Facebook Confirms New Campaign Is Trying To Influence U.S. Midterm Elections

Facebook has understandably been more vigilant about political social media campaigns being run on its platform ahead of the U.S. midterm elections after what happened during the last presidential elections. The social network today revealed that it has identified and banned suspicious accounts that were taking part in “coordinated inauthentic behavior” in what appears to be an attempt to influence the U.S. midterm elections.

The social media campaign that it has identified and effectively banned may have been designed to influence the upcoming midterm elections in the United States which will take place this November. Facebook hasn’t confirmed as yet what particular organization or country was behind this campaign.

The New York Times reports that Facebook officials have briefed lawmakers about this and have pointed out that Russia might be involved in the campaign. All fingers were pointed at Russia for the social media campaign during the presidential elections as well.

The activity that Facebook discovered was designed to ignite tensions around controversial issues in the United States such as the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and white supremacy. The suspicious accounts were found to be performing coordinated activity around the #AbolishICE trend and a second “Unite the Right” gathering of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The company had identified eight Pages, 17 profiles, and seven Instagram accounts that were performing this activity. At least one of the pages was followed by over 290,000 people. A total of $11,000 was spent to run 150 ads between April 2017 and June 2018 by these accounts collectively.

Facebook will reportedly discuss its findings with members of the press in a briefing later today.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Web
Tags: Facebook