Facebook has removed networks of accounts that are accused of coordinated inauthentic behavior and that are said to have attacked each other. The competing disinformation campaigns therefore concentrated on the Central African Republic and had their origins in France and Russia, explains the social network.

It is that the first time that such networks were discovered that actively interacted with each other and, for example, accused each other of being “fake”. The responsible persons in France therefore used false accounts, while the campaigns controlled from Russia clamped in local users.

Fake accounts defame each other While such allegations are not new to Russia, the one directed at France is more extraordinary. The people behind it had tried to conceal their identity, but Facebook claims that it has found connections to individuals in the French military. In total, there are several dozen accounts on Facebook and Instagram. Some of the articles that have now been published are directed directly against Russia’s foreign policy. So far there has been no comment from France’s Ministry of Defense. The focus of the campaign was on the Central African Republic and Mali, but other former French colonies in North Africa were also targets.

Several hundred blocked accounts opened Facebook and Instagram meanwhile attribute Facebook to Russia and there individuals with previous connections to the Internet Research Agency, which is associated with attempted attacks on the US presidential election 2016. Here the social network has also determined that tens of thousands of dollars were spent on advertising on Facebook. Here, too, Facebook has published examples that are directed directly against France. According to its own information, the network also has examples of accounts in the opposing networks having added each other as friends and commenting on each other.

Facebook now publishes information on its own action against undesired activities with great regularity Platform that are more or less directly attributed to nation states. Just a few days ago, the US company announced the action against two groups in Vietnam and Bangladesh who had used the infrastructure to spread malware and hack accounts. The target was, among others, human rights activists, foreign governments and the media.

(mho)