Facebook and Twitter said on Thursday they had removed several hundred fake accounts linked to Russian military intelligence and other Kremlin-backed actors involved in previous efforts to interfere in U.S. politics, including the 2016 presidential election.
Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy, said in a blog post that the operations did not focus on the U.S., gained little following and did not directly target the 2020 presidential election. But he warned that “they are linked to actors associated with election interference in the U.S. in the past,” including the leak of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign four years ago.
Such “hack-and-leak” operations are “one of the threats we’re particularly focused on and concerned about ahead of the November elections in the US,” Gleicher wrote. U.S. intelligence officials have warned that Russia is seeking to spread disinformation that would undermine former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign.
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