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Facebook announced in an official statement Tuesday (31) the exclusion of pages and profiles apparently geared to influence the US elections scheduled for next November. In an article posted on the press room blog, Nathaniel Gleicher, head of the social network's computer security policy, said 17 profiles, eight pages, and seven Instagram accounts had "unauthenticated coordinated behavior."
a coordination of unfair efforts of agents usually hidden. Unlike what happened in the US presidential elections of 2016, Facebook still can not attribute the detected activities to Russia or any other entity interested in the mid-term elections of the country. 19659003] Thousands of adept and advertising spend
The searchable data, however, show that one of the banned pages had 290,000 subscribers. Among the most popular are "Aztlan Warriors", "Black Elevation", "Mindful Being" and "Resisters". Other miners had fewer than 10 followers – and there was even an Instagram account without followers.
The pages were created between March 2017 and May of this year, and some of them have clearly highlighted a very active management. "They ran about 150 ads on Facebook and Instagram for about $ 11,000 – paid in Canadian and US dollars," writes Gleicher.
The measurement also took into account other activities, such as posts and comments in publications.
Arms race
Unlike the widely open methods used by the Russians in the 2016 elections, the performance of groups interested in manipulating the vote in November was much more cautious. According to Gleicher, new influencers use features such as virtual private networks (VPNs), and generally use the Internet only on mobile phones (which makes tracking difficult). In addition, paid advertisements are usually made by third parties, helping to hide the real articulators.
A new involvement of the Russian Internet Search Agency is not ruled out, however. "Some activities are consistent with what we saw perpetrated by the IRA before and after the 2016 elections," says Gleicher, adding that links between newly identified accounts and those belonging to the IRA, excluded in 2017, have been noted. Although a new IRA action is not excluded, recent actions have been more refined – using VPNs and cellular networks.
"But there are some differences," he adds. "For example, although IP addresses are easy to hide, the IRA accounts we disabled last year were using Russian IP addresses – and we did not see them this time." But the social network tries to retain an advantage. "It's an arms race, and we have to constantly improve," concludes Gleicher
Source: Facebook Newsroom
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