Facebook killed over 300 fake Pages and accounts linked to Russia that it said was “engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior”, almost two years after the US presidential election.
The company removed 364 Pages and accounts as part of a network that originated in Russia and operated in the Baltics, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Central and Eastern European countries.
“Despite the misrepresentations of their identities, we found that these Pages and accounts were linked to employees of Sputnik, a news agency based in Moscow and that some of the Pages frequently posted about topics like anti-NATO sentiment, protest movements, and anti-corruption,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Head of Cybersecurity Policy, Facebook, wrote in a blog post.
About $135,000 were spent in ads, and paid for in euros, roubles, and dollars, over a time span from October 2013 to now.