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The website, which ran the accounts on both Twitter and Facebook, claims to be a “non-profit news organization” and calls itself Peace Data.
It was after a tip from the FBI that Facebook acted, the company told Reuters.
Facebook closed on Monday 13 accounts and two pages, which were started in May and which have links to the website. The IT giant’s investigation found links between Peace’s data and the Russian company Internet Research Agency, which according to the US intelligence service was central to promotional campaigns during the 2016 presidential elections.
Robert Mueller, who led the investigation into Russian influence during the 2016 election, brought charges against the Internet Investigation Agency in February 2018. The US Department of Justice dropped the accusation in March this year.
The Russian government has denied the allegations, saying it does not interfere in the internal policies of other countries.
Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity, told Reuters that 14,000 people followed one or more of the accounts and pages that have now been removed.
Twitter also has removed five accounts with links to Paz’s data, the company reported Tuesday. In the future, all links to content on the site will no longer be shared on Twitter. All links to the page that have already been shared will be removed.
The accounts that have now been closed had little effect, according to Twitter, which says they were quickly identified and deleted. They will now be added to a database that the IT giant has on promotional campaigns that can be used as a basis for research.
https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1300848632120242181
Before Facebook deleted Peace Data accounts, the company shared the information with analytics firm Graphika, which conducted an independent analysis.
According to Graphika directs Peace data mainly to progressive groups and people with leftist sympathies in the United States and the United Kingdom. In their report, the researchers write that AI-generated profile images have been used for the accounts they have run on Facebook, Linked in, and Twitter.
Between February and August 2020, the site published more than 500 articles in English and more than 200 articles in Arabic. Some of the articles are written by independent American and British journalists, who have been recruited by Peace data and who, according to Graphika, seem to be unaware of the purpose of the business. Other material has been copied from other sources.
The English content is critical of both President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Only a small part of the articles directly affects the next presidential elections in the United States.
The material on Joe Biden and his vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris, however, stands out for her “hostile tone,” according to investigators. The operation appears to be trying to “build a left-wing audience away from the Biden campaign,” Graphika writes, drawing parallels to how the Internet Research Agency worked to reduce support for then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in the election. of 2016.
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