https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/43bn7g/facebook-deletes-hundreds-of-accounts-controlled-by-russian-propagandists-internet-research-agency >Hundreds of Kremlin-linked Facebook accounts and pages, controlled by the Internet Research Agency (IRA), were deleted by the company today. In total, 70 Facebook, 65 Instagram accounts, and 138 Facebook Pages were removed, according to Facebook’s Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos. >Many of the Facebook pages ran ads on the platform, Stamos said. The pages spent $167,000 on ads since January 1, 2015 and targeted Russian speakers, and people living in Russia or nearby countries—95 percent of the pages with content were in Russian. It took several months for Facebook to identify these accounts and pages, which were ultimately deleted because they were IRA-controlled, Stamos wrote.