Washington: Facebook on Monday said it removed Russian-backed accounts that showed some links to the Internet Research Agency, an indication of the persistence of the tech giant’s disinformation problem a year before voters head to the ballot box.
In some cases the accounts posed as locals weighing in on political issues in swing states.
The Internet Research Agency is the Kremlin-backed entity that sowed social and political unrest during the 2016 presidential race.
Facebook described the network it disabled on Monday as a “well-resourced operation,” focused on the US, “that took consistent operational security steps to conceal their identity and location.”
It operated primarily on Instagram, which belongs to Facebook, and 246,000 accounts followed one or more of the Russia-linked accounts the company disabled.
In doing so, Facebook said it also removed three other foreign networks that originated in Iran.
The social-media company unveiled a series of policy changes meant to fine-tune its defences against disinformation, though Facebook left untouched a policy that allows political candidates to lie in their political ads.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company’s latest efforts indicate the threat of “increasingly sophisticated attacks from Russia, Iran and China,” but added he is “confident we’re more prepared now.”
Read the article by Tony Romm and Isaac Stanley-Becker in The Sydney Morning Herald (from The Washington Post).