Facebook says it has removed more than 200 Facebook pages and Instagram accounts controlled by the Russian organisation that had meddled in the US 2016 presidential election.
Facebook said it removed the accounts and pages because the Internet Research Agency had lied about its identity in creating accounts, including some that purported to be American around the election.
The content of the majority-Russian accounts was not problematic, Facebook’s chief security officer Alex Stamos wrote in a blog post
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The majority-Russian-language pages and accounts, created by the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency, also called the IRA, mostly targeted Russians, Ukrainians and other former Soviet states, and had amassed roughly 1.5 million followers across Facebook and Instagram.
“Security isn’t a problem you ever fully solve,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post on his personal Facebook page.
“Organisations like the IRA are sophisticated adversaries who are constantly evolving, but we’ll keep improving our techniques to stay ahead – especially when it comes to protecting the integrity of elections.”
