META Meta Platforms Inc

By Georgia Wells and Deepa Seetharaman 

Two accounts that Facebook Inc. said appear to have ties to Russian operatives amassed more than half a million followers in the past couple of years with posts, ads and events that stoked strong emotions over issues including race and immigration.

Most followers never suspected that people with possible Russian ties were behind the accounts -- except for a few users who interacted in real life with the people running the sites.

Some users said the content from these accounts seemed like something their peers would share. "Blacktivist," an account that supported causes in the black community and used hashtags such as #BlackLivesMatter, frequently posted videos of police allegedly shooting unarmed black men. "Secured Borders" often railed against illegal immigration, publishing material such as a photoshopped image of a woman holding a sign that said "Give me more free shit!"

Via several platforms -- Facebook and its Messenger and Instagram services, as well as Twitter Inc. and YouTube, part of Alphabet Inc.'s Google -- 470 Russia-backed Facebook accounts including Blacktivist and Secured Borders quietly infiltrated communities on social media. The issues they targeted spanned the U.S. political and social spectrum, including religion, race, immigration, gun rights and gay rights. Facebook said the accounts were created by Russian entities to exploit tensions among Americans and interfere with U.S. elections.

"We were clear that there was a possibility that less-than-friendly actors would look for ways to align with the movement," said Heber Brown III, a pastor and activist for racial justice in Baltimore who first noticed the Blacktivist group on Twitter in April 2016. "But I had no idea that it would reach all the way to the Kremlin."

Russia has denied any interference in the election.

The experiences of Facebook users illustrate the apparent sophistication of people who ran the accounts. The posts mimicked the tone and topics of conversations in various communities well enough that the accounts largely were believed to be authentic.

In late August, before it was taken down, Blacktivist had 411,000 followers, according to cached versions of the page, surpassing the official "Black Lives Matter" Facebook account by more than 100,000 users.

Facebook disclosed last month that the Internet Research Agency, a Russian outfit that shares pro-Kremlin views online, created accounts that bought $100,000 in ads over a two-year period, from June 2015 to May 2017. At least some of them continued to post divisive content as recently as August.

"Any time there's abuse on our system, foreign interference on our system, we are upset," Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said at an event on Thursday. "But what we really owe the American people is determination. These are threats. These are challenges, but we will do everything we can to defeat them because our values are worth defending." Facebook has declined to say how many users engaged with the Russian content overall.

The Journal interviewed about a dozen people who followed the pages to illustrate how the accounts attracted so many users. Most of the people the Journal interviewed said they don't believe the content they absorbed sowed divisions or influenced their voting choices. "No Russian ever called me and said, 'Who are you going to vote for?'" said Wendy Harris, from Frisco, Texas, who said she thinks she followed the "Secured Borders" page around the time of the election. "I do my own research."

Facebook removed the 470 accounts last month for violating its policy prohibiting accounts from misrepresenting their origin. But because they weren't identified earlier, and because of an algorithm that favors posts that trigger reactions regardless of their authenticity, these groups were able to operate and amass a following for the past two years or longer.

In interviews, Facebook users often said they couldn't remember the first time they followed one of these pages. Facebook said the entities used divisive ads to lure users to their pages, where the accounts would then serve up unpaid content -- in the form of posts, photos and videos -- more frequently. Soon the content filled their newsfeeds, the users said.

One Facebook user in Charlotte, N.C., recalled coming across the Blacktivist page in late 2014 after a friend shared a Blacktivist post about the FBI's surveillance of black activists. Soon after, the person, who declined to be named, shared a different Blacktivist post that elicited a flood of likes and comments from the person's friends, potentially drawing more people into Blacktivist's network. "Whoever wrote that copy definitely had their finger on the pulse," the person said.

Sometimes the Blacktivist page shared content that came from a page with a more militant stance called "The Quiet Ri0t," which published content including an image that said "Black revenge: white people fear it...But so do most black people." That site is no longer up and no contact information is listed.

Blacktivist also used Facebook Messenger, the messaging service spinoff of Facebook, to reach people such as M'tep Merlotte, from Washington, D.C., who received an invite from the group before the election. Soon, she was receiving videos, including alleged police brutality, with a comment about where they happened and what they meant for black Americans.

The group posted nearly every day so Ms. Merlotte turned off Messenger notifications. "It was irritating," she said.

Blacktivist began raising suspicion among some followers when the account tried to organize real-life events. The account planned several events last year in cities such as Chicago, Baltimore, Houston and Atlanta, according to archived versions of webpages.

A march planned for April 2016 in Baltimore to mark the anniversary of the death of Freddie Gray, a black man who suffered injuries and died while in the custody of the Baltimore Police Department, spurred local activists to contact the Blacktivist administrators about the difficulty of having a group from out of town organize a sensitive event.

Cortly Witherspoon, a Baltimore-area activist who spoke to one of the administrators by phone, said he was surprised to hear him speak with an accent Mr. Witherspoon identified as possibly European.

Around the same time, Rev. Brown, the Baltimore pastor, also realized Blacktivist's administrators weren't from his area. He messaged Blacktivist on Twitter and asked if Blacktivist was a local organizer because none of his activist acquaintances had heard of the group.

"Me personally -- no," the administrator for the Blacktivist account replied, according to a screenshot of the exchange viewed by The Wall Street Journal. "We are looking for friendship, because we are fighting for the same reasons."

--Jim Oberman contributed to this article.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 13, 2017 14:32 ET (18:32 GMT)

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