Facebook and Twitter, once again, have surprised Russian trolls looking to meddle with their platforms. Both corporations revealed that they had suspended a handful of accounts connected to the Internet Investigation Agency, the Russian troll farm from Russia’s 2016 election meddling campaign.
While this isn’t the first time corporations have discovered IRAs this year, it seems the organization has replaced its tactics.Facebook and Twitter report that IRAs have led an information site to an effort to improve their credibility, and that they have controlled the rental of genuine (and “involuntary”) hounds to write for it.
“In total, our team discovered and got rid of a dozen deceptive crusades similar to those relevant to the Americans relevant to the IRA,” Facebook wrote in an update.”The IRA crusade we had thawed out of in August largely failed on Facebook, yet it led unconscious independent hounds to write articles on their behalf.”
Similarly, Twitter said it had known five accounts that may be “reliable features of Russian state actors,” which appear to have been related to the same system.As on Facebook, Twitter states that the accounts “had little effect on Twitter” and the most commonly posted spam and other tweets of “poor quality”.
Tweets from accounts connected to Russia were of poor quality and contained spam, and the maximum tweets from those accounts got little or no likes or retweets.The accounts had little effect on Twitter and were known and temporarily deleted.
But the company notes that the accounts, which were related to a news site called “PeaceData”, had hired freelancers to produce content.Twitter says it will now block links to PeaceData and that “existing links will be disabled”.
Twitter and Facebook said they were informed of IRA activity through the FBI, which helped them close accounts before they could simply increase their influence.