Facebook removes Romanian accounts that shared partisan news in support of the ruling party

Facebook announced on Thursday, March 7, that it removed almost 170 groups and accounts in UK and Romania “that engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior on Facebook and Instagram.” Most of these accounts were from UK while 31 were from Romania.

The 31 Facebook pages, groups and accounts removed in Romania were “part of a network that operated in Romania and used a combination of fake accounts and some authentic accounts to mislead others about who they were and what they were doing,” Nathaniel Gleicher, head of Facebook's cybersecurity policy, said in the blog post announcing this move.

The admins and account owners were particularly posting about local news and political topics, including “partisan news under fictitious bylines in support of the Social Democratic Party (PSD).” The Social Democratic Party is the ruling party in Romania.

“They also shared divisive narratives and promoted content hosted by several domains that present themselves as news sites. Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our manual review found that some of this activity was linked to an individual associated with the PSD,” reads the Facebook blog post, which also gives examples of content posted by some of the removed pages.

These pages and accounts had about 1,550 followers and spent around USD 650 for ads on Facebook. The first ad ran in December 2013, and the most recent ad ran in February 2019.

The pages and accounts removed in UK “represented themselves as far-right and anti-far-right activists, frequently changed Page and Group names, and operated fake accounts to engage in hate speech and spread divisive comments on both sides of the political debate in the UK.” They had about 175,000 followers and spent around USD 1,500 for ads on Facebook.

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