Thread by @sampsonlive

Facebook busts another influence operation aimed at midterms using pages and profiles to marionette target audiences. #Russian #ActiveMeasures

newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/07/r…

“more than 290,000 accounts followed at least one of these Pages, the earliest of which was created in March 2017. The latest was created in May 2018”

“The most followed Facebook Pages were “Aztlan Warriors,” “Black Elevation,” “Mindful Being,” and “Resisters.” The remaining Pages had between zero and 10 followers, and the Instagram accounts had zero followers”

“There were more than 9,500 organic posts created by these accounts on Facebook, and one piece of content on Instagram”

“They ran about 150 ads for approximately $11,000 on Facebook and Instagram, paid for in US and Canadian dollars. The first ad was created in April 2017, and the last was created in June 2018.”

“The Pages created about 30 events since May 2017. About half had fewer than 100 accounts interested in attending. The largest had approximately 4,700 accounts interested in attending, and 1,400 users said that they would attend”

“These bad actors have been more careful to cover their tracks, in part due to the actions we’ve taken to prevent abuse over the past year”

“We found this activity as part of our ongoing efforts to identify coordinated inauthentic behavior. Given these bad actors are now working harder to obscure their identities, we need to find every small mistake they make. “

“The “Resisters” Page also created a Facebook Event for a protest on August 10 to 12 and enlisted support from real people. The Event – “No Unite the Right 2 – DC” – was scheduled to protest an August “Unite the Right” event in Washington. “

“We disabled the event earlier today and have reached out to the admins of the five other Pages to update them on what happened.”-“we’ll begin informing the approximately 2,600 users interested in the event, and the more than 600 users who said they’d attend”

“We’re seeing real benefits from working with outside experts. Partners like the Atlantic Council have provided invaluable help in identifying bad actors and analyzing their behavior across the internet.”