Russian campaign targeted left-wing voters in US, UK, says Facebook

LONDON: Facebook on Tuesday said that a Russian influenced operation targeted left-wing voters in the United States and Britain, including freelance journalists to write about domestic politics.

Facebook said the operation — which partly focused on US politics and racial tensions in the run-up to the November 3 presidential election — centred around a pseudo media organisation called Peace Data.

The website operated 13 Facebook accounts and two pages, which were set up in May and suspended on Monday for using fake identities and other forms of “coordinated inauthentic behaviour,” the company said.

Facebook said its investigation “found links to individuals associated with past activity by the Russian Internet Research Agency”, a St Petersburg-based company which US intelligence officials say was central to Russian efforts to sway the 2016 presidential election.

Twitter said it had also suspended five accounts as part of the operation which it could “reliably attribute to Russian state actors.”

Peace Data did not respond to an emailed request for comment and Russian officials were not immediately available after normal working hours in Moscow. Russia has previously denied US allegations of trying to sway elections and says it does not interfere in the domestic politics of other countries.

Investigators at social media analytics firm Graphika studied the operation and said Peace Data predominately targeted progressive and left-wing groups in the United States and Britain, but also posted about events in other countries including Algeria and Egypt.

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It said in a report here that the website pushed messages critical of right-wing voices and the centre left, and in the United States "paid particular attention to racial and political tensions", including civil rights protests and criticism of President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival, Joe Biden.

Graphika said only around 5% of Peace Data’s English-language articles directly concerned the US election, but that “this facet of the operation suggests an attempt to build a left-wing audience and steer it away from Biden’s campaign.”

The findings support an assessment by the United States’ top counterintelligence official last month, who said Moscow was using online disinformation to try to undercut the Biden campaign, and could stoke fears about further Russian efforts to interfere in the November vote.

A spokesperson for the Trump campaign said the president would win re-election “fair and square and we don’t need or want any foreign interference.” The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The US office of the Director of National Intelligence referred questions to the FBI. In a statement, the FBI said it had flagged the activity to Facebook.