Facebook And Twitter Remove Russia-Backed Accounts

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/01/908386613/facebook-and-twitter-remove-russia-backed-accounts-targeting-left-leaning-voters


September 1, 20204:17 PM ET
Bobby Allyn

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 said 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.

"Russian actors are trying harder and harder to hide who they are and being more and more deceptive to conceal their operations," said Facebook's Head of Cybersecurity Policy Nathaniel Gleicher in an interview with NPR.

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. 

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Facebook said its investigation was launched after receiving a tip from the FBI about accounts controlled by the Kremlin-backed Russian Internet Research Agency, which American intelligence agencies have said interfered in the 2016 election to help then-candidate Trump.

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Social media analysis firm Graphika said the takedown appears to reveal new tactics that Russian operatives are employing on social media ahead of the 2020 election, including the use of artificial intelligence to create social media profiles.

"This is the first time we have observed known [Internet Research Agency]-linked accounts use AI-generated avatars. However, the website employed real and apparently unwitting individuals, typically novice freelance writers, to write its articles," Graphika researchers found in a new report on the Russian-backed accounts.

Between February and August, the website published more than 500 articles in English and about 200 in Arabic that were shared on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, according to Graphika.

The researchers quote one article by a guest writer that accused Biden and Harris of "submission to right-wing populism [...] as much about preserving careers as it is winning votes." Another story, according to Graphika, accused Harris and other Democrats of "deliberately avoid[ing] being held accountable by setting no moral standard for the public to hold them to."

The operation attempted to enlist a left-wing audience and then serve up articles attacking the character and policy positions of Biden and Harris, something Graphika said is consistent "with the original [Internet Research Agency's] attempt to depress support for then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by infiltrating and influencing progressive audiences."

The report supports America's top counterintelligence official, who said last month that Russia is spreading propaganda on social media and on Russian television to try to undercut Biden ahead of the November election.