We looked through the fake Russian Instagram accounts pulled down yesterday. Here's what we found.
The fake Instagram accounts aimed at fans across the political spectrum, from John Oliver to the Kardashians to Tomi Lahren.
CASEY MICHEL
NOV 7, 2018, 9:59 AM
On Tuesday morning, ThinkProgress broke the news that a new website claiming to tamper with the midterm elections was created by a Russian company mentioned in one of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictments.
And by Tuesday evening, Facebook announced that it had removed over 100 accounts — many on Instagram — associated with the website, and presumably with Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA).
“Last night, following a tip off from law enforcement, we blocked over 100 Facebook and Instagram accounts due to concerns that they were linked to the Russia-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) and engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior, which is banned from our services,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cyber security policy, said in a statement. “This evening a website claiming to be associated with the IRA published a list of Instagram accounts they claim to have created.”
The website, which claimed to provide the “Official Statement of the Internet Research Agency,” went live over the weekend. It was created by Azimut LLC, one of the LLCs mentioned in Mueller’s February 2018 indictment identifying a number of Russian nationals as responsible for Russia’s 2016 social media interference campaign.
On Tuesday evening, the website published an additional statement. “Facebook and intelligence agencies tried to stop us but they only managed to uncover 1/25 of the whole picture,” the page read. The page then listed dozens of Instagram accounts — some of which were already suspended, but some of which remained live as of Tuesday evening.
https://thinkprogress.org/here-are-some-of-the-fake-russian-accounts-facebook-pulled-down-yesterday-819f62a59c05/
And we have to be more vigilant coming this November 3, 2020......................
