Facebook removes Russia-backed users, pages, groups including in Georgia

Facebook has removed 214 users, 35 pages, 18 groups and 34 Instagram accounts for violating its policy against foreign or government interference 'which is coordinated inauthentic behavior on behalf of a foreign or government entity', announces Head of Security Policy Nathaniel Gleicher.

Gleicher said that this activity originated in Russia and focused primarily on Syria and Ukraine, and to a lesser extent on Turkey, Japan, Armenia, Georgia, Belarus, and Moldova. A small portion of this activity focused on the UK and the US.

This network appears to have centered around a number of regions including the Far East, Russia’s neighboring countries, and Syria. They used fake accounts to create elaborate fictitious personas across many internet services, posing as journalists to contact news organisations, purporting to be locals in countries they targeted, and managing groups and pages, some of which proclaimed to be hacktivist groups. 

These clusters also focused on driving people to their off-platform sites and other social media platforms where, among other topics, they promoted content related to past alleged leaks of compromising information. The operation had almost no following on our platforms when we removed it", wrote Gleicher in a statement published by Facebook.

A sample of the content posted by some of the removed pages and accounts: Photo: Facebook.

The individuals behind this campaign posted in many languages including English, Ukrainian, Russian and Arabic as they tailored their activity to each audience. They frequently posted about news and current events, including the Syrian civil war, Turkish domestic politics, geopolitical issues in the Asia-Pacific region, NATO, the war in Ukraine, and politics in the Baltics, Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and the US.

We identified this activity as part of our investigation into suspected coordinated inauthentic behavior connected to the networks we had removed in August 2018 and February 2020. Although the people behind this operation took steps to conceal their identities and coordination, our investigation connected these clusters to the Russian military including military intelligence services", Gleicher said.

A sample of the content posted by some of the removed pages and accounts: Photo: Facebook.

Last week Facebook launched its third-party fact-checking programme in Georgia with local organisations FactCheck Georgia and Myth Detector.

The programme is in line with Facebook’s three-part framework to improve the quality and authenticity of stories in the news feed, wherein Facebook removes accounts and content that violate its community standards or ad policies, reduces the distribution of false news and inauthentic content like clickbait, and informs people by giving them more context on the posts they see.