Facebook and Twitter have, again, caught Russian trolls trying to meddle with their platforms.
Facebook said the accounts and pages were linked to Russia’s Internet Research Agency, which has used social media to interfere in elections and politics since at least the 2016 US presidential election.
The network was mainly targeting the US, UK, Algeria and Egypt and other English-speaking countries and countries in the Middle East and North Africa, Facebook said.
Late on Tuesday Facebook said it investigated the network based on information from the FBI. It was in the early stages of development and saw “nearly no engagement” Facebook said.
The network consisted of 13 Facebook accounts and two pages, with around 14,000 accounts following one or more of the pages.
Facebook said the people behind the network posted about global events ranging from racial justice in the US and the UK, NATO, the QAnon conspiracy theory, President Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.
The network spent about $480 on advertising on Facebook, primarily in US dollars, a sign that it was able to at least briefly evade systems designed to prevent foreign entities from buying US political advertisements.
