Facebook identifies ongoing political influence campaign

WASHINGTON: Facebook is preparing to announce that it has identified a coordinated political influence campaign, with dozens of inauthentic accounts and pages that are believed to be engaging in political activity before November’s midterm elections, according to three people briefed on the matter.

In a series of briefings on Capitol Hill this week, the company told lawmakers that it detected the influence campaign as part of its investigations into election interference. It has been unable to tie the accounts to Russia, whose Internet Research Agency was at the centre of an indictment earlier this year for interfering in the 2016 election, but company officials told Capitol Hill that Russia was possibly involved, according to two of the officials.

Like the Russian interference campaign in 2016, the recently detected campaign dealt with divisive social issues. Facebook discovered coordinated activity around issues like a sequel to last year’s deadly “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. Coordinated activity was also detected around #Abolishice, a left-wing campaign on social media that seeks to end the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

The company is using artificial intelligence and teams of human reviewers to detect automated accounts and suspicious electionrelated activity. It has also tried to make it harder for Russian-style influence campaigns to use covert Facebook ads to sway public opinion, by requiring political advertisers in the US to register with a domestic mailing address and by making all political ads visible in a public database.

U.S. INTELLIGENCE AND LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIALS HAVE WARNED RUSSIA’S EFFORTS TO UNDERMINE AMERICA’S DEMOCRACY REMAIN ACTIVE.