Facebook finds evidence of interference in US mid-term election

SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook Inc has identified an ongoing effort to influence the United States mid-term elections, using inauthentic accounts and pages on the social network.

“We’re still in the very early stages of our investigation and don’t have all the facts – including who may be behind this,” said Facebook on Tuesday in a blog post. “It’s clear that whoever set up these accounts went to greater lengths to obscure their true identities than the Russianbased Internet Research Agency (IRA) has in the past.”

The company has stepped up its work to ferret out fake accounts after a Russian-backed effort sowed discord among Americans during the 2016 presidential campaign. Facebook and other social-media networks have been criticised by lawmakers for failing to recognise and take steps to stop those efforts.

The new disclosure underscores the rising difficulty of distinguishing real political discourse from content meant specifically to create dissension among Americans, even as Facebook invests heavily in systems to spot and take down such posts.

Facebook said starting last week, it identified eight pages and 17 profiles on its main social network, and seven accounts on Instagram, that violated its rules. It shared the findings with US law enforcement, Congress, and other technology companies.

“At this point in our investigation, we do not have enough technical evidence to state definitively who is behind this,” said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy.

“These accounts have engaged in some similar activity and in some cases have connected with known IRA accounts.” He said the full extent of this effort may not yet be known. “We’re following up on thousands of leads.”

On the call, Facebook executives said they were sharing the evidence they found with law enforcement, which could help determine the groups’ motives and impacts.

The firm said it only saw what happened on its platform, and is not able to judge what the campaign was aiming to achieve.

Democratic Senator Mark Warner said he was “glad that Facebook is taking some steps to pinpoint and address this activity”.