Why Election Interference Campaigns on Facebook Are Still Working

Why Election Interference Campaigns on Facebook Are Still Working

6 years ago
Anonymous $oIHRkISgaL

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/j5ndz7/why-election-interference-campaigns-on-facebook-are-still-working

Wednesday, Facebook revealed it had discovered what it claimed were inauthentic actors operating on its platform. Before telling the public, Facebook deactivated the eight pages, 17 accounts, and seven Instagram accounts. The various groups and pages targeted specific, typically left-leaning, political activists and one had even coordinated a counter-protest to the upcoming Unite the Right 2 rally in Washington, DC with five other legitimate pages.

Facebook was unwilling to definitively attribute the disinformation campaign to Russian hackers, but the tactics are similar to those used by the infamous Internet Research Agency (IRA), the St. Petersburg based troll factory thought to be responsible for many of the Kremlin-backed disinformation campaigns that helped sway the 2016 election. One account linked to the IRA got administrative access to one of the now disabled pages for seven minutes.

Why Election Interference Campaigns on Facebook Are Still Working

Aug 1, 2018, 8:22pm UTC
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/j5ndz7/why-election-interference-campaigns-on-facebook-are-still-working > Wednesday, Facebook revealed it had discovered what it claimed were inauthentic actors operating on its platform. Before telling the public, Facebook deactivated the eight pages, 17 accounts, and seven Instagram accounts. The various groups and pages targeted specific, typically left-leaning, political activists and one had even coordinated a counter-protest to the upcoming Unite the Right 2 rally in Washington, DC with five other legitimate pages. > Facebook was unwilling to definitively attribute the disinformation campaign to Russian hackers, but the tactics are similar to those used by the infamous Internet Research Agency (IRA), the St. Petersburg based troll factory thought to be responsible for many of the Kremlin-backed disinformation campaigns that helped sway the 2016 election. One account linked to the IRA got administrative access to one of the now disabled pages for seven minutes.