Earlier this week, in a press conference, Facebook closed two misinformation networks related to Russia, one of which was associated with the French military. Facebook has accused these accounts of orchestrating interference campaigns in African regions. Two networks using multiple FB accounts were given to users associated with the Russian Internet Research Agency. In contrast, the third account had links to persons related to the French military, says Facebook.
Facebook has closed all three accounts for violating the policy of foreign or government interference. These networks, according to Facebook, attacked targets in North Africa and Middle East countries.
As of now, the French military has offered no comments on Facebook's allegations. The campaigns battled with each other, said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of security policy, and David Agranovich, head of global threat disruption in a blog.
It is the first time that Facebook found two campaigns (from France and Russia) fighting with each other, commenting on each other's accounts, claiming it is fake. These accounts used fake accounts as a central part of their operations to mislead people about who they are and what they are doing, and that was the basis for our action, says Facebook. One sample post read, "The Russian imperialists are a gangrene on Mali!"
The French network accounts mainly targeted Mali and the Central African Republic. Other targets include Cote d'Ivoire, Chad, Algeria, Niger, and Burkina Faso. It involved 84 FB accounts, six pages, nine groups, and fourteen Instagram accounts that infringed a policy facing "coordinated inauthentic practice."
In French and Arabic, some of the posts were about France's Francophone Africa systems, allegations of Russian meddling in CAR elections, supportive comments about the French military, and Russia's criticism.
According to Gleicher and Agranovich, "we shared information about our findings with law enforcement and industry partners. We are making progress rooting out this abuse, but as we've said before, it's an ongoing effort, and we're committed to continually improving to stay ahead." As of now, the investigation is ongoing, and no further detail has been offered.
