Facebook, the world’s leading social media giant has confirmed that some hacking groups were trying to play spoilsport with the results of the US 2020 election polls by influencing them by various digital means.
Graphika, the social network analysis company hired by Facebook says that Russia’s troll agency named ‘The Internet Research Agency’ in association with Iranian Intelligence had launched a botnet campaign that worked to influence next year’s 2020 Presidential Election polls.
The campaign is reported to have used 50 Instagram accounts and one Facebook account with around 246,000 followers to publish nearly 75,000 posts. What’s concerning about the incident is that the posts were being delivered through influenced PCs operating from the United States which clearly states that the hackers were working on the campaign by concealing their ‘true’ identity and location.
Facebook’s Graphika analysis states that the social media campaign was being carried out in the name of various political outfits holding names such as Pro-Donald Trump, anti-police violence, pro-Bernie Sanders, LGBTQ, feminist, Pro-Police and Pro- Confederate.
Mark Zuckerberg announced the news to the world yesterday and added that the 9 accounts which had an innumerous number of followers were seen mainly re-sharing memes or content created by authentic American social media users.
The American online social networking service suspects that both the adversaries could have succeeded in influencing the elections if their campaign was not identified on time and neutralized.
Also on Monday this week, the Massachusetts based company launched an initiative to safeguard the elections by offering help secure the accounts of elected officials and tightening rules for those handling the account. The company has also started a campaign to label false content from state-controlled media outlets and will receive assistance in this regard from the third-party fact-checking program.
Zuckerberg is also focusing on how ads are being generated by the political accounts as they could suppress voter turnout or influence their minds in voting for a specific Presidential election probable in 2020 Presidential Polls.
Note- The US 2020 Polls are scheduled to take place on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2020.
