Facebook Takes Down Foreign Troll Farm Posing As American Citizens

In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, Facebook vowed to do a better job detecting and removing misinformation. It announced the results of one such effort this week, taking down a Romania-based troll farm that ran accounts posing as African Americans in support of Donald Trump.

According to Facebook, this operation didn’t have clear links to any commercial actors. However, it’s likely that it was operating on behalf of a larger disinformation campaign originating from a foreign government.

Though this is obviously a positive move for Facebook, the social media giant was also quick to emphasize that it can’t do all of the work itself. Instead, the company called on society to step up and address these threats.

“Our teams will continue to find, remove and expose these coordinated manipulation campaigns, but we know these threats extend beyond our platform and no single organization can tackle them alone,” Facebook wrote in its monthly coordinated inauthentic behavior report. “That’s why it’s critical that we, as a society, have a broader discussion about what is acceptable political advocacy and take steps to deter people from crossing the line.”

While it’s true that Facebook can’t handle every problem by itself, it’s also fair to demand that the platform does much more to fight misinformation.




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