Facebook removes four Russian and Iranian troll networks from platform

Facebook has discovered and removed four troll networks from the platform. The social network links one of the groups to the Russian Internet Research Agency. The troll network is said to have tried to influence the 2020 US election.

According to Facebook, it concerns four operations that come from Iran and Russia. Facebook says at least one is linked to the Internet Research Agency. In total, dozens of accounts and pages have been removed. Also deleted Facebook accounts on Instagram. The four groups targeted different audiences. For example, there was one group from Iran that, in addition to America, also focused on French-speaking users in North Africa, and a group that mainly reported on countries in South America such as Venezuela and Brazil. Two groups focused mainly on the United States.

Facebook says one group “shows some links to the IRA.” The group has “characteristics of a well-funded operation,” and the trolls used “consistent operations security to hide their identity and location.” During the campaign, one Facebook page was used with 246,000 followers, which had posted a total of nearly 75,000 messages. Fifty Instagram accounts were also reported to have been deployed. The admins used fake accounts and interacted a lot with each other to increase engagement. This put them higher in timelines.

All groups used roughly the same modus operandi, according to Facebook. They would run several pages of political and social topics on which there is much divisiveness. These are, for example, political candidates, LGBTQ rights, or the action group Black Lives Matter. They did not make up fake news themselves, but shared existing news from existing networks. One of the researchers told CNN that groups pretending to be from both sides of the political spectrum especially attacked Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

In addition to the announcements, Facebook also announced new measures to better protect the US presidential election. The company says it will introduce stricter rules for who manages a Page. The company will also label state media as such from now on, and it will be more prominently displayed if Facebook’s fact-checkers prove a post to be false.