Facebook said it discovered 32 false pages and profiles that were created between March 2017 and this May, which lured 290,000 people with ads, events and regular posts on topics such as race, fascism and feminism — and sought to stir opposition to President Trump. The company informed law enforcement before it deleted the profiles Tuesday morning. It also notified lawmakers of the activity this week, and said it would notify the real Facebook users who were swept up in the operation.
One of the most popular pages had links to the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the Kremlin-backed organization of Russian operatives that flooded Facebook with disinformation around the 2016 election, Facebook said. Yet the operators of the newly banned pages, whom Facebook said it was not in a position to identify, were more clever about covering their tracks. Lawmakers and experts were quick to attribute the activity to Russia.
The disclosure — the first admission of coordinated disinformation on Facebook that could affect the November election — is a sign that manipulation continues to be an active problem for Facebook and its billions of users, even after the company has spent heavily to prevent it. It also raised questions about whether other technology companies are still being used as conduits for disinformation, as Google, Twitter and others were around the last election.
Google didn’t respond to queries about whether it has observed any new coordinated disinformation. Twitter declined to comment.
Both Facebook and disinformation operators have become more savvy in the last year, since the company trickled out information about the IRA activity. Facebook, which detected the most recent pages through manual investigations, artificial intelligence and leads from law enforcement, has taken a more aggressive approach to rooting out and disclosing political abuse.
Printer-friendly copy 
Email this topic to a friend
General Discussion
