Facebook and Twitter have removed social media accounts linked to the Russia-backed Internet Research Agency (IRA), which has returned with new efforts to sway Americans in the 2020 presidential election using a fraudulent news website and several fake social media profiles.
The IRA is a Russian organization known for its massive operation to influence the results of the 2016 election with disinformation tactics. Researchers with Graphika who analyzed its latest activity say it's using new methods to achieve a familiar goal: to persuade voters away from the campaign of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, similar to its efforts against Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Over the past three years, Facebook has removed about a dozen deceptive campaigns linked to people connected with the IRA, the company states in its latest Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (CIB) report. Its recent investigation into IRA accounts followed a tip-off from the FBI, which warned Facebook about the IRA network's off-platform activity.
As part of its disinformation efforts, the IRA created a website called peacedata[.]net, which was disguised as an independent news outlet working in both English and Arabic. The network seemed designed to target progressive and left-wing readers in the United States and United Kingdom, with personas masquerading as left-wing reporters and editors, Graphika reports.
The personas on PeaceData each had profile pictures generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and maintained a presence on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Researchers note this is the first time IRA accounts were seen using AI-generated avatars, marking "an apparent attempt t ..
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