Meta Removes Russian-Origin Accounts, Pages Targeting Protesters of Foreign Agents Law
Tech giant Meta has removed Russian-origin accounts and pages on its platforms that criticized protesters against the Foreign Agents Law and supported Georgia’s ruling party, Georgian Dream.
In its recently released adversarial threat report, Meta said it removed 76 Facebook accounts, 30 Pages, and eleven Instagram accounts that originated in Russia and targeted three South Caucasus countries- Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Meta said violation of its policy “against coordinated inauthentic behavior” was the reason for removing them.
The report says “this operation centered around fictitious news websites with distinct branding focused on the individual countries this campaign targeted” adding that these websites “also had a presence across several internet services, including ours, YouTube, Telegram, and TikTok” to make these entities to appear more legitimate and and to withstand scrutiny by platforms and researchers. As of this writing, the report notes, fictitious news websites continue to operate and post “news” stories about politics in Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, and Russian.
In Georgia, the report says, these fictitious websites “posted about the most recent protests against the “foreign agents law” where they criticized the protesters and supported the ruling party, Georgian Dream.”
As for the other two countries, Meta says they posted anti-Western posts in Azerbaijan and pro-Russian comments in Armenia. According to the report, in all three countries, about 3,800 accounts followed one or more of these pages, and about 1,850 accounts followed one or more of these Instagram accounts.
In addition, about USD 77,000 was spent on ads, most of which were paid for in US dollars.
The International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), a local CSO, contributed to Meta’s investigation. “We found this network as part of our internal investigation into recidivist attempts by a previously removed spammy inauthentic behavior (IB) reported to us by ISFED, a non-profit in Georgia,” Meta wrote.
This is not the first time that Meta has removed Russian origin or pro-GD, or both, accounts and pages on its platforms due to “coordinated inauthentic behavior.”
In 2023, Meta had suspended more than 100 accounts and pages on its platforms linked to the Georgian government’s Department of Strategic Communications for the same reason. Those fake accounts were mostly commenting on or liking pro-government content to make them appear more prominent.
It is noteworthy that, as in the current period, the accounts that were suspended in 2023 also shared the criticism of the protests against the Foreign Agents Law when it was first introduced in the country’s legislature and also met with popular protests that year.
Also Read:
- 28/02/2024 – Government Spends Most on Social, Political Ads on Meta
- 21/10/2023 – Media Watchdog: “Entertainment” Pages’ Network Runs Anti-EU Campaign
This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian) Русский (Russian)
