Facebook has banned yet another set of accounts, this time from Moldova, after receiving reports of these accounts attempting to influence Moldovan politics with campaigns linked to the Moldovan government.
In an announcement posted on Thursday, Facebook said that it had “removed 168 Facebook accounts, 28 Pages and eight Instagram accounts for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior targeting people in Moldova.” To be more specific about the “inauthentic behavior,” though some of the accounts were found to be real, they were mixed with fake accounts in order to mislead other people about “who they really are and what they are doing.”
Facebook explains in its official post, “The Page admins and account owners typically posted about local news and political issues such as required Russian or English language education and reunification with Romania. They also shared manipulated photos, divisive narratives and satire and impersonated a local fact checking organization’s Page that called out other Pages for spreading fake news. Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our manual review found that some of this activity was linked to employees of the Moldovan government.”
The social media network also promises to build better technology, hire more people, and work more closely with law enforcement, security experts. and other technology companies in order to combat these types of “nefarious activities.”
