Facebook Announces It Took Down ‘Fake Accounts’ That Were Trying To ‘Interfere In The Midterm Elections’

The Facebook drama continues…

According to this, Facebook has removed “fake accounts” that were allegedly attempting to “interfere in the midterm elections.” In response, they’ve removed a total of 32 pages and accounts from Facebook and Instagram.

“We’re still in the very early stages of our investigation and don’t have all the facts — including who may be behind this,” Facebook stated. “It’s clear that whoever set up these accounts went to much greater lengths to obscure their true identities than the Russian-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) has in the past.”

I thought this little snippet from CNBC was interesting.

Facebook said it has not been able to confirm Russia’s involvement. During the 2016 election, the Russian troll farm Internet Research Agency (IRA) was accused in an indictment of election interference. In its announcement, Facebook admitted it did not have all the facts on who was responsible for the effort, but said it was disclosing the fake accounts now ahead of planned protests in Washington, D.C. next week.

Interesting, that.

Here’s more of Facebook’s statement:

Today we removed 32 Pages and accounts from Facebook and Instagram because they were involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior. This kind of behavior is not allowed on Facebook because we don’t want people or organizations creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are, or what they’re doing.

We’re still in the very early stages of our investigation and don’t have all the facts — including who may be behind this. But we are sharing what we know today given the connection between these bad actors and protests that are planned in Washington next week. We will update this post with more details when we have them, or if the facts we have change.

It’s clear that whoever set up these accounts went to much greater lengths to obscure their true identities than the Russian-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) has in the past. We believe this could be partly due to changes we’ve made over the last year to make this kind of abuse much harder. But security is not something that’s ever done. We face determined, well-funded adversaries who will never give up and are constantly changing tactics. It’s an arms race and we need to constantly improve too. It’s why we’re investing heavily in more people and better technology to prevent bad actors misusing Facebook — as well as working much more closely with law enforcement and other tech companies to better understand the threats we face.

To be continued…