Facebook has identified an ongoing political influence campaign

WASHINGTON – Facebook announced Tuesday it has identified a coordinated political influence campaign, with dozens of non-authentic accounts and pages expected to engage in political activities ahead of the November mid-term elections. according to three people informed on the subject.

In a series of briefings on Capitol Hill this week, the company told lawmakers that it has detected the influence campaign on Facebook and Instagram as part of its investigations into the ### 39, electoral interference. He was unable to bind accounts to Russia, whose Internet search agency was at the center of an indictment for interfering in the 2016 elections, but Company officials told Capitol Hill that Russia was involved.

"We are still in the early stages of our investigation and we do not have all the facts, including those behind it," the company said in a statement. "But we share what we know today given the link between these bad actors and the protests planned in Washington next week."

In his statement, Facebook claimed to have discovered the accounts – eight Facebook pages, 17 Facebook profiles, and seven Instagram accounts – two weeks ago.

The company works with the FBI to investigate the activity

Just like the Russian interference campaign in 2016, the newly detected campaign dealt with conflicting social issues. Facebook has discovered a coordinated activity around issues like following the White Supremacy rally of last year in Charlottesville, Virginia. Specifically, a page titled "Resistants", which was interacting with an Internet Research Agency account in 2017, created an event called "No Unite the Right 2 – DC" to serve as a counter-proposal to the White Nationalist Rally, scheduled in Washington in August. Facebook said the event has been disabled

A coordinated activity has also been detected around #AbolishICE, a left-wing campaign on social media that aims to end the agency's presence. Immigration and Customs, according to two people. This echoes the efforts made in 2016 for the fan division around the Black Lives Matter movement.

After being caught off guard by the efforts of the Internet Research Agency to use social media to sow division before the 2016 presidential election, Facebook is trying to avoid The company has expanded its security team by recruiting counter-terrorism experts and recruiting workers with government security clearances.

The company uses artificial intelligence and teams of reviewers to detect automated accounts and suspicious election activities. He also tried to prevent Russian-style influence campaigns from using hidden advertisements on Facebook to influence public opinion, forcing US political advertisers to take action. Register on a national postal address and publish all political advertisements in a public database.

During a conference call with reporters earlier this month, Nathaniel Gleicher, director of Facebook's cyber security policy, declined to directly answer multiple questions about the presence of campaigning campaigns. additional Russian information. Bad actors will continue to try to abuse our platform – before the mid-term, probably mid-term, after mid-term, and around other events and elections, "said Mr. Gleicher: "We are continually looking for this type of activity, and as we find things that we think inevitable, we will inform the forces of order, and where we can, the public "

Warned for months that Russia's efforts to undermine US democracy remain active and pose a threat to this year's elections.If in fact Russian, the activity would provide living proof that the type of cybernetic operations used around the 2016 campaign was still used.

"We think that it is inevitable that we find evidence, and we will find other actors, come from Russia, other countries or national actors x seeking to continue to try to abuse the platform, "said Mr. Gleicher