Weeks before election, Facebook shuts down alleged Russian military intelligence operation
Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, said that, while the accounts had not been primarily targeting the United States, there is a concern that accounts like this could be used in Russian influence operations as November’s US presidential election draws closer.
Gleicher said Facebook has not seen specific evidence of a so-called “hack and leak” operation but said “we do think, and I think a number of experts think, realistically this is one of the threats we should be ready for.”
Facebook said the accounts it had shut down had been primarily focused on “the Far East, Russia’s neighboring countries, and Syria.”
“They frequently posted about news and current events, includingthe Syrian civil war, Turkish domestic politics, geopolitical issues in the Asia-Pacific region, NATO, the war in Ukraine, and politics in the Baltics, Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and the US,” Facebook said.
Twitter also said it shut down related accounts on its platform that it could “reliably attribute to state-linked entities” in Russia, a Twitter spokesperson told CNN on Thursday.
Facebook said it had evidence that the group had posed as journalists to contact news organizations — something, Gleicher said, American reporters should be mindful of in the final weeks of the election campaign.
Facebook also said it shut down accounts tied to people who have been associated with the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the infamous Russian troll group that used social media to try to meddle in the 2016 election.
Facebook identified a website, linked to the pages it shut down, that describes itself as an “independent analytical center” but is linked to the troll operation.
Facebook identified this after a tip from the FBI, the company said.
Russia has repeatedly denied it used social media to interfere in the 2016 election.
