Facebook could crack down on Russian authorities accounts to battle disinformation | Engadget

Facebook says it’s eyeing new methods to restrict the affect of official Russian authorities accounts because it sees a surge in cyber espionage and “covert influence operations” tied to “government-linked actors” from Russia and Belarus.

Facebook’s safety researchers shared the replace as a part of the corporate’s first quarterly menace report, which detailed its newest efforts to stop its platform from being exploited amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

During a name with reporters, Meta’s President of Public Policy Nick Clegg stated that the corporate has seen an uptick in state-backed disinformation and different efforts to sow misinformation. “Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we’ve seen attacks on internet freedom and access to information intensified,” Clegg stated. “It’s manifested itself in two ways: One focus is on pushing state propaganda through state-run media, influence operations and espionage campaigns. And the other aimed at closing down the flow of credible information.”

Clegg added that the corporate is contemplating new steps to stop official authorities accounts from spreading disinformation, however didn’t elaborate. Though Facebook has been demoting Russian state media retailers , the corporate hasn’t had a transparent technique for addressing misinformation and lies concerning the battle from official authorities accounts. Up to know, it’s taken one-off actions towards particular posts, like when an account belonging to Russia’s UK embassy a photograph of a hospital bombing was staged.

Now Facebook is outwardly contemplating the way it can higher stop these accounts from spreading misinformation, stated Clegg, who has beforehand been a vocal defender of Facebook’s coverage towards fact-checking politicians. “We are actively now reviewing additional steps to address misinformation and hoaxes coming from Russian government pages,” Clegg stated.

Official pages are only one space of concern for Facebook although. In its report, Facebook safety researchers detailed a number of affect operations and different campaigns to control its platform in favor of pro-Russian pursuits and disinformation.

“For example, we detected and disrupted recidivist CIB [coordinated inauthentic behavior] activity linked to the Belarusian KGB who suddenly began posting in Polish and English about Ukrainian troops surrendering without a fight and the nation’s leaders fleeing the country on February 24, the day Russia began the war,” they wrote within the report. “On March 14, they pivoted back to Poland and created an event in Warsaw calling for a protest against the Polish government. We disabled the account and event that same day.”

The firm additionally stated it noticed renewed exercise from Ghostwriter, an entity that makes use of phishing assaults on e-mail accounts to take over its targets’ social media accounts. Facebook Ghostwriter focused a handful of Ukrainian journalists, army officers and different public figures initially of the battle. This time, Ghostwriter “attempted to hack into the Facebook accounts of dozens of Ukrainian military personnel,” Facebook wrote. “In a handful of cases, they posted videos calling on the Army to surrender as if these posts were coming from the legitimate account owners. We blocked these videos from being shared.”

Facebook additionally noticed renewed exercise from Russia’s Internet Research Agency, the behind Russia’s 2016 election interference marketing campaign that’s made repeated makes an attempt to get again on Facebook in recent times. Facebook stated their makes an attempt to make new accounts on the platform have been “unsuccessful” and gave the impression to be making an attempt to drive site visitors to a separate web site that “blamed Russia’s attack on NATO and the West and accused Ukrainian forces of targeting civilians.”

Finally, Facebook additionally stated it has eliminated “tens of hundreds’ ‘ of accounts, pages and teams for utilizing spammy and deceptive ways in an try to revenue off the battle in Ukraine. These efforts included posing as on-the-ground reviews from Ukraine in addition to spammers making an attempt to promote merch or lure individuals to outdoors web sites for advert income.