Facebook says it removed 200+ accounts Thursday that were associated with US election interference in the past, “including those involved in DC leaks in 2016”
Facebook on Thursday removed over 200 phony accounts and dozens of pages that originated in Russia and pumped …
CyberScoopSean Lyngaas
Context & Ripple Effects
This takedown is the latest step in a removal cadence Facebook has run since the midterm cycle: it attributed over 100 removed accounts to the Internet Research Agency in late 2018, then swept hundreds more pages and Instagram accounts for coordinated inauthentic behavior in January 2019, including a 471-account purge and a 315-page takedown days later. What distinguishes Thursday's action is the retroactive reach — accounts tied to the 2016-era DCLeaks operation are being pulled years after the fact.
First-order effects
Russian-origin networks tied to past US election interference, including DCLeaks-linked personas, lose their Facebook distribution weeks before the November vote; dozens of pages are removed alongside the 200+ accounts.
Second-order effects
The September 2 removal of a fake left-wing outlet after an FBI tip shows the pattern: intelligence-community referrals are now feeding enforcement, meaning operators can expect faster attribution and shorter network lifespans on the platform.
Third-order effects
If retroactive removals of 2016-era assets become routine, influence operations shift from durable long-running pages to disposable networks built and burned within a single cycle — raising detection burden for platforms ahead of every election.
The trend: Platform enforcement is moving from reactive post-election cleanups to continuous, intelligence-assisted takedowns that reach back to older operations.
Worth media outlets (re)thinking through now what happens if a big hack-and-leak operation hits in the next few weeks https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
This is such an important point, and media are the front-line targets. When SIO did an analysis of prior GRU activity (much of it topically identical to today's takedown) our key takeaway was the extent to which this attack vector remains: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... http…
What could Facebook see that would hint towards a hack and leak? The ultimate target of such an operation is the media, but the mechanism to reach out to the media to groom them and provide stolen documents is often social media. One output from that: https://www.politico.com/...
@Graphika_NYC has posted their detailed report. I gotta say, I'm jealous of their naming scheme when held up against our dry, academic titles. https://graphika.com/...
Our team at FB saw such activity in 2016 and reported it to the FBI. The best (but highly redacted) explanation of what this looked like is in the SSCI report, starting on page 183. The Facebook post indicates that this might be happening again. https://about.fb.com/...
1/ Today we announced three CIB takedowns linked to Russian actors — all three had very limited global following, and even more minimal following in the US. But we know that networks like these can pivot in the the weeks to come, so we'll stay vigilant. https://about.fb.com/...
Ben is right, now is the time to get ready for a hack-and-leak dump. Several groups with access to raw intel are pretty heavily hinting that recent Russian activity might be in preparation for a document dump. https://twitter.com/...
Today saw a massive takedown of #Russia-linked misinformation platforms — timed before the U.S. election, a good deal of the targeted content related to #Syria. Check out this super insightful @benimmo thread: https://twitter.com/...
Our report highlights new fake personas commenting on the Syrian conflict, ops focused on the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, the Kuril Islands, and more across platforms and throughout 2013-2020 (!). 🍝 Also in digestible format in @benimmo's great thread: https://twitter.com/...
BREAKING: Multiple platforms took down assets from various Russian info ops today. The ops did *not* primarily target the US election. Much more on RU strategic concerns. @Facebook kicked this off. Reports by @Graphika_NYC and @DFRLab to follow. https://about.fb.com/...