Groups affiliated with the Russian and Belarusian governments are using numerous dark tactics to target Ukrainians on the social media network, according to a new report from Facebook’s parent company Meta. In the last few days, there has been an increase in attacks targeting public figures, military members and the average civilian as Russian forces have besieged their country.
These plans range from malicious actors trying to hack the Facebook pages of Ukrainian authorities to creating a network of fake accounts posing as journalists, editors and news agencies. All the fake journalists spread talk about Ukraine being a “failed state”. According to the report, this network consisted of around 40 fake accounts running Facebook Pages and Groups on Facebook and Instagram. Fake accounts also maintained a side presence on other platforms such as YouTube and Twitter, so they could look more real.
These accounts were discovered after a while. But as Facebook Security Policy leader Nathaniel Gleicher told reporters about the findings, the “decisive enemies” have tried to come back and are still working. During the ongoing investigation into this team of fake journalists, the company said it found links between these accounts and another roster of fake news pages that were removed in April 2020.
Alongside fake diaries and fake YouTube videos, Meta says it has intercepted a network of nearly 200 accounts, all operated from Russia, accusing Ukrainian users of their posts with hate speech, bullying and more.
The people behind this activity relied on fake, real and duplicate accounts to file hundreds – in some cases thousands – of complaints against their targets through our abuse reporting tools. Most of this network’s accounts were detected and disabled by our automated systems. Their coordinated reports increased in mid-February, just before the invasion of Ukraine.”
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