New details were disclosed Tuesday about Russia-linked accounts on Facebook and Instagram that tried to spread politically divisive content ahead of the midterms — and had 600,000 followers in the United States.
In a blog post, Facebook said it has taken down 99 Instagram accounts, 36 Facebook accounts, and six Facebook Pages.
It added 1.25 million users followed at least one of the Instagram accounts — and 600,000 of these users were in the United States.
The company first revealed the accounts last week just before the midterms, saying it promptly removed accounts engaged in a coordinate influence campaign following a tip from the FBI.
"Last Tuesday, a website claiming to be associated with the Internet Research Agency, a Russia-based troll farm, published a list of Instagram accounts they said that they'd created. We had already blocked most of them, and based on our internal investigation, we blocked the rest," Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy Nathaniel Gleicher wrote in Tuesday's blog post.
"Ultimately, this effort may have been connected to the IRA, but we aren't best placed to say definitively whether that is the case. As multiple independent experts have pointed out, trolls have an incentive to claim that their activities are more widespread and influential than may be the case. That appears to be true here as well."
Following revelations in 2017 about how its platform was manipulated to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, Facebook has worked to uncover and reveal other coordinated misinformation campaigns it has found on its site, The Hill noted.
The company has disclosed accounts linked to Russia, Iran and yet to be determined actors and says its working with law enforcement to curb misinformation and find other potential abuse.
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