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US-IT-POLITICS-VOTE-FACEBOOK
Facebook blocks 115 accounts on eve of US election
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 6, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Facebook said Monday it blocked some
30 accounts on its platform and 85 more on Instagram after police warned they
may be linked to “foreign entities” trying to interfere in the US midterm
election.
The announcement came shortly after US law enforcement and intelligence
agencies said that Americans should be wary of Russian attempts to spread
fake news. The election is Tuesday.
A study published last week found that misinformation on social media was
spreading at a greater rate than during the run-up to the 2016 presidential
vote, which Russia is accused of manipulating through a vast propaganda
campaign in favor of Donald Trump, the eventual winner.
“On Sunday evening, US law enforcement contacted us about online activity
that they recently discovered and which they believe may be linked to foreign
entities,” Facebook head of cybersecurity policy Nathaniel Gleicher said in a
blog post.
“We immediately blocked these accounts and are now investigating them in
more detail.”
The investigation so far identified around 30 Facebook accounts and 85
Instagram accounts that appeared to be engaged in “coordinated inauthentic
behavior,” Gleicher said.
He added that all the Facebook pages associated with the accounts appeared
to be in French or Russian.
The Instagram accounts were mostly in English, with some “focused on
celebrities, others political debate.”
“Typically, we would be further along with our analysis before announcing
anything publicly,” Gleicher said.
“But given that we are only one day away from important elections in the
US, we wanted to let people know about the action we’ve taken and the facts
as we know them today.”
– ‘Junk News’ –
Despite an aggressive crackdown by social media firms, so-called “junk
news” is spreading at a greater rate than in 2016 on social media ahead of
Tuesday’s US congressional election, Oxford Internet Institute researchers
said in a study published Thursday.
Twitter said Saturday it deleted a “series of accounts” that attempted to
share disinformation. It gave no number.
Facebook last month said it took down accounts linked to an Iranian effort
to influence US and British politics with messages about charged topics such
as immigration and race relations.
The social network identified 82 pages, groups and accounts that originated
in Iran and violated policy on coordinated “inauthentic” behavior.
Gleicher said at the time there was overlap with accounts taken down
earlier this year and linked to Iranian state media, but the identity of the
culprits has yet to be determined.
Posts on the accounts or pages, which included some hosted by Facebook-
owned Instagram, focused mostly on “sowing discord” via strongly divisive
issues rather than on particular candidates or campaigns.
Sample posts shared included inflammatory commentary about US President
Donald Trump, British Prime Minister Theresa May and the controversy around
freshly appointed US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
– War room –
Major online social platforms have been under intense pressure to avoid
being used by “bad actors” out to sway outcomes by publishing misinformation
and enraging voters.
Facebook weeks ago opened a “war room” at its Menlo Park headquarters in
California to be a nerve center for the fight against misinformation and
manipulation of the largest social network by foreign actors trying to
influence elections in the United States and elsewhere.
The shutdown of thousands of Russian-controlled accounts by Twitter and
Facebook — plus the indictments of 14 people from Russia’s notorious troll
farm the Internet Research Agency — have blunted but by no means halted
their efforts to influence US politics.
Facebook, which has been blamed for doing too little to prevent
misinformation efforts by Russia and others in the 2016 US election, now
wants the world to know it is taking aggressive steps with initiatives like
the war room.
The war room is part of stepped up security announced by Facebook, which
will be adding some 20,000 employees.
BSS/AFP/GMR/1220 hrs