FB says it uncovers new meddling

Washington : Facebook Inc has identified a new coordinated political influence campaign to mislead users and organise rallies ahead of November’s US congressional elections, taking down dozens of fake accounts on its site, the company said on Tuesday. Facebook on Tuesday said it had removed 32 pages and accounts from Facebook and Instagram, part of an effort to combat foreign meddling in US elections, attempts that lawmakers have called dangerous for democracy.

The company said it was still in the early stages of its investigation and did not yet know who may be behind the influence campaign for 2018 elections that will determine whether or not the Republican Party keeps control of Congress. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said on a call with reporters that the attempts to manipulate public opinion would likely become more sophisticated to evade Facebook’s scrutiny, calling it an “arms race.”

“This kind of behaviour is not allowed on Facebook because we don’t want people or organisations creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are, or what they’re doing,” the company said in a blogpost. More than 290,000 accounts followed at least one of the pages and that about $11,000 had been spent on about 150 ads, Facebook said. The pages had created about 30 events since May 2017. Facebook for months has been on the defensive about influence activity on its site and concerns over user privacy tied to longstanding agreements with developers that allowed them access to private user data.