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.
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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.