There are a lot of very odd things about living in 2018 but the fact that there are people in buildings somewhere in Russia being paid to post day-in and day-out about how Hillary Clinton has a terminal illness and how ISIS is being paid by George Soros to help funnel genetically engineered super-criminals into the United States via migrant caravans, well, that’s gotta be somewhere near the top of the list.
In the wake of the discovery that Russia did have a measurable impact on the 2016 election via social media influence, Facebook has been trying to restore faith in the platform by introducing transparency about their efforts to crack down on dishonest actors using the platform.
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In a post to their blog, Facebook’s Head of Cybersecurity Policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, has said that the company has suspended around 30 Facebook accounts and 85 Instagram accounts that they believe “may be engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior” on the eve of the mid-term elections.
According to Gleicher, the FB accounts were almost entirely in French and Russian, with the Instagram accounts mostly in English — some “focused on celebrities, others political debate“.
Gleicher said the announcement was early in their investigation and that they would reveal more details soon, including whether the accounts could be tied to Russia:
Typically, we would be further along with our analysis before announcing anything publicly. But given that we are only one day away from important elections in the US, we wanted to let people know about the action we’ve taken and the facts as we know them today.
Once we know more — including whether these accounts are linked to the Russia-based Internet Research Agency or other foreign entities — we will update this post.
Gleicher said that they were alerted to the accounts on the weekend by US law enforcement, who believed that they could be connected to ‘foreign entities’.
