Sep 02, 2020 14:05:00

Facebook announces that Russian activity group is disguising news media and conducting public opinion work

For the

US presidential election held in November 2020, Russian crafts are intensifying. Facebook, with the help of the FBI, has identified a new work account for the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian company that has done a lot of internet work in the 2016 US presidential election.

August 2020 Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report-About Facebook
https://about.fb.com/news/2020/09/august-2020-cib-report/

As 2020 election looms, Russian trolls are targeting Americans again, Facebook says-CNN
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/01/tech/russian-troll-group-facebook-campaign/

Russian internet trolls hired US journalists to push their news website, Facebook says
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/russian-internet-trolls-hired-us-journalists-push-their-news-n1239000

Facebook says Russian influence campaign targeted left-wing poll in US, UK-Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-facebook-russia/facebook-says-russian-influence-campaign-targeted-left-wing-voters-in-us-uk-idUSKBN25S5UI

Headquartered in St. Petersburg, Russia, IRA is a company that conducts spoofing using social security numbers of existing Americans, opens accounts on PayPal, and posts political advertisements on Facebook. In 2018, a grand jury was charged with forming a fictitious debate using bots in the 2016 US presidential election, causing political turmoil.

Facebook has detected a new work activity by the IRA. According to Facebook, the IRA has launched a new news site called 'Peace Data', and is delivering news about President Trump, President Trump and his opposition Joe Biden, foreign policy in the United States, Q Anon conspiracy theory, etc. I heard that. The Peace Data's three full-time staff were 'fictitious staff,' but the 22 reporters employed were real-life freelance English-American journalists. The following is a Facebook account of a fictitious staff of Peace Data, and a profile image is a composite photo by deep fake .

The IRA is believed to have masqueraded and hired a real-world American journalist to impersonate Peace Data as a real-world US news media. The reward paid to journalists was up to $75 per article.

13 Peace Data related accounts and 2 pages on Facebook have already been deleted. According to Facebook's official announcement, these accounts and pages received little attention, Facebook said, 'We deleted suspicious accounts before gaining a large number of followers.'

Regarding the IRA's work activity that has continued since the 2016 presidential election, Facebook has taken measures to 'delete the account as soon as it finds it' and announced that it has deleted more than 270 pages and accounts in 2018.

Facebook announces it has deleted hundreds of Russian accounts and pages that spread fake news-GIGAZINE

by Andrew Feinberg

Facebook provided information to Twitter regarding the IRA's work activities. Informed Twitter has suspended 5 accounts related to Peace Data. About this, Twitter explained, 'We suspended the account because of operation of the platform suspected of involvement of Russia.' Even on Twitter, the activity of Peace Data was at the stage before it attracted attention.

Suspended Five Twitter We Accounts For Platform Manipulation That We Can Reliably Attribute To Russian State Actors. As Standard, They Will Be Included In Updates To Our Database Of Information Operations In The Coming Weeks To Empower Academic Research. Https://T.Co/ 9RqOiDNB7d

— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) September 1, 2020

'The IRA is actively, proactively and creatively attacking the 2020 presidential election,' said Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy at Facebook.