Facebook blocks Russian fake news site

FACEBOOK has dismantled a Russian campaign that tried to influence British politics by targeting Jeremy Corbyn supporters.

The operation posed as an independent news outlet called Peace Data. But it was actually run by a Kremlin ‘troll farm’, secretly run by Russian agents, which tried to meddle in both the EU referendum and the 2016 US elections.The online network was exposed following a tipoff from the FBI. According to Graphika, an independent cyberintelligence firm that reviewed Facebook’s data, its goal was to dissuade Left-wing voters from backing centre-Left politicians such as Keir Starmer or Joe Biden.

The content also attacked Britain’s

foreign policies, criticised the Tory Party and accused the UK of war crimes and interference. The articles portrayed Sir Keir as ‘more centrist than Left’ and accused him of ‘weaponising’ anti-Semitism ‘to achieve his own political ends’.

The Tories were accused of having a special flair for corruption, with Boris Johnson described as a ‘far-Right, plutocratic, racist spiv’. According to Graphika, the network prioritised supporters of Mr Corbyn. Facebook said it had been only ‘in the early stages of building its audience’ and the investigation ‘found links to individuals associated with past activity by the Russian Internet Research Agency’ – the Kremlin troll farm.

Twitter also said it had suspended five accounts ‘for platform manipulation that we can reliably attribute to Russian state actors’. Peace Data did not respond to a request for comment. Moscow has said it does not interfere in domestic politics.