Facebook and Twitter said Tuesday that they had removed accounts linked to Russian state actors who tried to spread false stories about racial justice, the Democratic …
Facebook and Twitter said Tuesday that they had removed accounts linked to Russian state actors who tried to spread false stories about racial justice, the Democratic presidential campaign of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and President Trump’s policies. Researchers who have examined the operation say it attempted to steer left-leaning voters away from the Biden-Harris campaign in an way that echoes the Russian disinformation campaigns that sought to depress progressive and minority support for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Facebook said the Russian agents set up a site posing as an independent news outlet and managed to recruit “unwitting freelance journalists” to write stories that were shared by dozens of social media accounts created through artificial intelligence. The Russian operatives, according to Facebook, primarily used a website called PeaceData. It billed itself as a news site that aimed to shed light on corruption, abuse of power and human rights. Both Facebook and Twitter detected and removed accounts associated with the site before any of them had gathered a large following. Facebook said it removed 13 accounts and two pages that together had gained 14,000 followers. Twitter said it had suspended five accounts and will continue to block any content connected to the PeaceData website.
