Facebook Removes Romanian Fake Account Network Aimed at US Elections

Face­book report­ed in July that it had removed a Roman­ian fake account net­work due to coor­di­nat­ed inau­then­tic behavior​ on behalf of a for­eign enti­ty. The accounts and pages of the fake net­work posed as con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian Amer­i­cans and shared arti­cles about U.S. domes­tic news ahead of the 2020 Pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. Accord­ing to the Face­book report:

July 2020 The peo­ple behind this net­work used fake accounts — some of which had already been detect­ed and dis­abled by our auto­mat­ed sys­tems — to pose as Amer­i­cans, ampli­fy and com­ment on their own con­tent, and man­age Pages includ­ing some pos­ing as Pres­i­dent Trump fan Pages. This net­work post­ed about US domes­tic news and events, includ­ing the upcom­ing Novem­ber elec­tion, the Trump cam­paign and sup­port for the cam­paign by African Amer­i­cans, con­ser­v­a­tive ide­ol­o­gy, Chris­t­ian beliefs, and Qanon. They also fre­quent­ly repost­ed sto­ries by Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tive news net­works and the Trump cam­paign. We found this net­work as part of our inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into sus­pect­ed coor­di­nat­ed inau­then­tic behav­ior ahead of the 2020 elec­tion in the US.

Read the rest here.

The spon­sors of the activ­i­ty were not identified.

The GIOR report­ed last week on oth­er sim­i­lar actions by Face­book with respect to influ­ence net­works including:

• We report­ed that Face­book had removed a net­work asso­ci­at­ed with Falun Gong propaganda.

• We report­ed that Face­book had delet­ed Chi­nese accounts both attack­ing and defend­ing US Pres­i­dent Trump.

• We report­ed that Face­book had removed accounts of the Russ­ian Inter­net Research Agency crit­i­cal of the Biden campaign.