Facebook Uncovers Web of Accounts Spreading Disinformation to Influence Election in Favor of Democrats
Yes, you read that correctly
Democrats? Yes, Democrats.
The social media giant said Tuesday that it uncovered a whole web of fake accounts spreading disinformation in what they believe could be an attempt to influence the upcoming midterm elections.
The campaigns exposed were similar to Russian campaigns that ran before and after the 2016 elections.
NBC News reported:
The company removed 32 pages and accounts from its platform and from Instagram “because they were involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior,” the company said in a statement. The pages and accounts were connected to protests planned in Washington next week, Facebook said.
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, said that the company could not identify the source of the campaign and that it was still looking into it.
“This is an early stage for us to be sharing this information because we don’t have perfect information,” Sandberg said on a call with reporters.
Facebook said the campaign was similar to Russia’s efforts around the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
“Some of the activity is consistent with what we saw from the IRA before and after the 2016 elections,” Facebook said in a blog post, referring to Russia’s Internet Research Agency. “And we’ve found evidence of some connections between these accounts and IRA accounts we disabled last year, which is covered below. But there are differences, too. For example, while IP addresses are easy to spoof, the IRA accounts we disabled last year sometimes used Russian IP addresses. We haven’t seen those here.”
However, this particular campaign focused on left-leaning issues.
Most of the campaign focused on left-leaning issues such as women’s rights, the rights of indigenous people and general resistance to the Trump administration, according to a sample of about a dozen posts released by Facebook.
One of the events was titled “Trump Nightmare Must End — NYC,” planned for November in New York’s Times Square.
Another post included a photo of President Donald Trump holding a phone, with the caption: “If Trump wants to beat Barack Obama’s Twitter record for most liked tweet he only needs to tweet two words ‘I resign.’”
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., confirmed that Senate Intelligence Committee staff had been briefed this week by Facebook officials. The company also said it had shared its findings with U.S. law enforcement agencies, members of Congress and other tech companies.
Warner said he believed that Russia was behind the effort.
“Today’s disclosure is further evidence that the Kremlin continues to exploit platforms like Facebook to sow division and spread disinformation, and I am glad that Facebook is taking some steps to pinpoint and address this activity,” Warner said in a statement.
Facebook’s full statement is here.
Much of Russia’s attempted interference in the 2016 election via Facebook was overblown by a media hungry for any proof of Russian collusion.
Both Congress and Facebook found most Americans were not exposed to ads meant to influence opinion or stir up division until after the election.
Facebook, Twitter, Google, and even Pokemon Go were all part of the Russian fake ad network.
Last week, Facebook’s stock suffered the worst drop in Wall Street history. And now a shareholder is suing Facebook, claiming, “accusing the social media network of making misleading statements about its user numbers and operations,” reports the San Fransico Gate.
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Comments
I noticed in the last week or so that Facebook no longer shows the preview or thumbnail when I post a link to a LI article. Shadowbanning?
Yes.
Nope. Just shared the link to this post on my FB page and it showed up just fine.
I can see the MSM reporting on this now. Hope springs eternal!
Reporter: McZuckerberg is quoted as saying, “Facebook them Dano!”
Nope, reality just kicked in. They will still have their heads up their behinds and report what they see there instead.
If this is true that FascistBook is outing them then some employee has turned on the DNC.
More likely this is just a ruse for them to screech more “Russia Russia Russia.”
RE: Removed 32 pages and accounts?
LoL
That’s a Nuttin’ Burger!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Fake News from FakeBook.
I believe it’s about just what Rush Limbaugh speculating. Perhaps internal polling at the DNC show that this coming ‘blue wave’ is gonna be more of a ‘blue whimper’, and that they actually might lose seats. Well, now you have a ready-made excuse for such a thing happening, more Russian collusion and hacking tainting our electoral system (but only when Republicans win elections). Democrats are doing their level best to attack the integrity of our electoral system and tear down our democracy.
This is a joke.
A tiny handful of pages that had less views than cat videos on Youtube, spending less than $50,000.
These smug, arrogant pricks think we’re stupid and are acting like they’re ‘doing something’ to control RUSSIA! This is a rounding error in the balance sheet of a political campaign.
True That.
Obviously this is part of a Set-up for the Democrats to screech more Russia Russia Russia when the Dems lose Yuge in the Mid-Term this year!!!!!!!!!
Important side note:
“It cannot be repeated enough that the Mueller probe into foreign collusion was itself the product of foreign collusion….”
https://spectator.org/never-forget-the-brennan-brit-plot-to-nail-trump/
So, Facebook has been caught hosting disinformation accounts and actively working against any account which espouses any position which they do not like for months. This behavior causes the company’s stock to tank. Then a week later, the company announces that it suddenly “found” 32 pages and accounts which were actively spreading disinformation for a nearly infinitesimal left wing action and removed them. Timing is everything. This is nothing more than an attempt to make it appear that Facebook has a neutral bias and is not, in fact, exactly what it is, a propaganda engine for liberal causes and persons.
This Russian Disinformation is attaining a legendary reputation that makes it seem almost mystical in its power and danger. I would love to see and hear it for myself. What magical words and chants does it contain, that ordinary Americans can’t create themselves on the internet? What is this wondrous power of the Russians, that acts like the enchanting songs of the Sirens, which required Odysseus to be strapped to the mast so that he would not be drawn toward them, into the treacherous waters, to his ultimate peril? Are we doomed by these incantations? Worse yet, what if the Democrats master this evil art?
Ah yes, Grasshoper, the bullshit is strong in this one …
Warner said he believed that Russia was behind the effort.
“Today’s disclosure is further evidence that the Kremlin continues to exploit platforms like Facebook to sow division and spread disinformation …
Quite a jump there from “belief” to “evidence” … a bit extreme, I’d say, even for a Democrat.
Are we entirely sure that they are watching the news and not just last season of Homeland?
Well, we certainly hope it was the last season.
So we are to believe the Ruskies have changed sides?
Since November 2016 we have been bombarded with charges that the Russians conspired with Trump’s people to steal an election from the “most qualified candidate to ever be nominated”; there is even a major investigation going on about this.
Now we find that the Russians are posting ads, or whatever, on Facebook that are intended to roll Congress to the Dems who will oppose the guy they supported in 2016. Maybe they should save their money since we have just seen Trump capitulate to Putin at the Helsinki meeting (at least according to the Dem propaganda sources).
I, too, would like to see an example of what is actually posted that has all these people upset. The home-grown retards have already proposed over a dozen “impeachable” scenarios only to see them all explode in their faces, so this Russian stuff must be really something. Can’t wait.
And… Zuckerberg: what’s with that hair? Does a man of his wealth not own a mirror?
Of course the Russkies didn’t change sides, they have always been closer to Obama’s side. Trump is a big Israel supporter. Russia supports all Israel’s enemies.
That struggle is the root of everything else going on and puts everything else in perspective. But don’t be fooled by “Jewish” groups that are actually for the Palestinians / Iranians / former SA / former NK / Russian axis.
Y’alls need to pay attention. The so-called “hacking” back in 2016 mostly involved setting up fake FB identities to tout a particular candidate.
While the pro-Trump pages have been extensively discussed, few people have talked about the (nearly as many) pro-Hillary pages.
What should be self-evident is that Russia wasn’t trying to get any particular elect candidate elected, but rather to degrade any faith in the US elective process. They have been fairly successful in that regard. While Democrats have as a rule seemed to have fallen for the narrative more frequently than Republicans, I’ve seen even on this blog many republican/conservatives who have also fallen prey to the disinformation.
If you honestly think that the other side is fundamentally evil, then you’ve swallowed the kool-aid. They’re not evil, they’re just wrong.
Gosh! Thanks Facebook. I might have voted differently because of something I read on the internet.
(that’s really the meat in the Russian Nothing Burger, yes? Stupid Democrats were going to vote Hillary but then read some fake report by an anonymous source on Facebook?)
“Today’s disclosure is further evidence that the Kremlin continues to exploit platforms like Facebook to sow division and spread disinformation”
Goldstein. Again. Damn, that guy sure gets around. Just yesterday he tripped Hillary into the bushes.
And yet solid conservative sites still use Zuck for commenting. Yeah… you Powerline.
I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts that it isn’t Russians. My money is on some of the shady groups attached to and funded by the Nazi Collaborator George Soros.
Soros was not a nazi collaborator, and repeating this vile libel discredits everything you have to say.
Soros helped the Nazis identify and confiscate Jewish property. He admits to it.
No, he did not. This is a vile blood libel invented by liars like you.
He didn’t say that story? Or he has an odd sense of humor and didn’t mean it when he said it?
A blood libel is a very specific form of libel. The term is powerful, but only so long as it is not abused by being misused as an insult word for something else.
You aren’t helping.
You are absolutely wrong about that. He admitted to it on a 60 Minutes interview that I have watched. Lots of people have watched it. Despite his recent efforts to deny it and try to get rid of any evidence, the interview still exists. And he actually said he had NO REGRETS. So enough this “libel” nonsense. Truth is an absolute defense to that claim and this is TRUE.
Go to 8:20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSyczwuTQfo
Zuckerberg’s name will always be synonymous with greed and treachery.
This seems more like cover, when they dump a bunch of right leaning conservative pages and members they will point to this and say, see, we are fair and do it to both sides… even if it’s 1000 to 1 ratio, they did it to leftists first, so it’s virtue signalling while meaning really nothing.
Expect that these pages will be back in some form or other and go untouched closer to the election. It is about creating a narrative while doing virtually nothing.
With the huge number of people, groups and pages just focused on US politics that are on FB, this is less than .1% and will easily be covered by all those lying pages that remain untouched, including the media which doesn’t report much more than propaganda.
“coordinated inauthentic behavior”
Yep, that sounds like the Democrats.
“coordinated inauthentic behavior”
But when they start doing “coordinated, authentic behavior” my bet is FB does nothing.
The kicker is that most of the news articles about facebook shutting down accounts never mention that most of the recent accounts that were shut down were trying to hurt conservatives. The way they word their stories give readers the impression that these were more supposed pro-Trump efforts….which they clearly were not.
“Facebook, Twitter, Google, and even Pokemon Go were all part of the Russian fake ad network.”
Well that explains why I never saw even one of the supposed ads.
I would take these pages at face value and assume these pages were put in place by either progressive sources or State(s) such as Iran or China that perceive the Democrats as easier to deal with.
Warner is a stupid senator that has minimal computer skills yet he “thinks” it is Russia. Facebook has hundreds of real nerds and they can not identify who did it or where they are roughly located.
If any of the polling groups were to ask who the 32 most influential vote-generators of today are, I seriously doubt that an obscure Russian Facebook bot-farm would show up among them.