Facebook, Twitter Remove Russia-Linked Accounts Trying To Heighten Racial Divisiveness

Facebook and Twitter both announced on Thursday that they had removed multiple Russia-backed accounts, operating from Ghana and Nigeria, that appear to be designed to heighten racial tensions among U.S African Americans ahead of the presidential election.

The messaging has not directly tried to “promote or denigrate” specific presidential candidates, Nathaniel Gleicher, head of security policy at Facebook, wrote in a blog post.

But the operation was found to be linked to EBLA, an NGO in Ghana, “and individuals associated with past activity by the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA),” he wrote. That agency employed similar tactics during the 2016 presidential election in efforts to suppress voting among the black community, which tends to favor Democratic candidates.

Facebook removed 49 accounts, 69 Pages and 85 Instagram accounts, citing “coordinated inauthentic behavior on behalf of a foreign actor.”

The bogus Facebook pages had about 13,500 followers, and the Instagram accounts had about 265,000 – all mostly in the U.S.

Twitter reported, in a tweet, that it had removed 71 accounts operating from Ghana and Nigeria.

Twitter said that it had worked with “law enforcement, industry peers, journalists and expert researchers” to identify the accounts.

Facebook specifically credited CNN. “Our assessment benefited from our subsequent collaboration with a team of journalists at CNN,” Gleicher wrote. “We’ve shared information with our industry peers, policy makers and law enforcement and will continue working with others to find and remove this kind of behavior from our platform.”

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