Facebook removed fake accounts run from Russia that aimed to influence politics in US presidential election with the Russian Internet Research Agency, the same group that used social media to foment political discord during the 2016 election.
Facebook explained those accounts also posed as a Romania-based news organization and recruited freelance journalists to write stories.
On other hand, PR company CLS Strategies ran 26 fake Facebook accounts, 36 fake Instagram accounts, and 46 pages across platforms, spending about $3.6 million on advertising.
In the US, the Russian network attempted to influence the upcoming presidential election, but without much success. According to Graphika’s analysis, an article about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris gained only a handful of likes when posted across Facebook groups.
Although CLS Strategies is based in the US, its content largely targeted people in Venezuela, Mexico, and Bolivia.
The Russian operatives, 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, according to News reportes.
Also, both Facebook and Twitter detected and removed accounts associated with the site before any of them had gathered a large following.
According to Graphika, 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.
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 in 2016, by infiltrating and influencing progressive audiences.
Follow the latest news on Google News
