As early as January 2017, weeks before Donald Trump took office as President of the United States, the US intelligence service identified the Internet Research Agency (IRA) in St. Petersburg as a so-called magic factory, with a clear connection to the Russian state and President Vladimir Putin.
In the then partially published report, they claimed that Putin ordered an influence operation ahead of the 2016 presidential election when Donald Trump became president.
But this was not the first time the IRA was noticed.
As early as the spring of 2015, former employees at the magic factory spoke in the Moscow Times, among others.
Since then, several investigations have been carried out by US authorities and social media companies as they warned of Russian influence campaigns.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg when asked by the US House of Representatives about potential misinformation in the 2020 presidential election. Photo: Epa, Michael Reynolds 23 October 2019
The FBI tipped off Facebook
On Tuesday, Facebook again warned that they "found links to individuals associated with previous activity of the Russian Internet Research Agency".
Twitter draws a similar conclusion.
Therefore, both close down a number of accounts, the British news agency Reuters reports.
Facebook has acted on tips from the FBI, states Facebook, which believes that the accounts were closed before they became too large.
- I want people to know that Russian actors are still trying, and their methods are being developed, but I do not want people to think that this was a big, successful campaign, says Nathaniel Gleicher, head of policy issues on cybersecurity at Facebook.
Attracted left-wing voters
The Russian campaign is said to have been an independent news site targeting "left-wing voters" in the United States and the United Kingdom.
It must have been partly focused on the presidential election in November 2020 and the ongoing racial conflicts in the United States.
The site is said to have recruited freelance journalists who write about domestic politics and have managed 13 Facebook accounts and some websites.
The accounts were created in May and were closed on Monday because they used fictitious identities and other "coordinated non-authentic behavior", Facebook states.
Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey swear an oath of allegiance ahead of a hearing by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee.
Photo: AP, Jose Luis Magana on September 5, 2018
The Senate warned
Just over two weeks ago, the US Senate Intelligence Committee warned of Russian interference in the upcoming presidential election.
This is not the first time Facebook has announced that it has acted against the IRA.
In April 2018, Facebook said that they had deleted a large number of Facebook and Instagram accounts as well as Facebook pages that should have been controlled by the IRA.