Facebook announced, Wednesday, July 8, the deletion for coordinated disinformation of dozens of accounts in several countries, in particular some linked to the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, and who still recently published messages on the Covid-19 pandemic.
This network of action "Inauthentic coordinated" in Brazil focused on a domestic audience and, "Even if the authors tried to conceal their identity and coordination, our investigation found links with people linked to the Social-Liberal Party" of the far-right Brazilian president, as well as those around Jair Bolsonaro himself and his sons Eduardo and Flavio, said Nathaniel Gleicher, in charge of Facebook’s security policy.
The American group has therefore deleted 35 Facebook accounts, 14 pages and a group, as well as 38 accounts on its Instagram subsidiary, having generated a total of 1,500 dollars (1,322 euros) in advertising revenue. Approximately 883,000 accounts followed one or more of these pages, 350 accounts had joined this group, and approximately 917,000 people followed one or more of the Instagram profiles.
Coordinated misinformation
Gleicher said Facebook had also deleted accounts for coordinated disinformation originating in Canada, Ecuador, Ukraine and the United States, but with themes that sometimes go beyond their borders. In the United States, old pages of Roger Stone, a very close friend of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, have been deleted.
It was the recent publication of documents gathered during the investigation by special prosecutor Robert Mueller, into Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election, which allowed Facebook bloodhounds to measure the extent of the network created by Roger Stone , a character as colorful as sulphurous. They were closed for "Inauthentic coordinated behavior". "We want to make sure that these means – mostly dormant – cannot be reactivated and used in the upcoming election" in November, said Gleicher.
"Punch Specialist"
The platform, which had already discovered part of the network by investigating the attempts of the Proud Boys, a far-right group banned from the network in 2018, blocked dozens of accounts and pages, themselves followed by 260,000 subscribers, as well as four Instagram accounts. This disinformation network was most active between 2015 and 2017. It was in the context of the Mueller investigation that Roger Stone – who proclaimed himself "Poke specialist" and wears a Richard Nixon tattoo between the shoulder blades – was sentenced to forty months in prison for perjury.
The world's largest social network reports that these accounts spent only $ 308,000 on advertisements and paid in dollars.