Facebook blocks Trump supporting fake news networks

Facebook reported Friday. December 20 that it blocked two separate public opinion manipulation operations, including a network with branches in Vietnam and the United States that aimed to influence Americans with messages in favor of President Donald Trump.

The internet giant said it withdrew more than 600 accounts on Facebook and the Instagram network.

These pages, groups and profiles basically shared content from the Epoch Times media group (linked to the Falun Gong spiritual movement, banned in China) and from BL, a Trump-friendly American medium.

The people involved in this campaign “largely used fake profiles, many of which were automatically blocked by our systems, to manage their pages and groups, automatically publish at a very high frequency and redirect users to other sites,” aid. Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity at Facebook.

The platform also noted that some profiles published photos generated by artificial intelligence technologies, to impersonate Americans.

They shared texts, images, and montages on US policy issues, from the impeachment procedure filed against Donald Trump in Congress, through religion, commerce, and family values.

The other operation dismantled by Facebook was carried out from Georgia and addressed the residents of the Caucasian country shaken in recent weeks by a deep political crisis.

In October, the social network announced that it had blocked four opinion manipulation operations carried out by groups that pretended to be users and were backed by Iran and Moscow, as well as a disinformation operation directed from Russia to several African countries.