Facebook Removes A Pro-Trump Group Based In Romania

Facebook on Thursday announced it removed a handful of accounts linked to a pro-Trump group based in Romania. In total, 35 Facebook pages and 88 Instagram accounts were taken down for violating the company’s coordinated inauthentic behavior rules, which since many of the pages and posts claimed to be Americans.

Some of the content posted by these accounts involved stories purported to be from conservatives African Americans and Christians, and also sometimes included content related to the QAnon conspiracy theories. Some of the accounts had names like “#BlackPeopleVoteForTrump” and “We Love Our President.”

The company stressed that the takedowns were due to the conduct of the accounts, not the political content. President Trump and many other conservatives have previously claimed that social media platforms are biased against right-wing politics.

According to a report from Reuters, the group was taken down before it was able to gain much reach. At the time of the accounts were taken down, the Facebook pages boasted only 1,600 accounts while the Instagram accounts had only 7,200.

The motivations of this group are unclear at this time, but Nathaniel Gleicher, head of security policy for Facebook, said that they did not show any clear signs of a financial motive.

According to the Atlantic Council, many of the posts made by these accounts were linked to “David Adrian,” a fake online persona which claimed to live in Montana and Romania, and which used a stolen photo.

Numerous “David Adrian” accounts have recently been taken down from Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.