In a series of briefings on Capitol Hill this week and a public post on Tuesday, the company told lawmakers that it had detected and removed 32 pages and accounts connected to the influence campaign on Facebook and Instagram as part of its investigations into election interference. “We’re still in the very early stages of our investigation and don’t have all the facts – including who may be behind this,”

Facebook acknowledged, while adding that “whoever set up these accounts went to much greater lengths to obscure their true identities than the Russian-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) has in the past.”



IRA is accused by Facebook and the US Department of Justice of having played a key role in the campaign of hoaxes and fake news on controversial and divisive issues designed to try to influence the 2016 election in which Donald Trump won the White House. "The vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, similarly said in a statement that the announcement shows "further evidence that the Kremlin continues to exploit platforms like Facebook to sow division and spread disinformation, and I am glad that Facebook is taking some steps to pinpoint and address this activity. "There was only one known IRA account that was a co-admin on one of these pages and that was just for about 7 minutes, so it was a brief period of time," said Tom Reynolds, an official with Facebook's communications team.Nathaniel Gleicher, the head of cybersecurity policy at Facebook, said that while the pages do share similarities with previous IRA-linked accounts, there are differences this time around in the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses used by the accounts in this most recent influence campaign. Image copyright Facebook Image caption Facebook has shared some of the images posted by the accounts

In total more than 290,000 accounts followed at least one of the pages involved, it added. More than 290,000 accounts followed at least one of the pages and that about $11,000 had been spent on about 150 ads, Facebook said. "The accounts -- which Facebook said were created as early as March 2017 and May 2018, were first discovered two weeks ago.According to Facebook officials more than 290,000 users on the site followed at least one of the pages involved in the "inauthentic behavior. "The eight fake organization pages and 17 accounts posted a total of 9,500 times on the site and spent $11,000 on ads starting in April 2017, according to Facebook officials.When asked if the campaign was specifically an attempt to influence the 2018 midterm elections, officials said they are not characterizing what exactly the political aim of the network was, but that they "expect to find activity focused on the midterms," given their proximity.Gleicher detailed the campaign these actors were engaged in, including an instance in which the network tried to boost interest in an August 10-12 event called "No Unite the Right 2 - D.C.," billed as a counter-protest to a rally planned in the nation's capital by the same group that organized a protest that sparked violence in Charlottesville, Virginia last summer.Gleicher said that the company disabled the event posting on Tuesday and notified 2,600 Facebook users that indicated interest in attending the event.Facebook officials also said they detected activity from the network that mentioned the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency(ICE), and around the #AbolishICE movement that has grown in popularity in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in recent weeks. “Today’s announcement from Facebook demonstrates what we’ve long feared: that malicious foreign actors bearing the hallmarks of previously-identified Russian influence campaigns continue to abuse and weaponize social media platforms to influence the U.S. electorate,” Schiff said.
Facebook announces that it has suspended 32 accounts it believes intended to influence the 2018 mid-term elections in the United States. The company says while it is uncertain who operated these accounts, at least one is linked to the Russian-based Internet Research Agency.