Author: Adam Satariano / Source: New York Times
Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
LONDON — Facebook identified two disinformation campaigns originating from Russia — including one tied to an agency controlled by the Kremlin — that were targeted at users in Europe and Central Asia. The company said on Thursday it had deleted nearly 500 pages and accounts that had posted the misleading messages.
Many of the pages were discovered to be linked to employees of Sputnik, an agency controlled by the Russian government that was established to spread reports and information sympathetic to Russia. It used independent news pages on topics like weather, travel and sports to mask its efforts, Facebook said.
The company has been under pressure to more aggressively address the spread of misinformation, and to counter manipulation on its social network that is aimed at stirring division and discord, ever since it became evident that Russia used it to target groups of voters, sow division and spread false information in order to sway the 2016 presidential election. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, has said the detection of suspicious activity is a top priority.
But on a platform of two billion users, disinformation campaigns are hard to detect, and Facebook remains a gathering ground for groups eager to spread disinformation to the widest audience possible.
The activity revealed by Facebook shows how Kremlin-linked groups continue to use the social network to spread misleading materials around the world. Several of the countries targeted share a border with Russia.
“We are constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people,” Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy at Facebook, said in a blog post.
The discovery provides another glimpse of the manipulative tactics used by groups to promote their articles, videos, groups and other content on Facebook.
Fake accounts were created in different countries with the sole purpose of sharing content from Sputnik.Facebook said one of the campaigns had targeted people in 13 countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Facebook deleted 289 pages and 75 accounts linked to that effort, which also spent about $135,000 on Facebook advertising from 2013 to this month.
About 790,000 users followed one or more of the pages, and up to 1,200 people expressed interest in attending one of the roughly 190 events organized by those behind the fake pages. Facebook couldn’t say whether any of the events had taken place.
The company said the misleading content aimed to influence people in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
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