election interference
Facebook has uncovered a coordinated effort to influence the midterm elections
Facebook said Tuesday that it has identified a coordinated effort to influence the upcoming midterm elections, with a network of fraudulent accounts that are spreading divisive content in an attempt to interfere with national politics.
The company said it removed 32 accounts that "went to much greater lengths to obscure their true identities" than the platform previously saw with Russia's Internet Research Agency. More than 290,000 accounts followed at least one of the 32 pages, and they had created more than 9,500 posts since last year.
It's still unclear whether the newly-uncovered accounts are tied to Russia, reports The New York Times, but the pages paid for $11,000 in political ads in both U.S. and Canadian dollars. Facebook is working with the FBI to tamp down on the interference and investigate the ongoing activity. Read more at The New York Times.