Facebook Executing Numerous Fake Accounts Tied To Russia

At least 118 accounts from Russia were directly deleted by Facebook on Monday. The social network said they considered these accounts as fake, including personal accounts, fan pages, and groups as well. This execution is due to the misinformation contents amid the sensitive political scenes in Ukraine and other European nations.

According to Facebook, thousands of Facebook users were involved in those fake online organizations at the time they removed them. A report showed that 34,000 users followed at least fake Facebook pages and about 86,000 accounts joined one or more of the fake groups.

Ahead of the EU parliamentary election taking in the coming weeks, Facebook opened a new operations center in Ireland to combat fake news. At least 2 campaigns were shut down immediately when Facebook discovered them. One campaign was activating mostly in Ukraine by spreading misinformation through 97 fake Facebook channels like personal accounts, fan pages, and groups.

Note that some of these types of accounts did intend to drive users to other sources. Besides, another campaign from these fake accounts targeted some Western countries like German, Spain, and the UK. The tactic standing behind is impersonating other users and joining fake groups to propaganda misinformation to them and leak it widely.

Since the 2016 US presidential election, the company has been facing massive pressure to combat misinformation on its platform. The scandal of Cambridge Analytica was recorded to be a bad precedent. Russian trolls were accused to use it to sow discord. Apart from them, the company has also been pulling down several fake ones from other countries such as Iran, the UK, and even the US.