Facebook said it was eyeing new ways to limit the influence of official Russian government accounts as it noticed an increase in cyber espionage and “covert influence activity” tied to the Russian government. associated with “government related parties” from Russia and Belarus.
Facebook security researchers shared the update as part of the company’s first quarterly threat report, detailing its latest efforts to block its platform. used in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
On a call with reporters, Meta President of Public Policy Nick Clegg said that the company has seen an increase in state-backed disinformation and other efforts to sow disinformation. “Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, we have seen increasing attacks on internet freedom and access to information,” Clegg said. “It manifests itself in two ways: One focus is on promoting state propaganda through state media, influence operations and espionage campaigns. And the other is aimed at shutting down the flow of reliable information. “
Clegg added that the company is considering new steps to prevent government accounts from spreading misinformation, but did not elaborate. Although Facebook has dismissed Russia’s state media agencies , the company did not have a clear strategy to address misinformation and lies about the war from official government accounts. Be aware, it is done once for specific posts, such as when an account belongs to the UK embassy of Russia a picture of a staged hospital bombing.
Now Facebook is clearly looking at how it can better prevent these accounts from spreading misinformation, said Clegg, who has previously defended Facebook’s policy against fact-checking politicians for know. “We are now actively considering additional steps to address misinformation and hoaxes coming from Russian government sites,” Clegg said.
Official pages are just one area of Facebook’s interest. In their report, Facebook’s security researchers detailed a number of influence operations and other campaigns aimed at manipulating its platform for pro-Russian interests and disinformation.
“For example, we detected and disrupted re-offending CIBs [coordinated inauthentic behavior] The activity involved the Belarusian KGB, who suddenly started posting in Polish and English about the surrender of the Ukrainian army without a fight and the leaders of this country fleeing the country on the 24th. February, the day Russia started the war,” they wrote in the report. “On March 14, they returned to Poland and created an event in Warsaw calling for protest against the Polish government. We disabled the account and the event on the same day.”
The company also said it has seen new activity from Ghostwriter, an entity that uses phishing attacks on email accounts to take over targets’ social media accounts. Facebook Ghostwriter targeted a small number of journalists, Ukrainian military officials, and other public figures at the start of the war. This time, Ghostwriter “attempted to hack into the Facebook accounts of dozens of Ukrainian servicemen,” Facebook wrote. “In rare cases, they post videos calling for the Army to surrender as if these posts came from legitimate account holders. We have blocked sharing of these videos”.
Facebook also detected new activity from Russia’s Internet Research Agency, behind Russia’s 2016 election interference campaign has repeatedly tried to get back on Facebook in recent years. Facebook said its attempt to create new accounts on the platform was “unsuccessful” and that it appeared to be trying to drive traffic to a separate website “to blame for the Russian attack on NATO and the West, while accusing Ukrainian forces of targeting civilians.”
Finally, Facebook also said it removed “tens of thousands” of accounts, pages and groups that used spam and misleading tactics to profit from the war in Ukraine. These efforts include masquerading as field reports from Ukraine as well as spammers trying to sell merchandise or lure people to external sites to earn advertising income.
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