Elections: Facebook: campaign to influence voters before US elections in autumn discovered

F acebook claims to have discovered an election campaign before the November US congressional elections. Facebook closed due to a coordinated attempt to influence the election of 32 user accounts in the online service and Instagram image service, as the the US company announced in several blog posts on Tuesday. The White House said it would not tolerate foreign interference in electoral processes.

"We are still at the very beginning of the investigation and we have not yet got all the facts," said Facebook. Until now, the company could not name the countries or groups that could be responsible for the campaign.

There are links to accounts closed last year by the Internet Research Agency (IRA), which is the troll factory of the Russian government. Alex Stamos, head of security at Facebook, said at a press conference. Trolls are internet users who deliberately disrupt online discussions and poison the atmosphere of discussion forums.

"But we do not think the evidence is clear enough to publicly accuse the IRA," Stamos said. The IRA has controlled many Facebook accounts before the US presidential elections in 2016, which were used to influence voters. Russia faces repeated allegations of manipulation attempts during the 2016 presidential campaign. Moscow rejects the allegations.

Facebook has already informed US law enforcement agencies, Congress and other technology companies of its recent findings. According to a New York Times article, the company works with the FBI.

Facebook's boss, Mark Zuckerberg, has challenged the abuses on the social network: "One of my top priorities for 2018 is to abuse Facebook. Zuckerberg wrote Tuesday on his own Facebook page. "We create services to bring people together, and I want to make sure we do everything we can to prevent anyone from abusing them to disperse us."

Closed accounts gave Facebook Digits $ 11,000 (9400 euros) for nearly 150 ads. "We are dealing with determined and well-financed opponents." These "would never give up and would change tactics constantly," he says

. The oldest of closed accounts was created in March 2017, the most recent in May 2018. In total, more than 10,000 messages were written, 290,000 other users are closed

Last fall, Facebook has said that nearly ten million users in the United States have seen suspicious sponsored contributions from nearly 500 user accounts from Russia.

The White House badured Tuesday US President Donald Trump made it clear that the government "will not tolerate foreign interference in our electoral process by a state or other malicious players".

Trump had recently outraged because he had avoided speaking at a press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin to condemn the unanimous recognition of US intelligence from Russia for cyberattacks against the US Democrats during the election campaign of 2016. Instead, he evaluated Putin's claim that Russia had nothing to do with these hacker attacks, "extremely strong and powerful".

US Democrat Senator Mark Warner, Vice Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday that Facebook's revelations are "further evidence that the Kremlin continues to use platforms like Facebook to divide and spread misinformation." 19659002] Chuck Schumer, Leader of the Democrats of the Opposition Senate, accused the Trump administration of "not even approaching enough" to protect the elections.