(Bloomberg) — Facebook Inc. removed a small network of accounts and pages that originated in Russia and had links to the Internet Research Agency, acting on a tip from the FBI, according to Nathaniel Gleicher, the social media company’s head of cybersecurity policy.
The network included 13 accounts and two pages, and just 5% of the English-language content it created was targeted at U.S. users, Gleicher said. The network was trying to build an audience on the political left, and posted some criticism of the presidential campaigns of both Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, Gleicher said. The network got “nearly no engagement on Facebook before we removed it,” Facebook wrote in a blog post.
Facebook disclosed the network’s removal as part of a monthly report on its efforts to fight foreign influence operations on its sites.
Twitter Inc. also said Tuesday it removed five accounts that were linked to “Russian state actors” following an FBI tip, according to a company spokesman. “The accounts achieved little impact,” Twitter posted from a company account.
(Updates with information on Twitter removal in final paragraph.)
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