Facebook has shut down a sophisticated disinformation operation on its platform that engaged in divisive messaging ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, the company said Tuesday,
an escalation of what a top executive described as an “arms race” to manipulate the public using its tools.
Facebook said it discovered 32 false pages and profiles that operated from March 2017 until this May,
which lured 290,000 people with ads, events and regular posts on topics such as race, mindfulness and feminism
- and sought to stir opposition to President Trump.
The company deleted the profiles and notified law enforcement and lawmakers of the activity, as well the real Facebook users who were swept up in the operation. The pages had links to the Internet Research Agency,
the Kremlin-backed organization of Russian operatives that flooded Facebook with disinformation around the 2016 election, Facebook said.
Yet the operators of the newly banned pages, who Facebook said it was not in a position to identify, were
more clever about covering their tracks.
Lawmakers and experts attributed the activity to Russia, and
Facebook itself found that some of the pages had connections to IRA.
manipulation continues to be an active problem for Facebook and its billions of users, even after spending heavily to prevent it.
Facebook, which detected the most recent pages through manual investigations, artificial intelligence and leads from law enforcement, has taken a more aggressive approach to rooting out and disclosing political abuse.
