Yahoo Finance Facebook catches Russian trolls targeting Corbyn supporters
Facebook has taken down a covert Russian influence campaign that targeted supporters of Jeremy Corbyn with scathing attacks on Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Keir Starmer.
The social media giant said on Tuesday that it had removed a small network of Facebook accounts and pages attempting to promote a Left-wing news website called PeaceData, linked to the same Russian "troll factory" that meddled in Britain's EU referendum.
The campaign recruited real freelance journalists to write articles, and used fake personas with faces generated by artificial intelligence (AI) to push those stories to Facebook users in Britain, the United States, Algeria and Egypt as recently as August.
PeaceData's UK output described Boris Johnson as a "far-Right, plutocratic, racist spiv", criticised the Government's report on Russian election interference and boosted a real news story about Jacob Rees-Mogg's investment firm telling its clients to expect bumper profits from coronavirus.
It was also doggedly hostile towards Sir Keir Starmer, Mr Corbyn's successor as leader of the Labour Party, calling him "more centrist than Left" and "Labour's new Tony Blair".
According to Graphika, an independent cyber-intelligence firm which reviewed Facebook's data, the network's goal was to dissuade Left-wing voters in the US and UK from supporting centre-Left politicians such as Sir Keir and the US's Joe Biden.
However, Facebook said it only been "in the early stages of building its audience", and had seen "nearly no engagement on Facebook" before it was busted.
A spokesman said: "We are making progress rooting out this abuse, but as we’ve said before, it’s an ongoing effort. We’re committed to continually improving to stay ahead."
The network appears to have been run by Russia's Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Saint Petersburg "troll farm" made infamous by its high-profile intervention in the 2016 US election and the UK's Brexit referendum.
The IRA is officially an independent company, but is allegedly funded and controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch with close ties to the country's president Vladimir Putin.
Graphika said that this operation had been more detailed, focused and plausible than previous examples, with PeaceData's fake editors having an active presence on LinkedIn, Twitter and various gig work exchanges.
Other targets included Mr Biden, his vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris, President Donald Trump, Amazon head Jeff Bezos and the Israeli government. Facebook said it had acted after a tip off from the FBI.
Facebook also said it had taken down a separate, more successful network of fake accounts allegedly linked to a Washington, DC public relations firm called CLS Strategies, which claims to have worked with the United Nations, the World Health Organisation and governments including those of Brazil, Egypt and Mexico.
The network spent around $3.6m (£2.7m) on Facebook adverts, many of which supported opposition parties in Venezuela. Its ultimate instigator or funder is unknown.
