Facebook Deletes Fake Accounts That Mimic Russian Tactics Ahead of Election -- 3rd Update
July 31 2018 - 3:24PM
Dow Jones News
By Robert McMillan and Deepa Seetharaman
Facebook Inc. said it deleted a new group of politically
oriented accounts that were engaged in coordinated misinformation
efforts ahead of the U.S. midterm elections and resemble Russian
activities on the platform during the 2016 presidential
campaign.
The social-media giant on Tuesday said it removed 32 pages and
accounts from its main service and its Instagram photo-sharing app
that were created between March 2017 and May of this year. The
pages and accounts -- which include names such as "Aztlan
Warriors," "Black Elevation," and "Resisters" -- collectively
created more than 9,500 posts and were followed by more than
290,000 other Facebook accounts.
Facebook said those responsible for the accounts and pages took
great care to cover their tracks, using virtual-private networks
and internet phone services and routing ad purchases through third
parties. It said the "Resisters" page, one of the most popular of
the group, created an event page on Facebook for a protest planned
for Aug. 10-12 called "No Unite the Right 2 - DC" that enlisted
support from real people. It was scheduled to protest another event
planned for Washington, D.C., called "Unite the Right."
Facebook's revelation raised the specter of continuing outside
interference just over three months ahead of the midterm elections
-- and five months after special counsel Robert Mueller secured
indictments against a group of Russians for using an organization
called the Internet Research Agency to manipulate Facebook and
other social-media platforms during the 2016 campaign. Those IRA
accounts agitated over politically divisive issues and orchestrated
political events involving real people.
Facebook on Tuesday said it first detected some of the new
inauthentic accounts about two weeks ago, and hadn't yet determined
who may be behind it. The company said that there was evidence
connecting the accounts to last-year's Russian activity, including
that a known IRA account holder was a co-administrator of one of
the newly deleted pages for seven minutes. But there were also
differences. For example, the IRA accounts sometimes appeared to
connect with Facebook directly from computers based in Russia.
That's not the case with the new accounts, Facebook said.
Executives on a conference call declined to speculate who was
behind the activity. "We do not have enough technical evidence to
state definitively who is behind this," Nathaniel Gleicher,
Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy, told reporters.
Several lawmakers pointed the finger at Russia.
The new activity is "further evidence that the Kremlin continues
to exploit platforms like Facebook to sow division and spread
disinformation," Sen. Mark Warner (D.,Va.) said in a statement. Mr.
Warner credited Facebook for coming forward and added that he
expects the company and other internet platform operators to work
with Congress "on updating our laws to better protect our democracy
in the future."
"I am glad to see that Facebook is taking a much-needed step
toward limiting the use of their platform by foreign influence
campaigns," said Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina,
who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee. "The goal of these
operations is to sow discord, distrust, and division in an attempt
to undermine public faith in our institutions and our political
system. The Russians want a weak America." He said more needs to be
done to battle foreign interference on social media.
Facebook said it detected the activity in part thanks to
measures it took in the wake of the discoveries of the IRA
activity.
"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 did," Chief Operating
Officer Sheryl Sandberg said on Tuesday's conference all. "Security
is an arms race and it's never done."
Facebook said it removed the 17 profiles and eight pages from
its main app, along with seven Instagram accounts, for violating
its ban on "inauthentic behavior." It said it had deleted them on
Tuesday after sharing information from its initial investigation
with U.S. law enforcement agencies, members of Congress, and other
technology companies.
The banned accounts ran 150 ads on Facebook and Instagram
costing approximately $11,000 between April 2017 and last month. In
all, they also organized about 30 events on the site, dating back
to May 2017, one of which events attracted the interest of 4,700
Facebook accounts, with 1,400 saying that they would attend.
Alex Stamos, Facebook's chief security officer, said the group
behind this latest activity could well be the IRA, but could also
be a separate group. Mr. Stamos said in a blog post about the
activity that "offensive organizations improve their techniques
once they have been uncovered, and it is wishful thinking to
believe that we will always be able to identify persistent actors
with high confidence."
--Byron Tau contributed to this article.
Write to Robert McMillan at Robert.Mcmillan@wsj.com and Deepa
Seetharaman at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 31, 2018 15:09 ET (19:09 GMT)
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