified a coordinated political influence campaign believed to be working ahead of November’s midterm elections.
The social media company announced Tuesday it had detected and removed 32 fake accounts and pages from both Facebook and Instagram after identifying “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” Of the 32 accounts identified, seven were Instagram accounts, 17 were Facebook profiles and eight were Facebook pages, Facebook said. An estimated 290,000 Facebook accounts followed at least one of those pages.
Facebook said it has not been able to confirm if Russia was involved. During the 2016 election, the Russian troll farm Internet Research Agency (IRA) was accused in an indictment of election interference. In its announcement, Facebook admitted it did not have all the facts on who was responsible for the effort, but said it was disclosing the fake accounts now ahead of planned protests in Washington, D.C., next week.
“It’s clear 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,” Facebook wrote in a statement.