Facebook warns of midterms election interference, fingers point to Russia

Jessica Guynn | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Report: Facebook suspends 'inauthentic' propaganda accounts Ahead of the November’s elections...Facebook has Shut Down about thirty accounts and pages that they call “inauthentic.” Veuer's Sam Berman has the full story.

​SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook has detected a covert campaign to influence the November midterms by targeting hot-button social issues, raising the possibility that Russia is again attempting to interfere in U.S. elections.

The 32 fake pages and accounts, which were created between March 2017 and May 2018 and were first discovered two weeks ago, have not been definitively tied to Russia or the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency. Facebook will leave that determination to law enforcement currently investigating the activity, its security chief Alex Stamos said.

The revelation comes after warnings from intelligence and law enforcement officials that Russia would engage in election interference in this year's elections as it did during the 2016 presidential election.

More than 290,000 Facebook accounts followed the fake pages, which had such names as “Aztlan Warriors,” “Black Elevation,” “Mindful Being” and “Resisters," according to Facebook.

The eight Facebook pages, 17 Facebook profiles and seven Instagram accounts – which included an African-American group, a Latino group and a women's group – were not pushing specific candidates ahead of the midterms but sought to stir anger on divisive issues such as race and immigration and appear to have been aimed at left-leaning voters. Facebook declined to characterize the Facebook posts and ads.

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said the pages and accounts were removed Tuesday.

Collectively, the fake pages spent about $11,000 on 150 ads on Facebook and Instagram, which were paid for in U.S. and Canadian dollars and were placed between April 2017 and June 2018. The fake pages also created more than 9,500 posts on Facebook and one on Instagram.

"The goal of these operations is to sow discord, distrust, and division in an attempt to undermine public faith in our institutions and our political system. The Russians want a weak America," Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., said in a statement.

Facebook is in the early stages of its investigation but found connections between the fake accounts and IRA accounts, Stamos said during a conference call with reporters. A known IRA account was briefly – for about seven minutes – the co-administrator of one of the Facebook pages before the account was removed from Facebook.

"Some of the tools, techniques and procedures of this actor are consistent with those we saw from the IRA in 2016 and 2017," Stamos said. "We can't say for sure whether this is the IRA with improved capabilities or a separate group, based on what we know today."

He later added: "In these situations, it is possible that we will never have good attribution to a specific group or country."

The tactics deployed in the Facebook campaign were strikingly similar to Russian interference in the presidential election but were more carefully disguised, Facebook said. The fake pages used VPNs, internet phone services and third parties to purchase ads.

"It's clear that whoever set up these accounts went to much greater lengths to obscure their true identities than the Russian-based Internet Research Agency," Sandberg said. "We face determined, well-funded adversaries who won't give up and are constantly changing tactics."

As during and after the 2016 presidential election, fake accounts tried to get Facebook users to turn out at real-life political events.

Since May 2017, some 30 events were created. The largest event had drawn interest from 4,700 accounts and 1,400 users who said they would attend. About half of the events had fewer than 100 accounts who expressed interest in attending.

More: We read every one of the 3,517 Facebook ads bought by Russians. Here's what we found

More: Russian Facebook ads inflamed Hispanic tensions over immigration after Trump election

Facebook says it decided to alert the public because one event promoted by the "Resisters" page, a counterprotest to the white nationalist gathering "Unite the Right," was scheduled for Aug. 10 in Washington.

Fake administrators connected with administrators from five legitimate pages to co-host the protest. According to Facebook, these pages unwittingly helped build interest in the event, which was removed Tuesday. Facebook notified 2,600 Facebook users who had indicated interest in attending.

D.C. organizers say they're angry Facebook took down the Facebook page for the event which was organized after Jason Kessler, organizer of last year's Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, announced plans to hold a similar event in Washington.

Dozens of local groups, including Black Lives Matter and Resist This, are behind the counter-protest, according to activist Dylan Petrohilos. "I cannot believe I have to say this: the unite the right counter protest is not being organized by Russians," he wrote on Twitter.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters Tuesday that Congress is looking at various legislative proposals to tighten election security, but said the Trump administration "is not doing close to enough."

"I think we have to do everything we can to stop this," he said.

President Donald Trump, who at times questioned Russia's election interference, has pledged a "whole-of-government" effort to prevent foreign interference in U.S. elections.

"The fact is Russia meddled in our 2016 elections. That is the unambiguous judgment of our intelligence community and, as the president said, we accept the intelligence community’s conclusion," Vice President Mike Pence said at a government-hosted cyber summit in New York Tuesday. "While no actual votes were changed, any attempt to interfere in our elections is an affront to our democracy, and it will not be allowed."

Facebook has intensified efforts to identify and remove bad actors after the Russian-based Internet Research Agency sowed conflict during and after the presidential campaign. Lawmakers have sharply criticized Facebook for failing to stop the election interference in 2016.

The midterms represent the first big test in the U.S. of Facebook's investment in artificial intelligence and additional human reviewers to spot suspicious activity. Facebook also now requires political advertisers in the U.S. to register before placing ads and is putting all political ads in a public database. Facebook says the fake pages were not able to place ads after the new registration system was instituted.

"From what we can see, they attempted to run one ad after our ads tool was in place," said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy. "That ad did not run, and they made no further attempts."

Earlier this month, Gleicher declined to directly answer questions on whether Facebook had detected Russian interference in the midterms.

“We know that Russians and other bad actors are going to continue to try to abuse our platform before the midterms, probably during the midterms, after the midterms and around other events and elections,” he said. “We are continually looking for that type of activity, and as and when we find things, which we think is inevitable, we’ll notify law enforcement, and where we can, the public.”

Thousands of ads released by House Democrats and analyzed by USA TODAY showed Russian operatives focused on race during the presidential election in what experts say was a clear effort to amplify existing divisions.

They didn't stop there. In the first half of 2017, as President Trump aggressively moved to restrict immigration, fake Facebook pages set up by a Russian propaganda operation started pushing ads on both sides of the immigration debate.

Contributing: Erin Kelly