CENSORED: Facebook Blocks 115 Popular Accounts RIGHT BEFORE Election Day
Facebook announced on Sunday that it has suspended 115 accounts due to what they termed as “suspicious behavior” on the eve of the midterm elections.
The social media giant said in a news release that U.S. law enforcement contacted Facebook on Sunday night about online activity potentially linked to foreign entities. The social media giant, in response, suspended 30 Facebook accounts and 85 Instagram accounts believed to be engaged in “coordinated inauthentic behavior.”
“We immediately blocked these accounts and are now investigating them in more detail,” Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy at Facebook, said in a statement. “Almost all the Facebook Pages associated with these accounts appear to be in the French or Russian languages, while the Instagram accounts seem to have mostly been in English — some were focused on celebrities, others political debate.”
Although the company would typically hold off on making a public announcement on findings such as these, because of the proximity to the election, they felt they needed to release the latest report of suspicious behavior to the public immediately.
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“Given that we are only one day away from important elections in the U.S., we wanted to let people know about the action we’ve taken and the facts as we know them today,” the company said in a post on its blog site.
“Once we know more — including whether these accounts are linked to the Russia-based Internet Research Agency or other foreign entities — we will update this post,” Gleicher said.
This latest announcement comes less than two weeks after Facebook said it had removed 82 pages, accounts and groups connected to Iranian disinformation activity on the site.
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The company did reveal, however, that the majority of the accounts that were deleted were created in June of 2016, but did not become active until this year.
Facebook said the company would continue to provide updates on the situation as they develop.
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