Facebook Says Russian Agency May Have Been Behind Pages Purged Before Midterms

Facebook spent months promoting its new election safety policies before Tuesday night’s United States midterm elections. Not long after polls closed, the social network’s cybersecurity chief said the 115 pages that had been wiped from Facebook and Instagram for disinformation may have belonged to a notorious Russian troll agency, according to the New York Times.

Facebook announced the purging of 115 accounts on Monday, but at the time, did not say whether or not Russia was involved. Once Americans had voted, Gleicher said the Russian Internet Research Agency could have been behind the fraudulent pages.

“This is a timely reminder that these bad actors won’t give up — and why it’s so important we work with the U.S. government and other technology companies to stay ahead,” Gleicher said, per the Times.

The Internet Research Agency has been linked to multiple social media campaigns in the past few years. A grand jury indicted 13 Russian individuals in February for “seeking to interfere in the United States political system” during the 2016 presidential election. According to the Department of Justice, 12 of those 13 people worked for the Internet Research Agency.

Facebook’s Monday announcement about the removed pages said the investigation was in its early stages and promised an update to the blog post when more information was available. That still had not happened at the time of publication.

The site stopped short of fully linking the Internet Research Agency to the pages.

The social network released a joint statement with the FBI, stating there was no indication that foreign interference had affected anyone’s votes. That said, the statement emphasized that foreign influence still exists in other ways.

“But Americans should be aware that foreign actors—and Russia in particular—continue to try to influence public sentiment and voter perceptions through actions intended to sow discord,” the statement read. “They can do this by spreading false information about political processes and candidates, lying about their own interference activities, disseminating propaganda on social media, and through other tactics.”

Facebook also joined Fox and NBC in pulling a racist midterm campaign ad run by President Donald Trump this week. The ad had already accumulated more than 10 million impressions by the time Facebook revoked its distribution.