Facebook Finds, Removes Fresh Political Influence Campaign

Facebook said it has removed 32 pages from Facebook and Instagram reportedly involved in a "coordinated political influence campaign," according to news reports and a company statement.

Citing three people briefed on the matter, The New York Times reported the pages are believed to be engaging in political activity ahead of the midterm elections. Facebook said in a statement that the pages that were removed were involved in "coordinated inauthentic behavior."

"This kind of behavior is not allowed on Facebook because we don’t want people or organizations creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are, or what they’re doing," Facebook said.

The statement continued that the investigation was in its early stages and the company does not have all the facts, including who may be behind the pages. However, Facebook said there is a connection between whoever is behind the pages and protests planned in Washington next week.

Facebook said that whoever set up these accounts went to much greater lengths to obscure their identities compared to the Internet Research Agency, the Russia-based troll farm.

In its statement, Facebook described the activity of the pages, which was similar to tactics used in the 2016 Russian election interference campaign outlined in indictments and Congressional hearings.

More than 290,000 accounts followed at least one of these pages and the earliest page was created in March 2017 while the latest was created in May 2018. According to Facebook, the most followed pages were "Aztlan Warriors," "Black Elevation," "Mindful Being" and "Resisters." The remaining pages had between 0 to 10 followers and none of the Instagram accounts had followers.

The pages created more than 9,500 organic posts and ran about 150 ads for approximately $11,000 on Facebook and Instagram, the company said. The pages created about 30 events since May 2017 and the largest of these events had about 4,700 accounts interested in attending and 1,400 accounts saying they would attend.

While Facebook says it does not have all the facts about who is behind the pages, an IRA account disabled in 2017 shared a Facebook event hosted by the "Resisters" page, Facebook said. The page also had an IRA account as its admin for seven minutes, the company said.

An event organized by this page in Washington D.C. had 2,600 users interested in attending the event and 600 saying they would attend, Facebook said. The event, "No Unite The Right 2-DC," was scheduled as a counter-protest to the "Unite the Right" event in the city. The "Unite the Right" rally is organized by Jason Kessler, the same man behind the deadly August 2017 rally in Charlottesville. WTOP reports that Kessler's initial application for the rally was approved last month but a permit has not yet been issued.

Facebook said it would be informing the users who RSVPed to the event about what happened.

This report will be updated.

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