By Jeff Horwitz and Robert McMillan
Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. have taken down a global network
of fake accounts used in a coordinated campaign to push pro-Trump
political messages, including some that used artificial
intelligence tools to try to mask the behavior, the companies and
outside research firms they worked with said on Friday.
The move targeted a U.S.-based media company that also operates
out of Vietnam called The BL, which, Facebook alleges, used
computer-generated profile pictures to cover up the orchestrated
nature of its activities. Facebook linked the company to the Epoch
Media Group, which has had ties to the Falun Gong movement, a
spiritual movement based in China which has clashed with the
Chinese government and supported President Trump's reelection.
The BL, also known as the Beauty of Life, is "currently working
with Facebook to resolve the issue," said Orysia McCabe, the
website's editor in chief. She didn't say how the company planned
to settle the matter with Facebook.
In a statement posted to his company's website, Epoch Media
Group Publisher Stephen Gregory denied any connection between BL
and his company, saying that BL was "founded by a former employee,
and employs some of our former employees." Epoch Media is neither
owned nor operated by Falun Gong, the company has said.
A Facebook spokeswoman responded by saying that executives of
The BL were active administrators on Epoch Media Group-controlled
pages as recently as Friday morning, when The BL accounts were
deleted by Facebook.
The use of AI-generated photos to pass off the accounts as real
represents a new tool for those trying to use fake accounts to
amplify their message on social-media platforms. It adds to the
longstanding practice of stealing other people's photos, using
stock images for profile pictures and hijacking other peoples'
accounts. The use of AI comes as Facebook and others are using
their own tools to help spot fake accounts.
The large deployment of AI-generated photos in this way "was the
first time we've seen this at scale," said Ben Nimmo, of Graphika,
an social-media analytics firm that worked with Facebook to
investigate the network.
The tech giant said the BL, which the social-media company has
now banned from its platform, ran 610 accounts, 89 pages, 156
groups on Facebook -- in addition to 72 accounts on Facebook-owned
Instagram. The fake accounts accrued more than 55 million
followers, Facebook said, adding most of them were outside of the
U.S. The accounts targeted people in Vietnam as well as global
audiences speaking Chinese and Spanish, Facebook said.
The network of fake accounts bolstered its efforts by spending
more than $9 million on advertising on the platform.
The BL itself had more than 1.5 million Facebook followers as of
Tuesday, according to a version of its Facebook page captured by
the Internet Archive. Facebook said. Graphika's Mr. Nimmo said the
network, by followers, was the biggest found to date.
A Twitter spokesman said the company "identified and suspended
approximately 700 accounts originating from Vietnam for violating
our rules around platform manipulation -- specifically fake
accounts and spam." The company did not identify who owned the
accounts.
The accounts had a relatively low number of followers, he said,
and have been permanently suspended. Twitter said it was still
investigating but "our initial findings have not identified links
between these accounts and state-backed actors."
Facebook said it may remove additional accounts.
"We are continuing to investigate all linked networks, and will
take action as appropriate if we determine they are engaged in
deceptive behavior," Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of
security policy, said in a blog post. Mr. Gleicher said "open
source reporting" aided its investigation.
Last week, one of Facebook's own fact-checking partners, Lead
Stories, alleged that The BL had been generating fake profiles
using pictures from ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com, a website
showcasing the ease of producing photos that look realistic using
artificial intelligence.
Facebook asked researchers from the Digital Forensic Research
Lab, an arm of the Atlantic Council, a non-partisan think tank, and
Graphika to conduct an independent analysis of the network,
according to a report by the two groups.
"This case shows that there is a huge market demand for boosting
online engagement and increasingly sophisticated methods to do so
in a manipulative or inauthentic way," Graham Brookie, director of
the Digital Forensic Research Lab said. The network stood out, he
said, because of how flagrantly it used manipulative tactics.
Fact-checking site Snopes, which isn't a Facebook partner,
faulted the social-media company for not acting sooner. It said it
had previously alerted Facebook to BL's alleged behavior and, in
recent months, provided a list of allegedly fake accounts. Vinny
Green, Snopes's vice president of operations, argued that
Facebook's failure to act earlier demonstrates its inability to
protect political discussion online.
Mr. Gleicher acknowledged that the investigation had taken
Facebook five months to complete, but said that time was needed to
ensure Facebook had caught the entire network of accounts.
"This is the soonest we could taken action on it," he said,
adding that the age of the networks of accounts that Facebook has
removed is dropping as the company gains experience combating
organized abuse.
Separately, Facebook also took down a network of more than 400
pages, groups and Facebook and Instagram accounts it linked to
inauthentic behavior in the country of Georgia.
--Alexa Corse and Betsy Morris contributed to this article.
Write to Jeff Horwitz at Jeff.Horwitz@wsj.com and Robert
McMillan at Robert.Mcmillan@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 20, 2019 19:13 ET (00:13 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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