The latest round of Meta’s account takedowns involved a fake political group running dozens of fake accounts to recruit Americans to run for office. The social network detailed the scheme in its latest report on unsolicited behavior linked to its platform.
According to Meta, the fake accounts, pages and Facebook groups were trying to support the so-called Patriots Run Project, a political group that encouraged people to challenge the Republican and Democratic “elites” by running for president. In total, Meta detected 124 Facebook accounts, pages and groups, as well as three Instagram accounts. The group mainly targeted people living in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North Carolina and spent $50,000 on Facebook ads.
Institute for Strategic Dialogue, formerly a nonprofit researching disinformation and extremism About the Patriots Run Project and their Facebook presence. The group, they said, “urged followers to run on a pro-Trump, anti-establishment platform focused on many of the same themes that motivate the right-wing movement: fighting gun rights, border security, ‘traditional values’ and election fraud.”
It is not clear who is behind the strange campaign. In its report, Meta said it had “found contact with individuals associated with a US-based intra-platform entity called RT Group,” but did not elaborate. The company’s researchers noted that the group was relatively adept at disguising themselves. They use fake accounts they “bought” from Bangladesh and rely on trusted individuals to pretend to live in the states they target.
Although Meta’s researchers say they were able to disrupt the group before it could build a large audience on its platform, Politics He reported that the group was successful in recruiting a man from Montana For Congress, though, it’s unclear whether he’s contacted the group on Facebook. During a briefing with reporters, Meta noted that the Patriots Run Project is also active on X and its websites are still online.
The company’s researchers also shared more information about what they’re watching ahead of the US presidential election. According to Meta’s director of threat security policy, David Agranovich, as in other recent elections, Russia-based groups will target US audiences on Facebook. “I think we should see Russian attempts to target the election debates, especially when they touch on support for Ukraine,” Agranovich said. “We expect that Russia-based campaigns will promote comments supporting candidates who oppose aid to Ukraine and criticize those who advocate aid to Ukraine’s defense.”
