Facebook finds evidence of new campaign to influence midterm elections

Source: The Hill | July 31, 2018 | Ali Breland

Facebook revealed Tuesday that it has found evidence of a coordinated political influence campaign making use dozens of fake accounts and pages on its platform in advance of the November midterm elections.

The social media company announced that it has removed 32 pages and accounts across Facebook and Instagram involved in “inauthentic behavior.” Facebook is reportedly working with the FBI on the matter.

Facebook told lawmakers in a series of briefings this week that it had discovered the influence campaign as it watched for election interference efforts, The New York Times reported.

The company told Congress that the efforts could have been conducted by Russia, but that it has not been able to confirm this.

“We’re still in the very early stages of our investigation and don’t have all the facts — including who may be behind this,” Facebook said in a post on Tuesday.

“But we are sharing what we know today given the connection between these bad actors and protests that are planned in Washington next week. We will update this post with more details when we have them, or if the facts we have change,” it added.

The company said that “whoever set up these accounts went to much greater lengths to obscure their true identities than the Russian-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) has in the past.”

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