Facebook is set to reveal that it has identified multiple bogus user accounts that have been tied to what it says is a political influence campaign leading up to the 2018 midterm elections.
The New York Times reports that Facebook has “discovered coordinated activity around issues like a sequel to last year’s deadly ‘Unite the Right’ white supremacist rally,” as well as “around #AbolishICE, a left-wing campaign on social media that seeks to end the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.”
The Times’ sources say that Facebook will publicly reveal more information about the alleged influence campaign on Tuesday afternoon, and the publication reports that it briefed Congress last week on its investigation into the accounts.
According to CNN, Facebook has already removed this network of accounts – one of which promoted a counter-demonstration to this summer’s planned “Unite the Right” white nationalist rally in Washington, D.C.
Although Facebook isn’t saying for certain that Russia is behind these bogus accounts, it does claim that it has “found evidence of some connections between these accounts” and similar accounts used by Russian trolls during the 2016 presidential election.
“We know that Russians and other bad actors are going to continue to try to abuse our platform – before the midterms, probably during the midterms, after the midterms, and around other events and elections,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, said on a conference call with reporters earlier this month. “We are continually looking for that type of activity, and as and when we find things, which we think is inevitable, we’ll notify law enforcement, and where we can, the public.”