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San Francisco – Facebook has identified new attempts at political manipulation of its platform in the run-up to the November legislative elections in the United States, but without identifying the perpetrators, the social network announced on Tuesday, adding that it has closed accounts and pages concerned.
While claiming not to know who is behind this coordinated action the group however states that " part of these activities is consistent with what (Facebook) had seen of the share of (the organization related to Russia) Internet Research Agency "(IRA) at the time of the presidential election of 2016.
The first social network in the world also explained to have found" links "between deleted accounts" and IRA accounts disabled last year ".
In total, 32 pages and Facebook and Instagram accounts were identified and deleted. The oldest was created in March 2017, the most recent in May 2018.
As was the case for publications identified as political manipulation in the 2016 US presidential election, the deleted accounts and pages addressed polemical subjects, likely to throw oil on the fire in the American society.
Facebook cited Tuesday a call to protest against " Fascism " in Washington next week posted on one of these pages.
– Informed Police and Congress –
During a conference call, group officials also reported that they had informed US law enforcement authorities as well as parliamentarians.
The social network had already said it expected new attempts to manipulate via its platform in the run-up to mid-term elections in the United States this fall.
Repeating several times that it was not up to Facebook to attribute these manipulative attempts " to a specific organization or country ", Facebook security chief Alex Stamos said that 'it' was for the police to make the decision "to attribute these attempts to an entity or a country.
The group added that the actors behind these manipulative attempts had covered their tracks in a much more sophisticated way than what was observed when examining IRA methods, that " closes at trolls "Russian.
" Security is an arms race ," said number two of the Sheryl Sandberg group.
US intelligence services and parliamentary commissions of inquiry have repeatedly stated that the Kremlin was behind attempts to manipulate public opinion via Facebook, which Moscow has consistently denied.
Facebook has been widely criticized for failing to identify these manipulations and has since implemented tools to limit and better identify them.
The pages removed by Facebook were followed by 290,000 accounts and spent $ 11,000 to sponsor nearly 150 content (" ads "), making them more visible, the network said.
" We face determined, well-financed opponents who will never give up and change tactics all the time ," said Mark Zuckerberg's group.
According to a New York Times article, relayed to Facebook's Twitter account, company officials said in congressional meetings that " Russia could be involved " in this new case .
Facebook reported in October that about " 10 million people in the United States " had viewed sponsored content funded by nearly 500 activated accounts from Russia before the 2016 presidential election.
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